Publish 70.0.3 to go through Tonight/Tomorrow

There is an emergency publish, Pub 70.0.3 will be pushed out to the shards this evening or tomorrow morning, depending on your shard’s location. It’s only bug fixes.

Bug Fixes
* Fixed an issue where players could not get or turn in Fishmonger quests.
* Fixed an issue with commodity deeds not showing the proper name
* Fixed the issue with unused tiles appearing in pets death gump.
* Fixed the issue where hirelings were not following commands

Read: UO Herald

Ultima Online’s Enhanced Client – Videos

I’m currently running the CC, aka Classic Client, while Deckard is trying out the EC, aka the Enhanced Client, and one of these days we are going to get together and compare notes, but for now we are both happy with our respective setups.

If you are interested in the Enhanced Client in any way, Storm, a moderator at UO.Stratics.com, has put together some great instructional videos walking you through the EC:

Guide to The Enhanced Client User Settings (half an hour!)

Installing a mod into EC (short)

If you have a Stratics account, you can comment direclty in the Stratics thread that Storm started.

I would recommend you click through to view the videos at YouTube, select the Expanded view, and then select 720p as you really need to see them in high resolution.

Oceania Has Migrated Back to Australia

Yesterday, Oceania players were asked to test the hardware. The UO team liked what they saw, and so Ultima Online players in that part of the world will once again have a local shard, Oceania, to play on, as it has been migrated to a server located in Australia.

From UO Herald

Kai Schober

Update 3:25 pm EDT: The shard is now available again. Enjoy!

Greetings,

After the successful performance test, we will transition Oceania shard to a server space located in Australia today, Wednesday 03/30. This will require a server down.

We will take down Oceania at 1:45 pm EDT. We expect the shard to be back online no later than 4:45 pm EDT.

Thank you for your support.

Let’s Play the Speculation Game About the Graphics

I may not be able to contribute a lot to the site for the next several days, but I can still post from my phone. Please excuse typos or a lack of shift key usage. Deck can fix those.

This is commentary, not news. Actually it’s speculation to be precise, but if you are after news, skip over this. Just so you know, my track record with UO speculation is about 50%, less if you ask my friends.

Hopefully Deckard will add appropriate links after I post this, but here goes. Tonight, somebody with UO posted on Facebook that the graphics document is written (link). This is their plan for whatever you want to call the graphics upgrade or the higher resolution or enhanced artwork. Details are supposed to be released soon.

The other night during the video panel, they had to discuss whether or not to discuss the artwork. They even muted the audio on us and went to a UO logo screen.

Last week, Cal made a very cryptic reference to a lot happening between January 3rd and now (link). Deckard can provide the date/links, but you can search for January 3rd and probably hit it. It was a very cryptic reference that implied that major things involved UO were happening. I don’t think our archives are back online just yet, but prior to January 3rd, it seemed they had a pretty clear plan for UO moving forward, and it didn’t seem to include a graphics update. By now most of us had expected the next booster to be announced, since that would match their schedule. Cal also made a reference to pr adding game footage, and that played out really weird as far as where the footage came from and whether it was stock EA footage.

Last week, we also get the dev video diary (link). It was butchered, and I’m being kind. There was something like 5 seconds devoted to the upgraded graphics and Supreem’s comments before and after his brief mention of the upgraded graphics were edited out.

From the video HOC (link) they were clearly no where close to talking about the new player experience.

But they have the graphics plan finished.

I’m going to say that what held up the dev video diary and what led to the mysterious butchering of the dev video diary was also what Cal cryptically referred to as happening between January 3rd and now, which is the graphics upgrade and its discussion.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the dev video diary was delayed for so long and then within a week of it being released, they announce they have the graphics plan finished, nor was it a coincidence that they actually had to discuss whether to talk more about the graphics at the HOC.

It also makes complete sense to have the graphics upgrade in place before the new player experience is ready.