Jeff Skalski Introduces Himself to the UO Community

Yesterday I guessed that Jeff Skalski had something to do with UO and today he started the process of introducing himself to the community, with a post on Stratics:

Just wanted to stop by and say hi to everyone. I got a lot of catching up to do as you can imagine with getting reacquainted with UO. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve played and a lot has changed since then as many of you know. Regardless, the team has run me through what they have planned for the next couple of publishes and cool things are coming. Right now I’m focused on doing everything I can with getting us through the remaining migration issues. I know it hasn’t been as seamless of an experience as we originally hoped for some people, but we have more fixes in the works.

See you online,

Jeff

That’s a good opening post to the community. Things are looking good.

Is Jeff Skalski the New Ultima Online Producer? (Updated)

Updated: I asked Jeff directly on Twitter and this was his response: “You found me. ;) Yes, I’m the Ultima Franchise Producer & UO is now one of the projects I’m responsible for. Nice to meet you.”

It’s been two weeks since UO lost its producer. Calvin Crowner was the producer when UO saw the Stygian Abyss expansion released (possibly my favorite expansion), the High Seas booster pack that revamped an area that desperately needed it, as well as the reincarnation of the EM (Event Moderator) program, along with about 20 or so publishes. Big shoes to fill.

Ultima Aiera is running a story about an update to Jeff Skalski’s twitter status.

Namely, Jeff Skalski is now listing himself as a Producer at BioWare Mythic and he claims to be “working on virtuous things

You can follow Jeff on Twitter.

You can now follow UO Journal on Twitter as well.

Now it’s possible that Jeff is working on Paul Burnett’s “secret” Ultima project and given the emphasis on Ultima IV and the virtues…but UO has been without a producer for a few weeks now. Either way Jeff is a producer of something Ultima-related.

Compassion Dyes, Vet Rewards, and Publish 72

It’s been nearly a week since I last posted, and a few things have happened. Nothing too major – the UO team is still working through Publish 72.

From the UO Herald, Vet rewards are back online (but nothing new just yet) on Origin.

* Publish 72 bugfixes on Test Center

* Mannequin can no longer be placed outside of a home.
* Increased the point value for the Item bless deed
* Changed the name of the item bless deed to bless deed to preserve the rare factor of the original one.
* The Cornucopia will now give points as it should.
* Removed the cooking bonus from the full Fisherman’s set.
* Fixed an exploit with placing Clean up Britannia items in the trash can.

Please note: If you put female gargoyle cloth armor onto a male gargoyle you cannot remove it via the paperdoll. You can remove it by changing the race/gender. This is a classic client bug that will be fixed in the future.

And last but not least, The “Compassion” dyes were pushed out last week:

As announced in a previous news the compassion dyes will be patched into the game this evening. If your character is more than 30 days old and not on a trial account, you will see the dyes in your pack after maintenance.

Some complained about the dyes being only one per shard per account, but it increased the amount of interaction among players as they traded for them, and that’s not all bad is it?

Cleaning up Britannia, One Cake at a Time

. UO Pub 72 is in testing on the Test Center, and the Clean Up Britannia program is one of the additions that is being heavily tested. I’ve already posted some of the rewards available for turning in items.

UOGuide has a very comprehensive guide to Clean Up Britannia 2011, assembled by UOGuide.com users Gemmie and Cogniac. It’ll show you how many points are available for items that can be turned in. There are a lot of older items that you can turn in for points to apply to new things, such as archery buttes, armor, virtue tiles, and some new house deco items.

Highlights and their reward points include:
* Red Crystallized Essence 25,000 points
* Blue Crystallized Essence 25,000
* 120 Powerscroll 2,500
* A Tattered, Ingeniously Drawn Treasure Map – 1000
* Berserker’s Scythe 10,000
* 300th Anniversary Ball “Ask and thou” 15,000
* Janna’s Hangover Remedy 15,000
* Christmas Statues of Dawn, Katrina etc etc 12,500

Yes, the infamous crystallized essence is worth a lot, the most of any of the turn-in items.

At the bottom of the guide, there is a list of rewards as well. I expect that some of the values and items will change between now and when the publish is pushed out to the prodo shards.

Richard Garriott Would Like to do More Ultimas with EA

I never know what my news reader will turn up, and I’ve got to say this one really surprised me.

But don’t get your hopes up too much, as Garriott explains why.

In an interview with Industry Gamers, Garriott actually brought up the Ultima franchise first, and mentioned that he found it funny that EA was using the Origin name for its online services. He then went on to mention that he’s actually had talks at “very high levels” about collaborating with Electronic Arts.

“I find the use of the word Ultima to be more interesting as they’ve tried to give that legs again. I hope that Ultima does survive forever, yet I also, of course, have my own very particular ideas for what Ultima can and should become over time and so we’ll see if they do things quite the way I would do them… since I’m not there at the moment,” he commented.

IndustryGamers asked Garriott if he could still collaborate with EA. “We would be open to that. In fact, we’ve had some discussions at what I’ll call very high levels, but the individuals who are currently shepherding the property don’t seem to be particularly interested in that, so we’ll see,” he replied. “Who knows? You never know what’s going to happen in the future… the doors always open if they were ever interested.”

As for those individuals who are “currently shepherding the property”, that would probably include Paul Barnett of BioWare Mythic. He is a big fan of Origin and Ultima titles, and is rumored to be working on an Ultima project of some sorts, as his so-called “secret project” that he tweets about. This week for instance, he’s posted this:

Earlier Today

Ultima 4, free, on GOG.com , it’s a miracle. It’s like there is a plan to re-release all the great old origin games…. What can it mean?

And a few days ago

Will be testing the secret project in London this week. Hoping for positive feedback. Latest build will be sent via dropbox!

I have a hard time believing that Barnett would turn Garriott down, so I’d be willing to bet that other personalities are at play, probably outside of the BioWare label.

Full article: IndustryGamers

via Eurogamer.net