>> Master Five on Friday List

Colored Shrouds (October 6, 2006)

Do you plan to do something about the colored shrouds that seem to be everywhere?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer: We’re getting close to implementing a solution for these shrouds. Stay tuned.

Other Events like Treasures of Tokuno, New Rewards? (September 29, 2006)

1. It’s great that the Treasures of Tokuno event is back. Do you have plans to do other events like this, but with new rewards?

Aaron “Darkscribe” Cohen, Producer:
Yes. There are a few variations that we are talking over and will experiment with. We’d like to make a system that isn’t just about combat, but also involves other disciplines like crafting, fishing, mining or others. That would bring players together with different interests and abilities and give them a reason to work together. We’re working on something along those lines and will roll it out when ready. I can’t give a timeline at the moment, but we like the idea a lot.

Treasures of Tokuno II in Dungeons? (September 29, 2006)

Are the Treasures of Tokuno appearing in dungeons? I thought I saw some earlier, but haven’t seen any for hours.

Ihara Soko, Imperial Trade Minister: (September 29, 2006)
It would appear that the majority of the treasure that washed ashore was taken by monsters roaming the lands above the dungeons. A few might have managed to get a very small quantity into the dungeons, but surely our people have already decimated those foul creatures and recovered it all. We would recommend hunting down these beasts above ground.

Garlic-based Spells as a Vampire with LRC (September 22, 2006)

Currently, using garlic based spells as a vampire with lower reagent cost doesn’t damage the caster. Will that be changed?

John@EA “Wilki”, Community Coordinator: Yes, along with garlic based spells cast via arcane clothing and scrolls.

Red Soulstones - Binding to Account (August 11, 2006)

Are the Red Soulstones available as 1st year vet rewards going to be given in token form, or will they be bound to the account that claims them?

Wilki: They will be bound to the account that claimed them.

More Vet Reward Choices? (August 11, 2006)

Will more vet reward choices be added to the list over time?

Ando: For the time being we’re polishing the vet rewards we’ve already announced. We will consider the possibility of adding more rewards at a later time.

Hints about Vet Rewards (July 28, 2006)

Can you give us some more hints about Vet Rewards?

Darkscribe: Next week, we will announce every single one of them.

Discord and Loot (July 21, 2006)

Does discord negatively impact loot drops?

Wilki: No, it does not. Each monster has its own loot table, with luck playing a small role in determining what is actually generated upon death.

Vamp Form, LRC Suits, Garlic (July 21, 2006)

Does the dev team have any plans to change vamp form so that players in LRC suits start taking damage for casting spells that use garlic? Or is this as intended?

MrTact: It wasn’t intended that way. We should probably fix it at some point, but it’s way below our radar right now.

Commas in Checks (July 14, 2006)

Have you thought about putting commas on checks so we can easily see just how many zeroes a check has?

Draconi: Why yes, we have! It’s a real pain when trading bank checks to have to count the zeros (or other numbers) for each check. Not to mention the potential for an innocent player to be scammed by a less than virtuous one, who hides a 100,000 check amidst a few for a 1,000,000. While this may be a lower priority compared to the rest of our workload, if we’d like address this as soon as we have time to fit it in.

Item Stacking and Mondain’s Legacy (July 14, 2006)

I still have a lot of items that aren’t stacking together since Mondain’s Legacy. Can this be fixed?

Ando: I was just looking at this the other day. I’m hoping we should be able to fix many cases of this (though probably not all) in the near future.

Do Away with Checks/Gold? (July 7, 2006)

Any chance that UO would do away with checks and physical gold and go to a bank account type of system? This should eliminate the ability to dupe gold.

MrTact: We talk about doing so all the time. So “any chance”? Yes. What is that chance? Hard to say.

Aegis of Grace and Publish 41 (June 30, 2006)

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).

New Vet Rewards (June 16, 2006)

Tell us about the new vet rewards!!!

Wilki: We’re planning to add one new reward for 1st year vets, as well as a reward each for 6th through 9th year vets. For one of the later year rewards, we’re adding a weapon engraving tool, so you can personalize your favorite weapons. More details on the other rewards will be coming soon.

Community Collection - Individual Rewards (June 16, 2006)

Is there any chance that the individual rewards from the community collections will be made easier to get?

Wilki: Yes! The amount of effort required to obtain these through legitimate means is too great. Once we solve the scripting issue, we’ll then take a look at adjusting these downwards into the reasonable range.

Stealth vs Passive Detect (June 9, 2006)

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.

Item Insurance (June 2, 2006)

Any plans to change or get rid of insurance or maybe even bring something in where everyone has their items blessed?

Darkscribe: No. With all the planning we are doing for so many different things, changing the insurance system is pretty far down the list. If you don’t like insurance, please play on Siege or Mugen. There are plenty of folks there waiting to take your stuff.

Lag (May 26, 2006)

strong>I have noticed some lag lately while I’ve been playing. Is anything being done to address this?

Ando: Yes, the Dev team is working to find a resolution to this issue as soon as possible. Currently we know that this issue only appears to be affecting certain parts of the world and is more noticeable on some shards than it is on others.

Polymorph Timer - Removing? (May 12, 2006)

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.

Vet Rewards - Newer Players (May 12, 2006)

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.

Hunger, Remove Curse Apple, Corpse Skin (April 28, 2006)

What’s the status on hunger, remove curse apples and corpse skin?

Wilki: We’re going to adjust hunger, that’s a given. Remove curse apples will also be brought into balance by the hunger adjustment, since you won’t be able to eat tons of them repeatedly. In the meantime, the changes to corpse skin have been reverted, so there will be no change in Pub40.

