UO Compendium - News Archives

UO Compendium - Ultima Online News, Info, and Rants.

UO Compendium News Archives:

Forgive the condition of the archives, the older posts may at times be harder to read, that's because I changed styles since they were first written, and well, they've suffered from it.

The archives go back to January 3rd, 2002, the day I broke them last. *sigh*

Publish 37 - What I like {By: Orion - Nov 5, 2005 12:39:49}

Okay, I'm reading through the list of stuff being fixed, here is what really stood out to me:

▪ You can now rename ship keys again. To do this, double-click the key and then target it.

▪ Various server stability and other back-end fixes

▪ Escort NPCs can now follow players through gates to different facets

▪ Ring mail Gloves can now be smelted

▪ Smelting ore when your backpack is overweight no longer causes the produced ingots to drop to the ground

▪ Ambient jungle sounds no longer persist when you leave the jungle

▪ Fixed windowed wall tiles that weren't aligned correctly

▪ Help menu text is now less bright is 3D client

Well this helps. {By: Orion - Nov 5, 2005 12:28:39}

I just looked at the UO site and saw that Publish 37 is all about bug squashing. I have to admit that right there is huge. Heck the list is huge!

Kudos to the UO team.

An age past? {By: Orion - Nov 5, 2005 12:27:54}

Well I have a confession. I recently canceled my UO account, after not logging into it for about 4 months. My reasons are pretty simple:

1. Mondain's Legacy (Never ordered it, had no want to order it).
2. The game engine.
3. UO no longer satisfies.

Let me explain, Mondain's Legacy did look like it brought some nice new content, the improved AI stuff sounded good. But EA's statement they had no intentions going forward with the game engine really disappointed me. 3D game engines are not a must in my opinion. But it has become more and more clear to me that 3D engines really do provide nice features for a game. I don't demand eye candy, but I do like to see the "modern" changes that 3D engines have brought.

UI's interface (outside perhaps the crafter menus) has for a long time looked horrible. There is a reason I always prefered the bags, they didn't make me want to cry when I looked at them. The gumps "stone" look has for a long time drove me nuts. Add some color people!

In a way this goes back to UXO being canceled. It was a step forward, it wasn't the same game as UO, but it didn't have to be. I didn't want it to be.

I think I'm going to, do some work on what I just wrote to be more clear. I just took a survey from EA and answered a ton of questions, all about why I left and what I'd like to see to come back. There is much more to it than the UI (though I'll be honest that's a huge portion). I like UO, and I would actually consider coming back, so I'll be posting later this week a bit more cleary on why.

Updated Links {By: Orion - Oct 30, 2005 04:28:06}

I updated the links section today, most notable I added UO Forums. It's odd I haven't linked them before since I've gone there a few times and known about it for a while. It's a great forum that stays pretty active. Definitely a nice change of pace from the Statics boards.

The biggest changes is how it was gutted. No BOD sites listed anymore, I almost left one but it's only active for what seems two shards and dead empty for the rest. I also downgraded a couple of sites for useful information. For that matter I suppose I would have had to downgrade my own site if I linked it. I still like UO, I'm just not satisfied in the direction it has gone. UXO had so much of what I wanted to see, and heck so much of what is in WoW. I really think it had a shot.

Hrm, perhaps I'll write on that next time. I play WoW often and it surprises me still on how much UOX was similiar. In August of 2003 when I played it at their convention it seemed WONDERFUL, it definatly was not finished, but man did it have great points, from what I saw it sure seemed like it could have been out before WoW and it was definitely innovative enough to have grabbed a nice market share.

I'm Here {By: Orion - Oct 13, 2005 04:33:47}

I'm here, just very busy with my main source of income. That's a good thing I assure you.

I know a lot of you bought UO:ML, but as of right now I can't say I did. Some of it looked like a treat indeed. But, overall I didn't see anything in it for me. That may change of course, as I find things that I see others have and I don't.

Umm, that's all. :D

Just how big is the landmass of UO? {By: Orion - Aug 26, 2005 02:48:28}

Sometimes odd things cross my mind. Today's odd thought, was "Just how big is the land mass of Ultima Online?". This thought was triggered by another mmog in beta, Irth Online, that claims a world map that is 192km by 192km, or a whopping 36,864 square kilometers.

For some perspective the Earth is approximately 360,000,000 sq km (140,000,000 sq miles). The United States is 9,631,418 sq km and the Netherlands are 41,526 sq km. So with that you can see that Irth Online is a bit smaller in total land mass than the Netherlands.

So great, but what about UO? Well I openned up UOAM and started counting tiles, I didn't count dungeons in Tram/Fell and Malas, but did in the other worlds, because of how the map is laid out, I'm not trying to be super exact, just close enough. Anyhow here are the findings (:

Trammel and Felucca are each 5119 by 4095 tiles.
Lost Lands are 1023 by 1791 tiles.
Ilshenar is 2303 by 1599 tiles.
Malas is 2046 by 2047 tiles.
Tokuno is 1447 by 1447 tiles.

Now for these measurements, I'm calculating the width of a tile in UO as about two feet. It could be up to three feet I suppose but two seemed more reasonable. So armed with that "exact" information here is the area of each land mass in square kilometers:

Trammel: 7.78 sq km
Felucca: 7.78 sq km
Lost Lands: .68 sq km
Ilshenar: 1.36 sq km
Malas: 1.55 sq km
Tokuno: .77 sq km

For a total of 19.92 sq km. That's about 1/3 the size of the Manhattan (you know in New York). That makes sense, since you can easily run across all the lands of UO in no time at all. Which isn't a bad thing at all really.

So the point of this? No point really, UO is not worse off being such a small game in terms of land mass that's for sure. At 36,864 sq km of land mass in games like Irth, I have to question how you get around, that seems pretty huge, though still smaller than most states the in the US.

Well I Didn't Expect This {By: Orion - Aug 25, 2005 12:33:07}

I have to admit, I wouldn't have thought that if you didn't buy UO:ML, and didn't care to be an elf anyhow, that you wouldn't at least get the racial traits being introduced to humans in UO:ML. However, I seem to be wrong. Have a look at this forum post on stratics and you'll see that I was wrong.

I don't mind content being left out to those who don't buy an expansion. That's the way the game has always worked. And by game, I mean the release of expansions across every MMOG. However, certain aspects of expansions, like Age of Shadows change of weapon system can't be left out for those who don't upgrade. I would have seriously thought that racial traits would be one of these.

Five Accounts? {By: Orion - Aug 9, 2005 04:11:29}

I'm curious how many people still have five accounts in UO? I imagine there are a few out there, otherwise you wouldn't see discounts like this from EA. But I haven't actually known anyone with more than two accounts for a while it seems. I myself only have one account now, peaking out at 3 during the hight of BOD madness.

It also seems EA is planning to stress test UO:ML. Unfortunatly this is only for those with Ultima Online: Mondain's Legacy Beta Codes. I was hoping that by now they'd release a few more codes, I've had the beta installed for a bit now, sitting there waiting for something (*cough* like a code *cough*).

Oh well.

UOML {By: Orion - Aug 5, 2005 03:18:46}

I've been very quite about UO lately. Frankly I'm trying to decide if I like the direction of UO. Anyhow...

If you haven't noticed, the official Ultima Online: Mondain's Legacy site is up. There is a virtual treasure trove of information there if you've been left out of the beta (*sob* like me). Good stuff overall, they really are adding a lot, new race attributes, quests, collections, pixel crack, pixel crack, and lots of other stuff.

They talk about the Pre-Order Promo item some too, but frankly I have to ask, why bother pre-ordering a DOWNLOAD ONLY game. I mean seriously, pre-ordering has always been a thing for companies to insure profits, never something really for you or me, but now it's an all new things. Before, under the frase of making sure a store has enough games in stock, we would pre-order a game. But it has slowly evolved into locking you into a purchase when you're feeling great about a game. Because they know eventually the euphoria will wear off and you'll start to notice stuff that doesn't look so super-span-dacular. So that path has eventually led us to pre-ordering a game that will not run out of stock, because it's just a download. Wow.

Beyond that, the Promo item is a new mount. That's it, that's all they are saying about it. Not even an ingame picture of the new mount, just a warhorse of some sort. Nice...

My one last nitpick about this whole expansion is the price. When you go to a store and spend $29.99 for a game, you get the box, a pathetic manual, and a damn CD. To me a CD is a nice thing, because on that CD is my code, forever etched in a place I'm 99% sure I won't loose (I say 99% because I have a tendancy to loose things, hehe). I suppose the codes don't matter too much, once you enter them online you're hooked up. But don't you see? You're paying the same process, and now the task of putting the game on a CD is in your ball park. You're paying for something you used to get for free. No more pretty box, no more CD, no more manual. EA doesn't pay any retailer to carry their game, they have no shipping costs or packaging costs, yet the game is still $30 bucks. That seems awefully tacky to me.

Okay, that's it for my complaints I guess, they mostly center on how EA has chosen to distribute the game, not the actual content itself. The new crafting stuff looks great, I think the racial attributes are a nice touch too, to me elves just look like hippy humans with zanny hair styles, but whatever. To me what looks best is the new dungeons and quests, more content = good in my opinion. And making use of places like the long forgotten zoo near Moonglow is very nice.

Anyhow, I'll probably pick up a copy for myself. Err download it I mean, it's no fun being left out in the cold when new content rolls around. =)

Mondain's Legacy Code {By: Orion - Jul 31, 2005 10:55:55}

So I'd love to get a chance to play Mondain's Legacy Beta, I've got the client, but no code. I'm wondering if anyone out there has a spair code somehow they could send my way. =D

Yes I'm begging.

Digging beneath the surface. {By: Orion - Jun 6, 2005 05:17:57}

As I sat here idly wondering just what was happening down in Fort EA, I happened across a post from Hanse to the Ultima Online Discussion Group (unofficial via Yahoo Groups). This group like the other much more known (and official) group is practically up in arms over recent news about UO and the direction it�s going.

Since I�m still passionate about UO after all these years, I of course assumed the worst too, you can tell because I�ve started posting again. But then I started to wonder, perhaps I�m in the minority on a few things I assumed I was in the majority for. Perhaps I�m viewing things from WoW colored glasses and not UO colored classes? Let me explain.

First off for me, and it seems like a lot of others, though it could be a very loud minority, there are three things going on in UO right now that are making us collectively have seizures. These things are: the announcement of no real 3D plans for UO, Elfs being added to Ultima Online before other more obvious races like Orcs, Gargoyles or Meer, and finally what seems to be a sudden influx of developers abandoning ship. So I�ll tackle those three topics and see if I can put some sanity into my own thoughts and perhaps make sense of this mess.

