September 2011 – Page 2

UO Publish 72 to go Live for all Shards on September 21

September 20, 2011 by Deckard

We will push Publish 72.0 to all shards during the next maintenance cycle. Here are the complete Publish Notes for your reading pleasure, thanks!
Publish 72.0.0
Clean Up Britannia
We are proud to announce the return of Clean Up Britannia!
Similar to the original Clean Up Britannia and subsequent Spring Cleaning events, you may now discard your unneeded items in exchange for points good for the purchase of interesting and powerful new items. Here’s how it works:
* Use a trash can, either in public or in your house, to discard items. When the items are destroyed, you are awarded points.
You may appraise items before throwing them out. Select “Appraise For Cleanup” from a trash can’s context menu, and target items to appraise them.
* Speak to a Cleanup Officer in New Magincia, Britain, New Haven, Ter Mur, or Buccaneer’s Den to see how many points you have, and spend those points
Things you can Turn In
* All items which could be turned in for Spring Cleaning in 2008 may now be turned in for Clean Up Britannia
* Many older and rarer items are now worth a lot more points!
* Any leftover points for Spring Cleaning 2008 convert to points for Clean Up Britannia
* Many new items can now be turned in for points:
* Almost any item crafted from wood, leather, or metal (the rarer the material used to craft the item, the more points it’s worth)
* Almost any equipment loot drop (stronger magical item properties increase their point value)
* Gold and Bank Checks
* Raw resources such as leather, wood, and ingots (the rarer the resource, the more points it is worth)
Things you can Buy
* Most of the items from Spring Cleaning 2008 are available in Clean Up Britannia
* The high-end item sets are available as replicas. These knock-offs are much cheaper in point cost, but have 125 durability and cannot be improved by Powder of Fortification.
New Imbuable Item Sets are available:
* Berserker’s Gear: the wearer gains a special berserk combat effect when at low health
* Fisherman’s Gear: wearing these items enhances the effectiveness of any fish bait used by the wearer
* Virtuoso’s Gear: these items improve a bard’s Mastery Bonus
* Various new decorative and equipment items are available for sale
Honesty Virtue
As you travel the lands of Trammel and Felucca, you may find lost items. These items will say “Lost Item (Return To Gain Honesty)” when you mouse-over them. These items are never in dungeons or in guard zones.
To turn in a lost item for Honesty credit: In a bank of each of the Virtue Towns (Britain, Yew, Moonglow, Trinsic, Skara Brae, New Magincia, Jehlom, and Minoc) there is a lost and found box. Put the item in the box for Honesty credit. You may use Forensic Evaluation skill to gain more information about the owner of the item. If you turn the item into the Lost And Found Box in the city where the owner lives, you will get double Honesty points for your extra effort. If you give the item to the original owner, you will get quadruple honesty points. It is perfectly acceptable to let a friend discover the owner for you.
Honesty gives you discounts at NPC merchants. The higher your rank in Honesty, the bigger your discount. The discount is applied to the total purchase. The discount is not shown in the merchant window, but you will see a system message once you make the purchase.
Other Virtue System tweaks:
* The total virtue point cap has been increased so that it is easier to maintain Knight rank.
* All virtues now decay at the same rate as the current rate for Valor. (This is a significant decrease in decay rate for * most virtues.)
Skills that had their decay rate reduced now spend virtue when you use them.
Anniversary Gifts
Happy 14th Anniversary to all our players! This year we have done something a little different. We have a few new items and included last years items for anyone that may of missed them. Hope you enjoy this token of appreciate for all your years of dedication to UO. As always you have to be 30 days old to receive an anniversary gift. The gifts will stay active until October 31st.
Guild Voting Changes
Added functionality to resolve guild hierarchy issues when a guild has no active (characters that have logged in within the last 30 days) voting members. When a guild has no active voting members (Guild Leader, Warlords, Emissaries or Members) and only has active non-voting members (Ronins) the system will now hold a special election which will promote the guild member (Ronin) that was most recently active to become the guild master. If the system is unable to identify the most recently active member, it will randomly select an active guild member (Ronin) to promote. This special election will ONLY occur when there are no active voting guild members.
Halloween
This year’s Halloween Event will begin October 1st thru November 12th. We have added a special treat for you this year so keep your guard up. *evil grin*
Bug Fixes
* Converting stoneboots to Gargoyle stone Talons will no longer give a TID error.
* You can no longer use the Sacred Journey ability to recall away to your ship when you’re flagged.
* The amount of ingots were corrected to be the same when salvaging in a bag or by the smith hammer.
* You can now salvage deer mask, bear mask, and tribal masks via the salvage bag.
* Gargoyle alterations should now recognize the small soul forge.
* Your poison skill will affect the poison strength applied to Shurikens and Fukiya Darts.
* Grape vines fished up from MIB’s will produce grape bunches (this does not apply to the ones already fished up). Non functional grape vines previously fished up can be traded in for functional items at the Ye Olde Winery in Yew.
* Fixed an issue with pets disappearing from the warehouse NPC in Magincia.
* When the Bestial Set is activated it will reduce the HP regeneration and healing.
Classic client 7.0.17
* Cliloc Changes
Enhanced Client 4.0.17
* Cliloc Changes
* Players are no longer able to filter out GM reponses
* Updated the Enhanced Client default target type for several mysticism spells

