UO.com has news that Publish 41 will be rolled out to all worldwide shards today.

During each shard’s daily maintenance, we will be deploying Publish 41 Worldwide to all shards.

Publish 41 will contain the following changes:

* Added Personal Attendants
* Fixed a bug that was causing certain items that had been changed in the past to not fix themselves. This may have an affect on certain items such as the Aegis of Grace
* The Aegis of Grace can now be equipped by humans
* Fixed Elven Dressers facing south. These items were being placed in 2 sections
* Imprisoned Dogs will no longer take items players accidentally drop on them
* Imprisoned Dogs no longer change shape while stabled
* Players will no longer get The Shattering book in their bank box

The June 9, 2006 edition of the Five on Friday is up on UO.com. The first question, about the hideous looking duped clothing.

1. My eyes! Are you looking into this sudden influx of garishly colored clothing?

Darkscribe: Ah yes, the dreaded duping bug that creates eye searing hues on some items. We will be fixing that as soon as we’re able.

2. It’s really hard to sneak around these days. Do you have any plans to take a look at stealth vs. passive detect?

Wilki: Definitely. The stealth/hiding/detection system needs to be readjusted so that it’s possible to sneak around other players and monsters without such a high chance of detection. We’ll also look at detect hidden, and the reveal spell as well. We’ve seen some good ideas from the community, so please feel free to comment more on the forums.

3. Occasionally I have noticed that my client has been crashing since Pub40 was released. Is this something that will have to wait until Pub41 to get fixed?

Ando: The QA team has reproduced two separate crashes. The first one involves the targeting system and the Dev team is currently working on a fix for this. The second appears to involve Elven containers, and the QA team is in the process of providing the Dev team with all the information they need to locate the root cause of this issue. The Dev team would like to release a fix for these issues as early as next week if possible.

4. What will Pub41 consist of and when can we expect to see a Pub41 Test Center?

Ando: Since Pub41 will be a fairly small publish, we should be able to get a Test Center up sometime next week. At that time we will be providing details of what the publish will consist of.

5. Are there any possible plans for the 9th anniversary?

Darkscribe: Yes! There will be a new boxed product that we will be announcing shortly that will go on sale in September, just in time for the anniversary. There are a couple remaining details to work out before we can give all the details. This new product will contain not one, but two new housing tile sets, both of which are quite different from anything currently in the game. And no, this anniversary box isn’t the secret that will be revealed when you solve the puzzles surrounding Inu. The spring flowers are still very much in bloom.

From UO.com, the May 12, 2006 Five on Friday.

1. When you add vet rewards, will you add some for vets that haven’t been playing since the beginning?

Darkscribe: Yes! We are adding a new reward for one year players, to go along with the existing one. We should be able to announce all the new vet rewards next month.

2. I really liked the Treasures for Tokuno event. Is there a chance that it, or something like it, will be brought back in the future?

Darkscribe: Absolutely. We really liked that event as well. It needs some tweaks here and there, but overall it got a great response. We’d like to do something similar this year.

3. What would it take that you consider removing the timer on the polymorph spell. If not then why?

MrTact: The only reason I would be reluctant to do this would be that I hate “toggle” spells, although the recent introduction of the buff/debuff gump makes them somewhat less annoying. We will look into doing this in a future publish.

4. Have you been listening to our feedback on Proficiencies? I haven’t seen you comment on them recently.

MrTact: Proficiencies slipped out of this publish, both because we bit off more than we could chew with pub 40, and because of the level of player reaction to the announcement of the feature. I haven’t been talking about them because there was more than enough controversy over what was left *in* pub 40! As we come to the close of that publish, we’re going to start talking more about proficiencies.

It’s clear to us that we need to take our time and make sure they are done right. Accordingly, we are actually slipping them out of pub 41, as well – we have some time-dependent features in that publish, proficiencies are a big change, and we don’t want to push them out half-baked just to make a deadline on another feature. We’ll be working on them, and they should be available on TC for players to experiment with, but the earliest you would see them in production is pub 42.

5. I really enjoyed the “Inu” story that was printed on BNN. Who wrote it, and do you plan on writing more fiction like that?