First off, no real 3D! What can they be thinking? Do they think that the UO:3D client is actually good, perhaps they think we all like keeping our games in the stone age? Well perhaps that�s all partly true.

I�m a fan of games written in 3D engines. What you can do with them quite often will look visually light years beyond even a good 2D client. But I do know that a 3D engine is not the end all, if a game lacks convincing game mechanics than it�s really not going to last. Look at Doom 3, visually the game is stunning, but the mechanics of the game are kinda boring, scripted monsters pop up behind you, very linear game play, etc. Heck even the amazing game of World of Warcraft, while visually stunning, really drives me nuts. Right now, when I play my level 25 Paladin I feel I�m being force fed down a specific path of kill A, then kill B, so I can gain another level to kill C. These games look great, but many feel that their mechanics really are found lacking.

But does UO need Doom 3 style graphics? NO! In fact it�d be refreshing not to have them. I think something along the lines of Neverwinter Nights or Dungeon Seige is perfect for Ultima Online. Keep the 3D isometric vantage point, but put everything in 3D and please for the love of all that is pure, give us descent 3D textures! If you do that then UO would look fantastic. Of course this means a huge investment into Ultima Online. It�d probably take a couple years, but the advantages would be you could add things like player races much more easily than the current 2D client, and you�d have something people would love to show off to their friends. I say that because I specifically will never show UO:3D to people, I made that mistake just once.

Okay, so I�ve made what I feel is a strong argument for a 3D client, a 3D client that probably doesn�t come into the mind of the average Joe UO. Joe UO who loves his 2D client probably thinks of Doom when he hears 3D and he says �Hell no will I play that! Don�t hurt my lovely UO!� But if you put it into terms of Neverwinter Nights and Dungeon Siege well then maybe he�ll think that a 3D client isn�t so bad. So is that it? Could EA have really missed the boat and when they went out and asked people if they wanted a 3D client presented them with the likes of �Doom UO�? Or is there something else?

Well yes there probably is. Even a client like Neverwinter nights needs more horse power than what it takes to run UO:3D. In fact, it probably wouldn�t run all that well on a lot of integrated graphics chipsets. So how many people would be forced to do a major upgrade to continue to play UO in all its full glory? Good question and only EA can say for sure, but at the end of this question may very well be why we�re not seeing a major UO upgrade to 3D. It could possibly be that the niche EA wants to cater to have budget eMachine computers. EA may see it that they don�t want to push their user base to upgrade their computers, fearing people just leaving instead.

I don�t know, but the reality is, after reading a few posts I wonder if I�m not in the majority wanting a 3D client, but perhaps in the minority, or even worse it�s 50/50 and EA knows they can�t please anyone.

Okay second issue, why on earth are they adding Elfs! Well sadly I can�t make heads or tales of this one. My best guess is to keep up with the Johns next door. The art for Mondain�s Legacy screams early Everquest artwork. Perhaps EA is keeping the UO client as is, and focusing on old EQ people who don�t like the direction EQ is going (i.e. requiring bigger and badder computers). So they are banking on the fact they feel EQ�ers who can�t buy new computers will at least be able to play an Elf in UO. Boy I hope that�s not it.

I do know it�s probably easier to advertise though. Say to someone, �Hey we have elfs!� verse, �Hey we have Meer�. The first remark will be something like �Gee how unique� but at least they�ll be able to identify with it. The second remark will get you something along the lines of �Meer, what�s a meer? Blah you�re game is lame�. Okay well maybe not that, but outside of UO no one has a clue what a Meer is. And lets face it Elfs are way more sexy than a grunting Orc or a winged Gargoyle. Elfs are must much more marketable. Even though adding Elfs just tosses UO�s fine traditions and history into the wind.

And finally the last issue, who�s left manning the ship? Well lots of people and after reading a post by Wilki, perhaps it doesn�t look as bad as it really is. First off Sunsword seems to be out of the picture for good, in his place is Lady Lu as the producer. While I haven�t heard much from Lady Lu we can assume he (she?) is doing their job, since they still have it. So Lady Lu is manning the ship, okay but what about the crew, five devs have left our cherished baby!

Well Wilki recently stepped in on that one for us and shed some UO colored light on things. �Vex left several months ago. Hanse moved to a different project inside EA in March. Oaks and Speedman left within a week of each other.� This was before the announcement by Leurocian obviously. So that puts the score as one dev left over two months ago, one dev left UO but did so internally to EA, and three devs left out of the blue all rather quickly during the same time period.

Oaks and Hanse were especially beloved by the UO community, so their departure is staying very fresh in people�s minds, but them leaving and the time frame they did so, isn�t really anything special or remarkable. Make it a company you don�t care about, like the shipping department Applied Plastics, Inc., and you wouldn�t even comment. So you have these two departing EA and bam out of no where three others leave. SAVE US! SAVE US! UO is sinking (I�m repeating myself here, haha). Why would they leave? Well I�ve read twice today that perhaps they are leaving because their year is up.

Year is up? What year! You know when evil EA dissolved Origin, they moved everyone to San Francisco. It�s quite common for a company to agree to move you and your family lock, stock and barrel at no expense if you agree to stay a year. Perhaps that�s why. Leuricon did specifically mentioned moving back to his family was his a reason for leaving. We could very well just be seeing the result of a one year contract coming to fulfillment. So maybe there are other issues at play other than the ship sinking.

In my mind things are settled that UO isn�t sinking. I currently see it as the following; UO is catering towards a user base with older computers. We have Elfs because they are easier to market, and perhaps easier to create in the 2D client. The ship isn�t sinking, a couple people left for normal reasons, and a few left because their contracts ended and they wanted to be closer to family, or hated San Francisco. There are lots of rational answers, ones I haven�t mentioned. Sure it seems fishy for all this to happen at once, but I�ve come to realize EA is just a fishy company, you can never guess what they�ll do. But the same is true for UO. I would never have guessed we�d have been given a mirror, err a new faucet like Trammel.

The things I�m more concerned about is why the next expansion of UO appears to be download only. Why people won�t give me my 3D client for UO, even though I understand in all likely hood why (hey I love 3D), and why fishing and the seas can never get a fair chance. I�m sure they all have rational answers though.

So I hope I shed some light on things, that I didn�t bore you too much, and that I perhaps made the waters less murky. Of course I could be completely off and the ship is sinking, haha.

And then there was ... ? {By: Orion - Jun 6, 2005 12:29:24}

Well another one bites the dust, looks like Leurocian is saying farewell to UO.

It is with great reluctance and heartfelt sadness that I tender my resignation to you � The Ultima Online Community. My last day at EA will be June 17th.

My wife and I have decided to return to the �Shire� (Indiana), buy a house, perhaps have children, and live the simple life. My main reason for leaving is to be close to our family.

I wanted to take this moment now to thank each and every one of you for your many years of devotion and support to Ultima Online and its community. For it is you, that I will miss most.

There is a light inside the darkness, ever bright and full of selfless love, and that light has a name. That name belongs to all of you.

Sweet water and light laughter until next,

Patrick �Leurocian� Malott

That's five now that have recently left the UO team. Six if you count that Sunsword isn't just UO anymore, but the head of EA's online gaming division (or something like that).

It could just be that a it's a coincidence, or that a major update was just finished (i.e. the next "expansion") and the team is just cycling. But I can't remember any other time in UO's history that so many have departed all at once. I'd love to hear something from EA that they are still alive and doing well.

I keep thinking of the saying "The rats are leaving the sinking ship".

Mondain's Legacy {By: Orion - Jun 2, 2005 09:30:43}

Hrm, not sure of my opinion yet on this new expansion. Mondain's Legacy introduces the first new playable race to UO, the elf. Here's a link that cover's all the highlights: Mondain's Legacy info at Stratics.

I just don't know what to say. I like the whole spellweaving idea, and the Peerless monstesr intrigue me. But the one thing that I crave the most has been shot down. Apparntly UO is not to get a new 3D engine. At least according to the news I'm hearing from the Washington DC event today.

UO:SE was to me a nice expansion, but it lacked the polish I was hoping for (the tilesets look really goofy to me in 2D). And it left me feeling a UO void in a lot of ways. So hearing that they will not in fact revamp UO's 3D makes me very disappointed.

Well as time gets closer we'll see I guess. =)

Sorry to rant but here it comes. {By: Orion - Apr 26, 2005 10:30:45}

In a discussion on the Ultima Yahoo! Group mailing list we've been discussing UO, or rather why the devs seem so dang quiet and nothing seems to be happening to UO (minor upgrades and changes don't count). From this discussion I dropped this rant and thought I'd share it with you. It covers a lot of what I've felt lately about UO, and some of my ponderings about EA's two failed attempts at creating a successor to the Ultima Online tradition.

Rant Begin...

I hear ya Teich. I've been saying the similar thing on my UO site. UO needs to evolve and move on, do something. The devs are all dead quiet. There has been no major news after all the big UO sites met the devs down at EA. Everyone was saying something big is happening, but we can't talk about it, blah blah blah. But here we are months later, and still nothing.

But then if they did finally announce something "big" would you or I believe them? They canceled UO2 and UXO something I followed and was very interested in. Heck I played UXO and loved the feel of it.

You know, the funny thing is UXO was EXTREMELY similar to WoW.

- Both are cartoony and have a new fresh feel away from the "realistic" aspect most other games take.
- Both had a portrait of the players face in the upper left corner with information.
- Both allow you to talk in chat, click an item and everyone else see the items properties by hovering the mouse over it.
- Both have instances.
- Both use vertical space a lot more than any other game has.
- And so much more.

(did they cancel UXO because of the similarities?)

The funny thing is, UXO should have beat WoW to market (at least from my player experience it seemed rather good, beta quality at least), but once again EA pulled the plug.

I remember UO2, heck I still have the preview movie on my desktop! It used vertical space like none other (Yew looked shwank), and it had a more involved combat system, where it actually looked like you were in combat, rather than swinging in the air. You could leap across the screen kicking opponents and more. Heck they had dancing emotes that meshed together and more. I would have forked over big bucks to upgrade my system then to play it.

I'm fed up, and it's sad. Because I've tried other MMOGS (EQ, Asherons Call, DAoC, and so many others) but UO is the only game I've truly felt passionate about, and they seem to be more willing to settle for 2nd, 3rd, 4th place than actually innovate. As if they (not the devs perhaps, but corporate EA) are afraid of loosing customers. The funny thing is, they have lost customers. The game hasn't really had any substantial growth in a very long time, and it now appears to be actively going down.