My thoughts?
It’s a good mix of things. I’m very happy with the Honesty Virtue work. I’ve speculated, as have others, that it’s the start of a revamp of the quest system. Earlier this year, in February, Mesanna talked about “getting away from basically just quests that you go out and kill mobs and we’re getting more into the story of a quest“. I look forward to seeing this applied to other virtues. And hey, it encourages Forensic Evaluation.

The guild changes are interesting, and could help out those guilds who have fallen way off or have lost their leaders but still have active members. Some have said it could hurt guilts with people who are not guild leaders having an easier path to take over the guild, but the guild leaders could rectify that by logging in once every 29 days.

I’m looking forward to Halloween. I think Clean up Britannia needs an ending date announced so that players aren’t caught off guard. I like that there was a decent amount of bug fixes, but they’ve been putting in quite a few bug fixes in between publishes as it stands.

What I’m looking forward to is now that Publish 72 is virtually out of the way, outside of some tweaks here and there, it’s hopefully time for news of the artwork update. We’ve got vet rewards, we’ve got possible anniversary events, but the artwork is the next big thing for UO.

No Update Today

September 19, 2011 by Deckard

Just a quick note, I won’t be updating with a story or review of previous expansions of Ultima Online – UO:Renaissance is a big issue given how it changed the game, and it’s taken me long to finish the article than I thought. Plus I’m waiting on permission to use some images from the Japanese release as well.

Check back tomorrow around this time tomorrow.

Thanks

UO’s 14th Anniversary: The Second Age – Delucia in the Papua

September 19, 2011September 18, 2011 by Deckard

Yesterday we covered the launch of Ultima Online and today we are continuing on with the quest of looking back at all of the expansions and major events of Ultima Online, as we head towards the 14th Anniversary. That brings us to The Second Age. The Second Age rolled into UO in October of 1998, but a lot happened between the original release of Ultima Online and T2A. I’ve included some specific highlights in this previous post if you’re curious. It must be noted that not long after T2A launched, UO would grow to reach 100,000 players. These were pretty heady times for UO.

Ultima Online: The Second Age (Box Front)

Note: Click on images for larger versions or visit the entire flickr set of T2A

So how was it being sold? With a similar message as the original UO, but adding in all of the accolades it had received (Game of the Year type of stuff), as well as emphasizing the social aspects. It also emphasized things that had been added since the original UO launch – guilds and vendors.

From the back of the box:

Ultima Online: The Second Age - Back of the Box

Thousands of Players
Potentially thousands of players online day and night from around the world, each character as indivdiual as the person who created it. A vibrant player community, hundreds of websites, hundreds of guilds to join. Are you with us?

A Persistent World
Your actions have a real, lasting impact on this fully simulated world. Regular and ongoing automatic updates to the game snure that it remains fresh and exciting.

Endless Possibilities
Ultima Online offers an unprecedented degree of freedom for you to seek out your own destiny. Craft weapons, tame wild animals, build a house, run a shop, quest for treasure, delve into dungeons – true role-playing where your only limitation is your imagination.

The Second Age
Ultima Online truly enters a new age, with over a year of gameplay refining, increased land mass, new creatures, towns, and terrain, enhanced interface, extended chat features, new in-game language translation, and a new tutorial.

