Events

Digital Memories of Ultima Online Project

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Have you heard about the Digital Memories of Ultima Online Project?

I’ll let the mission statement speak for itself:

The purpose of this project is to establish a central repository of images (screen caps) taken by users of Ultima Online while playing UO. The images might be of events, guild meetings or even character paperdolls. The images will be open to public viewing on an online image-sharing service or hosted website.

And a video:

There was an update a few days ago – DMUO – Private folders are now in use, regarding Dropbox as a means of collection, as work is being done to determine the best way to collect and display the information. See the previous article, DMUO Clarification and Evolution for other details.

You can view a roadmap, or mindmap here: DMUO_mindmap_share.png to get a sense of the project.

Links
– DMUO Information and Sign-Up

City Loyalty Ratings – Explained!

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Kai Schober has posted an in-depth explanation of city loyalty ratings. It’s been a hot topic among a lot of UO players since it went live recently.

Basically a character is rated by every participating city, based on whether the city likes, hates, or doesn’t care about them. The values/numbers for these ratings are not displayed to characters/players. The explanation posted on the Herald takes you through the different tiers of being hated or being liked/respected. You can become loved or hated by actions you take based on the live events going on – dealing with rioters, etc.

The notes at the bottom of the document help clear up a few questions I and others had:

* It is possible to shift a city’s favor slowly over time, but this is much more difficult for those with checkered pasts
* Negative deeds are worth more hate than positive deeds are worth love
* Negative deeds are remembered longer than positive ones
* While the world is in chaos, all cities distrust each other. This is why trying to be devoted to multiple cities will just earn neutral ratings from all. However, this will not always be the case…

The implication is that there is a potential for cities to unify in some way, or at least allow characters to be loyal/devoted to more than one city. It also confirms something I thought – that it’s a lot harder to move up the positive side of the loyalty ratings than it is to drop. This makes sense, and actually ties into the virtue system in a way. Evil always takes the easy way, that kind of thing.

Read the full document: Entire article at UO Herald

UO Team is Looking for Houses up Longer than 10 Years

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Once again, something that should be on the UO Herald, is of course not on the UO Herald.

We already had the unannounced 14-day renewal bonus that ended today.

Now we’ve got a thread up on Stratics, where Petra Fyde explains that the UO team is looking for people whose houses are 10 years or older:

Calling all house owners!

Do you have a house that is 10 years old or more? We, in collaboration with the UO Team, want to locate them all.

Mesanna is asking for Vet Houses to step right up! Submit your house information if you have a house placed for 10+yrs to receive in game recognition of your accomplishments!

Fill in our simple form and tell us about it. Where is it? Shard, facet, co-ordinates. Find these with a sextant if you need to. Tell your friends too, we want to find every home 10 years and older on all shards. Help us find them all, Mesanna is counting on us!

Find the ‘information’ page on the house sign, enter the date in the same format as it is shown on the sign

There are a lot of people who do not follow UO-related forums for one reason or another. Come to think of it, they probably don’t follow the Herald, for that matter, but that’s beside the point.

This isn’t a dig on Stratics either, this is a dig on the at times non-existent UO community relations team. In the old days, these kinds of things would be mentioned on UO.com, because that’s the official website for communications. It should also be in the client login screen.

If the Herald was actually updated with this kind of stuff, more people might start following it.

Openings for Japanese-Speaking Event Moderators

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Do you speak Japanese with at least a little bit of English, have 20 hours a month to devote to UO in a role that has nothing to do with your current accounts, and are you outgoing and creative?

If so, they are looking to add 6 players to the Japanese Event Moderator team. Details below.

Greetings everyone,

We are looking for 6 players that are creative, outgoing, and love to make events come to life on Japanese shards. These positions require you to be 18 years of age, and able to put in 20 hours a month. A small amount of English is a must to be able to communicate with the team. If you are interested in being a part of the Event Moderator team; please fill out the following application and return it to barmstrong AT ea.com.

Name:
Age:
Shard/shards you play on:
What language (s) do you speak?
Account names (no passwords please):
How long have you played UO:
Have you ever been a volunteer or worked with EA before?
What type of character do you like to play?
If you could change anything about UO what would it be?
Where do you buy bananas? (sorry couldn’t resist)
Has any of your accounts ever been suspended, if so what was the reason?
Write a short event that you would like to run on a shard, include the type of decoration and reward you would like to give.

Please remember you are not allowed to EM on the shard you play on.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Source: UO Herald

Publish 74 is Out and About

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Publish 74 is out and about on the production shards, yay! If you want to read the full list of changes, check the UO Herald.

I’m just going to give a brief rundown.

Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us. We’re getting cupid statues and cupid arrows. You can tag your true love or the object of your stalking, I mean desire, with these arrows.

A major live arc/storyline is starting up. We’ve been getting hints for a while now – the town loyalty, the rioters. It starts in February is set to run through at least September, and involves both the main UO team and the EM team, and is meant to lead to the 15th Anniversary.

Bulk Order Deeds (BODs) are getting a makeover. NPCs will now cache up to 3 BODs a day for players. All BODs are limited to obtaining a new one every six hours, regardless of crafting skill. You can now bribe NPCs that give out BODs to get even better BODs. I’m not sure what to think of it, since I see both sides to argument – that it was a pain in the butt to obtain certain types of BODs, but on the other hand, I can see the bribery prices going sky high, putting certain BODs still out of the reach of a lot of players. It’s a gold sink, and it will definitely lighten some peoples’ bank boxes.

I’m not going to talk about the Runic Re-Forging – you really need to read the UO Herald publish post about it. It’s interesting, but not something I have time to check out and comment about.

Continuing in the series of dungeon revamps that started last year, Wrong has been revamped! Very happy about this. The New Loot Generator applies to Wrong. The mobs are tougher, there are escort missions to gain Compassion rapidly. The Prison of Nightmares has been added – you’ll have to try this one for yourself. New stealables have been introduced for the thieves out there.

Clean Up Britannia has gained 4 new dyes. I’m glad to see Clean Up Britannia continuing, and hope it’s permanent.

Looting rights distribution has been changed, and healers are included equally, assuming they act as they should.

Some Bard changes were made – I don’t have an active bard character so can’t really comment on those.

Finally, there are a lot of bug fixes. Again, read the UO Herald post for more information – too many to list here.

The Classic Client was updated to version 7.0.23 and the Enhanced Client to 4.0.23.

Overall thoughts
A lot of work has went into Publish 74, and at the same time it seems to have come together fairly rapidly. It’s a good sign, and there is clearly a lot of work being done to rework current systems, in addition to the dungeons. The numerous bug fixes are also a good sign.

Would like to have seen information about the high resolution artwork update to the Enhanced Client.