April 2001

Comments from Adrick
Posted April 30, 2001 - 10:42 PM PDT by Adam Ant

Hot off the ORIGIN web site!

Greetings,

My last comments were back in November around the time of the UO World Faire, an event I enjoyed very much. It was fun to meet the players and hear what the community had to say about the game and the future from their individual perspectives.

In these Comments, I thought I would take some time to let people know what it is I’ve been doing over the last several months and what I am currently working on.

Now that Third Dawn has shipped, the designers have once again been given areas of the code to manage. I‘m very pleased to be working on the faction system, the guild system, and all player/player interactions such as reputation, trade and the party system. All of these areas are of great interest to me, and as we move forward it will be my primary focus both to clean these systems of bugs and exploits and to stabilize them. I am currently working on fully documenting these systems and identifying the bugs that need to be fixed.

I’m particularly excited to be working again on the faction system and building on the initial design that I helped write and code when I first joined the team almost a year ago. I think the faction system can be improved and expanded in many ways. The area I am most concerned about is the amount of blue interference that is occurring in and around the strongholds and in the 8 faction towns, and I am working on several ways to limit this or remove it altogether. In addition to this problem, I'll also be focusing on other bug fixes and balancing issues over the next few weeks. The second area I am responsible for is the guild system, which I think is one of the most important systems in our game. It is a great community builder and organizer, and a way for people to work together towards a common goal. I expect to be spending a lot of time making these two systems work together, as they overlap in many areas and depend a lot on each other. The final area (player/player interactions) is also a challenge. I’ll be responsible for making sure that these interactions are bug and exploit-free (mostly regarding scams), and working to provide the players with a comfortable experience when interacting with other players (at least from a game mechanics standpoint).

Well, that’s it for now - thanks again for your time, and as always feel free to contact me at my email (Adrick@uo.com)or on the boards with suggestions, ideas and concerns.

Take care,

Pete "Adrick" Warner
Designer - Ultima Online

Bandwidth stealing
Posted April 29, 2001 - 1:30 PM PDT by Adam Ant

Ever wonder what you can do to curb bandwidth stealing?
Oh, by the way, bandwidth stealing is where you link to images on someone else’s web site, thereby increasing the load on their server. Sometimes this increased load is enough to shutdown your site because the increase in bandwidth pushes your site beyond it’s bandwidth limitations imposed by your host.

Anyway, One of our enemy guilds, Lost Circle, saw it fit to link a couple of game-master.net owned images right on the main page of their website.

Well, I though it would be fun to do a little promo for my guild GUL :)

Have a look!

Update On Veteran Rewards Testing
Posted April 28, 2001 - 9:38 PM PDT by Adam Ant

posted on stratics general News

Update On Veteran Rewards Testing
This quick note was posted by Melantus on the official Discussion Board:
The information I have so far is that Vet Rewards will be on an external test server early next week. I'm sorry it's been delayed longer then I originally said.

Melantus
Online Community Coordinator
Ultima Online
Melantus@uo.com

Have a comment?

PS. Thanks Angels for bringing this important development to our attention.

Another satisfied customer
Posted April 28, 2001 - 11:10 AM PDT by Adam Ant

I just received this email and thought I would share it with you:

hey there Adam,

I was one of the less fortunate to run into one of your friends.
I guess what i am trying to say is I have been taken to school. I wandered into a forest near the orc fort where liches spawn, and was attacked one of the lich there. A man came out of nowhere and killed me while i was in battle.(Nice tactic). I finally found a healer and got back to my body, but found that all was gone but my clothe (no armor) and a red bag with a recall scroll, book, and a rune to britain.

I read what was inside the book and it was funny at first, but i now finally know that I'm not the only role player in this game. I play a char by the name of Cael Elventime. GM warrior. I now know that there is a worthy adversary in the world of UO, and am looking forward to seeing your people again. I too have a trade mark item by the form of a yellow bandana.

I just wrote to say how well organize your work has been and am looking forward to a long lasting relationship with your guild. It's good to know I am not alone in Roleplay in UO.

-Alex aka Cael ElvenTime-

Thanks Cael!
We do try to role-play an evil that the UO community can tolerate.
I don’t know which GUL member attacked you, but it warms me little PK heart to know they left you the requisite death-pack.

