UO Develoment Team

[Ron Silverbeard]

I think she is refering to general EM events that got cancled or postponed the last month - if i remember correctly i saw some that got cancled...

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

RE: EM Events

Score One for the UO rumor mill. I've seen no announcements along these lines.

UO is an EA product so literally anything is possible but that doesn't mean everything will happen.

-Galen 's player

 

[Tina Small]

The only announcement that I can think of that even remotely refers to cancelling EM events is the sentence in Mesanna's Producer's Letter of January 18th. Towards the very end, she said, "We will be working on a new Global Arc for the future (of course it will not run for 8 months) but we hope you will enjoy the evilness of it anyways." [ Source: http://www.uo.com/article/Letter-Producer-1 ]

It seems to me that there are two ways to interpret the part of that sentence that says "it will not run for 8 months." The first interpretation is that we won't see the new global arc start any time in the 8 months following the release of her letter, i.e., not until August or September.

The second interpretation is that the new global arc won't have a duration of 8 months, whenever it does run in the future. This is the interpretation I find most likely, just because of what else she said, i.e., "...we hope you will enjoy the evilness of it anyways."

But a "quick and evil global arc" or a global arc that doesn't kick off until August or September sure doesn't read to me the same as saying EM events have been flat out cancelled. So, count me as another person who is also mystified by Lady Storm mentioning an announcement regarding cancellation of EM events. I checked a couple of the EM websites yesterday and there were no cancellation notices of any kind on the ones I checked.

If the program is being temporarily put on hold or even being cancelled, I would hope EA is smart enough to realize they need to make an official announcement that explains what is being offered as a substitute or replacement for those events, rather than possibly relying on the grapevine to get the news out. I would hope Dropixel is following this discussion and is able to impress on Mesanna and Jeff that some kind of an official update (not just Mesanna saying something to a handful of people at an in-game event on one shard) would be very helpful right now. A lot of people are kind of reeling over the news of another layoff that hit the UO team and also by the way the current publish in testing has been so delayed and also significantly trimmed down from what Mesanna's January letter indicated it would include.

It wouldn't be unusual for the game's producer, or even someone above him, to publish some kind of reassurance about UO's future in the wake of mass layoffs. I can't find it at the moment, but I remember that we got something like that back in late 2009 after the mass layoffs. I think it came from Cal's boss and if I remember correctly, it might have been aimed at DAoC subscribers too. If I find it, I'll post a link.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Once the Publish 81 is released and it's bugs are squashed, the next things the Devs need to do is write a User's Guide for UO that gives a New or Returning Player some basic info on the EC & CC commands and some basic info on how to do things that the New Haven quests don't tell you, something on the idea of what was provided with UO:Renaissance back in 2000. Having enough basic info could well make the difference between a someone staying and figuring out more about the game, or just feeling confused and leaving for another game. With a good foundation of basic info, putting in the hours needed to learn more may not seem like such an effort they are chased away to another game.

Why stop at the Pub 81 bugs, fix them all. Fixing bugs would take care of a lot of the problems with UIs and broken Graphics.

User Guide will never happen, sorry to say that. UO.COM would be better off putting in direct links to UOStratics and UOGuide for all of this. This will get done faster and better than UO would or could do. UO would need to provide all info required to do this.

2nd, For the time being stop adding things to the game and work on the EC and fix it's UI faults Pinco can't get to, ignore new graphics for the time being, just get the EC to the point it works as well as the CC. The CC is stable and runs well, get the EC to do the same.

%100 agree about the UIs.

3rd, get the game banking system switched from checks to the gold total number in the bank for each character. Gold piles stay at 60k maximum.

4th, get the vendor search system published so that people who don't or can't play the massive number of hours to have megatons of gold stashed away can find prices they can handle easier than the current prices our economy has. There are Crafters willing to sell for lesser prices.

5th, Make changes that make play more convenient and less of a grind so that the frustration factor becomes a fun factor. Once the game experience becomes more fun and people post positive reactions to having more fun, some people who are looking for a another game may see the positive tone of comments about UO and give UO a try, running into that User's Guide mentioned above.

After these five things are done, then try appeasing the pixel addiction of our graphic gripers.

I would make 5th #3. 3rd and 4th would be nice but are not a %100 have to. 1, 2 and 5 would go a long way to helping UO and now I am going to agree with

...
Now that's a post I can get behind Tanivar, the only disagreement I have is that the High Res graphics update should not be ignored and should be part of your #2.

but not as part of #2 but make this #4 on a have to do list.

The Devs have never said if the EC is able to display all the old CC graphics or not, I know ZOOM would not work so it could be disabled with CC mode, but allow EC users the choice of CGraphics or EGraphics with UI displays matching choice. Now we come to the KR Graphics. If the EC is able to display them, then please add this to the Graphic Switch. Upon logging in you would have a choice of Display Graphics Please choose one CC/EC/KR. Now we have the best of all worlds. A modable UI and the Display/Graphics of our choice and also give people the ability to do things that UOAssist do at the same time. Yes I would use the EC UI if I could display/graphics of the CC. Sorry I can not play 3D games or this 2.5D that is being used with the EC. Now you might get away with telling people the CC will no longer be supported only after all this is done %1000.

1. Fix BUGS / Broked Graphics / UIs
2. Finish EC UI
3. Stream line game play
4. Add CC and KR Display/Graphics to EC and make EC UI modes easy / add UOAssist functions and finish HigRezGraphics.

