NEWS [UO.Com] Publish and Patch today (Read post #292 before posting))

[Shackles]

If you have 150 tokens built up, do you even ever transfer?

150 Tokens = ~$3000 value

If you don't want to wait the 2 week time on an individual character, then simply use another one.

It took about 10 months to save those up. 10 months of being semi inactive and busy. I do transfer often, but I don't always have a need to go to ever server I have saved. Like, I don't go to Yamato often, but when I am doing trades there I can easily use 5-10 tokens since they have a item restriction, unlike the purchasable token where you can use pack horses.

Either way, I can use them when I need them. With this restriction I will never have the ability to use them when I would like to. Unless what bleak said is true that it is only that character itself that has the two week restriction.. that makes it a little more manageable. But if it is a full account timer of 2 weeks... I would like to trade some of the shields that I will never use in for new picks please.

 

[obeeee]

If its just a character to buy stuff, then give your LS token/goods to a newbie character and transfer it back.

Boom, no 2 week wait.

I'm sorry, but that makes no sense with an account bound token. I have no 'spare' / 'newbie' chars on either shard.

 

[Ender]

If you are just xfering a character to buy stuff.....Why are you taking a geard/skilled character?

Did you miss the part where I said 14 year account? It's pretty damn likely all the characters are skilled up.

 

[Lady Storm]

Promanthia
think on that for a second... they didnt state you could use more then 1 character at a go to move and use the shield tokens.
We all have characters or slot to make them for use of shields...
Some are set to move things, while others live on the home shard and dont go anywhere but to work.
We are just shocked that they did such a big cut back... 2 weeks is a hell of alot different then every 25 hours.
This no warning or even hint of any change to the shields came off wrong.
You must know how the shields work...
You have 1 move to one shield destination every 2 weeks as per how I read the message.
This means for that character to return home I must wait 2 weeks after they go to return home.
Wash rince repeat... Thats too long. I will forget where I left them... or worse yet the stuff I need will be moot by then.
This is far more then just a finacial hurt to the players my friend.
The shields came with a limit and we got use to it, now a very big difference is coming in so fast its hard to deal with on such short notice.
I do understand your opinion and while I dont agree fully we do need to wait til its fully explained.

 

[4runnersport]

What if our char slots are full on the shard we are xfering off of and have to take a skilled char to another shard to buy some items and have to wait 2 weeks to get it back just bc we have fully developed chars on our home shard

 

[Promathia]

Did you miss the part where I said 14 year account? It's pretty damn likely all the characters are skilled up.

I don't see what the account age has to do with how many characters you have per shard.

If you dont have the space, wait the 2 weeks.

 

[Veldrane]

If its just a character to buy stuff, then give your LS token/goods to a newbie character and transfer it back.

Boom, no 2 week wait.

If that is the way it's going to work, then what is the point of the change to begin with? I know that's what Bleak is saying with how it's going to work, but I just don't see what it solves if that is actually how it works. Somehow, I'm going to guess that he didn't mention that the character will need to be X days old to be able to use the token.

 

[Vexxed]

"Just to clarify, Characters that use the shard shields will now only be allowed shard shield transfer once every 2 weeks. Normal character transfers are not affected."

Ok, so now I have to make a new character to be able to use Shard Shield Transfers as often as I want? I hope your "Fix" takes that fact into account. I also find it extremely lame that a 14th year Vet Reward just gets up and changed with no warning. I've picked up 4 Sonoma & 4 ATL tokens each so I could effectively pull off 1 round trip every week and now the only way to continue to do that will be to constantly create new characters and move the tokens between them. The change just forces us to jump though more hoops on our end so I really hope it's functioning for what you need it to bc it's VERY lame.

If your going to tinker with something that takes 14 years to achieve in general nerfing it is going to annoy people big time..... I'd personally rather you straight up turned off shard shield Xfers for an unknown period until you fixed whatever needed fixing rather then permanently change how they function for the worse....

 

[Ender]

I don't see what the account age has to do with how many characters you have per shard.

If you dont have the space, wait the 2 weeks.

Are you serious? Because at 14 years you probably have 7 characters on your home shard.

 

[Aurelius]

If you are just xfering a character to buy stuff.....Why are you taking a geard/skilled character?

