Magincia

Publish 70 Test Delayed One Day, Blue Crystal Owners Happy

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So the plan was to roll out the Publish 70/New Magincia to the Test Center tomorrow, using a backup of Great Lakes. That’s been pushed out a day to Thursday, March 17, 2011, however blue crystal owners rejoice, they will be used in the growth and rebuilding of New Magincia. The reason given for the one-day delay is due to some internal testing. The clients will need to be patched, and this will involve a restart and update of all shards on Thursday at 3pm Eastern, 2pm Central. They should be back online within a few hours. Full details:

While the preparation for the launch of Pub 70 to the test center is in full swing, our internal testing on the changes to Magincia require one more day of review. Pub 70 will be available on Test Center this Thursday, March 17.

The client patch for Pub70 requires a server restart. Therefore on Thursday, beginning at 3:00 pm EDT we will bring down all shards. We expect all shards to be back online no later than 5:00 pm EDT.

As an additional note, we have added a purpose for the blue crystals so many players have asked about. They will have a use in the growth of Magincia.

There may have been an additional comment about starting new characters and where their starting location would be, which was tied to the client/shard updates, but it has been removed.

Read: UO Herald

Publish 70, New Magincia Lottery, on Test Center this Wednesday.

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Update: The test has been pushed back to Thursday, however a use for blue crystals is being implemented. Calvin Crowner, the producer of UO, has posted this late bit of breaking news. Ultima Online Publish 70, which should go a long ways towards wrapping up the Magincia storyline, is going to be loaded onto the Test Center this coming Wednesday, March 16, 2011, with a backup of Great Lakes. We will be able to see how the lottery system for New Magincia is going to fully work (more on New Magincia). The period of testing will be extended due to the recent tragedies that have happened and are still happening in Japan, so that hopefully when it is finally published to the production shards, more Japanese players will be able to participate. Given how large of the UO player population is Japanese, I wondered how EA would be handling this. I’ve seen other companies such as Sony suspending billing for people in affected areas.

We will be bringing build 70 to the test center on Wednesday March 16th. As always, we ask that you participate in this test phase and give us your feedback.

However, in light of the events in Japan we will be extending the Test Center phase of this publication. Publish 70 is the end of the live event and the new beginning of Magincia and we want all players to have a chance to participate; and we recognize that there may be many members of our Japanese community who may be unable to participate at this time.

So here is our current release plan for build 70: Test Center Deployment: 03/16. Our expectation is that we will publish to Origin in around 2 weeks. Of course, as events change, we will keep all of the community updated.

We will be putting a back up of Great Lakes on Test Center 1. We hope this encourages you to log in and discover for yourself how the lotto system on Magincia works. In addition to the house plot lotto please enjoy the new system of planting seeds and watching your plants group in the open land of Magincia.

Thank you for your understanding. We are looking forward to getting your feedback and please join us when we say that the hearts and thoughts of our team go out to our Japanese friends.

Read: UO Herald

Map of New Magincia, Housing Details Released

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Ultima Online - Map of New Magincia

There you have it. A document has been published (UOHerald.com) outlining the upcoming changes with Magincia, along with a new map showing the housing plots (click the image above for a full-size version). It matches up with what we were told during the UO House of Commons recently, and now we have more details. If you want to download the PDF file from the link provided on UOHerald.com, it is here.

If you want a better look at an older map of Magincia before it was destroyed, head over to Ultima Online Travelogues and Adventurer’s Guide or to the UO.Stratics.com Atlas – Magincia.

What buildings/locations are definitely being lost?
* Assorted NPC buildings
* Counselor’s Guild
* Stichin’ Time (tailors)
* Family Jewels (jewelry)
* Magincia Miner’s Guild (makes sense)
* Baker’s Dozen (bakers)
* Bread Basket (bakers)
* The Stag and Lion (see notes below)
* Magincia Healer
* Magincia Magicka (mage shop)
* Tic Toc Shop (tinkers)
* Merchant’s Guild (replaced by Great Horns Tavern moving)
* Magincia’s Parliment

What buildings/locations are definitely remaining?
* Docks
* The Furled Sail Shipwright (same location)
* Great Horns Tavern (moved next to Fisherman’s Guild)
* Fisherman’s Guid and Supplies
* Bank (moved to the SE corner)

What buildings might remain?
* The Stag and Lion Inn. There is a location for it, and it would be odd for them to not have an Inn available for players to log out in that don’t live in Magincia.