--Adam Ant

"l33t Player Killers" goes online!
Posted April 25, 2001 - 10:00 AM PDT by Adam Ant

Well, looks like there's a new kid on the block.

Nexus has just fired-up his new site l33t Player Killers and it looks really awesome.
The site hosts forums for all the major online games including our favorite, Ultima Online.

I decided to check out the UO forum and was greeted with the following thread dedicated to yours truly. Hehe.

Looks good Nexus, I'll be stopping by periodically to see if there are any site layout ideas I can appropriate :)

Good luck.

--Adam Ant

UO2 canceled, UO quality to improve
Posted April 23, 2001 - 6:54 PM PDT by Adam Ant

Mr. Tim Keating
QA Engineer, Ultima Online, speaks out on improving UO quality.

--Adam Ant

-------------------

This is an extremely exciting time to be a part of UO. Throughout the lifetime of the game, parts of the community have been very vocal about problems with bugs and stability. Historically, the dev and QA teams have been in a kind of Catch-22 situation: given a finite amount of time, they had to balance adding new features to the game with fixing bugs. Some bugs had to be left in, not because no one WANTED to fix them, but because the necessary resources had to be dedicated to adding and testing promised new features.

That's not the case anymore.

The upside to all the chaos of late is that many people and procedures from UO2 are now a part of the UO team. This is a big win for UO. There are more people working on UO now than at any other time since its launch. Additionally, with only one product, our focus as a company is very narrow. We can afford to pay attention to details that previously we would not have had the bandwidth to address.

From a QA perspective, we've never had the kinds of engineering resources devoted to UO that we do now. Where QA used to just mean "testing" (and black-box testing, at that, for those of you who know anything about software development), we are now fully responsible for improving the quality of UO from stem to stern. We are starting, slowly but surely, to get involved with development earlier in the lifecycle so we can help dev catch bugs sooner.

Add to that the renewed commitment by the OSI management team to stomping bugs and improving the quality and reliability of our service, and you can see why I'm so enthusiastic to be getting involved with UO at this point in its lifetime. I hope you'll stick around, because we're going to see some really exciting improvements.

Tim "MrTact" Keating
QA Engineer, Ultima Online
Origin Systems

Comments?

2D Client Patch 3.0.0e
Posted April 23, 2001 - 6:33 PM PDT by Adam Ant

This just in from The Update Center at www.uo.com

We will be releasing a client patch on April 23rd at approximately 11:00 am CDT. The client patch will include the following:

• The translation server will no longer pop up a dialog box when it encounters a missing language pair.
• A crash caused by trying to plot a course on a map between two identical locations.
• A fix for the "Unknown Packet Oops" dialog crash.
• Other random crashes.

New Titles, Seahorses, New Weapons and EXODUS???
Posted April 19, 2001 - 5:19 PM PDT by Dyastro Farkas

Well it has been some time since my departure from Ultima but I have still kept up with what is going on within the game.

When OSI began work on UO3D they promised many new things would be added to the game but left these new additions up to the players to find for themselves. One of these new additions has already begun to be noticed within the game.

In the lands of Ilshenar its seems that you are able to leave the titles of old behind to obtain a new title. These titles work almost in the same way that the old ones did. Gaining Fame to become Lord but while a Mage would gain the title Dread Lord Adam Ant, Grandmaster Stotic , But if you went out hunting only Daemons your new title would be Dread Lord Adam Ant, Foe of the Abyss . (Hope you don't mind the cameo Adam). There are many titles to obtain all depending on your actions within the lands of Ilshenar. Just pray that no Guardian runs into a man carrying the Title of a Lich killer.

Well the Dev team is up to it again with a new mount that will allow you to travel over water. Seahorses are in the works but there are still some additions that must be made before they can be introduced. I don't see a real true greatness to this addition other then finding some fool out on the Seas riding one and killing him and his pretty new horse. But maybe they will have some use when they appear in the lands. Duels on the Sea anyone?

There have been reports of new magical weapons but I have yet to hear anything more then that they are new. Most likely they are new Virtue weapons or some new Staff of Trammilization (Ice Staff. For those Great Warriors who reside at the Britain bank in Trammel to carry on there Mare, Unicorn, or Kirin. Why don't they just get it over with and bring out the Cannons. So we can just blow each other away with cannonballs.

