OSI Houses - Offical EA Response Needed !!!

[Demonous]

When you say they will be removing osi owned houses from the game, does this mean they are going to just delete them along with the loot or let them collapse? also are houses that just say "an unnamed house" with no owner listed considered osi owned houses as well?

 

[Omnius]

okay it falls to ground like normal decay as they always do and no why the hell would they.

 

[Madrid]

Boy I feel dumb for asking this one but...

What in the $%# is an OSI house? How does one identify one?

And why in the world is there even such a thing as an OSI house? Why did OSI place houses?

This announcement is a little baffling to me.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

Boy I feel dumb for asking this one but...

What in the $%# is an OSI house? How does one identify one?

And why in the world is there even such a thing as an OSI house? Why did OSI place houses?

This announcement is a little baffling to me.

There are two versions of OSI owned houses that I'm for sure of, but I believe there are some others.

1. Any house which actually lists the owner as "Owned by OSI"

2. House which have no owner even in the house sign. They say "unnamed house", "house is private", but most of these you can still walk onto.

 

[Redxpanda]

That is a good question. They didn't say if the houses will fall or if they are just going to delete them (and everything in em).

 

[Plucky Duck]

There are two versions of OSI owned houses that I'm for sure of, but I believe there are some others.

1. Any house which actually lists the owner as "Owned by OSI"

2. House which have no owner even in the house sign. They say "unnamed house", "house is private", but most of these you can still walk onto.

2. Is not an osi owned house. These are houses that were owned bye players that were banned from game pre AOS. The coding then was entirly different and unless they say otherwise I would not assume the owned bye osi houses include those that predate EAs ownership of this game. The no named houses are literaly staticed to game and are not tied to any accounts at all. Unless they want us to point them out to then you might as well have the crappy LA house promotion small towers accounted for too since that fell on its face as well.

 

[Olahorand]

These houses from players banned pre AoS had the Owned by OSI tag before AoS, so they still are somewhat.
I wonder, what makes it so difficult to search the housing database for the properties
No owner name
Private, but stairs accessible (must be a somewhat special - or unset - attribute)
Classic (all pre AoS banned accounts could only have classic homes)
Maybe some old seer blessed locations would fall into the same category, so a manual check/update still may be required.

For the other thing - the perma cycling Owned by OSI houses due to vendor bugs - it should be simple to add an attribute which counts the time from starting Owned by OSI stage to the maximum time frame a vendor contract expires and holds it's stuff for the owner in the house sign (which would be 37 days total if I'm right) and if this time is larger than these 37 days the house should fall independent from each other condition anyway.
*Salute*
Olahorand

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

I've been watching a house on Origin for over three months now.

It's "Demolition Pending", "Owned by OSI" and has been for at least the three months I've been watching it.

What's really weird is that I didn't check it for a week or so and I went yesterday and it's been resized but otherwise the deco and crap in the house appears identical. The vendor that was there is finally gone and now it appears to be finally decaying.

 

[WarUltima]

I've been watching a house on Origin for over three months now.

It's "Demolition Pending", "Owned by OSI" and has been for at least the three months I've been watching it.

What's really weird is that I didn't check it for a week or so and I went yesterday and it's been resized but otherwise the deco and crap in the house appears identical. The vendor that was there is finally gone and now it appears to be finally decaying.

Those are also houses previously owned by dupers that was banned, however they had vendors in the house which results in a bug that will cause the house cycling permenatly. It will go from almost new to IDOC then back to almost new and so on so forth even if the owner of the house is gone.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

Those are also houses previously owned by dupers that was banned, however they had vendors in the house which results in a bug that will cause the house cycling permenatly. It will go from almost new to IDOC then back to almost new and so on so forth even if the owner of the house is gone.

From the way this house is set up and the stuff that's in it I'd speculated that it was a scripter/duper's house. Plus it's in an extremely secluded location. The vendor that was there had only a few things on it but they were all set up so that it was impossible to buy anything and I suspected the vendor was being used to store gold.

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

There are two versions of OSI owned houses that I'm for sure of, but I believe there are some others.

1. Any house which actually lists the owner as "Owned by OSI"

2. House which have no owner even in the house sign. They say "unnamed house", "house is private", but most of these you can still walk onto.

Three versions ... your 2 and those as owner: dsfasfa

Dsfasfa housing are leftovers from a promotion YEARS ago. LA mapped a good couple hundred in Trammel alone, submitted the list and no action has occured. They are all small stone towers.

 

[Alvinho]

The coding then was entirly different and unless they say otherwise I would not assume the owned bye osi houses include those that predate EAs ownership of this game.