So in the end what will they have? A shell of a game with a shell of a user base and have missed the grand opportunity to move their users to a new game?

While I'm on this, I think the devs behind UO are great, I think they've done a lot of traffic stuff to a game engine that is very dated. They've probably rewritten more code to update it than we want to know about. But what is it with the 3D client still? Why can't EA hire really good 3D artists for UO? We know they can for other titles. A friend of mine at EA works on an EA game and their game looks damn beautiful. But the character models in UO:3D still are a farce. Compare them to any other major MMOG out there and everyone of you will laugh. What is it with EA that they can't move UO in any direction but none?

/rant

Orion
the UO Compendium
http://uo.gamesentry.com

PS: Why am I so dang passionate about this game?

Nieves is Logging Out {By: Orion - Apr 21, 2005 05:52:20}

Nieves of UO Powergamers fame is signing out of UOPG and Ultima Online. I'll miss Nieves, but truth be told you could tell he signed out a while ago, just now it's official. Well I wish Nieves well and know that UOPG is still being left in very good hands.

Will it catch on? {By: Orion - Apr 20, 2005 08:19:33}

So I've been talking about Sony's new Station Exchange for Everquest II. If you care to read my full thoughts on it head over to the main page of this site and read this.

What I wonder is what if OSI had done this years ago. What if, instead of saying "It's okay to sell items on Ebay" they instead had cashed in on this years ago. What if they had created a Ultima Exchange of their own, and then said "This is the only sanction place to sell UO goods for real money".

Think about it. The players would have been able to sell stuff, just like they have been able to. But, think about the scamming that could have stopped. OSI could have linked your selling account to your gaming account. Then they'd have a string to chase immediately when all of a sudden an account has millions of gold. It would have been noticable much faster, and they would have been able to stop utter gluts of gold hitting the market that much faster.

Of course that's a bunch of what if's. I was just thinking how interesting today's market would be if OSI had done this back in say 2000.

It's not earth shattering, but it's nice. {By: Orion - Apr 11, 2005 05:39:29}

Well, it is not earth shattering, but it's about dang time!

Highlights of Publish 32:

* Fix for ghost cams at Felucca Champ Spawns
* End of the Despise Invasion
* Guild/Alliance chat
* Alchemy addition
* BOD timer changes
* Many major and minor bug fixes

I have to say I'm almost amazed that true guild chat and alliance chat is being added to UO. Apparently I'm out of the loop a bit right now because this one hit me out in right field.

In games such as Dark Ages of Camelot, Everquest, and World of Warcraft these are main parts of the game. Ultima Online has had for a while party chat, which was so very much needed. But not guild chat, which was something I craved early on in my UO playing (about 5.5 years ago for those counting).

It's funny actually, some guildmates are currently discussing the pros and cons of chat. Our guild has a non-swearing policy in chat, recently this has become a small issue, and so in discussing chat, guild chat, etc, a few of us lamented how we miss the quiet aspect of games like UO. Where you only saw what was on screen.

Of course when you have what UO has (soon to be had) you find that it's hard to grow group dynamics, something that can happen in chat intensive games a lot faster. Ultimatly I think what UO has is best, where all local talk happens on screen, and guild/party stuff down in the message area portion of the screen. Where as World of Warcraft has gone overboard and you can soon find yourself in conversation overload (since all local converstation is in your chat box).

Ho-hum {By: Orion - Apr 7, 2005 10:27:33}

Who's ready for big news from EA about UO? I sure am. Just a quicky post. I'm in the depths of World of Warcraft right now. Still love UO, just feeling a bit burnt out on it right now. I know, I know, you've all heard it before.

I just want something really exciting to happen with the UO franchise. I really really do. I love the format of UO, with skills, tradeskills and more. I want EA to push the franchise forward. UO2 looked like it, then UXO looked like it.

Please OSI, keep the world of Britannia evolving. Don't settle.

Fairwell Hanse {By: Orion - Mar 28, 2005 05:25:57}

Ahh man, it appears Hanse is leaving UO. He has been by far my favorite developer in UO, and definatly the most communicative on the team. He's brought in great changes for the crafters and fisher and countless other things. Man I'm going to miss him.

I think you know the rest!

I'm leaving Ultima Online. Thank you for five great years on Ultima Online. I'll miss being part of such a great game!

- Hanse

Well Hanse, cheers to you. Happy landings wherever you go!

Site Changes {By: Orion - Mar 11, 2005 04:03:57}

So you may or may not notice the changes to the site, that happen just above what you're reading right now. I figured I'd toss the headlines of the main Game Sentry web site up there for you all to see. Just in case you care to read my ramblings even more. ;-)

Update 3/18/05: Woops, the new links were not pointing to the right page. My bad. Anyhow it's fixed. And there's a review of Lego Star Wars up now.

Publish 31 {By: Orion - Mar 7, 2005 10:20:37}

I'm five days behind the UO news it seems. It's dead week for me right now, thankfully this quarter I only have one final, but I do have four programming assignments to finish too. Blah.

Anyways, the real point of this post is to point out the design notes for Publish 31. Not super thick yet in new stuff, but it does bring forth the Tokuno artifact trade-in system. Trade in 10 minor Tokuno arties and get one major one. It sounds like you get to pick which one you get too, which is good I suppose. Also this is apparently a limited time frame event, that's interesting.

In other news, a test center for this is up already too. Not bad.

Let's get this party started. {By: Orion - Feb 26, 2005 07:23:10}

So, over on the main page for this domain, gamesentry.com, I've finally started using it as I originally envisioned, kinda. Basically, I'll be talking about other games I find enjoyable outside of UO. I've wanted to talk about games other than UO for quite a while, but ever time I started I tried to reinvent GameSpy, or it's ilk. Which is funny because I generally don't like those sites!

So, if you like games like UO, World of Warcraft, Battlefield 1942, Half-Life, Civilization and other great games. You want honest review and commentary, occassional timely news. Or you're bored at work and need another site to waste time on, head on over!

GameSentry.com may be the site for you. Or it may not be. I'm cool with that.

Dev Chat - Publish 30 {By: Orion - Feb 23, 2005 07:44:13}

Hi guys, my game rut is fading, my work load isn't, but hey, there is UO news and that's what I'm here to cover! Yesterday marked the 103rd UO House of Commons Chat, with the main subject being Publish 30. Anyhow here are my favorite parts

Brekkee - *Robdadct* Looking at Ghost Cams. I heard that you were looking into making a necro with spirit speak able to see the dead even while they are not in war mode. Also i heard that you were looking into making a possible exorcism spell that would send all spawned dead players to a graveyard is this true and if so will it be posibly comming out in publish 31?
MrTact - That is indeed in the works.
MrTact - However, I will not be able to get it done in time for pub 31, so probably 32.

Wow, what can I say, I really dig this. Being able to kick out all the ghosts will be a major plus. And I like the way they go about it big time.

Brekkee - *JCtheBuilder* Are there plans to further reduce lag when there are a lot of players in one area fighting? At harrowers especially, the server will sometimes grind to a hault.
Fertbert - We're currently in the middle of a shard hardware upgrade. Faster hardware may help the situation if the problem is that the server iteself is getting too busy. If it's a matter of too much data being sent for your internet connection to handle or for your client to render, there are no current plans to do additional optimization there in the next couple publishes.

New hardware is always good in my book.

Well, there is a lot more to the chat, but it's mostly about people wanting their chosen profession to be made better, or about arti's. Two topics I don't care too much about, arti's seem to me as a dog bone, and I like the professions as they are, I don't mind changes generally either, but I don't find that my blacksmith is useless as some do. Just personal taste really.

Woops {By: Orion - Feb 1, 2005 01:09:37}

Yah, so if you noticed the site was missing the last couple of days that's what happens when you forget to renew your domain name. :P

Game Rut. {By: Orion - Jan 29, 2005 11:19:24}

Have no fear, I still live. I'm just in a major game rut right now. UO, meh. WoW, meh, Desert Combat, Meh.

Not sure how long it's gonna last hehe. I think at this point the graphics of UO have me disappointed more and more. It is finally beginning to feel aged for me. WoW is fun, but it's not as easy for me to jump into and play like UO always has. Desert Combat is my quick endorphine fix, but I've been playing Battlefield 1942 and it's mods for quite a while, and while teamwork and strats can be fun, eventually it grows boring too.

I've actually been wanting to play OLD SCHOOL games lately. Once upon a time there was this Macintosh game where you had tanks, troops, planes and ships on this grid like map. It was a turn based very simple little war game, but lots of fun. I remember it had a menu option that said something like "quick the boss is coming" that would blank out the screen. Ahh funny stuff. The reason I've thought of the old school stuff lately is I've got my hands on an older Palm Pilot. I'm really finding it very useful to keep work and school organized better. But the ability to play little games on it is a plus to help pass the bordem in some of my classes. :P

Merry Belated Christmas {By: Orion - Dec 31, 2004 12:53:24}

Well I just got back from a nice eight day break. In time to hurry and do some work and get back to the college grind. Joy.

I hope your holidays were merry and bright and that you have a happy new year.

~ Orion

FireFox 1.0 and why I care. {By: Orion - Dec 16, 2004 10:00:31}

I'm proud of my readers, you've ditched Internet Explorer at a faster pace than the average web user, in fact 25.6% of you now use FireFox! As you may know FireFox 1.0 is now out (a few weeks ago), this is the first major major release of my favorite browser. I'd love to see everyone switch to FireFox, it's got great plugins, it's fast, and it renders CSS in most cases better than IE.

Now some of you may be wondering why I car about this so much. Many of you may have noticed that newer versions of Internet Explorer have been VERY slow in coming out. You may also have seen or been affected by many of the IE exploits. You may also have heard that Microsoft doesn't plan any major upgrades for IE for some time. Well all of the above is true, and each one is important, let me explain.

1. Slow Releases - Microsoft has been like a slug moving on new features with their browser. The browser is one of the most important interfaces out there, and it's ever so slowly changing. Why? Because this is not Microsofts platform of choice. (more in point 3)

2. Security Threats - Every browser has it's weaknesses. Because browsers rely on other code (you can't avoid that) there will probably never be a browser without problems. But no other browser is intergrated into the operating system like IE is. Thus you get these insane vulnerabilities that you have to generally wait months for a fix for, or usually at the least for the 2nd Tuesday of every month when MS releases patches. This is horrible for something so intergrated into the Operating System.

