According to Ando, over in a Stratics thread, the Test Center shard will be coming down, probably through the end of the week:

The Dev Team and QA need to use TC9 for doing some testing, so they will be taking the shard down for an undetermined period of time (sounds like it could be until the end of the week). Sorry for any inconvenience.

Could it be PunkBuster testing? Nah, probably not. Our guess is that it’s being prepped either for 9th Anniversary testing, or for something Halloween related (the devs hinted in the past few weeks that a Halloween shard would be under consideration). More than likely 9th Anniversary testing - the timing is right, based on past publishes. It could also be something related to the ongoing scenario.

According to the Update Center at UO.com, the rest of the shards received the latest publish, which concerned vet rewards and ongoing events in the game.

On Friday, September 14, 2006, during each shard’s maintenance time, we deployed an update that contained the following changes:

* Character Statues will no longer lose their Sculpted By name (existing statues will need to be resculpted)
* Fixed an entitlement issue with the weapon engraving tool
* Using the Weapon Engraver’s context menu no longer displays a system message twice
* Red Soulstone no longer does an entitlement check for UO:SE
* Fixed an entitlement issue with the cannon
* Fixed an issue that allowed players to fire the cannon without standing next to it
* Added live event content

If you’d like to read about some of the content added, read this forum thread but be warned, major spoilers could be revealed.

According to UO.com, Pacific will be receiving the same Publish that Origin did last night:

FYI

Pacific to be Published Sep 14 2006 11:44PM GMT (PST +08:00)
On Thursday, September 14, 2006, at approximately 5:30pm PDT (September 15 - 1:30AM GMT), we will be deploying a publish to the Pacific shard.

The update will contain the following changes:

* Character Statues will no longer lose their Sculpted By name (existing statues will need to be resculpted)
* Fixed an entitlement issue with the weapon engraving tool
* Using the Weapon Engraver’s context menu no longer displays a system message twice
* Red Soulstone no longer does an entitlement check for UO:SE
* Fixed an entitlement issue with the cannon
* Fixed an issue that allowed players to fire the cannon without standing next to it
* Added live event content

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

If you are curious about the live content that was added, head over to this thread, but be forewarned, there’s lot of spoilers ahead.

Wouldn’t surprise me to see the rest of the shards get their publishes sometime tomorrow (probably late in the morning/early afternoon).

From the UO.com Update Center:

On Wednesday, September 13, 2006, at approximately 6:00pm PDT (September 14 - 1:00AM GMT), we will be deploying a publish to the Origin shard.

The update will contain the following changes:

* Character Statues will no longer lose their Sculpted By name (existing statues will need to be resculpted)
* Fixed an entitlement issue with the weapon engraving tool
* Using the Weapon Engraver’s context menu no longer displays a system message twice
* Red Soulstone no longer does an entitlement check for UO:SE
* Fixed an entitlement issue with the cannon
* Fixed an issue that allowed players to fire the cannon without standing next to it
* Added live event content

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

From the UO.com Update/FYI Center:

During the morning of Saturday, September 9, 2006, we will be deploying a Publish 42 update to all shards during their respective maintenance times.

The update will contain the following changes to Publish 42:

* Blackrock will no longer spawn at server up
* A minor issue with Vet Reward Statues will be fixed

This publish is not expected to cause any additional downtime.

From the UO FYI Site:

On Friday, September 8, 2006, at approximately 2:30pm PDT (9:30PM GMT), we will be deploying a Publish 42 update to the Origin shard.

The update will contain the following changes to Publish 42:

* Blackrock will no longer spawn at server up
* A minor issue with Vet Reward Statues will be fixed

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

Normally we don’t post shard-related maintenance issues, as these are ongoing (and easily accessed at Support.UO.com), however this affects multiple shards and is unxpected.

Today at 12:30 PM (PST), September 1st, 2006, we will be performing maintenance on the following shards: Drachenfels, Legends, Siege Perilous, Baja, Lake Austin, Napa Valley and Sonoma. We expect this to take approximately one hour. Information on when this maintenance will occur will be updated to this post as soon as that information is avaliable.

For more details, please see the Shard Support/Issues Page at UO.com

According to the one they just received

Note: the “Thursday, August 30, 2006″ is a typo - we believe they meant August 31.

Full details:

On Thursday, August 30, 2006, at approximately 6:30pm PDT (August 31 - 1:30AM GMT), we will be deploying a Publish 42 update to the Origin shard.

The update will contain the following changes to Publish 42:
(more…)

UO.com - FYI - Origin to Receive Publish 42 Update

On Tuesday, August 29, 2006, at approximately 7:00pm PDT (August 30 - 2:00AM GMT), we will be deploying a Publish 42 update to the Origin shard.

The update will contain the following changes to Publish 42:
(more…)

UO.com - FYI:

On Tuesday, August 23, 2006, at approximately 6:00pm PDT (August 24 - 1:00AM GMT), we will be deploying Publish 42 to the Origin shard.

Please try out the new vet rewards on the TC9 test shard before you claim them on your regular shard. If you claim a vet reward that you do not want, you will not be refunded that choice.

The publish will contain the following changes to Publish 42:
(more…)