From UO.com, good news (especially in light of the fact we are probably picking up new users, what with the release of the 9th Anniversary Collection and everything):

More Than 400 Dupers Banned, Tens of Thousands of Items Deleted

After a month-long investigation and a thorough review of all involved, we:

• banned more than 400 accounts,
• deleted more than 100,000 illegally duplicated items, and
• deleted more than one trillion in gold.

More importantly, the bugs that allowed this particular kind of illegal duplication have been fixed. Also, duping and exploit prevention/detection systems have been in place for some time now - systems that help us to identify and eliminate cheaters.

We take all forms of cheating extremely seriously, especially cheats that affect the in game economy and devalue the hard work of honest players. We will never stop investigating and solving these issues, and appreciate very much those of you who contribute to the fight against cheating. We’ve had to keep these developments quiet until we completed our investigations, but we are very proud to be able to make this announcement today.

PunkBuster On Hold

After a lot of research and development, we’ve come to the conclusion that for now, it would be better for us to focus on internal fixes and security improvements instead of trying to install PunkBuster. The integration of PunkBuster into the Ultima Online client is being indefinitely postponed, until we can do justice to the marriage of the two products.

We enjoyed working with the team from Even Balance, and hope to do so in the future. We do have the same goals, after all: Ensuring fair play is one of our highest priorities.

Please know that we are working to make systems within the Kingdom Reborn client extremely tough on cheaters. We’ve made cheat prevention, and other in-game measures, a top (and ongoing) priority for our coding team.

It’s nice that they are working hard on the Kingdom Reborn client, as far as security, from the very beginning. It helps that UO is one of the oldest MMORPGs around and so they’ve probably seen a little bit of everything.

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

1. Did the 30 day timer for house decay go into effect on August first or was it postponed for publishes and the current story arc?
Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: The 30 day timer has not gone into effect yet. Our goal is to put more housing slots into the hands of active players, and doing that effectively involves more than just the decay limit. We’re sorry for the delay. As soon as we have an update, we will announce on www.uo.com.

2. Will there be any released products in between 9th ann and UOKR?
Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: No. But plenty will happen between those two releases.

3. When can we expect Punkbuster?
Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: We are working hard to launch the public beta in September, taking care of some remaining polish issues. We don’t want to launch even the beta version until we feel it’s ready. As soon as we have a beta launch date, we will announce on www.uo.com.

4. Is there a chance of a Halloween shard again this year?
Draconi: Count Draconula: Vat a velcome question! Ve suppose it all depends on you… do you veally vish to be our victims for a fortnight vonce more?

5. Can you explain the recent leech changes?
John@EA “Wilki”, Community Coordinator: The old method used your leech % as a chance for the effect to fire each time you swing. Each time the effect fired, you would get 40% of the post-resist damage inflicted back as mana, or 30% back as hit points.

The new method uses the leech % as the top end of a range. The amount of that 40% of mana (or 30% of life) that actually gets delivered is randomly determined — from 0 to your leech %. This amount is added every time an attack hits.

The resulting effect is that the amount leeched over time will be less — from a little bit less, for slower weapons, down to about half for fast ones. However, because it will deliver smaller amounts continuously, hopefully it will not feel like the ability has been nerfed dramatically.

The August 4, 2006 Five on Friday is online at UO.com. News about Punkbuster, the 9th Anniversary, and a, umm, disturbing development in regards to Draconi.

1. How is the Punkbuster testing coming? Do you have an ETA on when we could expect to be able to try it out?

Darkscribe: PunkBuster public beta testing should begin in August. We are almost set to go. We’ve been testing it in-house and have made some improvements that should make it extremely easy to install and use. Keep in mind, as I’ve promised, if it doesn’t work as well as we’d like, or if it causes problems for regular, honest players, we will delay its full launch or not use it at all.

2. When will the 9th Anniversary Edition come out? Has there been a date set yet?
Darkscribe: We are planning on October. We are finalizing the contents and adding a surprise or two. Look for an announcement soon.

3. What’s up with looting rights on Ophidian Berserkers?

Draconi: The Ophidian Berserkers absorb damage much differently than the other Ophidians. It seems the original version, while still letting incremental damage build up, wasn’t adding players to the loot table unless they managed significant damage. So if someone walked in and hit it last, they received the loot rights by default. We’ve fixed this by ensuring at least 5% of your damage is applied directly to the Berserker, however, the Berserkers have become slightly stronger to deal with their now weakened shielding.