3. MS is dedicated to selling software. Particularly MS Office and Windows, but more recently into other areas as well. They use their own programming languages, that you pay thousands to use the development environtment. Making IE was their way of squashing Netscape and adding a bonus feature to Windows, to make you want an Windows computer of say a Linux or Apple computer. Because of this they very vocally said not too long ago that they would not release a major update to IE until their next version of Windows came out in a few years. When that date got pushed back they released a few much needed features to IE with SP2, but only made it available to those WITH Windows XP, thus making more people buy a new Operating System.

Why is this a bad thing? Because the browser still has much more potential as a user interface. No not games, but business apps yes. There are many things that can be done with markup languages, CSS (cascading style sheets) has really changed how things are done, but boy does IE screw it up (FireFox has a couple annoying bugs but not nearly as many, plus FireFox releases MUCH more often to fix those naggy little things).

Anyhow, the point of this is that I'd love you to try out FireFox, click that link above. Over 10 million downloads of 1.0 in just a few weeks, that's a whole lot of users now.

PS: I think I need a blog or something so I can stop bothering you guys about none UO things. ;-)

Buy seperatly what you bought 7AE for. {By: Orion - Dec 15, 2004 04:11:38}

I'm not sure what to make of this yet. But I'm sure a lot of people will be buying more 7AE gifts.

Only at www.uogamecodes.com, get the perfect gifts for that special UO fan, especially if that fan is you. On sale now are 6th Character Slot Codes and 7th Anniversary Item Codes! An Ultima Online 6th Character Slot Code will give you a sixth character slot on all shards. (If you all ready have six character slots, this code will not give you another one.) For more info, go to www.uogamecodes.com. Add another character to your UO family without having to eliminate one of your favorites!

Also, until January 5th only, you can buy a 7th Anniversary Item Code for only $1.99. Now�s your chance to collect the items you don�t have, or get more of the ones you want. This code will let you choose from one of the seven rare in-game items created to celebrate the 7th anniversary of Ultima Online. This offer will end Jan. 5th, so act now. Go to < for more info.

From uo.com.

Most interesting. {By: Orion - Dec 10, 2004 11:29:30}

Because the beginning of December is a very hectic time for me, with finals, and the Christmas festivities setting in, I tend not to notice what goes on around me much. Which is funny because each year I'm always surprised once I peek back outside on the world that continues to move-on with or without me.

This years surprise is only a day old news wise, and what a surprise it is. I never expected a new server launch.

Origin Lives!
On Thursday, December 16, between 5:00 � 8:00 PM PST, a new shard will be born -- Origin. This shard will be a place where you can get a fresh start, claim that prime piece of real estate you�ve always had your eye on, or just rediscover the lands of Britannia.

Because we have many demo and free trial programs available, this shard will only be available to Ultima Online: Samurai Empire account holders for the first month. By limiting access in this way, we can ensure that our loyal customers have the first opportunity to claim the real estate and goods provided by the launch of the Origin shard. This restriction will be lifted in mid-January.

A few things you should know about the Origin Shard:

* Origin will be located on the West Coast of North America
* This Shard will be the first to receive most publishes and updates
* Character Transfer will be disabled to and from Origin for the first 30-days
* Advanced Characters will not be available for the first 30-days

We�re looking forward to seeing you on Origin!

Not at all what I was expecting, that is for sure. I tried out Lake Austin when it first game out, even had a nice sized house. But after a few weeks I disappeared from the Lake. Why you ask? Well because the friends I have in UO still played on Sonoma. And while I largly enjoy the changes that OSI makes, what keeps me on is my friends. Even if I rarely see them, knowing they are there is what keeps me playing UO.

I like that they are making this available to dedicated players, excluding those without Samurai Empires and those who are on a 30-day trial. I wish those who are moving on to Origin a happy move. Hopefully this new server will not be plagued my mad cash schemes like Lake Austin was, and that you make new friends at your new home.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition Trailer! {By: Orion - Nov 30, 2004 01:24:40}

Not UO news, but damn good needs, the trailer for RotK is out. They've added lots of good scenes, totalling to 50 more minutes of footage. Click here to watch it!

Good to be a gamer. {By: Orion - Nov 27, 2004 05:26:51}

Hello all,

Boy it's good to be a gamer right now. I've been blessed this past couple months with lots of new goodies software wise. UO: Samurai Empires is out and finally in my hands, World of Warcraft is out (and man is it nice) and on top of that Half-Life 2 *boggle*. That's a lot of gaming goodness to handle, but that's not all, Knights of the Old Republic 2 is out soon, Dec 6th releases LotR: Battles of Middle Earth, and Sid Mier's classic remake of Pirates! is out now too. Sadly there is no way I can fit all this goodness into my budget and my time (wife, family, work, school, games definatly come last, hehe), but the bright side is come this Summer if there isn't anything good out I can come back and buy some of these great titles.

Publish 28 & Holiday Gifts {By: Orion - Nov 22, 2004 04:51:04}

Well Pacific got Publish 28 today, and tomorrow Pub 28 will get rolled out to the other shards as well. This years holiday gifts again come in a randomly colored gift box like last year. In side you'll find four items: A Snowy Tree [Blessed, Winter 2004], A Pile of Glacial Snow [Blessed, Winter 2004], Light of the Winter Solstice [Blessed, Hand Dipped By RandomDevTeamMemberName, Winter 2004], and a Mistltoe Deed [Blessed, Winter 2004]. The text in the brackets is what appears below the item name when you mouseover the item. RandomeDevTeamMemberName is not what actually appears, hehe.

The gifts look pretty nice, I especially like the tree, however the size of the candle is kinda weird, as it seems HUGE (especially the bow). But still they look pretty shwank.

Publish 28 is pretty huge, instead of copying the entire thing here you can click the link to read the whole thing. I'll just cover the highlights as I see them.

1. There are tons of minor game fixes, that in itself is cool to me.

2. Instanced Corpses for loot division. I really like this idea, if you make the top damagers list than the loot is divided up into instaneced corpse containers only you have access to for three minutes. Say goodbye loot scripts!

3. They removed damage penalties for distance with hit area effects. That makes my favorite halbred that much more enjoyable.

4. They fixed the "target cannot be seen" but with Vortex's.

5. Looks like the GGS system is fixed for high levels of skill now.

6. Big Fish now come w/ a variable weight. The max weight hasn't been revealed, so this gives fisherman something to work for.

7. Lots of other stuff including new Artifacts.

In my hands. {By: Orion - Nov 21, 2004 06:45:05}

Finally, three copies of UO:Samurai Empires are in my hands. Tomorrow I can ship out the two copies to the prize winners and I can finally you know, play the expansion.

Of note, I may never preorder a game again. What a fiasco this turned into. In the end I ended up buying them from the local Target retail store. :P

My problems resolved. {By: Orion - Nov 21, 2004 11:36:49}

Well, EA Store finally replied to me. Even though their site still says my order has a status of "Ordered" their CS people are saying my order was canceled. It only took me telling them I was going to report them to my States AG to get a response. Now I'm off to town to see if I can find three copies of UO:SE.

I'm glad they finally canceled my order, but once again they highlight everything that is wrong with their store. They do not know how to communicate with their customers and to use their automated system as a tool for them. On top of that their left hand doesn't know what their right hand is doing. How can one person say my order has progressed too far for someone else to cancel it and not let me know?

Oh brother.

EA Says everything is shipped (yah right). {By: Orion - Nov 18, 2004 06:35:45}

So Wilki (UO Online Community Rep) posted on Tuesday, that according to the EA Store all the shipments of UO:SE have been fulfilled.

EA Store Information:

All orders should have been shipped, refunds for shipping should be processed this week, and refunds for those who refused delivery will be processed in the days ahead.

You can read the whole post here.

On that thread others have posted that they too have not received a thing from EA Store, and I'm not the only one having their emails ignored.

So anyone care to share their exploits in UO:SE so I can play vicariously through you? hehe .. *sigh*

Anyone home? {By: Orion - Nov 18, 2004 09:44:59}

Why yes I am here, but it's now the 17th and my UO:SE shipment has not been actually shipped by EA Store. Let this server as a lesson to each and everyone of you. Never buy from the EA Store. Ever.

I just want to report on UO:SE {By: Orion - Nov 14, 2004 02:09:47}

So what I really want to do is report on UO:SE and how it rocks, etc. But, guess what? My copies of UO:SE have not been sent to me yet. My credit card hasn't been charged yet, and according to the EA Store site, the status is still sitting at "ordered" not shipped or anything else to let me know things are moving forward. It's been a full month since I preordered the game, and come this Tuesday it'll be two weeks since the launch of UO:SE, yet I can't do a damn thing, except look in all the menus and see the cool items I could be forging if I had my damned copy of UO:SE.

...frustration...

First I can, Then I can't. {By: Orion - Nov 9, 2004 08:07:01}

Sheesh, what a fiasco. So last week a public apology was issued from the EA Store. Apparently they had nor ordered enough copies to satisify preorder needs. This was fine because I could thankfully cancel my order they said. So I did just that, last Thursday I followed their instructions and sent in an order cancellation. I waited for a reply on Friday and got nothing, then I moved this weekend and they replied to me on Saturday. Their reply was an apology and that yes I could continue to cancel my order (which was confusing since I thought we went through this already with me asking for them to cancel my order). So I logged into their system and replied again saying yes, just cancel my order thanks. To get a reply two days later that it was now too late to cancel my order. I would assume that this meant that my items were shipped, but NOOOOOOOO, according to their site my 3 copies are in the same state of nothingness, having been Ordered but not actually shipped.

Has anyone else actually been able to cancel their orders? Or was that just a ploy to cover bad press? At this point I'm completely disgusted with this whole mess. Not only did they NOT ship me anything, not only have they said they'd do one thing, and then do another, but NOW they are offering free shipping if you use OTHER stores.

That's like rubbing salt in my wounds, you won't ship me my items, you won't give me a refund, but you'll give other people a discount for NOT shopping with you. Nice.

Oh just splendidly delicious. {By: Orion - Nov 4, 2004 07:16:21}

So, a rumour has been flying about today that people buying copies of UO:SE who didn't even preorder are still getting Soulstone codes at their local retailers. Then a friend sends me this link: Confirmation on Stratics Forums

Nice. I have a few friends ICQ'ing me about this and they are pretty annoyed. But you know what really gets me. What gets me is that the EA Store hasn't even shipped my UO:SE copies yet. How is it the company store that creates this game is behind even Amazon? Oh wait here is why:

Dear EA Store Customers,

We must regretfully inform some of our EA Store customers that their order for Samurai Empire was delayed due to the great demand for the title. The orders will be fulfilled as soon as additional inventory arrives. We are expecting more copies to arrive for shipment next week.

