Among the other tidbits contained in the UO newsletter today (some of the big ones being the new Kingdom Reborn information I posted earlier):

From The Pen of Darkscribe

There has never been a more exciting time to work on UO. Maybe back in 1997, when we were about to launch the game that would launch a genre, there might have been the sense of excitement and discovery we’re feeling now. Every day we get see new portions of Sosaria come to life with new detail and color. Monsters we’ve known for years suddenly have new personality and texture. Just moments ago, I was in a partially finished Castle British. Even though half of the décor and detail was missing, it was still very much Castle British. I must admit, I got a little misty eyed.

We can’t wait for you to walk up those steps for the first time and see the new world for yourself.

- Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, UO Producer

This reaffirms my faith in where UO is headed, and who is heading it (well this, a lot of other things, and the hiring back of person I’ll mention in a few minutes).

FYI - UO.com says Origin received a publish this afternoon:

On Thursday, October 12, 2006, at approximately 4:30pm PDT (11:30PM GMT), we will be deploying a publish to the Origin shard.

The update will contain the following changes:

* Fixed an issue that was causing the account age to not display properly in the character profile
* New live event content

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

This should cover the account issues some have been having, as well as provide the basis for the “special event” that was delayed from last week, concerning a special visit by a character familiar in the Ultima world, but not the Ultima Online world.

Darkscribe mentioned last week:

Happy birthday to us! Ultima Online is nine years old, nine history-filled years. This game has defied expectations, pioneered new ideas, and built one of the most devoted, passionate communities in the MMORPG universe. To celebrate, a character from the Ultima single-player games will be making her first true visit to the worlds within the shards. That event begins October 6th (PDT). If you are a fan of Britannian history, you are in for a treat.

According to the UO Update/FYI page, it’s being delayed one week:

A slight change in plans Oct 6 2006 2:49AM GMT (PST +08:00)
The anniversary event we had planned for October 6th just isn’t going to be ready in time. There is a new system involved, and it turned out to be trickier than we had thought. The mysterious “she” that we mentioned will instead make her debut on October 13th, PST.

In the meantime, Treasures Of Tokuno Part II will continue for another week, and will have a few changes in store for this week.

From UO.com

A proud legacy, a bright future

From the pen of Darkscribe…

Happy birthday to us! Ultima Online is nine years old, nine history-filled years. This game has defied expectations, pioneered new ideas, and built one of the most devoted, passionate communities in the MMORPG universe. To celebrate, a character from the Ultima single-player games will be making her first true visit to the worlds within the shards. That event begins October 6th (PDT). If you are a fan of Britannian history, you are in for a treat.

Also, you might have noticed the announcement of the 9th Anniversary Collection. We’ve tried to make available just about every bit of art we could for housing decor, some of it nine years old and yet never available in the game. The official website for the 9th Anniversary Collection is here.

Looking back on nine years is fun, and humbling, but looking forward is what has us truly excited. Ultima Online is on the cusp of a new age, and we’re glad you’re with us.

See you in Sosaria,

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, UO Producer

The official Ultima Online 9th Anniversary Collection site is now online (www.uo.com/uo9/).

Gamestop, EB Games, and Amazon.com are among the official pre-order sites, with international ordering information coming soon.

Official Description and Contents:

Fame, fortune, and power await
you in a fantasy world like no other.

This is your chance to experience the legendary game that launched the massively multiplayer RPG genre. In the Ultima Online: 9th Anniversary Collection, join a global online community and enter a world teeming with adventure and excitement. Discover distant locales, battle fierce creatures, and befriend fellow travelers. You can even design, build, and decorate your very own house within the living world of the game.

FEATURES

* The Definitive Ultima Online Collection
- Quest for adventure in one of the biggest, deepest MMORPG’s in existence. The entire UO universe, including the content and features of seven expansion packs, is yours to explore.

* Embark on a Hero’s Quest
- Hundreds of monsters to battle, human players to fight, treasures to hunt, artifacts to discover, real estate to claim, dragons to tame, powerful weapons to craft, fame to earn, fortunes to win, and much, much more.

* Exclusive Crystal and Shadow Housing Sets
- Build a home of dark stone carved from the black depths of a demon-infested mountain. Or, create a gleaming castle with walls of crystal grown in magic fields with the help of specially trained mages.