For the umpteenth time allyouwho say this it just irks me, EA has ALWAYS OWNED ULTIMA ONLINE Ea purchased the ultima franchise in 1992, and everyone blames EA for ruining this, EA did that, EA ruined ultima online

EA GAVE YOU ULTIMA ONLINE, WITHOUT EA THE ONLINE PORTION OF ULTIMA WOULD CERTINELY NOT EXIST

 

[Crysta]

Hopefully they check house contents before deciding wether to just drop or delete.. case by case basis would be best, since they're already going around to them manually.

 

[Doomsday Dragon]

Why does EA need to tell you how they are going to do away with these houses?

The houses are going and that is good I couldn't care less how they get rid of them as long as the house spots open back up to players.

 

[Omnius]

first off, much of the information posted is wrong.

If the house has no owner and shows no decay, it's not owned by a banned player. It's owned by a grandfathered account who has no characters associated with it on the shard anymore. houses are connected to accounts not characters and thus the house stands timelessly.

There are some promotional houses scattered around the world. there are none left on the oldest shards.

Owned by OSI, Demolition pending are the only houses relevant to jeremy's post. they are owned by banned accounts(for old school unattended macroing, and other offenses but not duping). They may also be owned by people who simply deactivated their accounts while they had vendors. those vendors were paid to run for years as the owners had money in them but long since emptied their loot, in many cases, the vendors quit UO around the same time as the home owners so there was nobody to take the gold to begin with.

Owned By OSI houses are essentially an eye sore that reflects the declining health and population of UO(evidenced also by moving to luna where the space is tighter and the smaller numbers are not so apparent). EA really wants them gone because they stop active players from obtaining castles and 18x18 pixel crack that convinces them to keep playing.

 

[JC the Builder]

first off, much of the information posted is wrong.

If the house has no owner and shows no decay, it's not owned by a banned player. It's owned by a grandfathered account who has no characters associated with it on the shard anymore. houses are connected to accounts not characters and thus the house stands timelessly.

I don't think that is right. How account bannings used to work was the Gamemaster would secure the door of the house and set it to auto-refresh. Once the account review was complete the account/characters were deleted and a Gamemaster was supposed to come and delete the house as well. But at some points a few homes slipped through and just remained standing. They are definitely houses from banned accounts because I remember some of the owners.

 

[Olahorand]

If the house has no owner and shows no decay, it's not owned by a banned player. It's owned by a grandfathered account who has no characters associated with it on the shard anymore. houses are connected to accounts not characters and thus the house stands timelessly.

this statement alone could be true (not sure, if this scenario exists in reality).

But you cannot leave the criteria alone. One simple thing, as mentioned before, is that these houses are private, classic houses and independent from this you can step on the stairs. There are no other private houses you could do this.

*Salute*
Olahorand

 

[Nexus]

For the umpteenth time allyouwho say this it just irks me, EA has ALWAYS OWNED ULTIMA ONLINE Ea purchased the ultima franchise in 1992, and everyone blames EA for ruining this, EA did that, EA ruined ultima online

EA GAVE YOU ULTIMA ONLINE, WITHOUT EA THE ONLINE PORTION OF ULTIMA WOULD CERTINELY NOT EXIST

True but the Origin Systems team developed it for the first few years. Afterwards when EA squeezed those folks out through un-realistic time-lines and what not, they implemented their development team...

 

[Alvinho]

True but the Origin Systems team developed it for the first few years. Afterwards when EA squeezed those folks out through un-realistic time-lines and what not, they implemented their development team...

Correct, and origin systems were a subisdary of Ea but still over all EA, Origin was owned by EA when the game was produced and went live. The game has the name Origin studios, but was owned by EA and EA has always been the company owner when UO was alpha tested, beta tested and pubicly released.


without EA Origin would not have UO to put its name on.

Ultima is a different ball game all together, the online portion of ultima is all EA

 

[o2bavr6]

True but the Origin Systems team developed it for the first few years. Afterwards when EA squeezed those folks out through un-realistic time-lines and what not, they implemented their development team...

You are correct, I still have the jewel case to the first CD of UO and it has OSI all over it, and in fact does not say EA anywhere on it.

 

[Moby Grape]

Getting rid of the the OSI owned houses, that have sat for years, is great news.
But just last week, here on Pacific, another turned OSI.

So we identify all the old ones, just to have a new crop pop up!

Change the housing program, to make the vendor contracts end, upon the house entering decay.

If the owner was banned, burn it!