Exodus in UO? You all remember Exodus from Ultima III The son of Minax and Mondain. Well he has yet to be seen but reports are saying that he is there in Ilshenar. He looks pretty much just like a Daemon from what I saw. Also it seems the Shadowlords from Ultima V are also walking around in this new land. Now they remind me of a Drow mage. Fully covers by a robe with only their bright eyes showing from under their hood. You can see Exodus and The Shadowlords here.

Discuss Here

--Thou my body now lay decayed and buried amongst the Cemeteries of Sosaria, My soul travels the realms of this world searching for a new place to call home.

--Dyastro Farkas

What Adam Ant and GUL are all about
Posted April 16, 2001 - 10:37 AM PDT by Adam Ant

I received an email recently that went a long way to validate what it is I've been trying to accomplish for the last 2 1/2 years:

Bringing Evil Role-Playing to Ultima Online.

I have to admit...I detest PK's. I have no stomach for fighting other players, and when confronted with it, flee as fast as I can. I do have to say though...reading your accounts, have done several things for me. I am inspired by your role-playing, your sense of fair play against newbies, and your backyard, and your willingness to leave a way home for your victims. I have watched your story-telling progress to the point of very enjoyable reading, and feel a sense of entertainment when I am able to read one or two of them. While I am not willing enough to say that I admire what you do, I am willing to say that I admire the way in which you present it, and the way in which you tell your accounts of why you do what you feel you must. Your logic behind your favorite places to hunt are well thought out, and well played, and your reasoning behind your character's storyline are most entertaining. Thank you for sharing your accounts with us, and thank you for (what seems to!
me) living up to a true role-player's version of a player killer. Good luck on your journey, and please remind me which shard you dwell in, so that I may don a blood colored scarf when I venture into Shame.

Caderial of Baja

Thank you Caderial.
It is my hope that one day OSI will recognize the evil role-player as a valuable asset to the online gamming community.

--Adam Ant

Care to comment?

Angel Island lives on!
Posted April 14, 2001 - 11:06 AM PDT by Adam Ant

My Angel island proposal is far from dead. 
I am still receiving mail-in support daily.

Here is what Caliban had to say:

I think that this is a great idea.  I also think you should go get a job at OSI and have them fire some of the monkeys over there.  I have two chars, ones a bad-ass macer... the other is training to be an assassin.
More power to you.  GOOD CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT EVIL

Caliban of the The Pendril Legion

And this from Filious:

I think the Yew Prison island would seem promising. All they have to do is collapse the bridge from the courtroom to the prison, and boom, instant prison. The prison could, with some modifications, easily allow for the "going behind a wall and getting into another cell to talk to other inmates" scenario. And of course, there are rumors that the island has a cave system beneath it, what with the "cave wall" tiles on the ground and what not. 

Filious

--Adam Ant

Read about Angel Island here?
Add your.02 here.

Ultima Online House of Commons
Posted April 11, 2001 - 9:11 PM PDT by Adam Ant

Ultima Online Stratics is proud to host another UO House of Commons chat this Thursday(tomorrow), April 12th, at 7pm CST. The conference will occur in #uohoc. The topic will be announced prior to the chat. Note: This chat was previously schedule for last week.

Never been to a UO House of Commons before? Basically it is a developer chat, where the gamers and the designers sit down. Players get to ask the game's developers their questions via a live moderator. The designers then answer the question in the chat. It's a tried and true format for finding out what is in store for your favorite Massively Multiplayer games.

To join the chat, connect to one of the following Stratics IRC servers, and type /join #uohoc. Or, use our Stratics Java IRC Client.

• irc.stratics.com


• compu.stratics.com


• dhp.stratics.com


• frws.stratics.com


• intworks.stratics.com

New PK Site Opens
Posted April 8, 2001 - 4:09 PM PDT by Beldin

Announcing the release of GUL-PK Central.
You've read the Adventures of Adam Ant. You've read the Chronicles of Evil.
But now get ready for something a bit different.
Looking for a site that cuts right to the chase? A site where one thing matters above anything else?
GUL-PK Central has taken the cliche a pictures worth a 1000 words to new heights.
You'll find flash movies set to music that take you on pictoral tour of death.
Also not to be missed is the kill shot section. Where all that matters is Body Count!



So if you've been killed recently by a GUL member, or if you just enjoy seeing GUL at it's finest check out GUL-PK Central created by GUL's own Smerx and Cad