Shard Updates

UO Account Center Maintenance – August 22

by

A major update on the Account Center Migration, along with a bit of news that we’ll find out more about Publish 72 and UO’s 14th Anniversary sometime next week.

Early next week the Account Center will be offline for an update. We will update you on expected downtime for both the account center and game servers as we know more. We do not expect the combined downtime to take longer than several hours.

Over the past week we have gathered and evaluated player inputs on the account center, and will update and adjust account information based on this feedback.

We disabled many of the billing processes to avoid inappropriate or untimely charges during the transition to the new account center.

Our first step in is to update and process all those on any form of recurring billing. This means If you are charged for 30, 90, or 180 days at regular periods, AND were set to bill during the period from August 5th, through the time in which we enable the account center, you will be charged.

Also, during this update, we will re-enable and extend gametime for those whose accounts were incorrectly moved to an inactive status. For anyone whose accounts may have lapsed due to an expiring gametime card, your time will be appended.

The ability to redeem game registration codes and other codes which allow you to connect to and play the game will run once we are confirmed the first part of the process is running smoothly.

Our intent is to maintain player and character data for anyone who updated their subscriptions during this transition to the new account center.

We will also re-enable account age and veteran rewards.

Again, if you call into for support, please request an incident number as we are also tracking feedback for our use during this time.

Thank you again, for your patience during this time.

Look for information on Pub 72 and Ultima’s 14 year Anniversary later next week!

From: UO Herald

The Aftermath of the Great Account Migration

by

Well it’s been over 24 hours and I thought I’d comment on the Great Account Migration.

I had a BRIEF COMMENT about the problems a few minutes ago, but I’d like to go more in-depth.

First off, yes, I understand that it was not the decision of the UO Team. This migration, or upgrade, affected Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I do agree that it should make our lives easier in the long run to be integrated with the main EA.com/Origin.com billing and accounting system, however there were some serious issues. I also think there can be some changes made that make things easier, but more on that in a bit.

While I don’t know the whole story, given how rushed this felt, I’d have to guess that BioWare becoming a label and Star Wars: The Old Republic have something to do with it. BioWare/EA may have wanted to get the three main MMOs up and running on the main accounting system before they started collecting monthly subscriptions from Star Wars, and Star Wars could be launching later this year or early next. There will be more people initially playing Star Wars than UO, DAoC, and Warhammer combined. From their perspective, it would probably be better to get the other three MMOs up and running on the main system and any problems squashed before Star Wars launches, because after Star Wars launches, customer service and database development is going to be primarily tied up with it.

Criticisms
In addition to my brief comment I just made about the problems, I said yesterday that we should have had more time to prepare and we should have received a lot more instruction before the process started. This would have saved a lot of support time on EA/BioWare’s end, and it would have saved a lot of frustration for the players. People should have been told that it would be a good idea to get any email address issues or password issues resolved before everything started, or to move the accounts they want linked over to one email. This is one of the biggest issues that I’m hearing about and reading about. I know I’m having problems linking some accounts even though I still own the email addresses and can log into the game just fine with them.

The process in general, and the new website in particular, should have been better explained with a tutorial, complete with screenshots. A lot of people would not have guessed the _uo thing, regardless of how obvious some think it is. A lot of people are confused about Mythic Master Accounts and how a UO Account can be a Mythic Master Account but a Mythic Master Account can be many other things. People are confused about the whole EA.com accounts thing as well. The EA Account aspects should have been left out of this process or covered up for the time being, and people should have only had to focus on setting up their Mythic Master Accounts.

It’s been 24 hours, an hour or two from a few people working on a tutorial placed front and center and not a link to a fansite would have alleviated a lot of problems and a lot of stress for people, not to mention saving EA thousands in customer service calls.

Linking and Unlinking Accounts
The process of linking and what it entails should have been better explained. This is another huge issue I keep hearing or reading about. There should be an obvious process for unlinking as well, rather than having to go through customer support. Many people hold on to accounts for others who aren’t currently playing, or can’t for some reason, and they may have unwittingly linked those accounts to their own accounts. Many of these are not accounts that are being sold or traded, these are accounts that are being held as a favor, and these people should not have to pay the account transfer feeds because they mistakenly linked those accounts to their own.

9 Accounts
So I can’t go beyond linking 9 accounts. At least let me unlink some dead accounts so I can add active accounts. I don’t know if this is affecting me personally or if it’s a bug.

It appears I’m not alone. I’m not going to add it to my BRIEF COMMENT, since it’s probably the easiest thing for them to fix.

UO Game Codes
It seems like a lot of people are having issues revolving around things purchased in the UO Game Codes store, whether it was gametime or account upgrades or character slots. I know of people missing characters and I am as well. Obviously the new accounting system doesn’t play too well with the UO Codes store, so halt sales of items on it and make those items available through the new account system in another fashion.