 

[Azazel of LA]

2. Is not an osi owned house. These are houses that were owned bye players that were banned from game pre AOS. The coding then was entirly different and unless they say otherwise I would not assume the owned bye osi houses include those that predate EAs ownership of this game. The no named houses are literaly staticed to game and are not tied to any accounts at all. Unless they want us to point them out to then you might as well have the crappy LA house promotion small towers accounted for too since that fell on its face as well.

I already planned on including the DSFASFA houses in the list I send.

 

[Ashyn]

I'm sorry. We are unable to assist you with this issue. Please refer to the www.uousmoney.com database for assistance with dealing with this issue. Thank you for paying Ultima Online.





I can't believe anyone would event want to do the legwork for EA. Let me see, when I needed help, I waited in que for 6 hours on one occassion recently and I couldn't count the number of hours I've waited for "HELP" during the past ten years. I also can't count the number of times I've been told, "I'm sorry we can't assist you with this."

But, I'm sure all the tattle tales who have gotten help getting people banned for ...oh my gosh, walking away from the keyboard while working a skill....will just crawl out of the woodwork to get their lists in. I won't be joining the pack...have fun.

-Ashyn

 

[Jeremy]

We do have the list of DSFASFA houses as well - you don't need to send those at the moment.

The houses will most likely be dropped without fanfare, in small batches, over a relatively long period of time. It's not going to be a huge global wipe, and there will probably not be actual IDOCs.

 

[altarego]

True but the Origin Systems team developed it for the first few years. Afterwards when EA squeezed those folks out through un-realistic time-lines and what not, they implemented their development team...

You are correct, I still have the jewel case to the first CD of UO and it has OSI all over it, and in fact does not say EA anywhere on it.

OSI was purchased by EA in September of 1992. Although, at first, OSI was left to their own devices and maintained their own staff and production schedule, over time that changed. That's why there are so many "easter eggs" parodying the EA takeover in the U7 duology.

UO wasn't released until late 1997; it hadn't even begun production, until 1995, after U8 was released. It was originally released under the OSI label to attract fans of Ultima and RPG's alike, but it was and always has been EA.

Incidentally, the reason why new Ultimas aren't created has to do with the respective character/thematic copyrights held by Richard Garriot, who has been disenfranchised (literally) by EA.

 

[Plucky Duck]

this statement alone could be true (not sure, if this scenario exists in reality).

But you cannot leave the criteria alone. One simple thing, as mentioned before, is that these houses are private, classic houses and independent from this you can step on the stairs. There are no other private houses you could do this.

*Salute*
Olahorand

This is absolutly one hundred precent wrong.

Also the old houses are owned bye OSI (the pre aos ones with no owner name) are the only true owned bye osi houses. Its the new owned bye OSI houses that are recycling through the decay system that are truley not owned bye OSI and is just another example of how lazy EA is since they just deverted there decay system bye using old coding and verbage that existed prior to them. If anything the houses that Jeremy is going to be fixing are the ones owned bye EA (and the ones there devs broke do to the broken vendor contract bug that didnt extract owner dues a few years back).

 

[altarego]

This is absolutly one hundred precent wrong.

Also the old houses are owned bye OSI (the pre aos ones with no owner name) are the only true owned bye osi houses. Its the new owned bye OSI houses that are recycling through the decay system that are truley not owned bye OSI and is just another example of how lazy EA is since they just deverted there decay system bye using old coding and verbage that existed prior to them. If anything the houses that Jeremy is going to be fixing are the ones owned bye EA (and the ones there devs broke do to the broken vendor contract bug that didnt extract owner dues a few years back).

Wow, that made absolutely no sense. Ever heard of a homonym...or a dictionary?

 

[Plucky Duck]

Wow, that made absolutely no sense. Ever heard of a homonym...or a dictionary?

sorry but me using spell check or complete sentences wouldnt help you if youre too stupid to understand what I wrote.

 

[THP]

Owned by OSI, Demolition pending are the only houses relevant to jeremy's post. they are owned by either=

Banned accounts(for old school unattended macroing, and other offenses but not duping). DUPERS TEND TO GET GET FLAMED!!!!

Or by people who simply deactivated their accounts while they had vendors that were stocked full of gold paid to run for years !!!since the home owners or unable to take the gold the house keeps refreshing untill the vendors gold pot runs out!!!!.

I THINK WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THE .....

Owned by OSI, Demolition pending

Unless Jeremey says otherwise...oh and thanks again for looking into this problem for us.

 

[Jeremy]

Go ahead and send the weird un-owned ones too - just specify that's what they are. We'll investigate.

 

[Plucky Duck]

Go ahead and send the weird un-owned ones too - just specify that's what they are. We'll investigate.