The Best-Selling Role-playing series of all time has revolutionized online gaming again with Ultima Online: The Second Age. Interact with thousands of players simultaneously in this breakthrough Internet fantasy world. Get online and immerse yourself in the adventure of a lifetime..

Inside the flap/cover of the box, you got a very nice display showing some of what was going on. If you don’t look at this and grin, then you have no soul:

Click for a large/readable version

As the first expansion, what did T2A bring? Quite a bit:
* The Lost Lands, a new land for us to explore, with jungles (also new)
* Delucia and Papua
* Better chat features
* New dungeons
* New Monsters
* New language translation for players in-game
* New tutorial
* The Big Window Client

Now “Quite a bit” is very subjective obviously. If you were doing the upgrade price, it was a steal.

What was in the box?
Note: This is for the full version of the US retail box
* The game on a CD
* Ultima Online: The Second Age Install Guide
* Ultima Onilne: The Second Age Reference Guide
* Ultima Online The Second Age Playguide
* Reversible map – one side was Britannia, one was the Lost Lands
* EULA

Ultima Online: The Second Age - Everything

So what about the contents of the box? If you purchased the upgrade, you didn’t get the box, you just got a CD and the guides/documentation – pretty good for I think it was $7 or $8. I picked up a copy of the retail box for another account, which is what I’ve scanned. Looking back at the original UO boxes, retail or charter, the install guide for T2a was actually expanded to explain in more detail the in-game support. The Reference Guide was shortened, most likely because of the Playguide. The Playguide. Simply amazing, probably 150-200 pages, very hefty. Two steps forward, one step back – the map was paper and reversible – one side was the Lost Lands, one was Britannia:

Click for a huge version of the map

As much as I liked the cloth maps, I don’t have as much of a problem as these were pretty detailed, more detail than you get with cloth, as you can see from my scans above.

UO between 1997 and 1998 or I Killed Cows for Karma Loss

September 6, 2015September 18, 2011 by Deckard

As I’m working on the article about the The Second Age expansion (Update: UO: The Second Age – finished)in my little quest to look back at UO’s history as we head towards the 14th Anniversary, quite a lot was added to Ultima Online outside of the T2A Expansion, between September of 1997 and October of 1998. The following are some highlights taken from Update.UO.com/OldPatch.

Warning: This can be a long read, but it should be a fascinating read, as you’ll see some of the things we don’t even think about anymore had a lot of time and effort devoted to them. Those not familiar with UO’s early years but who play these days will probably (hopefully) be surprised and amused that some things we take for granted were not always a part of the game.

So we start in October 1997, just after the launch, here are the changes and additions made:
* A new pet command, “transfer,” was added. This completely transfers loyalty fr om one boss to another. This should be used to sell pets to other players, rather than “friend,” which merely adds an additional master.
* Animal trainers now understand the word “stable.” They will charge you 30gp fr om your bank account to stable a pet, and will keep it safely (unless they are killed) and well-fed even while you are logged out. The word “claim” will retrieve all pets y ou have at a given animal trainer.
* When clicking on someone, their name appears red, gray, or blue, depending on the following:
*** if performing a bad action such as theft, attack, or snooping would lower yo ur notoriety, they show in blue
*** if performing such an action on them would improve your notoriety, the name shows in red
*** if it would have no effect on your notoriety, it shows in gray
* The area west of Trinsic that has no bridges over the river will gain them.
* Ships and houses now put a duplicate key in your safety deposit box when they are built. Note that existing houses and ships will not do this for you!
* When you build a house, the key will appear in your backpack instead of in front of the house.
* Safety deposit boxes! All banker functions remain intact as before. But in addition, if you say “bank” to the banker, he will open up your personal chest. Note that there is a limit on how much this chest can hold! Also, gold in your account and gold in the box are the same gold; there’s just two ways of getting at it now.
* Committing a criminal act (an action that results in the loss of notoriety) will flag you for two minutes as a criminal. During this time period, actions against you will not result in any notoriety changes at all. Note that looting is not currently defined as a criminal act! Also note that attacks of any kind are still illegal in guarded areas!
* Herds of deer, flocks of sheep, herds of cows, packs of timber wolves, and small packs of undead will start roaming the land.
* Gypsy camps and brigand camps will appear.
* You will be able to rescue prisoners and escort them back to the location they request, for a reward.