Inu the Crone: I commissioned this relatively unknown writer who goes by the name Draconi to write the first chapter of my story. So many of you have come to me asking me about bits and pieces of the story. By bits and pieces, I literally mean one word at a time. And you wonder I prefer the company of scorpions and sand to you people? Bah.

In any case, I do think I will have this Draconi fellow write more of my story in the future.

Now online - the April 21, 2006 Five on Friday at UO.com. Make sure and read the question about codes (gametime, etc.) being sold…

1. I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Inu the Crone puzzles. Will my friends on Asian shards get to participate in the event too?

Darkscribe: Absolutely. The Asian shards have separate community teams that will be running the events. The key plot elements will be the same, but delivered in different ways and at different times. We’re going to try and keep all the shards as consistent as possible, but there will be deviations.

2. Are you guys at a point yet where you can finalize the list of pub 40 changes?

Darkscribe: We are very, very close, and just about everything in pub 40 is public now. I expect the entire “code complete” publish to be on test center next week. When it’s up on the TC, you’ll be able to sample all the new stuff, including the new buff-de-buff system and the new targeting system.

3. Can we see what the new buff/debuff system looks like?

Wilki: Yes, you sure can. Click here for a preview.

4. Sometimes I see codes (gametime, gender change, etc) being sold for less than I can buy from from EA. How is this possible?

Wilki: While I suppose it’s not completely impossible that someone might buy a bunch of codes and sell them for less than they bought them for out of the generosity of their heart, I’d say it’s about as likely as finding a check for one million gold lying around the Luna moongate at 8pm on a Saturday night. In the past, we’ve discovered codes bought with stolen credit cards. We then make an effort to find accounts that used the stolen codes and occasionally ban those accounts as well, depending on the circumstances.

If you need to buy a code, it’s highly advised that you only buy them from www.uogamecodes.com, otherwise caveat emptor. You wouldn’t meet a stranger at the crossroads in Felucca to trade your unblessed rares collection for an artifact, now would you?

5. I think Inu is a virtue short of a full codex. Is she ever going to make any sense?

Inu the Crone: I make plenty of sense. It’s not my fault that you can’t add two and two together; or any other combination of numbers for that matter.

*mutters* Non dignus.

This week’s Five on Friday is now online at UO.com. Among the questions answered - information about proficiency and Publish 40.

1. I saw the new targeting system thread in the Developer’s Corner, and I can’t wait to try it. I was wondering if that example was the way it is going to look in Pub40?

TheGrimmOmen: Not quite. What you saw in that thread was an early prototype to demonstrate the functionality of the new system. We’ve been working on the art for the targeting reticule, and should have something new to show you soon.

2. How will armor resists work with the proficiency system? Can I still have all of my resists at 70% if I want?

MrTact: Under the current plan, no. However, the armor proficiencies are one of the more controversial elements of the proficiencies system, and are likely to undergo some changes before deployment. There is an active discussion of this in the proficiencies thread on Stratics.

3. Do you still plan on putting a timer on changing proficiencies?

MrTact: Yes. The model I’m basing this on is the Soulstone. However, I am open to the idea that playtesting may show this to be too painful. If so, we can always relax that requirement.

4. When can we expect Proficiencies to be on a Test Shard?

Ando: Most of our focus at the moment has been on Pub40. We would like to try and get a Pub40 Test Center up for players to start testing some of the PVP fixes as soon as we can. At this point, there is only one technical issue remaining that needs to be addressed before we can do this. We are also working hard to get the Pub40 client ready so players can get their hands on the new targeting system and buff / de-buff system.

I don’t see us putting up a Pub41 proficiencies Test Center until after we release a Pub40 client. This is mainly due to the fact that logging into a Pub41 shard using a Pub39 client displays a lot of text errors when trying to test the proficiencies. I will also point out that when the Test Center does go up that it will probably only contain the tier 1 proficiencies at first.

5. The Basket of Herbs in the Spring Décor Collection doesn’t give a bonus if you are at GM Cooking. Is it supposed to be like this?

Wilki: It was designed that way, yes. However, after reading your comments, we’re looking into allowing you to exceed the 100 cooking skill cap with the basket, much like how mining gloves work with mining. No promises that we’ll definitely do this, as there may be some hidden issues that won’t be apparent until we try the change, but it most certainly is being looked at.