A new Five on Friday has been posted:

“The Boiling Cauldron from the Heritage Collection was a container when it was displayed on Origin - now it’s not. What happened?”

The Origin display house had unfinished versions of the display items, and the cauldron was not intended to be a container. However, many people have requested that it be made into one, and it’s relatively simple to do. But if we make it a container, it will require you to empty it out and re-deed it before you can customize your house (like the aquarium, elven containers, etc), so making it a container has some drawbacks. We’re happy to go either way with this one, so we’re asking your opinion - visit the poll on Stratics’s forums here and vote!

“AAAAH! I still don’t have my Veteran Rewards! My account age is STILL stuck!”

We’ve found the problem and we believe that we’ve corrected it - but the fix is not instant, and so you may see some account age weirdness over the next two weeks as all your characters get updated. Be patient just a little while longer, and you should be at the correct account age by 11/27/06 if not before.

As with all dates/times/weather reports, this is subject to change depending on our testing. This is our best guess given the information that we have at this time. Frankly, Sanya got a little too excited and jumped the gun when she gave the Stratics posters a date. But the programmer who gave her the information was just So Dreamy, she got distracted and didn’t wait for the test run to finish out.

“Does the 9th Anniversary Collection include a sixth character slot?”

This was not explicitly stated on the 9th Anniversary page - sorry for any confusion. Upgrading to 9th Anniversary will entitle your account to a sixth character slot.

“When Age of Shadows was launched, we were told that the ban on placing Keeps and Castles was temporary. That was a long time ago - when can we place those house types in Malas?”

Quite frankly, I searched uo.com six ways to Sunday and couldn’t find this ban listed specifically anywhere, so we had to look at the problem from the beginning. The purpose of the ban originally was, we assumed, to allow more players to place houses in Malas, rather than allow fewer players to place bigger houses. This still seems like a good idea, particularly because we are expecting new players to join the fun this spring with Kingdom Reborn. Also, people who were around for the launch of AoS searched their minds and hard drives, and found only evidence that Malas was intended to be mostly free of the large edifices. In fact, the only large houses in the area are promotional in nature.

So, for the foreseeable future, we’re going to keep the housing rules on Malas as they have been: “Castles and keeps, which occupy large plots of land, cannot be built on Malas in order to make room for more housing slots, ensuring that all citizens of Sosaria have a fair chance at home ownership.” This does not, of course, preclude us from changing our minds if at some point it makes sense to.

“This Halloween stuff is fun, but when are we going to get back to the storyline? I want to see Ricardo get what’s coming to him!”

Patience, patience. The wheel of justice grinds slow but exceedingly fine.

There’s your Five on Friday! Also, to follow up on the question about German ordering information that we posted last week, check out Sanya’s post about it here. Have a good weekend - I’m off to go hunt for the pumpkin with my name on it!

- Jeremy

Jeremy Dalberg’s first Five on Friday as the new UO Community Coordinator.

November 3, 2006

1. “What’s the Shard of the Dead stuff? Why should I bother to log on?”

Oh, man, the Shard of the Dead has some crazy cool stuff - Vampire Wars, mazes, monsters, zombies… too much, in fact, to go into detail on here, so I got all the devs to give up the goods on their projects. Check it out here. There sure are some twisted minds on this team.

2. “The 9th Anniversary page says “Ordering information for Germany is coming soon!” What does “soon” mean? I want my Anniversary tokens!”

We’ve been pursuing this one all week, internally - the short answer is still “soon” but since that’s not only useless but annoying, here’s the long answer: Germany has some regulatory processes that video games must go through before being put on the shelves. Until the 9th Anniversary package makes it through that process, we won’t have retail information to put up. We’ll keep on this one, and post updates regularly on Stratics.

3. “These Halloween monsters are too hard!” or, conversely, “These Halloween monsters are too easy!”

So, to clear up the confusion: The Halloween graveyard spawns are NOT normal undead. They will vary in difficulty - here’s the full explanation from Draconi:
“The spawn will increase its difficulty if it’s beaten too quickly by players. If the next round is beyond the players’ abilities, it will continually tone down until it finds a good spot.
The balance to this is that there’s more than one graveyard to be fighting in; so if you can’t handle one, try looking for another that’s been ignored for a while and has a more decayed difficulty.” .