Do you want us to cast stones at our fellow players as well and accuse one another of evil doings bye turning in those Bugged (blessed) Welcome back to Britainia houses that we suspect of being on nonactive accounts and thus accusing our neghbors of being exploiters and hackers.

 

[Pickaxe Pete]

...but, Jeremy, if we were to happen by at just the right times might we find house contents on the ground?

Also, what about Draconi's Crimes against the Kingdom Fire Houses? Will those ever fall completely? Will we be able to loot the burned debris from those spots?

I hope the answer is no to all, else I will feel like I'm missing out. We can't have that, can we?

 

[Azazel of LA]

We do have the list of DSFASFA houses as well - you don't need to send those at the moment.

The houses will most likely be dropped without fanfare, in small batches, over a relatively long period of time. It's not going to be a huge global wipe, and there will probably not be actual IDOCs.

Thank you , I will let people know not to include these , I myself know at least 3 people who were working on marking rhem.

 

[Lord Kynd]

about time.
just hope it works and works right .
EA verify what people send to you as actually being OSI/EA owned homes please.

 

[Jeremy]

The verification will be in them falling, or not - and please do be patient, because there's nothing automated about the process (unfortunately.)

 

[Demonous]

what does DSFASFA stand for?

 

[Demonous]

also my girlfriend has had her whispering rose stuck in a person's house who was banned many years ago, she is the only one friended to this house and would love more than anything to simply acquire this whispering rose, is there any possible chance that she would be able to do this before the house disappears completely? it would mean a lot

 

[Ashyn]

also my girlfriend has had her whispering rose stuck in a person's house who was banned many years ago, she is the only one friended to this house and would love more than anything to simply acquire this whispering rose, is there any possible chance that she would be able to do this before the house disappears completely? it would mean a lot

I had a whole slough of items in a house someone else had (a now OSSI owned when he was banned) and paged a GM with that very same question. Even though I was able to tell them what items were inside the gold boxes upstairs, the rune books all were made by my toon, and the closed books that no one could access would say "Ashalia" if opened, they wouldn't do squat for me to get any of it back. The GM even confirmed that he could tell all of the items had been locked down by my toon - Go figure!

Welp, when that OSI owned falls, someone's going to get a great deal of true rares (pumice and such). Good luck.

On the bright side, GM's seem to differ on what they will and will not do, maybe you'll hit it lucky and find one willing to go the extra mile for you.

Good luck

-Ashyn

 

[THP]

Well just checked on Europa AND IT SEEMS IT AINT GONNA TAKE THAT LONG IN WAITING....

2 Awesome OSI houses have already been claimed so to speak...one was full of maybe 1000 tokuna marties....i hope a gm didnt drop it all to the floor on the whim of one greedy player....delete yes...

 

[THP]

Okies seems they are not dropping them with loot.... just deleteing them..

Q and A from uo.com

"Since you're going to be removing old OSI houses, does that mean there will be a lot of new IDOCs coming?"

No - we're clearing these houses to make room for y'all to place in those spots, but we're not going to run them through the IDOC process. We're also going to be clearing them gradually - and without warning - so what will happen is instead of a huge land rush, you'll just see spaces start to open up over the next few months.

 

[Kelline]

im not an idocer, every once in a while ill stumble across one or a friend will say *hey come its falling*

but to just POOF the houses seems wrong I mean if they had fallin ages agoo, they would have went idoc...& i knwo its easy to just poof a house, but isnt it also just as easy to set the idoc timer on it?

 

[Joyous2K]

I think they should be able to clean up their own mess... but maybe you guys will do this work. You will definitely do this work if it benefits you to get a castle or something, so I guess some of them will be cleaned up.

UNNAMED HOUSE. I don't know what that is. But I am sure it needs an official response.

Why can't they see where houses named OSI are? Why can't they link houses to accounts or their own "Account?"

Shoddy tradecraft, lousy fix to ask players to clean up mess. That is the most low tech shoddy solution to solve a problem I have seen in a while.

If a guy asks you to fill up a pool with water... what do you do? Get a hose and fill it up with the hose. Check on it every three hours or so.

If Dev Team wants to fill a pool with water? Find a group of sandbox playmates, give them buckets and tell them to fill the pool with water using the buckets. Enjoy your holiday!! I will be swimming. Please mark those locations, it is important work, OK?

 

[Vesta]

You are correct, I still have the jewel case to the first CD of UO and it has OSI all over it, and in fact does not say EA anywhere on it.

I have the Charter Edition box and EA IS mentioned on it in the credits/trademarks. Plus EA is all over the original Invoice from sept. 1997 from EA Stores.