We understand that some who did not receive their order may choose to purchase the game from a local retailer. If you placed an order at the EA Store and have not received the shipping confirmation and, wish to submit a cancellation request, please go here:

http://eastore.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/eastore.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2591

In addition, those who placed a pre-order for Samurai Empire before November 2nd will receive an e-mail with a Soulstone code and further information regarding their order.

We apologize for the inconvenience and delay.

Sincerely,

The EA Store Team

For the record, I pre-ordered my copies on Oct. 14th, a full 19 days prior to the launch of UO:SE. How do you not order enough copies to cover the PRE-orders! I already got my codes for each pre-order purchase and I've already dolled them out to the "Haiku Like I Do" winners. But what I wanted to do was actually ship them the game already.

I have no clue how tomorrow I'm going to get to the store to buy 3 copies of UO:SE (I'm moving this weekend!), but I for one doubt I'll order from the EA Store again.

One last thing, would it hurt the EA Store to you know... Send me the above message to my email account? Why did I have to find this out by reading Stratics? Why when I checked on the EA Store page today, under my order history did it not have a note about this there?

Ianstorm.com's 14 UO Stormchat- TONIGHT!! {By: Orion - Nov 4, 2004 05:51:51}

IanStorm is pleased to announce their 14th UOSC (UO StormChat) with EA:Origin. It will take place at 8pm CST (6pm PST, 9pm EST, 1pm AEST, 1am GMT) TONIGHT, November 4th in #UOSC.

To access the network, you will need an IRC Client (like mIRC or Pirch) and use one of the following servers:

# irc.ianstorm.com

Don't have an IRC client? Never fear, you can access our network via our Java IRC client, here.

If you require help with IRC commands, please see our FAQ.

The topic for this month is General Discussion, so if you have a question to ask, come prepared!

We will also be taking questions pertaining to the new expansion, Samurai Empires.

You can access logs of our former chats here.

Hope to see you there tonight!

Go Vote! {By: Orion - Nov 2, 2004 09:50:07}

If you live in the US, you're a registered citizen, and you've registered to vote, PLEASE GO DO SO! I don't care which way you vote, but please your vote does indeed count, so get on out there!

Haiku Like I Do Winners! {By: Orion - Nov 2, 2004 08:10:28}

Sorry for the slight delay, it took a bit of time sorting out the contest winners. First off, there were a lot of awesome haiku submitted, you guys are a creative bunch of UO players. I'll definatly be doing something like this again.

And the winners are...

Ranguvar of Baja
The Llama saunters,
His thoughts of lush shrubbery,
Then quickly forgets!

The humor in this one is what one me over.

Charon of Baja
Young samurai seen
Healing under the cold moon
Cursing katana.

My weapon of choice has always been a katana in UO, this haiku quickly recalled how many times I have cursed my own katana.

Congrats you two, emails are on the way!

Some honorable mentions for their great haiku are:

Sid of Great Lakes with
Crowds gather about
town crier whispers soft words
chaos brews throughout

Ar-Pharazon of Chesapeake with
Exiled ninja,
In the land of sun and snow,
In search of a home.

Saph'yre of Oceania with
Lich Lords in the dark
In dungeons no seasons pass
Constant, silent, death

Gewurtztraminer of Sonoma with
A warm night at sea
You are already fishing!
Tell me why again?

Tiffiny Case of Atlantic with
Stranger shattered Gem
The Lands under Tyranny
A danger filled realm

Boy I could go on and on, I'll try to get these all copied to a UO Haiku page this week. Again you guys did awesome, by far the best contest I've run to date!

Two more days to Haiku Like I Do! {By: Orion - Oct 29, 2004 04:47:51}

Remember all Haiku submissions must be in by October 31st. You have to midnight that night to get them on in. That gives me a day to read over all the great submissions and then contact the winners to get their addresses so I can forward their copies of UO:SE to them!

UO Storm Chat this Thursday {By: Orion - Oct 25, 2004 12:40:49}

I just got this from TrinityX from UO Ianstorm:

IanStorm is pleased to announce their 14th UOSC (UO StormChat) with EA:Origin. It will take place at 8pm CST (6pm PST, 9pm EST, 1pm AEST, 1am GMT) on, THIS THURSDAY, October 28th in #UOSC.

To access the network, you will need an IRC Client (like mIRC or Pirch) and use one of the following servers:

# irc.ianstorm.com

Don't have an IRC client? Never fear, you can access our network via our Java IRC client, here. If you require help with IRC commands, please see our FAQ.

The topic for this month is General Discussion, so if you have a question to ask, come prepared! We will also be taking questions pertaining to the new expansion, Samurai Empires.

You can access logs of our former chats here.

Hope to see you there!

Haiku Submissions! {By: Orion - Oct 14, 2004 10:17:48}

Man you guys are writing some great Haiku! This is going to be tough. Anyhow keep it up, this is turning out pretty good.

Oh, and to clarify, the contest ends on October 31st, 2004. Not the 1st, sorry about the typo on the haiku contest web page.

Do you Haiku Like I Do? {By: Orion - Oct 13, 2004 03:22:08}

Do you Haiku like I do? Do you have a way with words, well then this contest is for you! It is simple to win, and you can enter
as much as you like. Here is how it works.

The UO Compendium is giving out two (2) copies of UO: Samurai Empires (once it is released of course). You can win them by writing
the best Ultima Online based Haiku. You can read the complete rules on the Haiku Contest page.

It is pretty simple though, write the UO based haiku, send it to me by Oct. 31st, 2004 and if you write a damn good haiku you could win a copy of UO: SE!

So go read the full haiku contest rules and start writing! Send as many haiku as you like, as long as they follow the rules.

UO:SE NDA Lifted {By: Orion - Oct 12, 2004 10:41:31}

Ultima Online: Samurai Empire News Okay guys, the NDA is officially lifted so I can finally talk about UO:SE, and sadly the beta is finished tomorrow morning.

So I was in the beta for umm, a month I think, towards the end. I managed to play a lot as a Ninja and really enjoyed it. I'm not so sure I'll ditch my trusty Paladin ways, but hey you never know. Just a couple of impressions here before I head to bed, more tomorrow with pictures.

- As you may know, there are a lot of new craftables. And yes they are all japanese themed. They look pretty dang nice.

- There are lots of new tile sets for houses. Most of the walls have new windows including stained glass ones. Most of the new tile sets looked good, unfortunatly some of the new ones didn't seem to line up with the old ones right. Could be a beta thing so we'll see. While 99% of them looked awesome a couple looked dorky, like the zen sand garden, definatly could use a bit more texture. But some of the floors really rocked, as do most of the new walls.

- While on the new tile sets, there are some awesome looking roofs coming our way. No more faking it. They do take up a floor, but you can use them as quasi atics, as a beta tester cleverly discovered.

- Being a ninja was fun, but it takes a lot of points in hard skills to raise like stealthing.

- Miners finally get portable forges via a new ridable = pretty damn cool.

- The new lands look sharp and have a great variety, including a couple places w/ new stealable rares.

- PvM'ers will have a great time with the new additions to UO, there are some great things to hunt.

Man I can go on. It's looking to be a great game!

So good in fact that I'll be giving away a couple free copies. But more on that tomorrow also.

House designs like never before. {By: Orion - Oct 7, 2004 09:07:28}

A friend just sent me this link, I didn't get it at first until I looked at the radar window in each screencap.

House Art Like Never Before

I think my favorite is the llama.

Win a copy of UO:SE and a SoulStone! {By: Orion - Oct 7, 2004 05:39:05}

Straight from uo.com:

Do you want a chance to win a free copy of Samurai Empire, including a free Soulstone, and help us improve Ultima Online all at the same time?

All you have to do is log-in to the UOSE Beta test shard and play on Friday, October 8th, between 4:00 � 8:00PM PDT (11:00 � 3:00AM GMT), when we will be conducting a server load test. Sometime during this special test, we will randomly select 5 players who are actively playing (killing monsters, PvP�ing, crafting, etc) in and around the town of Zento in the southern part of the Tokuno Islands to receive :

* A free copy of Ultima Online Samurai Empire.
* A Soulstone code.

The 5 lucky winners will have their prizes delivered after Samurai Empire has launched and is on store shelves November 2. If you win, you will be contacted via email and given instructions on how to claim your prizes. Make sure the email address associated with your Beta account is up to date and accurate!

Tell everyone you know in the Beta to log-in during the play test window on Friday between 4:00 � 8:00 PDT to help with the load test and get a chance to win a free copy of Samurai Empire, including a free Soulstone!

Remember, in order to have a chance to win, you must be logged in at the time that we select the winners and be actively playing in or around the town of ZENTO in southern part of the Tokuno Islands. We will pick the winners any time between 4:00 � 8:00PM PDT. Be sure to engage in normal gameplay for as long as you can during this time to increase your chance of winning!

See you in the Tokuno Islands!

Good luck and see you there!

Fishing {By: Orion - Oct 6, 2004 03:19:28}

Fishing! Boy I love to fish. Really I do, I've got a pretty nice fishing setup, 3 polls, two tackle boxes, one for fresh water and one for salt. There is nothing like reeling in a nice fat rainbow trout.

Oh, I bet you thought I meant fishing in UO. Well I actually did. UO fishing is perfect for me in many ways. It is what I like to call the perfect study companion. I'll get my Calculus out, or perhaps program in C on my tablet, all the while my character is fishing away in the UO seas. Obviously some interaction is needed, but not enough that it detracts from the actual studying. This works out very well for me, since long study periods REALLY suck, and this makes it a bit bearable from time to time.

Anyhow, today I thought I'd share about my fisher, who was my third UO character I ever made. I started him back in '99 and his original skills were just fishing and enough magery to recall home. Fishing back then was extremely easy, maps and MIBs just popped into your backpack. You just sailed north fishing and the occasional sea serpent that popped up once you reach 80 fishing would stay well behind you and eventually disappear. This is what I call the hay day of fishing. I'd start fishing and an hour later I'd have 8 or so MIB's which I could sell for a cool 20k each!

Not too long after I GM'ed fishing (which I did on a bridge in Vesper) they made it so each time you got a MIB a sea monster would pop up, again, no problem, this resolution lasted if I remember right, just a few days or weeks. Soon OSI got smart and made it so you had to fight off the sea monster to get the loot. Boy do I remember the complaints from my fishing friends. But really it only helped the game, by that time the value of a MIB was around 5k because of the glut of MIBs on the market. So in many ways I welcomed the change.