What buildings/locations are being added?
* 22 housing plots
* A gazebo for player/EM events

Other areas that are “under construction” or zoned to be commercial, as Cal mentioned a commercial zoning in the HOC, that will be utilized later on, possibly for the vendor bazaar (more information).These are probably the areas you see that are marked off with brown patches. In the HOC chat, they were mentioned as being fenced/marked off. The original buildings affected are:
* Stichin’ Time (Tailors)
* Magincia Healer
* Magincia Magicka (Mage shop)
* The Stag and Lion Inn
* The Bread Basket (bakers)
* Great Horns Tavern (being moved)

Summary
* 15×15 plots, plots can be smaller, but not larger
* Each plot has a unique feature adjacent to it
* 11 plots (northern) are on a per-account basis, one entry per account, 10,000 gp per entry.
* 11 plots (southern) are based on however many tickets you buy, 2,000 gp per entry
* “Writ of Lease” is issued to the winners
* “Writ of Lease” can be transferred to others
* If it’s not placed within the 30 days, the land changes to normal house placement rules
* No grandfathering – if you win a Writ of Lease and place it, you will lose any other houses on that account.
* Public Gardens are going to be available in several areas within and just outside of Magincia, where players can till the soil, plant plants, and will be able to harvest named plants (players name, location, date) as decorative plants. Growing plants will function basically the same as doing it in a player’s house.
* Plants can’t be created near structures or be placed too densely.
* Players can only till one plot of land in Magincia per four days, unless the last plant they cultivated died.

UOJournal.com notes
* The Moongate has been moved to the location of the former Baker’s Dozen shop which puts it near the new bank. Not a bad move in my opinion.
* In an effort to keep it from becoming Luna II, they appeared to have removed a lot of NPC shops that are found everywhere else, which will not exactly help it be popular to anybody who doesn’t live there. It’s possible some of those shops will come back in the construction areas. Cal referred to those areas as being zoned commercially. It could that they want to see how things work out with the vendor bazaars as far as whether they fill the needs of the NPC vendors or not (reagents, etc.).

I’m not seeing any mention of whether normal vendor rules for the houses will be in place. Those with a lot of money will be able to basically buy the southern plots near the bank/moongate since they can enter as many times as they want to. I know they don’t want this to become Luna II, but the conditions are ripe for it to become Luna II. Furthermore, if those zoned off areas in the south are the site(s) of the vendor bazaar(s), which will be up for bidding to the highest bidders, the richest players in the game will control southern New Magincia. It doesn’t exactly match up with the whole Virtue of Humility thing that’s a part of the Magincia back-story. Even if they restrict it to one housing tile set, there will be plenty of really ugly barebones housing plots that serve only to showcase vendors.

On top of all of that, there is the issue of this being tied to the mini-booster, since they appear to require a booster of sorts, at least for the vendor bazaar.

I have a bad feeling about this, but at this point I just want it over so that the UO developers can move on to other things.

Ultima Online Publish 69.7 and Client 7.0.12.1 and 4.0.12.2

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Rowland Cox made this announcement earlier today on UOHerald.com about Publish 69.7 as well as the client updates. This publish and the client updates revolve around the rebuilding of Magincia and possibly the upcoming mini booster pack.

It is our pleasure to announce the release of Publish 69.7 to all shards along with the Classic Client Update 7.0.12.1 and Enhanced Client Update 4.0.12.1.

The notes for this update are below, thank you and have fun!

Publish 69.7
* Updates for final live event

Client – Classic and Enhanced
* Cliloc updates

UOJ Note: It’s Enhanced Client 4.0.12.2.