Could be they had the same situation I had on my oldest account - which is why I did not get shard shields on that one - by the time shard shields came along, all those 7 characters were fully developed, and regularly played. Moving them to a shard and back over a couple of days would have been inconvenient, not game stopping but inconvenient (which is why since I also had a younger account that I could use for transfers, I opted to do that and have fewer shield picks).

Had I only that oldest account, I could have got by with the two day delay, but it seems now I'd lose a character from my home shard for two weeks..... which IS quite a big change to get landed on you with no explanations, or reasoning, or even warning...

 

[Lord X]

I dont think its THAT bad if its per char.... but it will still screw alot of ppl over and that sucks. For me itl be manageable but... keep in mind this:

If you use a newbie char, that implies you have a free slot. Some dont. Also, newbie chars have a one week timer to be deleted. It wouldnt be hard to get real jammed up.

 

[Longtooths]

If you have 150 tokens built up, do you even ever transfer? (Honest question)

150 Tokens = ~$3000 value

If you dont want to wait the 2 week time on an individual character, then simply use another one.

Would you rather have 3000$ cash to use as you wish or $3000 and you can only spend $40 of it every two weeks?

 

[Veldrane]

i think this is great. i for one never thought being allowed to transfer from shard to shard is a good thing .

I don't think the shields should have been introduced at all either, but they were and the damage was done. Waiting three years to make a change to the shields is going to have across the board impacts that will effect shield and non-shield accounts.

 

[Uriah Heep]

I don't see what the account age has to do with how many characters you have per shard.

If you dont have the space, wait the 2 weeks.

You really don't get it??? or are you just

 

[Promathia]

I just want to take this time and say, how much I feel UO needs to hire a community coordinator like we used to have.

 

[Uriah Heep]

Bring back Wilki!

 

[Warpig Inc]

It just shows the state that UO is in. Everything breaking, only way to fix it is ruin something else. What a joke.

"Let me see your pinky finger. Now your going to feel a little pain. Never mind that leg missing below the knee."

 

[Uriah Heep]

I love how they posted all this at quitting time, so they could go home and not deal with it till tomorrow...

 

[old gypsy]

I love how they posted all this at quitting time, so they could go home and not deal with it till tomorrow...

I'm afraid... when you let something stew too long, the pot sometimes boils over.

 

[Lord X]

Would you rather have 3000$ cash to use as you wish or $3000 and you can only spend $40 of it every two weeks?

Not only that, but the ammount you'd have in balance would also increase every month.

 

[Uriah Heep]

So what would be alternative fixes that would make everyone happy? Have the shield tokens give the option for a shard (like the paid ones do) so no one would have to keep getting more and more shields to travel the world? Just tossing it out there

 

[Assia Penryn]

I love how they posted all this at quitting time, so they could go home and not deal with it till tomorrow...

The only thing worse would have been do it at quitting time... on Friday

 

[4gregu]

My question is, if its per character, then why make the change at all? Just to make it super complicated for the players to schedule everything? Because if its per char you can do 14 moves a month, and I imagine there aren't may people doing much more than 14 a month, so what exactly is the point?

 

[Lady Storm]

ok I can see making it 3 or 4 days or even 5 days.... that I can see for scripters sake of money moving and such...
But 2 weeks?
Lets say I need scrolls, gold, armor, weapons, regs, and household items on 5 shards, I make my list up and fill the orders.
Bob who is my guy loads up on the stuff fills the bank and pack and pickes up the destination tokens of all 5 shards plus his return home token. In this time fraim the dev have given it will take my guy 3 months to do all this. oh add inthe days it will take to shift things to go back home too.
Now I wouldnt mind so much if I knew the game was that slow.............
But 3 months? Really?
I dont know about some of you but most shards outside Atlantic are low population and vendor selections are shall we say scant.
To get a suit you really have to be loaded in the gold department or be lucky enough to find an obscure vendor on serch that has what you need*(good luck on that one!) Our only option is the transfer.
I can see a change, many complain the EM event items are on Atlantic in minutes of the event happening this wont change... no matter how long you change the shard shields as they will just use the paid for tokens.
Then there is the gold markets who use the shields to move gold ... I can see this too but its hurting the honest player and soon as the dev figure out how ot put gold on a bank ledger and account bound they shields will be moot.
No one told us this was even in the works.
I dont like surprises that make friends threaten to quit.
I want answers.