* Command Your Personal Attendants
- Four servants await your command: The Fortune Teller predicts your past and future. The Herald announces your noble presence. The Dealer rolls dice of all shapes and sizes, and The Guide makes sure you never get lost.

* Try It Today for Free
- New accounts get 30 days of free gameplay with this package.

* Early Buy Bonus!
- Purchase during the first 30 days of release and choose nine gifts from a selection of rare items from the history of Ultima Online. Select from more than 50 items including the Ultima Online 7th Anniversary gifts, Ultima Online 8th Age gifts, and a wide array of unique items, décor, and collectables.

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From UO.com’s Five on Friday (Sep 15, 2006):

1. Do you ever plan to give everyone the +5 stat increase that currently is only available to players who were playing right after Age of Shadows?
Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: Yes.

2. Currently, some of the house tile sets have a few missing pieces. Will those get added to the game eventually?
Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: Yes.

3. Will the combat items that come with the 9th Anniversary Collection be blessed on Siege and Mugen?
John@EA “Wilki”, Community Coordinator: No, in keeping with our recent policy of not automatically blessing combat items on these two shards, they will not be blessed. However, you can still use your Personal Bless deed to bless them if you wish.

4. Will pre-patch Talon Bite minor artifacts ever be adjusted so that they have the same damage as the newer version?
John@EA “Wilki”, Community Coordinator: Yes, that is something we plan to address.

5. This blackrock seems incredibly dangerous! What’s the difference between “a piece of blackrock” and “a small piece of blackrock”?
Nicholas, Britain Mage’s Guild: Dangerous? Hardly! Blackrock seems to be completely magically inert - without any practical use at all!

Strangely enough though, our research does indicate that it has some unknown affect on dimensional structures, but we’ve been unable to fathom it.

As far as the difference between the two types of known samples (recently come to light), I can but say that the smaller pieces actually seem more unstable than the larger ones. We aren’t sure why this is so, but perhaps the larger ones will yield more consistent results in further experimentation.

Along with tonight’s Client 5.0.4d patch and the shard publish, these two lines jumped out at us:

* Added live event content (Shard)
* Updated text strings and localization for Live Event (Client)

I went poking around the the new cliloc.enu (client version 5.0.4d) (located in the root directory of your UO installation) and rand a diff against a slightly older cliloc.enu - I’ll run a check against newer text/localization strings when I get a chance, but it matches up with what others are saying on other sites - that we have some very interesting things coming about.

These are very interesting - once again the Devs are “putting more “Ultima” back in “Ultima Online”" as some of the words mentioned/added relate to Ultima (non-UO) history.

Keep in mind this could be a spoiler, so you’ll have to click on the “Read the rest of this entry »” link below to read.
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We are still running in a sort of “stealth” mode - not actively advertising the site or anything, as it needs a lot of work still yet, but I thought for those few who have been invited and for those that are finding us through Yahoo and Google, that we’d fill you in on some of what we’ve done recently. If you’d like to discuss any of these, please use the UOCodex.com forums. It’d be great to hear what you’d like to see more of, how easy you can find the information we have already online, as well as where you’d like to see things go.

A lot of work has been done behind the scenes of UOCodex.com over the past five days or so. One of the biggest things is the UO dev team documentation project - a little project here at UOCodex.com to flesh out all of those Ultima Online developers you see mentioned in the credits.dat file tucked away in your Ultima Online directory, as well as to work on preserving information about cancelled Ultima-related projects (including one that surprised us, and it has nothing to do with UO2/Ultima Worlds Online: Origin, or Ultima X: Odyssey. We’ll talk about that one at a later date).
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Gamasutra is doing a great job of covering the conference so far. Some highlights of the first day:

Blizzard Entertainment VP of Game Design Rob Pardo’s Keynote:
(Speaking about tradeoffs that had to be made with World of Warcraft)

High-level gear was another area where compromises were necessary. “It was really cool in Ultima Online to make your own character or guild with your own colors and your own look,” Pardo said. “But there’s only so much art time that you have, and only so many artists. We chose instead to concentrate that coolness on making really cool prestige armor sets that came from specific places.We allowed raiders and more hardcore players to get that prestige and reward, so that you can recognize where someone has been. With customizable gear, everyone can look different. But you can’t have both.”

MMO Personalities ‘Rant’ On Industry
Remember Gordon “Tyrant” Walton (no :love: lost), UO:Ren, UO: Third Dawn

Gordon Walton is best left with the last word at this year’s Austin Game Conference MMO Rant session. He’ll want to have it, might as well give it to him.