Now UO can start working on the NICE TO DO LIST with a poll on Client start-up as which people want more. Balance, Search, Gold converted and so on.

 

[Petra Fyde]

EM Events:
http://stratics.com/community/threads/april-event-schedule.297237/#post-2262141
http://stratics.com/community/threads/events-for-april.297421/#post-2262164
http://stratics.com/community/threads/em-events-april-2013.297292/#post-2257774

The only reference to a break in events I could find is here:

http://stratics.com/community/threads/mini-break-from-events.297302/#post-2259580
One EM is on holiday for 2 weeks.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

The only announcement that I can think of that even remotely refers to cancelling EM events is the sentence in Mesanna's Producer's Letter of January 18th. Towards the very end, she said, "We will be working on a new Global Arc for the future (of course it will not run for 8 months) but we hope you will enjoy the evilness of it anyways." [ Source: http://www.uo.com/article/Letter-Producer-1 ]

It seems to me that there are two ways to interpret the part of that sentence that says "it will not run for 8 months." The first interpretation is that we won't see the new global arc start any time in the 8 months following the release of her letter, i.e., not until August or September.

The second interpretation is that the new global arc won't have a duration of 8 months, whenever it does run in the future. This is the interpretation I find most likely, just because of what else she said, i.e., "...we hope you will enjoy the evilness of it anyways."

But a "quick and evil global arc" or a global arc that doesn't kick off until August or September sure doesn't read to me the same as saying EM events have been flat out cancelled. So, count me as another person who is also mystified by Lady Storm mentioning an announcement regarding cancellation of EM events. I checked a couple of the EM websites yesterday and there were no cancellation notices of any kind on the ones I checked.

If the program is being temporarily put on hold or even being cancelled, I would hope EA is smart enough to realize they need to make an official announcement that explains what is being offered as a substitute or replacement for those events, rather than possibly relying on the grapevine to get the news out. I would hope Dropixel is following this discussion and is able to impress on Mesanna and Jeff that some kind of an official update (not just Mesanna saying something to a handful of people at an in-game event on one shard) would be very helpful right now. A lot of people are kind of reeling over the news of another layoff that hit the UO team and also by the way the current publish in testing has been so delayed and also significantly trimmed down from what Mesanna's January letter indicated it would include.

It wouldn't be unusual for the game's producer, or even someone above him, to publish some kind of reassurance about UO's future in the wake of mass layoffs. I can't find it at the moment, but I remember that we got something like that back in late 2009 after the mass layoffs. I think it came from Cal's boss and if I remember correctly, it might have been aimed at DAoC subscribers too. If I find it, I'll post a link.

Your memory is correct.

Actually two similar announcements were posted, one in the immediate wake of the layoffs, and another a year or so later referencing something one of the laid off people said. The latter was callous but I must say it did have the desired effect, which was reassurance that despite layoffs the game itself remained viable.

I wouldn't lay odds on either easily being findable, because the site has changed from UO.com to UOHERALD.com back and forth a couple of times now, and unfortunately they don't seem to successfully have archived the sites as things changed. Some posts seem to always have fallen off the table. Deeply saddening.

I understand why the UO folks may be reluctant to say "the game remains viable" every time some seeming disaster happens, because there's an excellent chance we won't believe them, even if things had been perfect leading up to the seeming disaster, which in this case they have not been. That doesn't mean I think they shouldn't say anything, it means I understand why they might not.

I do not see how one reasonably could argue Mesanna's statement could be in some way related to the cancellation of EM events, something which we've seen no other evidence of. Now, again, this is EA. Literally anything happen, the fact that they are dumb enough to lay off from UO alone is proof of that. We cannot assume reason is a factor with EA, we can only hope it is.

Like yourself, I've long-proposed that event content should not exclusively lie with the Event Moderators; there's no substitute for ongoing, persistent global content, such as an invasion or the temporary emergence of a new and dangerous area. Both types of content can and should interact and overlap but they cannot possibly substitute for each other. The only way Mesanna's statement could be read as being related to the cancellation of EM events is if one thought that EM-less global content and any EM content (global or not) were for some reason technically or otherwise incompatible; something for which there's little evidence.

I actually didn't much like Mesanna's "won't take 8 months" comment because both long and short event cycles can suck. To paraphrase something Roger Ebert once said about movies: No great movie is ever too long and no bad movie is ever short enough.

-Galen's player

 

[Tanivar]

A break in EM Events could just be because they're trying to come up with a way to handle the griefer's which seem to always come and do their thing? Seems it was mentioned recently in these forums one shard had an EM just cancel his event when the griefer's successfully spammed text all over the screen badly enough the event text info was covered over. Those few who get their fun at events by ruining the fun of others need to just be blocked from the events by documented records with video included so any complaints to UO are shot down on arrival.

 

[Uriah Heep]

I still don't understand why, if we still have GMs, the EMs can't get one to come jail the griefers. Keep 72'ing em a few times, and then close their account..

 

[kelmo]

I see EMs post events almost daily. One just now posted an event.

 

[JAY8533]

Is this the type of guide people were asking about? Might not be perfect, but seems to be a decent starting point.

 

[Aurelius]

Rented Server space on a cloud not owned by EA. What happened to all those new servers we got, what a year ago.

Think they were scavenged to run the Sim City login and online systems.....

 

[Zosimus]

Think they were scavenged to run the Sim City login and online systems.....

I think that failed for them with all the issues