 

[Assia Penryn]

So what would be alternative fixes that would make everyone happy? Have the shield tokens give the option for a shard (like the paid ones do) so no one would have to keep getting more and more shields to travel the world? Just tossing it out there

That idea would be at least something. Allow folks to chose the graphic of the shield for mere decorative purposes only and then they get to choose where they get to go for each token (not shield).

 

[Goodmann]

[

I love how they posted all this at quitting time, so they could go home and not deal with it till tomorrow...

That's the best time to start a fire when no one is around

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

This has the feel of a short-term and not thought out business decision, because someone felt the shields were cutting into the transfer sales. As such I'm willing to assume it came from EA proper, not from Broadsword. (And that means the worst thing about this, from my perspective, is that it suggests quite mightily that EA hasn't relinquished the reins to Broadsword anywhere near as much as it needs to have in order to allow the game to thrive.)

As a business decision it's not effective as it will alienate people from a business that thrives on customer loyalty. It may not be anywhere near as big a deal substantively as we may fear but that doesn't make it a good call on their part.

"Not as bad as we may think at first blush" doesn't make it a supportable move, merely a less unsupportable one.

And, to the person who will think my saying this inevitably means I'm using some exploit or other: You're wrong, but I know from experience that your being wrong is unlikely to stop you from thinking that.

-Galen's player

 

[Viper09]

I love how they posted all this at quitting time, so they could go home and not deal with it till tomorrow...

I love how people are already talking about quitting and how this renders the rewards completely useless so quickly...

 

[Spiritless]

Don't worry guys. It's Broadsword now, not EA, so situations like this won't happen and communication will be so much better.

Oh wait...

 

[CovenantX]

Just to clarify, Characters that use the shard shields will now only be allowed shard shield transfer once every 2 weeks. Normal character transfers are not affected.

If it's per character as Bleak seems to have described it, it's not a big deal. If it's an account wide cool-down of two weeks, that's a different story.

 

[Smoot]

So many people in this thread who used the exploit...

In other news: Even if you can only use a shard shield xfer once every 2 weeks, you are still getting $40 value each month. For a year, thats $480. I wish any other MMO gave that to me for being a veteran.

That cant really be compared tho. I doubt that most people who have shields would buy a real transfer every time they currently use a shield token. maybe a 10 to 1 ratio, shard shield to real.

Plus, a shield token is limited to what you can put in your bank and backpack. and of course limited to 1 shard. Just saying no where near the value of a real token.

I do agree that the shields should never have been a reward in the first place, but since the devs went that route they need to uphold their original decision.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

I should think there are better ways to bring in money from the store. Selling more Smuggler's Edges, selling artifacts with cool colors and names that are good but not catastrophically over-powered, etc. Many people will still complain about many of the options but most of them won't cause the angst and depression that this has.

-Galen's player

 

[Lady Storm]

Viper09
Its due to the factor people dont like unplesant surprises dumped on them last minute without explanation.
Many who just turned old enough to get the coveted shields are now handed their hat in hand and told oh we are changing it too bad so sad...
without a by your leave.
Those of us who use them for normal game play and not any exploiting or trafficing in ill gotten goods its a slap in the face and being told on such short notice without any reguards for our input "here deal with it".
Those who hate the ones who have them are giggling with joy that they are getting the just deserts.
All the while we sit here and debait the outcome.... the real truth is unknown.
Look for some this just might be the final straw that breaks their camels back on UO.
I can say I have heard in the last hour from many different shards the ill feelings over how it was given and not even a tiny scrap of why.
Many are rightfully angry at how it was dropped in their laps short notice.
I dont like second guessing the Dev...

 

[Promathia]

I should think there are better ways to bring in money from the store. Selling more Smuggler's Edgesr

lol

 

[Apetul]

Soooooo...

If you have 7 skilled chars on your account, you are highly penalized and you cant move your char back to your home shard for the next 2 weeks. BUT.. you can create a new char on your home shard and move it to another shard without any problem.

If you have 5+ skilled chars on your usual destination shard, you are highly penalized too because you need to wait 7 days in order to delete a char so that means you wont be able to move more than 2 chars per week.

If you have 1-2 skilled chars per shard... then you can still do 5-6 shield xfers per week which is ALOT and probably no one is doing that many shield xfers unless UO is their real job. :loser:

If you dont have ANY skilled char on any shard.. then nothing changed for you since you can still do 7 shield xfers per week, you just need to delete the chars in the same order as you created them.