4. How exactly do Power, Vanquishing, and Mystic weapons help against Berserkers, and to what extent?

Draconi: The Power, Vanquishing, and Mystic weapons cut directly through the Berserker’s magical shielding to deal a certain percentage of the damage you would’ve done normally to it. Power does the least percentage, and Mystics do the highest. The damage numbers you see when dealing damage to Berserkers is the 5% mentioned above, and doesn’t include the extra damage the magical weapon has included as well.

5. How come Liane had to die?

Draconi: I think we were all shocked by just how vicious the Berserkers truly are. Even the normal Ophidians fear them, and the higher ranks have weapons made specifically to deal with any that get loose. Intelligence indicates that the Berserkers are only loyal to the Ophidian females – to the point of even murdering their own troops.

Beyond that, I think it’s been an eye-opener that the Royal Council has done virtually nothing to aid Papua or Vesper during this crisis, instead relying on the local militias, guilds, and mercenaries who’ve been doing their best to stem the tide. I don’t feel that Liane did have to die…

Editor’s Note: Speaking of dying, after Draconi so graciously answered these questions, he mysteriously disappeared. An hour or so later, EA Security called to let us know they needed the services of a healer once again, and that we’d need to send someone down to clean up the mess. The odd twist to this story is that Draconi’s ghost apparently has an affinity for photography, as once he was rezzed, he emailed this… um… self portrait. Click here to see it.

The June 30, 2006 edition of the Five on Friday is online at UO.com

1. Can you explain what has happened with the Aegis of Grace in Pub41?

Ando: One of the engineers came across a bug that was causing item properties not to update correctly on old items after changes were made to their templates. This had the unintended side-effect of essentially fixing items that had been essentially “bugged” in the past.

After making this fix and putting it on Origin and Pacific, the Dev Team realized the modification had affected older “pre-patch” Aegis of Grace helms, which were rare because they could be worn by humans and had the wrong art. So a decision had to be made before we published pub41 to the rest of the shards. On one hand, this bug fix was needed by the Dev Team because it was interfering with some work that was being done. On the other hand, we didn’t want to make these items no longer useful to humans who had always had them before. So a change was made so that all Aegis of Grace helms, both old and new, can now be worn by both humans and elves. Also, the older helms will continue to display the horned helm art instead of the circlet art (with the exception of the old ones on Origin and Pacific that had already been modified, which from what I understand were more difficult to change back - though this is still being looked into).

2. What kind of timeframe are we talking about with the delay of the Inu event? Weeks, months, a year?
(more…)

The 16th Five on Friday has been posted to UO.com. Hot topics - PunkBuster, EA’s acquisition of Mythic.

1. What does the Gold Rune signify during an event?

Zilo: When you come to the Gold Rune, you’ve reached the end of the event for that week.

2. What if I play on the non-PunkBuster shard and want to play on a shard that has PunkBuster (or vice versa)? Will we have some way to transfer for a limited time?

MrTact: We are actively discussing this issue. Our thinking right now is that we would provide a way for players to transfer their characters in order to play on the PunkBuster-enabled or -disabled ruleset of their choice. There are obviously some complications with that scenario involving Siege and Mugen, but we have plenty of time to work out those details.

3. You said that a possible “Devil’s Island” shard might allow scripting? What about other cheat programs? Does that mean it would be a “free for all” shard with no rules?

MrTact: We have considered making it almost complete anarchy, and writing new Term of Service to allow for at least one shard with fewer rules about third-party programs and other currently restricted gameplay behaviors. However, we haven’t made any firm decisions yet.
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4. I heard that PunkBuster is not very effective against cheats?

Wilki: While there isn’t a method that can guarantee a 100% cheat-free environment, PunkBuster is a tool that will help us eliminate most cheating in the game. Most cheaters in UO download their cheats from public websites on the internet. PunkBuster will prevent these types of cheaters from being able to cheat in UO. While there will be a small number of sophisticated cheaters that will be able to fly under the radar for awhile before they’re found, with the vast majority of cheaters removed from the game, they will be much easier to track down.

5. Is the acquisition of Mythic going to have any impact on UO?

Wilki: The EA Mythic team and the UO Team will remain separate units, so we don’t anticipate any changes to UO or the UO Team due to the acquisition.