Future of UO

UO – Big Mention on Massively.Joystiq.com of Producer’s Letter, Not so Favorable Mention of Account Management

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Massively.Joystiq.com is one of the largest MMMORPG gaming websites, and earlier today they gave a big mention of UO, specifically concerning Jeff Skalski’s recent letter of introduction:

In it, he explains that his goals for the grand-daddy of MMOs include heavily increasing the team’s interaction with the community, implementing weekly Q&A sessions, squashing bugs, and “breathing life back into areas that have long been forgotten,” i.e., revamping older content.

While Massively mentions a lot of the work being done on UO, and they cited Publish 73, they missed out on the fact that UO is getting a high resolution artwork update, something that several comments mentioned they would like to see for UO. Well they didn’t miss it, they forget about it – back at the end of September Massively talked about UO’s 14th Anniversary (more than the UO Herald did) and mentioned the upcoming high resolution update.

However, while that press is good, other mentions of UO are not so good. From two days ago, in a discussion of what games they are playing, Massively’s Beau Hindman was planning on doing a livestream of UO this week, but ran into the account problems that have plagued many, and there is still no tutorial on UO Herald.

@Beau_Hindman: I can honestly say at this point that I have no idea what I will be playing, except for War of Dragons for Rise and Shiny. Other than that, I planned on playing Ultima Online for the livestream next week, but EA or Origin or whatever it is calling itself now is so frustrating to deal with. I literally have spent hours on hold and with customer service reps, none of which knows anything about my old UO account. For the record, I resubbed and played it recently. I tried to log in with my old login and it takes me to a site that does not even recognize the game. I felt silly.

For the naysayers who believe that the MMORPG community neglects UO, they don’t.

Link
* Ultima Online producer’s letter promises revitalization of classic content (Massively)
* WRUP: Let’s do the crafting edition (Massively)

Pinco’s UI for UO’s Enhanced Client – Two Guides for Hotbars and Agents

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Those of you using Ultima Online’s Enhanced Client should be familiar with Pinco’s UI (User Interface). If you are not, make yourself familiar with it! Now! It makes certain aspects of the Enhanced Client enjoyable, similar to UO Assist for the Classic Client.

He has put together two very detailed guides to certain parts of his interface. One covering Hotbars, which are flexible/customizable bars that you can use for all kinds of things.

The other is for agents, and it’s very useful for those who grew accustomed to UO Assist. Agents include Organizers – moving items from one container to another, undressing – moving items from your character to a contain, restocking which is exactly what it sounds like. There are also automatic buy and sell agents.

Links to Pinco’s Work
* Download Pinco’s UI
* Hotbars – Full Guide
* Agents – Full Guide
* Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
* Support forum

Jeff Skalski’s Introduction Letter for UO – Maybe Tomorrow

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Quite a few of us have been awaiting the introductory letter/producer’s letter from Jeff Skalski, who is over the Ultima Franchise (including Ultima Online). It was finished last week, and went through the approval process, however it was held up somewhere in the process. Where or what parts of the letter, we don’t know, but this was just posted a few minutes ago:

Few edit request changes that I’ll turnaround 2night 4 anothr round of approvals. Crossing fingers my intro lettr 2 UO fans goes up 2morrow.

I think this is going to be a big letter and very important for UO’s future and UO’s players.

Last week, I mentioned three things needed to start fixing UO
1) Act like BioWare owns it.
2) Raise the level of communication.
3) Talk to us about the short and long-term plans for UO.

I stand by those and think that some of those areas will be addressed in Jeff’s letter. To what extent, I’m not certain. I know that things cannot continue in the current state – BioWare needs to publicly act like they care about UO, and communication between players and UO team needs to increase, and this includes doing something with UOHerald.com. We’ve just seen a flurry of communications from the UO team following Publish 73, but this is something we’ve seen in the past – a major publish followed by a burst of communication, followed by virtual silence until the next pub. There needs to be a constant flow of communication, even if it’s posting on UOHerald.com once a week with a few paragraphs concerning what’s happening.

And finally, we need to know where UO fits into the BioWare scheme. We know some things about the long-term plans of UO – Publish 73 saw the first of the high resolution artwork upgrades, terrain, for the Enhanced Client (EC) and Publish 74 is going to include high resolution updates for the wall tiles.

Publish 73 on Origin, Veteran Rewards Added

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Publish 73 has been pushed out to Origin, with additional changes and additions, including Christmas Gifts and new Veteran Reward Items

We’ll push Publish 73.0 to Origin today, Tuesday 1st at 5:00 pm EDT.

Here are are the additional changes:

Publish 73.0.0

Christmas Gifts
* Customizable Welcome Mats (2 styles)
* Vocal Santa Statue
* Customizable House type signs
* Scroll of Transcendence Book

Veteran Reward Items

This year for the 14th year we have added the following in celebration:
* Group Bracelet of Binding – This item allows you to bind with 10 people at once. Handy for those times when part of your group is lost or has issues with running into trees and being left behind.
* Seed Box – This box will identify all seeds put into the box, it will hold and organize up to 500 seeds.
* Shard Shields – We have added this as the 14th year vet reward. These are new art that represence a specific shard. The shield will give you a character transfer token once a month to the shard it represence. The token is account bound, so they can not be traded or sold. If you have a shield in your house and the house decays the shield will disappear.
* Sheep Statue – This statue is a resource giver, it will give you 10 pieces of a random hide or wool. This caps at 100 resources so make sure you collect your items.

Classic Client 7.0.19
* Trial accounts can only join the Help Channel

Enhanced Client 4.0.19
* Trial accounts can only join the Help Channel

Source: UO Herald

Thoughts
They probably worked on Halloween and Christmas items at the same time, which makes sense. Frees them up to focus on other items (high resolution artwork upgrades). The vet rewards – the Seed Box, Shard (transfer) Shields, are very nice. Both of these will be well-received I believe. Now begins the waiting game for Pub 74 and the high resolution wall tile upgrades.

And the new Producer’s Letter from Jeff Skalski is still tied up in red tape.

Additional Reading:
* Additional notes for Publish 73, preview of Publish 74
* Publish 73

Additional Notes for Publish 73, Preview of Publish 74

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There are additional notes for Ultima Online Publish 73, and along with it, a glimpse at the upcoming high resolution artwork update for Publish 74, which is housing/walls.

Additional Notes:

Clean up Britiannia
Added 4 new pigments – Polished Bronze, Glossy Blue, Black and Green and Deep Violet – 1 charge 250,000 points. We will be changing this out each month so stock up while you can

Arenas Go Live
The arenas located throughout the lands will go live with this publish. The arenas are located in the Lost Lands (both facets), Haven, and Ocllo. The following additions and changes have been made after the public testing done on the arenas test shard:

* Match hosts may now choose to allow or disallow Field Spells
* Match hosts now choose to allow or disallow potions, or to allow only non-healing potions
* A bug that caused some summoned creatures to attack their owner in an arena match has been fixed

Moving forward, we will continue to accept feedback and use it to make further improvements to the arenas. In an future publish, look for the addition of a wagering system.

New High Resolution Terrian Art
As I am sure most of you have noticed the difference in the terrain in the Enhanced Client. Just letting everyone know this is just the first of many more to come. Next publish we will be updating the Wall tile art, I think everyone will really appreciate the new look. Below are a few pictures of what is coming:

Details: UO Herald