For a little more about the Classic Client updates as well as what Publish 69.7 is moving towards, read Next Booster Pack = Magincia, Plus the Magincia Bazaar. Some of it is also covered in the Breakdown of Last Nights UO Video House of Commons.

Some of the EC files that were updated that I noticed:
* LocalizedStrings.uop
* UOSA.exe

Patches in total were listed as 8481KB by the Patcher.

Next Booster Pack = Magincia, Plus the Magincia Bazaar

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Last week I speculated that maybe the next booster pack would be the graphics update, ala Kingdom Reborn. I said it’s just speculation, and it turned out to be just that.

Tonight the Classic Client was updated to version 7.0.12.1

Over on Stratics, a Stratics mod, Nexus, took a look at the Cliloc differences. A lot was added that deals with what is being called the Magincia Land Lottery, including booster pack references.

I wondered how they would deal with not making it Luna 2 and letting it be overrun with plots that do nothing but serve as vendor platforms. Looks like they are going to have the vendors located in one area, the Magincia Bazaar:

Magincia Bazaar Stall Leasing
Leasing a Magincia Bazaar stall requires purchase of the [Booster Name Here]. Stalls are leased for a period of 7 days. At the time a stall becomes available, the highest bid for that specific stall, or the highest bid for the first available stall (whichever is higher) wins the lease for that stall immediately. The funds for the winning bid are taken up front and there are no refunds. Bazaar stall lease winners will be notified immediately if logged in, or at next login.Each person may have one active bid (per account, not per character) at a time. Anyone may place, retract, or adjust a bid for a stall lease at any time. Funds for bids are held in reserve. Bids may only be funded from checks and gold in the character’s bank box, and all returned bids are delivered to the claimant’s bank box. If a person is currently leasing a bazaar stall, that person may bid on another stall. If that person wins a new stall lease, the current lease is abandoned with no refund and the contents of the old stall are relocated to the new one. The current high bid on the abandoned stall immediately wins, beginning a new 7-day lease. Anyone leasing a stall may place a hidden “match bid” to retain that stall. At the time of lease expiration, if the current highest bid for that stall is equal to or less than the match bid, the match bid wins the auction at the highest bid price and the current lease is extended for another 7 days.The current renter may abandon a stall lease at any time but will not receive a refund. Auction end times are always reported as approximations, and an auction reported as “Up To 6 Hours” may end at any moment. In the case that a stall has no current lease and no bids, the stall’s lease will remain at auction for 12 to 24 hours.

Some notes:
* The Cliloc updates contain quite a bit of information about the planting on Magincia that players will be able to engage in.
* There is also a “chest of sending” that looks to be related to the vendor stall.
* The deed that you can win for to place a plot for Magincia can be used as a recall rune to the exact plot.
* If you don’t place, it spells out that normal housing rules take effect after 30 days, but the deed itself will remain as a souvenir.
* There will be several notices for when the lottery takes place.
* You can get updated odds on winning a plot.
* It looks like more of the Stygian Abyss expansion is being fleshed out. Not sure if it will be Gargoyle-only.
* Arena is definitely coming.

These may also be new items:
* A “Resonant Shield of Vengeance” is being added (Gargoyle-related)
* Lantern of Counselor (Legend) (kind of weird if you think about it, reminding players of the counselor program)
* Wedding Book (self-explanatory)
* Memorial Stone (dedicated to past UO players or to Dawn?)
* The afore-mentioned chest of sending.

I’d like to see more about this mailbox that was mentioned in the House of Commons.

A part of me is slightly disappointed that the next booster is tied to Magincia, since it’s taken so long for them to wrap this up. If they charge for this, it better be really cheap. I don’t know that “New Magincia” is worth the money, but I won’t complain as long as work progresses on other additions, such as the high-resolution artwork. I also question the vendor bazaar – the Luna vendors are liable to dominate it if it comes down to bidding wars.

The devs wanted to roll out the next publish dealing with Magincia in March, and they wanted to go through a full cycle with Origin, so the content contained within this patch will probably be live on the Test Center within the week.