So where does fishing stand today? Well pretty good actually. It definitely is not THE way to make money anymore, that is for sure, but it is still a fun way. Of course you have to be willing to have dry spells while fishing. Yesterday, during a very long bit of calculus I fished from 3:00pm to 4:35pm and only had 4 sea serpents spawn for me. I managed to get 1 SOS, 1 T-map, and 1 Net. Unfortunately one spawned with nothing on it. Now do you see why it's perfect for me? I basically fished for one and a half hours and only fought 4 monsters, so UO really only took up about 10 minutes total. Not too bad.

Of course later that night I went fishing again and managed to get 14 sea serpents in about the same amount of time. I managed to get 6 T-maps, and 4 SOS's. Four of the stupid sea serpents carried zilch on them. Again, it only took up about 15 minutes to fight all these monsters with my fisher. Not too bad.

So how do I fish? Well first off I use UOAssist quite extensively. Why? Because my object when I fish, is to play UO and at the same time do something else at my desk. Remember, it isn't against the rules of UO to macro as long as you are at your computer. So I do exactly that. My macro for UO Assist looks like this:

Use Item
Target relative
Pause 9000

That's it, of course it repeats quite a bit, so I don't have to hold down the play button all the time. I also do something else. I fish in four resource squares at once. As you may know, the landmass of UO is divided up into 8 tile by 8 tile squares. These resource squares are why mining spots may not have ore for a time, why you may find a group of trees next to each other out of wood to chop (that always makes me laugh), and why when you're out fishing a spot doesn't have any fish to catch. So if you can place yourself at the point where 4 squares meet then you can fish four resource squares at a time, and rarely find yourself getting a message about no fish to be caught.

Another reason I like UOAssist is the "Stack ore/fish/logs" feature. You can have UOAssist automatically stack the fish at your feet this way. Just put down a few at your feet and UOA will automatically add the newly caught fish to those stacks. It's very helpful when you're managing piles of 900+ fish.

Now I have tried many templates for fishing and I honestly thing that the best fishing template is the archer/paladin. When combat was forced upon fishers I tried out a variety of things, swords just don't work, you have to open up the gang plate to fight the serpents. And to make matters worse you take physical damage from the serpents as well. It's just a quick trip to the monotone lands of grey. Magery was nice, but rather costly to acquire to make battles quick and simple, so I ditched my magery down to 50 or so and went with Archery. Now I have completely dropped Magery for Chivalry, as Enemy of One is devastating combined with a good bow of some sort.

So what stats do I suggest? Well here they are:

GM Fishing
Duh, you can't do a dang thing with that pole until you know how to use it. I guess that can be said about many things...

GM Archery
By far the best way to kill a sea serpent. You can stand in the middle of your boat and not have to worry about being hit with physical attacks. Of course their fire attacks are a different story.

GM Tactics & GM Anatomy
These two go hand in hand with combat skills, you just have to have them.

80 Healing
Being able to apply a band aid is much better than relying on the paladin healing abilities. You get a much better bang for your buck. I don't GM healing, as I'd rather use the extra 20 points elsewhere.

70 Chivalry
Enemy of one is your main paladin buddy. It just rocks, add in the ability to recall, consecrate weapon, healing, cure abilities and the rest of the paladin arsenal, and you are all set. I only ever have 70 chivalry on my characters, it's enough to cast EoO easily and your other main paladin abilities.

Sub 100 Hiding and Sub 100 Magic Resistance
All of my characters have some way to hide. I'm a full time student and a parent. I need a quick way to get out of the game FAST! So I often have 90+ hiding and whatever else I can afford goes into Magic Resistance to make those hold spells be as short as possible, etc.

That sums up my fisher pretty well. In actuality he's a good overall warrior. I can take him out to a lot of places and he's pretty good against the Kraken when I'm fishing up nets. Being able to use a band aid well and use Chivalry to heal myself is a must. Which reminds me, my fisher has 51 Int. This way I can keep EoO going and still cure and heal myself. I don't bother with using the special attacks.

Well I guess that sums things up. In some ways this is an essay about fishing, in another way it is apparently about how I have poor study habits, but really it's just one of my rambles about a feature in UO I enjoy.

Oh BTW: I don't condone AFK macroing. It's just stupid, you're not playing the game. But if you want to try it while fishing, go right ahead, you'll find you die rather quickly. =P

UO House of Commons Chat. {By: Orion - Oct 6, 2004 01:42:15}

A new UO:HoC chat is tomorrow night (the 7th of October) at 5PM PDT (7PM CDT) on the stratics network. Here is the important stuff:

The next UO House of Commons Open House chat between the players and developers of UO is scheduled for tomorrow night, October 7th, at 5 PM PDT (7 PM CDT, 8 PM EDT).

The chat will be available at #uohoc on Stratics IRC, on the following networked servers:

irc.stratics.com 6667
stratics.frws.com 6667
irc.glowfish.de 6667
irc.epaxsys.net 6667
stratics.afraidyet.net 6667

This month's topic is Samurai Empire. Remember that this is a development chat, and as such only questions relating to the monthly topic will be answered.

If you are new to these chats, please visit the UO House of Commons webpage for information on how it all works.

See you guys there.

New Poll! {By: Orion - Oct 3, 2004 05:30:51}

Okay, so my last post got me thinking. Where do you guys hunt the most? No not hunt for bargains at the WBB, but get out and do some PvM. I spend a lot of time in Ilshenar, ever since I found the lich and lich lord spawn I've spent 90% of my PvM time in Ilshenar, the overlands have a lot of great areas, from Titans to the Undead, it's just a great place. Now everyone and their beetle is spending time in Ilshenar so I'm spending time elsewhere mostly, but I'm sure as time goes on people will spread back out.

So where do you get your game on? Let us know by selecting a choice in the poll on the right.

Mmmm, mini artifacts. {By: Orion - Oct 1, 2004 10:54:35}

I have to say I am really enjoying the paragons in Ilshenar. While I haven't spent a lot of time hunting them I have been lucky so far. I do a lot of solo hunting so I tend not to be facing a paragon dragon very often (if at all) I've mainly focused on the paragon ratmen near the Compassion moongate. The other night while out saving a buddy of mine who had died to a paragon ratmen archer I managed to land myself my first good piece from a paragon.

The image on the left is my main character Orion Do'Meric (Sonoma). The Blaze of Death is a pretty nice weapon. The SSI of 25% and the hit fire area 50% make it a wonderful weapon. Add on top of that the 10% fire resist and it's cake. While it's not on par with say a full fledge doom artifact I am very happy with it and tonight I used it to kill a couple more paragon ratmen.

I was out cleaning up the rat menance when I managed to have two paragons spawn right after eachother. It was quite the run. The paragon ratmen archer kept running away from me while the paragon ratmen mage kept running after me with its cursed spells. Thankfully both my fire and energy resists are very high. I almost managed to kill both of them, I had the archer to no blue left and worked on the mage till I killed him. By the time I killed the mage another group of warriors came by with a dragon and killed it. It was an "ahh damn" situation, but as luck had it I pounded that thing to have looting rights. I gave half the gold to the guys who finished it off (it had healed a bit) and there were not any cool items on it.

So that's my big paragon story. I haven't been spending a lot of time on these guys mostly because the current story arc going on Sonoma has Orc Brutes out and about in Yew and Cove. So I have been spending quite a bit of time working them over with my Orc Slayer Katana and my 70 physical resist. They really are right up my Paladin's skill set. The loot is pretty good on them as is the gold. I'd give it a 4 out of 5 while a ratmen mage would get like a 2.5 out of 5.

Also in that picture you'll notice I'm wearing two 7AE gifts. I was tempted by the tapestry, but really what do I do in UO? I bash stuff. So I went with the Samurai Helm and the Royal Legs of Ember. Both are pretty good items. I have the Helm of Insite doom rare that I switch back and forth with when I want more mana. But all in all I'm pretty happy. Really my character looks kinda dorky right now with that orange, the AOS surcoat I got is the exact same color, so with that black and orange them I'm kinda in the October mood. Go figure.

Soulstones! {By: Orion - Sep 29, 2004 02:29:27}

Ultima Online: Samurai Empire News I know a LOT of people who really have been wanting to get their hands on one of these soulstones. And finally the cat is out of the bag, soulstones are the next "shrowd of shadows". That's right, if you preorder UO: Samurai Empires you get a code for a soulstone. Anyways here's what OSI has to say:

From UO.com
Soulstones give you the power to change your character without losing your work!

When you pre-order Ultima Online Samurai Empire from a participating retailer, you�ll get a Soulstone, an amazing in-game device that gives you the power to store skill points or to move skill points from one character to another.

A Soulstone gives you a great deal of flexibility in managing your characters� abilities without losing the skill points you worked so hard to get!

They have a nice little FAQ and a list of participating retailers, you just need to give the link above a click.

Be there or be square! {By: Orion - Sep 29, 2004 02:23:53}

Ultima Online: Samurai Empire News In just two hours the UO: Samurai Empires test server will be back online for play! It'll be on from 4pm to 8pm PST for stress test. To encourage everyone to get online and actively play they're giving away some cool stuff too!

From FYI @ uo.com
Win a house on Tokuno Islands, a Soulstone and a free copy of Samurai Empire! Play in the beta test!

Want to build a castle on one of the large, scenic housing lots on the Tokuno Islands? Here�s how!

Play in the beta test on Sept. 29 between 4:00 � 8:00PM PDT (11:00 � 3:00AM GMT), when we will be conducting server load testing. During this playtest window, we will randomly select 5 UOSE beta testers, who are actively playing on the test server, to receive:

* An 18x18 house plot on the Tokuno Islands on the shard of their choice.
* A free copy of Ultima Online Samurai Empire.
* A Soulstone code.

All the prizes will be delivered after Samurai Empire has launched and is on store shelves November 2. If you win, you will be contacted via email and given instructions on how to claim your prizes.

Tell everyone you know in the Beta to log-in during the playtest window on Wednesday between 4:00 � 8:00 PDT to help with the load test and get a chance to win. See you on Tokuno!

Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me. =)

UO Compendium is 3 (as of last June). {By: Orion - Sep 25, 2004 12:05:48}

I just realized the 3rd anniversary of this little UO site came and went last June. Kinda cool in a way. Three years, not too bad for a hobby.

2 Points to OSI! -1 Point to them too. {By: Orion - Sep 24, 2004 01:56:19}

Okay, read below first, then come back here.