4. “MrTact said that he’d put Hit Chance Increase back on shields, but he hasn’t! What’s up with that?”
In the interest of strict honesty, I’d like to quote the whole House of Commons section about HCI:

Sprite - *Dolgorath[ATL]* Has there been any discussion among the devs about the HCI on Shields issue? Are there any plans to bring it back or remove it from existing, non-artifact shields? This causes a significant pvp inbalance between people who have the extra HCI and people who don’t.

MrTact - I wouldn’t say we’ve discussed it, though we are aware of it.
MrTact - Right now I think the way HCI and Hit Lower XXX are implemented is a little overpowering. That’s something I was ruminating about this morning, in fact.
MrTact - So A) That imbalance should be mitigated in the rebalance
MrTact - and B) Unless someone gives me a good reason why that property was removed from shields, I see no reason not to put it back.
MrTact - So, there you go . . . I have foolishly committed myself.

Right now the “good reason” is that we have not yet mitigated the imbalance, so for the moment, HCI will not be added back on to shields. That could, of course, change in the future - but the overall game balance remains the most important concern.

5. “Are there any plans to revamp the Doom artifact drop system?”

With the different looting rights systems on Treasures of Tokuno and the Grim Reaper, this question has come up. Leurocian has some ideas: “There are plans to revamp the Doom Artifact system to make it similar to Treasure of Tokuno. The tentative idea is that each player character participating against a gauntlet boss or the Dark Father will accumulate artifact reward points. The more artifact reward points a player character accumulates the more likely an artifact will spawn in his/her backpack. Player characters who score higher on the Top Attacker list will earn more points. However, everyone in the Top Attackers list that stays the entire duration of the combat (even if slain) will still earn points. This way, everyone who participates will eventually be awarded an artifact. As far as when this system will be implemented, this is still to be determined. No promises.”

That’s it for my first Five on Friday, folks - it’s been quite a week! Oh, and by the way - hurry up and grab those coins, because Sherry the Mouse has almost finished driving off the rats…

— Jeremy

From UO.com, we have a new Five on Friday. Previous Five-on-Fridays can be found categorized here. This one mostly concerns the Halloween events currently going on, although a mention of Stealth in Publish 43 is made!

1. Will we receive any free gifts to celebrate 9th Anniversary?

Anne “Silvani” Pitkin, Assistant Producer of Pain and Pestilence: We will be giving out one random piece of either crystal or shadow furniture per character soon. We want everyone to experience some of the great pieces that come along with the 9th Anniversary collection.

2. What is the deal with the Evil Twin?

Patrick “Leurocian” Malott, Dastardly Designer of Death: Ah, yes. The Evil Twin. Nasty trick that. Evil Twins are dark manifestations that reside from a world ‘outside’ our own. They essentially have all of the traits, skills, and abilities of brave adventurers. It is rumored that the recent experimentation with Blackrock has weakened the fabric of reality and has caused a planar rift between our world and theirs.

3. How many different pumpkins are there? How rare are the black ones?

Tim “Draconi” Cotten, Wild Eyed Designer of Doom: The Jack o’ Lanterns are a special treat (or trick?) which burst into flames if you smash one on the ground! Just double click it and target it like you would an explosion potion.

Now for the black pumpkins: there is a very rare chance (1 in 90) that a Jack o’ Lantern will become hued black, and when used like a normal Jack o’ Lantern cause a much more devastating explosion.

Be careful though, these rare Jack o’ Lanterns act just like a Conflagration potion.

4. Will there be any further changes made to stealth in or after Pub43?

John “Wilki” Wilkinson, Community Coordinator of Coffin Filling: There won’t be any further changes to stealth in Pub43, however we’re planning to monitor the changes and adjust them if necessary.

5. What is going on at the graveyards?

Conrad the Soldier: Ne’er seen the like in all me years. A man fool enough to step more ‘an six feet into a graveyard is a dead man indeed, mark me words! ‘Tis as though the gates of Doom herself ‘ave opened up in our cursed cemeteries, and those awful stories we tell children went and came true. Well, I don’t have much to say - the mages went off to go find out what’s happening, but they haven’t sent any word beyond some sort of gobbledygook about “portals” and “dimensions” and whatnot. The thing is, and I don’t understand it meself, is that they only seem to appear at night!