“… You’re all a bunch of whiny little b—-es,” he said. “‘We’re all victims of the guys with the money!’ No. Guess who signs up to make the game. Guess who along the way decides to change things. … Guess who won’t stand up and lose their job rather than s—-t-start. I put myself in there. I’ve done that. I’ve made bad decisions … many more times than most people here in this room … I think the challenge here is, are we agents of our lives, or are we victims? We’re talking about, oh, it’s going to come from the top down. Well guess what, if nobody will work for those schmucks, it’ll come from the bottom up. … What are they going to do? They don’t know how to put it on a disc. …

“The other thing is, we’re not holding up our end. Somewhere along the way we caved and promised something we couldn’t deliver. So you can’t say it’s the other guy, it’s some other motherf—er. No, it’s not. Everybody in this thing is responsible for what happens. Every single person on the team had a opportunity to do better. And I’d like to see more people think about how they’re going to make it happen rather than sit up and rant and b—- about it.”

Richard “Dupre” Vogel (UO, UO: The Second Age):

Vogel praised Pardo for his emphasis on not being in a rush to release a game, but lamented the lack of innovation in the genre, at least outside of Asia. WoW’s success seems to have pushed many business-types to look for ways to copy or re-skin WoW, Vogel said, rather than focus on innovation, which could reach the mass market that no game, not even WoW, has reached. “Looking out at E3 this year, there is nothing innovative coming out in the next three years, and that’s pretty sad.”

The Austin Game Conference started up today, and lasts through friday:

Austin Game Conference (AGC) - now in its 4th year - is the definitive conference for online and networked game development, including massively multiplayer online games, casual games, online PC and console games.

Quite a few people (including some big names) associated with Ultima Online in the past will be there and will be speaking. Among those in attendance (and what they are going to be speaking about/discussing):

- Raph “Designer Dragon” Koster, the former Lead Designer on UO and UO: The Second Age (although according to his website, he appears to be sick and may not be there the whole time).
“The Age of the Dinosaurs”:This lecture will examine business trends in the game development industry, the pressures that are changing the current publisher-developer model and the brave new world that faces us all after the fruition of current trends.
“The Future of Virtual Worlds”: The virtual worlds are changing drastically, atomizing through user-created content, providing end-users with business opportunities and meshing with an increasingly interoperable World Wide Web.

- Richard “Dupre” Vogel: Producer/Director of UO: The Second Age.
“Beta Community Roundtable”: The Beta period of an online game is the most crucial time in development. It is the first time the public will play the game. Opinions are being formed and viral marketing can be the biggest asset if there’s good buzz or a disaster if feedback is negative.
“”New” Challenges Facing MMOG Development”: An MMOG related discussion about the “new” challenges facing development, such as pursuing a broader audience, bridging platforms and incorporating mechanics from other genres.
“MMOG Rant”: Though our medium is becoming more significant yearly, we still have a long way to go to fully realize it’s potential. The panelists are going to unleash their inner anguish on an issue they believe is holding back our industry. (Also Jessica Mulligan and Mark Jacobs).

- Jonathan “Calandryll” Hanna - Former Online Community Relations, Content Designer
“Building Communities from Alpha to Launch”: Roles and best practices of community relations during development and testing of an MMOG. Once an MMOG has reached a developmental stage where any kind of external testing is to begin (alpha, friends and family, closed beta, etc.), new sets of challenges arise outside of the developmental process.

Mark Jacobs - EA Mythic General Manager: “MMOG Rant” Though our medium is becoming more significant yearly, we still have a long way to go to fully realize it’s potential. The panelists are going to unleash their inner anguish on an issue they believe is holding back our industry. Our goal will be to challenge ourselves and the audience to look beyond the current industry results. (Also Jessica Mulligan who is associated with UO somehow, Richard Vogel are speaking during this one).

- David Swofford - Media Relations for Ultima Online
“Emerging Public Relations Strategies for MMO Games” - Public relations strategies are changing in the game industry as more MMOG titles come to market. To break out from the noise, public relations professionals need to develop and implement innovative new strategies and programs that go beyond the traditional preview/review gaming cycle.

Also: Eugene Evans - EA Mythic VP of Marketing - Speaking about “Where is Asia Going?”

Note: Carly “LadyMOI” Staehlin will not be attending.