A very dumb change IMO, but im not surprised about it. Oh and I bet that devs spent alot of time to code this dumb change but they wont spend any second to remove the duped/exploited shield tokens from the shards.

 

[Smoot]

Alright, I can deal with 1 transfer per character every 2 weeks.

Im assuming we will get another character slot?

 

[4runnersport]

I guess 1 transfer per char isn't that bad a lil annoying but manageable. I also think we should get 1 more char slot for ppl who has vet accounts full of chars on there home shards.

 

[kelmo]

 

[Poo]

wow, this change came in out of the blue with a sucker punch, eh?

i'm sitting back and thinking how much this will effect me.
being i've been here since the beginning of the game and that i enjoy character development i have 7 characters per shard... every shard.
so when i started picking up shard shields i had to go buy a mess of real shard transfers and move off 1 character per account so i would have room to land.
so i only have 1 character that i can use to move around with.
he does all my transfers for me.
i can tell by the way some of the people posted above i'm not the only one that is in this situation.
jump to shard 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 then home.
you can do one every 24 hours so if your on the ball it takes you a week and your home.

so that is done now.
now i can only do one round trip jump a month.

ok, since we don't have a say in this i guess we have to live with it, but where it sucks is that we are gonna have a FLOOD of tokens laying around here in a year.
we incur one token per month per shield. i use to do a run every month to each shard which ate up my tokens.
now i can only do one round trip, so with my 8 shields i am only using 2 tokens per month, so ill be banking 6 per month that i cant use. so ill be cold storing 72 tokens per year that i cant use.

that seems like a big waste to me.
in comparison, my daughters account just turned 1 year old.
she uses her ethy horse every day for hours on end.
so who's getting the better use out of their vet rewards?
sadly not the 14yr + people.

i just wish they would have maybe done this a little different.
like really the shields only kick out one token per month already.... wasn't that already enough of a wait period for us? now on top of that one token per month now we are only allowed to use 2 (in my case).

this all seems like a pretty drastic change that was just dropped on us.
and here most of us opened up this thread expecting to see "new loot changes are going live on next server maintenance" OR if we where really lucky "those tamable Tigers we told you where coming into the game months ago are now in!" but instead we get this.

hey Stratics staff, you guys may wanna get ahead of the curve on this new change and set up a "shard shield bus ride" forum so people can pool their jumps.

 

[Uvtha]

I am still waiting for my Siege Shield.

There is a deco one from the minax arti event turn in dude. I have a deed if you want it. After putting it up i my house I decided it looks crappy, so I don't want it.

 

[Poo]

ugghhhh

i just realized this.
i had 2 shard transfers lined up that i was going to do, i was expecting to do one tonight and one tomorrow and then have my guy home for Friday.
now my guy wont be back home till September 24th?????

oh my god this is not going to be fun.

 

[Uvtha]

Game
2014 Aug 06 21:11 GMT
Good afternoon,,

We are putting out a new client patch which should fix the Japaense cliloc errors tonight . All servers will receive a publish during their normal maintenance hours to change the way the 14th Anniversary Shard Shields function. They will now only allow transfers once every 2 weeks. You will see a disturbance in Character transfers until all shards get the same server version.

Thanks everyone!

UO Team

Continue reading...

Wow... good change, but years late. How could they not anticpate the backlash on this one. Tee-hee!

 

[Poo]

I am still waiting for my Siege Shield.

its the one in the middle

 

[Kiss]

So if they really wanna rethink this 2 week rule then they should make my shard shields spawn a token every 2 weeks.... So when will we have clarification on how this is going to effect transfers on your account is it character base or toon based?