Fah! All I know is that my blade’ll dispatch these horrors as well it does anything. Just keep out of our way, and don’t dare try and steal our spoils! I’ve seen some strange things on these corpses, and we mean to make back some gold for our troubles at the least.

This week’s Five on Friday is online at UO.com

A categorized listing of all previous Five on Friday questions can be found here.

October 20, 2006

1. Are you going to make any changes to the Bushido ability Evasion in Publish 43?

John “Wilki” Wilkinson, Community Coordinator: Yes, the following changes will be made in Publish 43:

* Evasion duration will scale with your Bushido skill. Range is 3-6 second duration, with a 2 second bonus if your bushido is above GM and both tactics and anatomy are GM or better
* Evasion parry modifier will scale with your Bushido skill. Range is 16-40%, with a 10% bonus if your bushido is above GM and both tactics and anatomy are GM or better

For more information about Evasion changes and other changes in Publish 43 please check here.

2. I missed out on getting one of those special coins from the Castle rat invasion. Will I have another chance at these?

Sherry the Mouse: *squeak* I think the rats have gone back down into the sewers…

3. Whenever I use stealth, I seem to be passively revealed by other players almost every time. Are there any plans to change that?

John “Wilki” Wilkinson, Community Coordinator: Yes, we’ve made some significant changes to passive detect in Publish 43. We have adjusted passive and targeted detect hidden for both players and monsters so stealthers aren’t as easy to detect. For more information about Stealth changes and other changes in Publish 43 please check here.

4. Are we going to have another Shard of the Dead?

Anne “Silvani” Pitkin, Assistant Producer: We are indeed! Shard of the Dead II will be a wonderfully frightening experience on Halloween. This test shard will be full of spooky fun, with some new surprises. There will be crazy Dev Team appearances and other various forms of insanity.

5. Are we doing anything for Halloween on production shards?

Anne “Silvani” Pitkin, Assistant Producer: Yes, besides Shard of the Dead II, we’ll also have some scary surprises in store for regular shards! The Festival of Fright will be a game wide event on all shards. There will be some special treats given out during this time, however be wary of your local graveyards! This event will last one to two weeks.

The October 13, 2006 edition of the Five on Friday has been posted on UO.com.

All Five on Friday questions organized by category here at UOCodex.com

1. From looking at the new screenshots, it looks like we be getting horse blankets, saddles, and horse armor. Is this true?

Andrew “Ando” Woodruff, Assistant Producer: While this is certainly a possibility, the horses shown in the new screenshots are faction horses. The color of the horse is wearing represents the faction it belongs to.

2. Will you please extend Treasures of Tokuno II a bit longer?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: Since so many of you have asked nicely… YES!

3. I see that Leurocian is back! What is he working on?

Patrick “Leurocian” Malott, Designer: I’ve been working on additions and bug fixes for the heritage items such as adding fruit on the apple and peach fruit trees and allowing the curtains to open and close. I’m also working on design documents for UO: Kingdom Reborn as well as collaborating with our other designers on resolving ‘hot topic’ issues such as Evasion balancing.

4. We’re finding some new kinds of coins on the rats invading Castle British, what do they do?

Tim “Draconi” Cotten, Designer: Actually, they’re really *old* coins, from before Britannia switched to the simple gold piece system that we all know today. It looks like the rats managed to get into an old vault beneath the castle, because these have never been seen in the history of UO! They’re rather nice for coin flipping though. (Double click when they’re outside of a container, works when locked down as well).

Be careful though, I’ve seen quite a few merchants who are more than willing to accept them as legal tender. If you need to buy something, make sure you tuck these rare coins safely away first!

5. Who is Sherry the Mouse? What does she do?

Tim “Draconi” Cotten, Designer: You can read all about Sherry here: http://www.uo.com/sherrythemouse.html

This week’s Five on Friday has been posted at UO.com

All Five on Friday questions organized by category here at UOCodex.com

1. How long will Treasures of Tokuno II last?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: We’re planning to leave it active for one more week. We’ve made a few changes we think you’ll like.