So I went to the support site and at the top is an article named "I'm having an issue with my in-game gift!". I read it AND it solves my problems, apparently I just need to log back in and log back out.

Okay, I just did so and I've got my choice screen again.

Great! Give OSI 2 points for doing it right! But -1 point for the following reasons. How hard was it for GM_Wolf to just say "You will find your answer at support.uo.com, it is on the top of the "10 Most Viewed Articles" list, in the future please check here first as we are honestly putting in a huge effort into this site".

There, then they would have gotten the full 2 points, and they would have made me aware that the support.uo.com site isn't lame anymore, that it actually has support questions that are useful. They are obviously putting an effort into this site which is VERY cool, and obviously want to raise awareness. They just come off like the old OSI when they try to raise that awareness.

Warning about 7th Anniverary Codes {By: Orion - Sep 24, 2004 01:38:52}

Okay, I just learned this the hard way. I'm writing to you as I wait in the help queue (number 23 now). Anyhow, today, like many of you probably, I received my 7th annivsary code to receive one of the 7th anniversary gifts. I followed the instructions to enter my code in game, and when I got to the screen with all the options I realized I had forgotten what I wanted. So I clicked the option to "cancel". Then I went to the link above, read over everything and went back in game and entered my code. To find it is now being counted as USED! Even though I never selected anything.

Here is the message that popped up informating of this.

PROMO_AGENT tells Orion Do'Meric: Promotion redemption failed: specified promotion code has already been used. Please contact a Game Master if you need additional support.

So I'll write back to you all letting you know what happened. I'm #19 in the queue now, make sure you know what you want before you use your code!

Update:
Okay, so the GM staff is not even remotely helpful. Here is the message I got in game (obviously rather generic).

GM_Wofl tells Orion Do'Meric: Greetings, though we appreciate your page, this issue does not require the presence of an in-game GM. In-game support addresses only game impeding concerns that can be resolved on the spot. For this issue it is appropriate to make use of our web support. We handdle all manners of concern via our web based support, and you will find that using these sites keeps you more informed and increases your overall enjoyment of UO. I am going to provide you with the info for a few areas we find help the most.

Our Knowledge Base at support.uo.com has a searchable format and covers all aspects of UO. Use the keyword search to find your information or select the "Find Answers" link and do an advanced search with categories and sub-categories.

The Playguide has very useful information that explains different aspects of UO from beginning to end.

Honestly, we find that your fellow players are an incredible source of information. We always recommend reading or posting on our Official forums. Please keep in mind that we only sanction the forums on this site. All other information on this site is posted independently and thus is not official or guaranteed. We maintain all of our official documentation in the play guide and Support Knowledge Base mentioned above.

If these sites just aren't resolving this for you please return to support.uo.com and send us an email using the Ask a Question form there. Our same staff that handled your in-game requests will address your query as soon as possible.

Thank you for allowing us the time to get to those players in-game that needs hands-on assistance. We appreciate this very much, as do your fellow players who are awaiting a GM. Take care.

Well that sucks, off to "Ask a Question" and pray I get a reply. It's by the "same staff", so why can't it be done in game via message? Eh, whatever, I just want my code fixed, I'll jump through the hoopes as requested I suppose.

More UO: Samurai Empire Beta Codes {By: Orion - Sep 20, 2004 02:13:49}

Ultima Online: Samurai Empire News If you tried to nab a beta code for UO:SE and found they were unavailable then you better head back over to FilePlanet and get one quick becaues more codes are in stock!

From FYI @ uo.com
FilePlanet has been replenished with a new batch of codes for the Ultima Online Samurai Empire Limited Open Beta. Head on over to FilePlanet and get your code while they last!

Don�t forget to check the UOSE Beta Test F.A.Q. Here for information about the beta.

Good luck!

Have you had a beta today? {By: Orion - Sep 17, 2004 09:19:51}

Ultima Online: Samurai Empire News Come one, come all (limited numbers available) to the UO: Samurai Empires Limited Open Beta Test!.

Head over to FilePlanet to download the UOSE Beta client and get your Beta test upgrade code to join Phase 2 of the Ultima Online Samurai Empire Beta test! There are a limited number of slots available, so get your code today!

You will need to have a FilePlanet account in order to download the file and get your code, but you can register at the link above.

For information regarding the UOSE Beta, please visit our UOSE Beta Test F.A.Q. page.

Please note that this is a Beta test and you will experience bugs and downtime. Please report any issues with a detailed description to UOSEbeta@ea.com.

Please note that there is an NDA with this, it's not open as in you can talk about it to anyone and everyone. Also once you get in the beta head over to UOLS.net for their semi-official beta forums (semi-official because that's all there is and the devs have said it's okay, hehe). Thanks UOLS for putting up some great forums for this. Read the link above about how to get access to the forums.

Publish 27 - Can it get any better? {By: Orion - Sep 15, 2004 02:34:46}

Man, what a great end to my summer! Sorry for the lack of updates this last month, I have been busy riding my mountain bike over anything and everything, went to the mandatory summer weddings, and went on a great camping trip. Beyond that I'm working on a lot of new projects right now with my company, so fun projects, or ones that don't make a lot of $$$ tend to get the back burner. Anyways, that's my "How I spent my summer" report.

Now, onto the good stuff. Publish 27. All I can say is wow, this is a great publish, more than enough for me to ignore the length between publishes for sure. You can of course see the complete details of Publish 27 on FYI @ uo.com, so I'll just be covering my favorites.

� Serpent Pillar Restoration. Wow, it only took two years, but at least they are back. I for one love this feature of the seas and really missed them. But not nearly as much as much as the Admiral has.

� Fishing Enhancements From the new Leviathan, to fabled fishing nets, to sea serpents and deep sea serpents being susceptible to snake and reptile weapons and instruments, fishing has received a HUGE bonus. That's without even taking into account ancient fishing nets!

� Paragon Creatures Well the champ spawns in Ilshenar didn't get fixed like I wanted, but hey we've got new creatures to fight. Well the old creatures, just rehued but with higher stats and sweet minor artifacts. A nice touch indeed to attract people to Ilshenar.

There are lots of other things, but the above 3 items are by far the big ones in opinion. All in all, it's a great publish.

Decline in UO Subscribers? {By: Orion - Aug 3, 2004 12:12:41}

Could it be that the number of UO's subscribers has dropped over 70k? From what used to be 225k subscribers to around 153k subscribers? Apparently Alyssa W. of stratics delved into the latest quarterly reports from EA to find this staggering figure (page 14).

You can find more info over at UOPG (thanks Nevyn).

Take into account how many people have multiple accounts and 153k players seems even crazier. Also keep in mind, when was the last time a UO Dev said how many subscribers were out there.

I imagine there is always a lull in subscribers between new expansions, and that with the next expansion they'll pick up more players, but these numbers certainly explain why all these new gimics to get new players are out there.

UO:SE Preview at GameSpy {By: Orion - Aug 2, 2004 02:24:59}

There is a UO: Samurai Empire preview over at GameSpy right now.

Samurai Empire begins, naturally enough, with the introduction of the Samurai. This long-awaited class looks pretty cool, dressed in tradtional ceramic armor and wielding one of many new Japanese-inspired weapons that will be included in the expansion. Since Britannia is a world of magic as well as martial prowess, player-Samurai will be able to wield up to eight fantastic new abilities stemming from their study of the art of Bushido. Some of these new abilities include "Honorable Execution" which gives the player a chance to kill a foe with one blow, "Lightning Strike", a blindingly fast move with a 50 percent greater of hitting, and "Whirlwind" which increases the Samurai's abilities the more foes he fights.

I suppose this starts the media blitz. Woo.

24% of you are happier {By: Orion - Jul 21, 2004 11:56:29}

So for those 24% who don't use IE, you'll obviously see that I finally fixed the site! I'm ashamed to say I've used IE until about a month ago, when my laziness to switch browsers was finally beaten down by FireFox, a really slick browser that has built into it google search, tabbed browsing, and a pop up blocker. And best of all it's not so vulnerable to the numerous exploits that seem to browbeat IE. Also it's just as clean looking as IE and will import your favorites, cookies, etc right on over without a hitch.

Just in case you missed the link two posts down you can get FireFox a Mozilla browser right here: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

MrTact: No 3D Perspective Change {By: Orion - Jul 20, 2004 07:11:46}

You may ask why I think the following is good news.

Actually the argument doesn't have anything to do with game balance, it has to do with the fact that with a first-person view, you can see to the horizon, which might cause you to see enough dynamic objects to swamp your network connection.

In any case, UO is a top-down game. If we were ever to do an updated client, I doubt we would change the perspective.

MrTact

Well it is good news. UO really is a top-down game, and one of the benefits is less system lag and network lag. There are all sorts of benefits really. However, I have to say no hint at any graphic improvements is disappointing. I'm sure my new video card I'm ordering could do an awesome job in an all 3D environment. I can hope at least.

UOC Updates {By: Orion - Jul 20, 2004 10:55:16}

Well about a month ago I switched away from using Internet Explorer to using FireFox a mozilla browser, I've quickly fallen in love with it as a browser. But dang this site looks funky with it! I obviously need to work on my style sheet. About 24.2% of you use a browser other than IE, you guys are obviously a patient crowd since no one has mentioned how funky this site looks without IE. So I'll be touching up the HTML on the site to accomodate alternate browsers, in hopes that everyone will ditch IE. If you're interested in FireFox (it really rocks as browsers go) you can download it at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/.

Okay upwards and onwards. Obviously I have yet to say anything about the new expansion for UO, well I DO have lots to say, and lots to write. Quickly, I think it looks cool, sadly though it doesn't seem to have a new 3D client with it, perhaps they just haven't done any of that stuff yet, I can hope though. My main two comments are:

1. The samuri kill thingy, I hope that doesn't have ANYTHING to do with PVP and that in PVM it's like a you loose all HP and Mana but like 1 pt each for 30 seconds and it only works .01% of the time. Who knows, maybe it won't be as insanly unbalancing as it sounds (though it does sound pretty cool).

2. Housing. Please don't do a land sprawl, place trees and what not to break the house clusters up! Malas sucks because of this. My house is in Malas and I feel like I live in downtown urban UO (minus the gangs I suppose).

Oh, and I like spawn next to my house thanks, so feel free to do that (I know that's like the #1 thing people in UO don't want, but I can always hope).

More later. =)

UXO Discontinued! {By: Orion - Jun 30, 2004 07:56:34}

For crying out loud! What is it with EA and canceling UO sequels!!!

Today, the decision was made to discontinue the production of Ultima X: Odyssey. This was done in order focus resources and talent on Ultima Online, the upcoming expansion, and an unannounced Ultima Online project.