November 1997
* Added a macro called “AllNames” that lets you bring up the names of everyone on screen instantly.
* Mining now has a small animation, a delay, sound effects, and autostacking of ore in your backpack.
Fletching and lumberjacking also now have sound effects, animations, and require “process” time.
* Gate travel is now two-way, so that if someone tries to trap you on a roof you can just walk back.
* There are now four damage types: direct (ignores armor), physical, fire, and energy.
* Newbie items are not stealable.

December is where things really start to pick up. Among the additions: Vendors, tinker traps, pack animals, the bounty system, orc mages and orc lords, circle of transparency.

UO’s 14th Anniversary: The Charter Edition

September 18, 2011September 17, 2011 by Deckard

With Ultima Online’s Anniversary fast approaching, I was debating on a way to celebrate it. It’s been an interesting 14 years and a rocky road at times but the future is looking much brighter these days, in more ways than one.

For some reason, I looked across at my book shelf and it hit me. As we are looking forward towards UO’s future, why not revisit the past? That’s mostly what anniversaries are for. While I’ve seen photos of some of the materials on many websites, I rarely see any large scans, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Every day for the rest of the month I will scan in or post photos of UO’s retail releases along with interesting UO-related memorabilia I’ve picked up over the years. I will include high-resolution images, mostly cleaned up where I can do so. Warning, there maybe stray dust and creases and other wear and tear ahead. Do not cringe over the condition of my boxes, manuals, CDs, etc., for they have served their purpose well. As an example, while trying to get the CD insert out this morning, I even accidentally sacrificed the CD case. It was worth it.

Click for large 3000 by something version of Hildebrandt print
Click any of the images for larger versions and for the full set of photos/scans, see the Ultima Online: Charter Edition flickr set

This one is for you Paul Barnett, because it wouldn’t be Ultima without cloth maps:

First Up:
Ultima Online: The Charter Edition
Year: 1997
Information: Ultima Collector’s Guide and Codex of Ultima Wisdom and UO Guide

Who can forget the tagline “Are you with us?”

The advertising was effective, drawing many people in, even people who had never touched an Ultima game, and it’s clear where Richard Garriott got his inspiration for his interest in social gaming 14 years later, with with descriptions such as:

Experience real-time social interaction with thousands of people in the same exciting game world. Meet new friends and foes, engage in group combat, venture off to uncharted lands, or visit a tavern and chat with players from around the world. It’s an ongoing, ever-changing world of adventure.

and

“What happens when thousands of people are unleashed on a never-ending ever-changing fantasy world?

You tell us.”

and finally:

“The time has come to enter Ultima Online. You and thousands of people from around the world will live, quest, fight, love or hate in a persistent world, where every action you take affects the lives of others.

It’s more than a fantasy, because it really exists. It’s more than a game because it never ends. And it’s a quantum leap beyond anything you’ve ever seen before.

Go betyond life as you know it to an adventure more incredible than you can imagine. Are you with us?”

The features listed by Origin in advertising and on the boxes included:
* Mass player engine allows thousands of real people to play simultaneously
* Day and night effects, 3-D terrain and 16-bit color SVGA graphics.
* Customize your onscreens characters, including gender, skin tone, clothing and hairstyle
* Detailed character-defining systems and fully simulated virtual ecology
* Real-time combat, adventuring and social interaction
* Fully-simulated ecology and economy
* Visible dialog above speaking characters
* 3D terrain and dynamic lighting in 16-bit color

What did it Include:
* Comes in a Large, Flat Box, with an imprint of Lord British’s signature
* Large Hildebrandt poster/print
* Cloth Map
* Charter Membership Gift Certificate
* Pewter Ultima Online pin
* CD-ROM in a case without a cover
* Ultima Online Install Guide
* Guide to UltimaOnline.com (the website)
* Guide to playing Ultima Online
* 90 Days Gametime
* Ad insert for Dungeon Keeper
* 1997 Catalog of Electronic Arts, Origin, Jane’s Combat Simulations, Bullfrog

Did I say a large box? Yes, I did, here it is compared to the Dragon Edition of Ultima IX

Other Editions:
* Retail version: Same as the Charter Edition, only without the large Hildebrandt print, Charter Membership certificate, or the 90 days gametime