2. When will Siege and Mugen players get to exchange character transfer and advanced character tokens for something else?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: We’re planning to have this in for Publish 43, and will give players the option to turn in these items for ublessed 7th Anniversary items.

3. What is the robed figure in the Ankh room doing?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: It seems to be some entity attempting to enter our world, yet still unable to do so. The figure appears more often when several people are around, but always flickers back into the ether. Several of our citizens have already come to their own conclusions and drug up old books and legends, but whether or not this is truly the “Time Lord,” as some have rumored, remains to be seen.

4. Do you plan to do something about the colored shrouds that seem to be everywhere?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: We’re getting close to implementing a solution for these shrouds. Stay tuned.

5. Will I be able to dye the curtains that are apart of the heritage collection? And will I be able to get to the roof of my castle with the new ladder?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: Yes you will be able to do both. For other questions you might have, please check the FAQ here.

Five on Friday has been posted on UO.com

For all previous Five on Fridays, organized by topic, please see the master list here at UOCodex.com

1. It’s great that the Treasures of Tokuno event is back. Do you have plans to do other events like this, but with new rewards?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer:
Yes. There are a few variations that we are talking over and will experiment with. We’d like to make a system that isn’t just about combat, but also involves other disciplines like crafting, fishing, mining or others. That would bring players together with different interests and abilities and give them a reason to work together. We’re working on something along those lines and will roll it out when ready. I can’t give a timeline at the moment, but we like the idea a lot.

2. I love the 9th Anniversary stuff! Will we get to see any of this on the Test Shard?
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For an update on this story, see Treasures of Tokuno II and an Imperial Decree

Yesterday it was mentioned that the Treasures of Tokuno started back up with the publish that just went through. One difference over the past ToT was that the dyes were no longer available as major artifacts.

It turns out there are dyes dropped as minor artifacts, however they are more natural in appearance and they are only good for one use. The color matches the bottle, and players have reported that they match the metals we have available to us (minus iron of course).

Keep in mind this: Back on the April 7, 2006 Five on Friday Questions, MrTact answered this question:

3. Are you ever going to add Tokuno dyes back into the game?

MrTact: Not per se; we intend for those colors to stay rare. I would love to add metal dyes in a variety of additional (common) colors as an alchemy craftable, though. It’s just a question of finding the time to get it into a publish!

Since last week’s Week in Review (Sep 11 - 18) was well received, we are going to continue this series, and we are going to keep the same format - brief, one-line descriptions of each major news story from the previous week. One small change will be, it will cover from tuesdays through mondays, with each previous week’s summary being posted monday night or tuesday morning.

In-Game Fiction:
- Friday (Sep 22) - Elven Prosecutor Assigned to Ricardo’s Trial!
- Friday (Sep 22) - New Runes on UO.com
- Friday (Sep 22) - InuWiki moves to InuWiki.com

Game Updates:
- Wednesday (Sep 20) - Ultima Online 9th Anniversary doing fairly well at Amazon in pre-orders, despite few details having leaked out.
- Wednesday (Sep 20) - Wilki answered 50 questions
- Thursday (Sep 21) - Client Patch 5.0.4e (Login/Splash screens updated)
- Friday (Sep 22) - Five on Friday for September 22 - 9th Anniversary, Kingdom Reborn, Vamp Form, Talon Bites, Blackrock

Miscellaneous:
- Thursday (Sep 21) - Sosarian Tales is alive once more
- Friday (Sep 22) - PayByCash Custumors - Billing changes
- Monday (Sep 25) - Sosarian Voices Returns, Plus Show #30

Site News:
- Wednesday (Sep 20) - Searchable/Organized “Five on Friday” Finished

This week’s Five on Friday is now online at UO.com

For previous Five on Fridays - see the full list here.

1. When will the 9th Anniversary Collection site be going up so we can all start getting our pre-orders made and find out concreate information about what is in the box?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: Next week! You should also see several of the online retailers post new information next week as well.

2. When will we see some more teaser content for Kingdom Reborn?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: I hate using this word, because I know the UO fans hear it far too often, but the answer is soon. The marketing and community plans are coming together quickly, and momentum will soon begin to build.
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