Targeting Changes (April 28, 2006)

Why did you decide to change how targeting works?

Darkscribe: The old targeting system just wasn’t as easy and responsive as we wanted it to be. I know a lot of existing players have grown used to it and are quite good at using it in even the most hectic of combat situations. However, that old system just isn’t as good as it could be. I think once the complete server publish is rolled out with Pub 40, when targeting hostiles is working and a few other polish issues are taken care of, the new system will become quite popular. Personally, I find it much easier to target what I want and when I want. And, we are listening to the feedback and are figuring out ways to make the system better.

Buff/Debuff System (April 21, 2006)

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

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

Scroll Stacking Issue (April 14, 2006)

I thought the scroll stacking issue was being fixed in Pub40, but I don’t see it in the list. What gives?

Wilki:The change list we posted earlier in the week is not a complete list of everything that is in Pub40, rather it’s a list of what’s currently on the test shard. We’re still planning to have a fix for scroll stacking in Pub40.

Hunger and Eating (April 14, 2006)

Any plans to make hunger/eating work correctly and be useful again?

MrTact: Yes! This is part of the reason Remove Curse apples are overly useful - because you don’t get full quickly enough.

Non-Bushido Melee Character - Viable? (April 14, 2006)

Will a Non-Bushido Melee Character ever be a viable choice again?

MrTact: Consider this 6-slot melee template: weapon skill, tactics, anat, healing, parry, resist. Using that 7th slot for Bushido (or Chiv, or Ninjitsu) offers abilities that enhance your melee damage; NOT taking one of those abilities means you are giving up that extra damage. So will a melee character that doesn’t take one of those skills be competitive with one who does, based solely on damage output? Probably not. We’d have to resort to some extreme game design gymnastics to make that possible (e.g. items that give a damage bonus but cannot be used if you possess one of those skills).

There are some other axes we could balance on, such as how much damage you can absorb. That was the rationale behind tying armor to a skill, but people REALLY didn’t like that idea.

The basic problem is, not every skill has equal usefulness. That’s been true for a long time, and it would take a lot of effort to fix it (and would probably tick off quite a few people).

Tokuno Dyes (April 7, 2006)

Are you ever going to add Tokuno dyes back into the game?

MrTact: Not per se; we intend for those colors to stay rare. I would love to add metal dyes in a variety of additional (common) colors as an alchemy craftable, though. It’s just a question of finding the time to get it into a publish!

In-game Item Sales (April 7, 2006)

Are in-game item sales going to be a part of Ultima Online going forward?

Darkscribe: Yes. From time to time we are going to sell commemorative, decorative or interestingly useful items. However, in almost all cases, those items will also be available some other way. For instance, we are adding several formerly on-sale items to the buddy referral system. Some special items will also be included in special boxed products. These offerings might not appeal to everyone, but there are many players who enjoy collecting rarities, decorating their houses and using items with interesting new functionality. They don’t take too long to build, can mostly be built by outside contractors, and make some players quite happy, so we’re going to keep doing it. In fact, because these have been a success, we’re working on some more interesting offerings that should be available sometime this summer.

What I really want fans to understand is that when we enhance one part of UO, it’s not taking away from the parts of UO you like. We are working extremely hard to get the right PvP changes done. We’re working on a year-long fiction cycle that will be centered around large in-game events, along with mysteries, puzzles, and other surprises. We are hunting down and killing significant bugs as quickly as possible. We are working on a solution that will put a huge dent in scripting operations. We are trying to improve several key areas of UO, so when you see something like the Spring Décor Items go on sale, don’t take that to mean UO is becoming Martha Stewart’s Fantasy House Homebuilder. It just means that there are a lot of people in UO who like housing and might want some unique new décor items.

UO is a world of choice. You get to choose how you want to play. We dev team members are trying to make all the choices more fun. Capice?

Classic Shard (March 17, 2006)

How come EA doesn’t open up a “classic” shard?

Darkscribe: I have very mixed feelings about a “classic” rule-set shard. The reason is this: What a “classic shard” should be depends on what player you ask and when they entered the game. Year One people want one that looks like Year One. Year Three people want a pre-AOS shard, but not a pre-Ren shard. Then there are lots of people who came in after AOS, but could do without some of the Samurai Empire and UOML stuff. Then again, there are Year One people who want all the expansion pack land masses, but pre-AOS item properties and also no Elves. So, is it about PvP rules, or item properties, or size of landmass, or insurance, or races, or professions, or crafting, or artifacts, or what? What would make the majority of players the happiest? It’s very close to an unanswerable question. I’ve conducted the research, launched the surveys, conducted the focus groups, and I’ve yet to see a clean answer that wouldn’t anger as many as it pleased.

Here is what I do think can be done, maybe, after a lot more research and player discussion: I think a shard with a unique rule set could provide a new kind of experience and be an important addition to the world of UO. I’m more excited by the thought creating something new, instead of the impossible task of re-creating something that existed years ago and maybe could never be re-created again.

At the Town Hall meeting, I compared expecting a “classic shard” to be as satisfying as your first UO experience to expecting your 20-year high school reunion to be as fun as your senior prom. It just isn’t going to be as good.

The real question is what should a unique shard really look like? Or, should we take a closer look at our current hardcore shards, Siege Perilous and Mugen, and think about how to make the experience there more satisfying? These are questions we will try and answer within the next three months as development plans come together for the rest of the year.

Vet Rewards (March 17, 2006)

Are we going to be getting new veteran rewards anytime soon?

Darkscribe: Yes! These are slated for Pub 41, which should be out in late June. There will be Year Six, Seven and Eight rewards, and perhaps something new for Year One or maybe Year Two.