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

The UO Herald has the details:

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 aboutgetting 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.

Lake Superior 2011 Rares Fest – Golden Lotus Contest Pics 2

That Petal from the Golden Lotus of Heaven contest that is finished and voting has commenced.

Part 1 is here

Here are additional screenshots of entries from yesterday or entries that that were messed up and are now showing properly.

Some of these in this first group are repeats from the other day – they are corrected bags that were screwed up previously.

Lake Superior - Petal from the Golden Lotus of Heaven contest, Part 3

This batch is from the second house.

Lake Superior - Petal from the Golden Lotus of Heaven contest, Part 4

Lake Superior 2011 Rares Fest – Wabbit Races

Earlier today we had the Wabbit Race portion of the Lake Superior 2011 Rares Fest.

It’s broken up into two videos, and unfortunately I had the sound off. It’s still a little fuzzy but will hopefully sharpen up when YouTube finishes rendering it. If not, I can re-upload a larger file. Make sure and select 480p or 720p instead of 240p or 360p if you want to read the names. The toggle is in the same area where the volume and time indicators are located, to the right of those.

Video #1 is heat #1 and heat #2

Video #2 is heat #3 and then a final race between the winners of the previous heats.