And a few people on Stratics had a good idea similar to what I was thinking yesterday – make it easy to upgrade to Stygian Abyss, or purchase the High Seas, Rustic, or Gothic packs through the account system. Offer us a bulk discount or something. You want new players, don’t make them have to go to Origin.com or uogamecodes.com to buy stuff, let them buy it within the new account system.

Again, I know this was not the way the UO, Dark Age of Camelot, or Warhammer devs wanted to spend their weekend, but there should have been tutorials for all three games put together well before now. We got the notice on August 4th, and it’s August 14th.

Shards Back Online, Some Reverts, Vet Rewards Disabled, Other Issues

by

This was posted a few hours ago on UOHerald.com:

Migration Update:
Shards are now online.

Production servers have been reverted to last best version August 13th, 2011 6:25 a.m. EDT, with the exception of Origin which was reverted to August 12th, 2011 7:02 a.m EDT.

Veteran rewards are currently disabled.

We are investigating 6th character slot and other entitlement issues associated with our recent change to a new account center.

We are monitoring the forums and CS is forwarding all issue to the team. We will do our best to keep you updated as we hope to have many fixes implemented during the weekend.

Nothing too surprising, given how complex the accounting migration is. I’ve put together a brief tutorial and linked to a Stratics tutorial in there as well.

One thing that kind of surprised me from reading through forum posts on Stratics and UO Forums, there appear to be a lot of people who didn’t experience the more serious problems that UO experienced in it’s first five years or so. I see people who are upset about losing a lot of time or were doing something important after the servers came back up this morning and lost that when the shards reverted. In the early days of UO, it was almost the first unofficial rule of UO – don’t do anything you would be upset about losing immediately after a major patch, publish, or other system change. I was even hesitant to take a peak at the account management system, but decided to in the interest of the website.

Since there are a lot of people who are upset over losing some time this morning or who assumed that everything would be 100% perfect after the upgrade, that leads me to believe that a lot of players these days weren’t around for UO’s early years, and that is actually a good thing. That means that UO has a lot more players who started in the last 6-7 years or so. I had been running on the assumption that many of the remaining UO players were from UO’s early years. Given the stiff competition over the last seven years, it’s interesting how many chose UO. I think the majority of players I encounter are probably from around UO’s early years, but there is definitely a group who came along after that.

Servers are Down Again

by

UO servers are down again, as part of the accounting upgrade. They were up earlier when I got up this morning, and both Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online were up and running.

We are aware of several issues, including the character slot problem, and we are working on fixes now. The servers will be coming down shortly to impliment the fixes. Thank you for your patience.

According to posts by Cal Crowner, the UO producer, they were up for most of the night working on the system, but they came up around 4:30am Central.

UO Account Center Migration – Server Downtime, Now 9pm EST

by

The scheduled downtime for the account center migration has been delayed until 9pm Eastern, 8pm Central, according to a post by UO’s producer:

Update: We have rescheduled the downtime to begin at 9:00 p.m. EDT.

Greetings,

The update of Ultima Online to the new account center begins this afternoon.

Downtime for game servers begins 2:30 p.m. 9:00p.m. EDT. We expect the game servers to be down for a few hours and return this evening.

We will keep you updated as we have more information to share.

For those who are interested, please continue to read:

What are we doing?

Currently all player account information is moved and secure.

Three items:

Account Age
Account age will not update for several days. We are migrating information from 14 year old database. In order to validate this volume of records, we are taking additional time to test and verify all individual accounts are correct before declaring the migration complete.

Code Redemption
DO NOT yet redeem your gametime codes. We discovered additional steps we need to implement before allowing players to redeem gametime cards. We will take steps to ensure all players whose gametime has lapsed can continue to play the game.

Logins
When the game comes back online, the Return to Britannia program will be disabled. If you have trouble getting into the game please contact Customer Support.

Our priorities are to move all your information securely, make certain we have all the new customer support tools are in place for this transition, and to return you to the game as quickly and safely as we can.

Again, thanks for your patience.

Now some people are getting upset, throwing their typical fits over this. The way I see it, this is an area of UO that has needed fixing for many years. I’ve encountered problems with it, and I know others have. As the update mentions, they are migrating from a 14 year old database.

The end result, we should have a better account system, which has been needed for many years, we’ll have accurate account age tracking, and if you’re in Europe, you’ll have more payment options. Personally I’d like to see something done with UOGameCodes.com as well, I think it should be integrated with our account system as well, but we’ll see.

I can confirm that the servers came down, at least Lake Superior’s server did.

UO Herald