�With Ultima Online thriving, and with plans for its future taking shape, we made the decision to focus all our resources on that game world,� said Anthony Castoro, producer of Ultima Online. �We look forward to making more exciting announcements about Ultima Online very soon.�

Binky - Online Community Manager - All Things Ultima

More later when I'm not so angry. You can rant at EA here where Binky posted this.

My Unofficial 7AE FAQ {By: Orion - Jun 21, 2004 10:03:49}

Okay, so I was getting tired of not really having a clue what 7AE meant to UO. I know it comes with Ultima IX: Ascension, and some new gifts, but I wasn't sure who got them and how. I looked at the UO site and it described stuff, but I found that the UO forums had even more info, if you were willing to search for it. So being the nice guy I am I decided to help you out and fill in some blanks. ;-)

My Unofficial Ultima Online 7th Anniversary Edition FAQ

Corpnews interviews Sunsword. {By: Orion - Jun 19, 2004 01:07:13}

There is a new interview over at the Corporation. It's actually a good interview with more abstract questions then about particulars in UO. Here's a snipit:

Corpnews.com: When the 7th anniversary box is released, it will have been almost a year since the monthly subscription fee has been raised. In that year, there has been zero new retail boxes, and five content publishes (we're ignoring the for-pay only character transfer publish) at about one every two and a half months. Are there any specific changes being enacted to prove to your subscribers and any potential subscribers that the new fee has been and will be worth it?

Sunsword: The increased service fee was a business reality. We didn�t increase the cost of running the service because we intended to provide �X� new features. We increased the service fee because over the 7 years of operating the service, it�s gotten more expensive. That said, the UO development team is currently bigger than it was during the Age of Shadows development cycle, the live service has a separate team dedicated to updates and up-keep, and there are now more GM�s on staff than there were a year ago. We certainly have plans that when announced will reinforce our commitment to UO in the public�s eye.

You can read the rest here.

Updated Links Section {By: Orion - Jun 13, 2004 07:12:59}

Hi all, I made an update to the BOD Trading links in the links section today. I've added the uo-bodsexchange.m6.net to this section. It's a newer BOD trading site that needs users, but since some of the older BOD trading sites are either gone or not currently available definatly give the new guy on the block a try. One nice feature it seems is that bod's entered expire, so you're not going to get stuck looking at stale BOD's.

Hanse on Intelligence Stat {By: Orion - Jun 10, 2004 03:32:50}

Hanse had the following to say about max Intelligence when someone asked recently, on the Ultima Online Newsgroup", what the max you can get is.

I'm not changing the stat caps. With a +25 stat scroll and items (+8 ring and +8 bracelet), you can get your intelligence up to 141. You can temporarily get it higher than that, as well. The maximum is 250, but that is not achievable through any method currently in the game.

With mana items, you can extend your mana another +12 (2 per armor piece
- shields do not get this bonus). This can get your mana up to 153
without temporary effects.

The Helm of Brilliance has an intelligence +8 bonus and a mana increase of +15. That would allow max 149 int (you get +1% damage for every 10 int) and max 174 mana. It also has lower mana cost of +8 and mana regeneration of +2. Most mages don't use it because you can't meditate in it. It's good for paladins, though!

Divine countenance has a +8 intelligence bonus, lower mana cost 8%, and
mana regeneration +2. It's not as good as the helm. It would allow max
149 int, though.

The most popular of the artifacts is the Hat of the Magi, of course. +8 int, +4 mana regen, +10% damage increase, with a couple extra (but good) resistances (+15 energy and +15 poison). It gets you up to max 149 int with a higher regeneration than Divine Countenance...

So, the highest without temporary effects is 149 intelligence and 174 mana. Although, it's doubtful a mage would use that helm.

- Hanse
UO Designer

Then a slight correction to what he just said:

I meant to say the +10% damage increase on the hat of the magi to be spell damage increase. Just want to make sure there's no confusion. :P

Thanks Hanse, that's some useful information!

Patch Day {By: Orion - Jun 9, 2004 12:40:20}

It's been a bit since the last client patch, and they've been up to a lot (end saracasm)

Both the 2D and 3D Game Client
- New art for the 7th Anniversary gifts
- Support for a sixth character slot
- Localization updates
- Players will no longer be able to bypass the EA and UO logo screens when starting the UO client.

2D Client
- Fixed a client crash issue related to Archery

The bold item is my doing, I can't believe they even bothered with this. Seriously, do they think gamers give a flying fig? I know it's not something the UO devs probalby wanted to add, I'm sure it came from EA. But sheesh! You think that when a guy looses connection he wants to watch those HORRIBLE annimation. Which by the way have never played properly on my AMD 2000+, 1GB ram, ATI 9500 Pro system.

Oh, and if you, like me, can't stand the intro movies, just navigate to your Music directory within the UO directory and rename the three .bik files.

Okay enough of the trash talk, kudos for fixing an archery bug!

Happy Memorial Day {By: Orion - May 31, 2004 12:24:35}

Here in the US it's a time of celebration to honor those who have served our countries military. This is a somewhat interesting time for me, having grown up with my dad in the US Navy, and one grandfather serving in the Europe front of WW2 and another grandfather serving in the Pacific front of WW2. I think about how my grandfathers served my country to help others and I think how my own Dad while never seeing combat spent 21 years in the Navy. Myself, I have never served in any of the armed forces, but none the less I feel an extreme pride for my countries soldiers.

This gets me to my point. Regardless of your thoughts on today�s current military actions please remember those who served and serve your country, they've put themselves in harms way and they disserve your respect.

UO 7th Anniversary {By: Orion - May 22, 2004 11:59:03}

Wow, UO's been around for almost 7 years?! WHEW, time does fly. To notice this special event EA is coming out with a special 7th Anniversary Edition of UO. While it doesn't include any major additions to UO, it does give the following:

- New items for those who buy it (You get 1 of the 7 items they'll add I guess).
- A 6th character slot.
- A copy of Ultima IX (apparently it's been remastered, so does that mean it'll run? WOO!)
- 7 Buddy registration codes & other misc stuff.

For $20 bucks it doesn't really sound like a ton, but none the less it'll sell well, I kinda think the 6th character slot is worth $20 bucks. Anyhow the biggest/best part about this box is that it'll put UO back on the game shelves! I always see DAoC and EQ, but never a UO box, I've lemented for a while, and wondered why EA didn't do something, I guess they finally got it. =)

Anyhow, I guess we'll find out more Thursday the 27th.

I just talked to Richard Garriot {By: Orion - May 12, 2004 06:06:52}

My good friend Casey just called me from the floor of E3 and who should he put on the phone to talk with me?! None other than Richard Garriot! Hehe, true it was more of a hi, nice to talk to you conversation of all of 30 seconds, but still, woo hoo!

Publish 24 News {By: Orion - May 12, 2004 01:29:09}

Just in case you missed it the details of Publish 24 are as follows:

Gameplay
� Players with max Valor points will no longer be inundated with the "You have achieved the highest path in Valor and can no longer gain any further" message at Champion spawns.
� Saplings will no longer impede movement.
� Changed pack animal looting. All objects placed on a pack animal will NOT fall into one bag should the creature die.
� Peacemaking will now decrease uses remaining on instruments.
� Fixed an issue with cutting a large number of bolts of cloth that would result in a stack that exceeds the maximum amount allowed.
� Fixed an issue with combining ore that would result in a stack that exceeds the maximum amount allowed.
� Young players will have their "young" tags properly displayed on their item properties again.
� Fixed the ability to gain magic resist above 90.0 on Siege Perilous.
� Fixed an issue that caused victims to not be cleared properly from a player's "aggressor victim list" once the victim has been dispatched, which could impede the player's ability to instantly log out, recall, use gates, or re-enter his home (with the new house fighting balance changes - see below).

Game Balance
� Increased the spell delay of Holy Light to 1.25 seconds.
� Increased the spell delay of Wither to 1.25 seconds.
� Added a 3 second remount delay for bola usage.
� As part of the house fighting balance change, players will no longer be able to enter a house if they attack another player that is not in their guild or in a warring guild.
� Murderers can now enter guard zones on non-Siege ruleset shards (Only in Felucca).

Service Improvements
� Higher bandwidth efficiency for spell casting and item properties.
� Anti-speedhacking improvements

Well it's not a huge publish, but a couple things do stand out. I applaud all efforts to stamp out speed hacking, so that's really cool to see. And of course seeing the poor bluggers on Siege finally being able to 90.0 magic resist is very good to see. I'm very much for murders being able to go into guard zones in Felucca, I'm pretty sure that came about by player request, so that's very cool.

The rest are okay, nothing that doesn't sit well with me at least, so I suppose this publish gets an A-, hehe. Not that it matters. =)

The US shards should be going down right about how to get this patch, so in a couple hours we should be able to see how the patch goes.

Farewell Alai {By: Orion - Mar 31, 2004 05:57:54}

Ahh man, Alai won't be staying with OSI. Alai was the oldest member on the UO team, and I've interviewed him not once but twice.

Well, it has been almost six years, but it appears that my long tenure working on UO is finally coming to an end. This is a mixed blessing as I have been caring for the game for so long it is hard to let go. On the other hand, I am looking forward to seeing what comes next � besides perhaps a vacation. I started working at Origin while I was still in college and my time here has been the bulk of my working life thus far. I feel very much like I am about to take the step into discovering what the afterlife is like. It is both a scary and an exhilarating prospect.

I started on UO when it was still a young game with less then 100,000 players. I started as a world building intern and rose through the ranks over the years: World Builder, Designer/Scripter, Programmer, Lead Client Programmer and finally Associate Producer. I have worked on countless projects; some of them were big initiatives and some of them were little �weekend� features I probably should have gotten in trouble for. I have worked in the trenches and led teams to success. I lost some battles, but won most. In all, it was a good run - but I don�t think I�m going to have the patience to oust Sunsword out of the Producer spot. It�s a shame; I would have liked to try being at the wheel for a bit.

Chief amongst the bittersweet aspects of leaving now is the enormous potential of the projects the dev team is currently working on. Sunsword has invigorated EA�s interest in our game and now EA is starting to really invest in it. Moving to Redwood Shores should also help the team in accomplishing its ambitious goals. The Live team now has a chance to realize possibilities and execute on projects that were never before feasible. I hope that these initiatives meet their full potential; if they do, UO will truly experience a renaissance period of unprecedented value, fun, and quality. I will be sorry not to be a part of it.

I hope the dev team and the players will