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

You still have a few more days to participate in the Shard of the Dead:

Halloween is over, but the dead won’t go back to their quiet graves so easily. The Grim Reaper will continue to lead his hordes against the living of Sosaria until the 14th of November - keep your swords and wits sharp, and defend your land from the onslaught of those who have rebelled against Death and Time.

More details (UO.com)

From the Update Center at UO.com:

On Wednesday, November 8, 2006 at approximately 6:30PM PST (November 9 - 2:30AM GMT), we will be deploying a publish to the Origin shard.

The update will contain the following changes:

* Anniversary gift for all characters 30 days or older consisting of:
o 9th anniversary coin
o Gift box containing a random piece of crystal or shadow furniture
* Updated ladders to allow players to get down from keep rooftops
* Fixed an exploit with the Iron Maiden and Guillotine
* Heritage Tree trunks will no longer lose their “blessed” tag after being re-deeded
* Slightly reduced the difficulty of the Halloween graveyard spawns
* Added new Halloween pumpkins
* The Grim Reaper will now return to his graveyard if he teleports into a justice region
* The Grim Reapers will now teleport back to his graveyard once he gets down to 33% of his health
* Other monsters will now ignore the Grim Reaper
* Pets will no longer become uncontrollable if their target leaves the area
* The Heritage Ladder will let you choose between two types of ladders:
o Castle/Keep Ladder - can only be placed by house owner
o Regular Ladder

We expect Origin to remain offline for approximately one hour.

Very interesting about the ladder.

From the update center: Update.UO.com

On Tuesday, November 7, 2006 at approximately 7:00PM PST (November 8 - 3:00AM GMT), we will be deploying a publish to the Origin shard.

The update will contain the following changes:

* Anniversary gift for all characters 30 days or older consisting of:
o 9th anniversary coin
o Gift box containing a random piece of crystal or shadow furniture
* Updated ladders to allow players to get down from keep rooftops
* Fixed an exploit with the Iron Maiden and Guillotine
* Heritage Tree trunks will no longer lose their “blessed” tag after being re-deeded
* Slightly reduced the difficulty of the Halloween graveyard spawns
* Added new Halloween pumpkins
* The Grim Reaper will now return to his graveyard if he teleports into a justice region
* The Grim Reapers will now teleport back to his graveyard once he gets down to 33% of his health
* Other monsters will now ignore the Grim Reaper
* Pets will no longer become uncontrollable if their target leaves the area

We expect the Origin shard to remain offline for approximately one hour.

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

Just a quick reminder, The Dead Shall Rise with events on production shards, as well as the Test Center becoming the Shard of The Dead.

Full Details

According to UO.com, there will be an update to Publish 43 (tonight Origin, everybody else tomorrow, October 31, 2006).

The update includes:

On Monday, October 30, 2006 at approximately 6:00PM PST (October 31 - 2:00AM GMT), we will be deploying a Publish 43 update to the Origin shard. All other shards will receive this update during their next scheduled daily maintenance period.

The update will contain the following changes:

* An issue where your evil twin would get you guardwhacked has been fixed
* Evil twin will now disappear if it fails to reveal its victim
* Once the Grim Reaper kills a target or if his target is dead, he will go back to his graveyard
* If the victim or the Grim Reaper enters a house he will go back to his graveyard
* The Grim Reaper will now give a random top attacker an artifact, not just the player who does the most damage
* Added a 50/50 chance of either spawning a black statuette or an orange statuette
* 9th anniversary beverages will no longer lose their names, and existing ones will have been fixed as well
* An issue that caused Halloween invasions to be too easy has been fixed
* Added dead trees into the selection of the heritage items

We expect the Origin shard to remain offline for approximately one hour. We do not expect any additional downtime for all other shards.

Once more tonight, from UO.com:

And the Dead Shall Rise

Last year was Shard of the Dead. This year, it’s Shard of the Dead II AND The Festival of Fright, two evil events for the price of one. Today is the launch of The Festival of Fright! Log in and see the gamewide invasion of the deadly decomposing, spreading their thrills and chills across every shard. Coffins will spring open and their occupants will dance on their own graves, and even dig new ones for the unlucky. Undead death dealers of all kinds will gleefully rampage through all of Britannia, looking for the unsuspecting to play tricks on. Treats might also available if you know who to ask and who to kill before they kill you. And be on the look out for the Grim Reaper himself. This is his one chance to party, and he doesn’t like his revelry disturbed.

The Shard of The Dead will launch on the evil day of October 31st. This will take place only on a Test Center, and will feature experimental insanity that we wouldn’t dare unleash on a regular shard. We’ll be trying a few new tricks this year, so be ready for anything.

New runes are on on UO.com:

Translation: HAPPY HALLOWEEN

If you’d like to translate them yourself, see the runic libraries listed here.

This ties into something that you can participate in-game. We won’t say anything else in order not to spoil things, but we will say this weekend is a weekend you should definitely login and spend some time in UO.

Finally tonight, again, from the update center at UO.com, Client 5.0.5c:

On Thursday, October 26, 2006 at approximately 7:00PM PDT ( October 26 - 2:00AM GMT), we will deploy client patch 5.0.5c.

Details for the patch are as follows:

* Added Crystal and Shadow stairs for 9th to the 9th Anniversary housing tile sets
* Modified Shadow arches so that they can now be passed through
* Crystal/Shadow housing tiles now display their name when clicked on
* Fixed Heritage trees that had an issue with their foliage disappearing
* The Heritage wall torch can now be raised and lowered with the house deco tool
* Updated text and localization
* Bump version to “5.0.5c”

If patched correctly, your current version will display 5.0.5c for both clients. If you have any difficulty receiving this patch, please check the following:

Check the “Patch” directory within your Ultima Online directory (the default location is C:\Program Files\EA Games\Ultima Online\Patch). This directory should be empty. Any files in this directory should be deleted.

Run a virus scan on your computer. Undetected viruses may cause conflicts with patching Ultima Online. For information on up-to-date virus detection software, please visit http://www.mcafee.com/myapps/vso/default.asp.

If after trying the above, you are still experiencing difficulty patching the Ultima Online client, please visit this web page