 

[CovenantX]

 

[Lady Storm]

Ok I did a little digging in on the shard shield for answers.... hre is the gist of it kiddies
Each shield will give after 30 days a token, this is good for 1 move to the shard of the shield chosen.
To return you will need a shield of your home shard and 1 token from said shield in hand when you "jump" to the destination of your shield.
You may only move 1 character on this account in the time fraim of the cool down of 25 hours.
Example:
Account : Joublee (not a real account)
Shard of origin: Origin (first shard on list so used it)
Shard of Destination: Atlantic (most used destination so used)
Traveler name: JOE
So DDT needs to go to Atlantic for a shopping spree, gets 1 each token from his shields (1 origin 1 atlantic)
Loads up bank and his pack, sets off for his trip. DDT has made sure ther is room for his character to go to.
Hits token for Atlantic and gets through the load in screen and is sent off to shop.
Within the hour he can log in Atlantic and get JOE to go shopping.
His character JOE has a timer of 25 hours from log in to go before DDT can use the return token.
This timer is account bound also so no other character on any other shard can use any token to move.
SO ..........
With the change they are making it only effects the time of return of JOE to 2 weeks later.
NO you cant use another character on that account to go places.
The timer is account bound. So your stuck.
No statement was made if they are changing the numbr of characters per account who can use the shields tokens at one time.
In essence it is safe to assume that the 1 move per account timer for moving is going to be the same.
The shields hold 12 months of tokens. You do not have to pick them off the shields, and there for do not have a storage problem.
You just loose those months you do not use....

You dont want to know the words out of my mouth at this one kiddo's. Fair or foul this sux's.
I dont care who duped or not or how or why this change is needed... 2 weeks is too damn long.
Those of you clapping with glee because something was done to hurt those of us who have them "CAN IT".
Most of us are real vets of the game and got this item in good faith of its use.
I for one am not a happy camper... very far from it.
And not for what you think..
I am disapointed in how this was put to the general public and its short fuse timing.
I expected a better delivery and a clear cut reason for it.

 

[Swt Lippy Hippy]

Promathia said : UO Players are some of the most self entitlted, greedy , lazy players I have ever seen.


I do not know who you are, or where you play. After reading your post it upset me that you group us all together. I have 10 accounts at this time going and I bust my butt to be able to pay the cash for this game every month to play. I bust my butt in the game crafting and vendoring to earn things legally and fairly. So before you accuse me or others of being lazy or self entitled or greedy, get to know people before you judge the whole group. I have paid on these accounts for several reasons. To have more bods (lol) and to show support in the only way is by keeping the subscriptions going. I am not one to turn off account for 3 months and then back on. If I took a break I kept paying my way and supporting the game.

Smoot , (lol) I want to make a char over there and kill you Seige right? lolol

One reason i kept the accounts going is to get the benefit of the older vet rewards. I really did love the Shard shields a lot. I do it to shop around or move things to another shard i like to play on. It is not to buy and sell stuff for a business. I do not like the fact that now I have to come and go with my long awaited gift, to do the things i want to do on a time table that is controlling like this. I do not ever 'threaten' to quit because I dont like the rules or the changes. Over all I love the game I Love to play it fairly and I love to meet the people like me that are like minded. What irks me the most is that if there is so much duping and things going on Why are these people allowed to keep playing and why do we have to suffer as a result of other jerks that cant seem to play the game honestly .

Does the ' If you see something, say something ' rule apply to UO ?

I Love this game a lot and yes change can be scary. IF it is for the benefit of all. I dont have a pro account on here, I am just a peon on this board. Thanks for letting me post this and Thanks to trying to make the game better. I would like to see a 15 year account vet reward, be a Year of free play. LOL OR why not let the shard shield work like a normal token but account bound only. 14 years of paying on a account x 10 is like Paying off a house lol But I have no equity in this game at all. Only a thank you for giving me some fun in my uo life and bring many laughs making good friends. I guess that is priceless.

I hope they give the tailor npcs their right to bribe in this patch.... LOL (guild masters) and Pleaseeeeeeee do that soon if not.

Thanks for takin time to read this, and Kelmo I hope you dont ban me for my comments LOL

 

[Promathia]

Just to clarify, Characters that use the shard shields will now only be allowed shard shield transfer once every 2 weeks. Normal character transfers are not affected.

Quoting this so people stop missing it. Bleak made a point to bold the word Characters.

I am taking this at face value, the 2 week timer is per character, not account. Why would he specifically reference and bold the word characters instead of Accounts?

 

[Ender]

Quoting this so people stop missing it. Bleak made a point to bold the word Characters.

I am taking this at face value, the 2 week timer is per character, not account. Why would he specifically reference and bold the word characters instead of Accounts?

Doesn't make much of a difference, people aren't going to transfer characters to not be able to use them on their shard for two weeks.

 

[Promathia]

Doesn't make much of a difference, people aren't going to transfer characters to not be able to use them on their shard for two weeks.