I posted the following in another forum Sunday night after I listened to the recordings of the Saturday town hall.
The attendees at the Town Hall that came from EA Games were Kilandra, Draconi, Mesanna, and Robert (Jeremy's boss).
RECORDING ONE
Draconi's Presentation
Live Events 2008
Publish 51 Review:
Story arc just entered will last 6 months, half way thru it now.
Publish 51 started this story arc (Warriors of Destiny). Ultima 5 had same name. This brings the Shadow Lords into the game as more than just a name.
Fixed various exploits and can't tell us about them.
Publish 52 Review:
This publish introduces the first scenario for Warriors of Destiny. The Vanguard show up to attack Cove, Delucia, Papua and other outlying areas.
Dread warhorse can do tricks and can do some serious damage before being tamed. Draconi's enjoying watching people try to tame the war horses and argue with each other about not killing them.
Not overhauling factions now, but starting to fix some bugs and rebalance them. Removing antiquated restraints (e.g., one char per account). (Can add multiple chars now but only one vote per account.) Fixed SL base steps. Also fixed the transfer of silver problem.
House placement changes: Must have 15 day char age to place or receive a house. This keeps most trial accounts from having houses. This was a critical concern because paying customers couldn't get the best spots. Can't drop water barrels or do fields to prevent house placement. When house drops, can't place there for a while. Loot stays on the ground with some anti-scripting programming in place. Have to run around and pick up stuff. House placement tool now has a cool down period. Shouldn't affect you if you are trying to place 5-10 times. If you do more than that you will be locked out from using a tool. Lock out time is random.
Draconi also talked a bit about turn-ins, but I wasn't really paying attention. Didn't hear much of note.
Upcoming Events:
[This is about 19 mins into the first recording] Pub 53/54 [I didn't quite catch the number], also known as "war." Chaos between multiple sides in a conflict which will involve the main virtue cities of Britannia. The army system will be like the one used in the ophidian invasion, but more sophisticated. The invaders will have ranks, abilities and they will fight in groups and be more challenging. They may level up when they kill you (i.e., they will increase their abilities as they get experience from you).
Factions role: When someone controls something in fel, it will affect tram and vice versa. Focus group formed to get more feedback.
New designer (could it be Kilandra?) suggested adding weddings to the game. She did a design doc. Will be automated and you can do it yourselves, don't have to pay for it. Includes wedding rings.
Community Night (no details provided)
Robert also said something very short about the fact that they are working on stuff they can't talk about.
RECORDING TWO
This recording was mostly lots of talking and laughing while the EA folks gave away some items.
Robert introduced the Q&A session about nine minutes into this recording. Also talked very briefly about how EA doesn't like cheaters, however they can't talk about their plans to do things about the cheaters.
RECORDING THREE [Q&A Session]
What is the frequency of the [garbled, may have been "event spawn".] Initial wave saturday morning, more saturday night, and more in the week to come.
Why were bags of sending changed? Scriptors.
[garbled]..... about fletching quests in Heartwood for runic tools? They will think about how to balance them.
Superdragons - Is there a nerfing plan in the works for them? No, they are as intended. More changes coming to balance monsters and how they spawn. Can't talk about their plans.
Why are there such limitations on what can be turned in for the Clean Up Britannia event? The next publish will have more stuff to turn in and get and you will be able to keep your tickets/points from this round.
What's going on with Stygian Abyss? They can't talk about it.
When will we be able to place castles and keeps or something bigger than 18x18 in Malas? They don't have any plans to introduce any kind of custom housing bigger than 18x18. No plans for anything else.
Robert interjected here that there is stuff in UO that they won't talk about until they know they can deliver it.
Any chance of earning .... gardening .....[garbled]? They are planning to introduce in the near future a way to grow cocoa trees. Won't have to be elf to do it.
Any plans to be able to ride dragons? Not in the plans.
One of the developers (Mesanna?) interjected here that they've fixed things so runic fishing poles will have properties that have actual values instead of zeros.
They also stated that checks will continue to be limited to one million for very good internal reasons (especially for people who have seen houses full of them).
UO Pro - Will it continue? The way I interpreted the answer, it sounded like they were trying to say Tugsoft can do what he wants with UO Assist (i.e., continue it or shut it down). They didn't really address whether UO Pro will ever be expanded or shut down.
Anything coming for stackables? They are looking into it and it's just a matter of when they can fit in some changes.
Can there be more stealables? They couldn't answer the question right now, but it's not because they don't love thieves.
What's going to happen to Magincia? (Didn't hear the answer. Must have been edited out for noise.)
Why is the stuff in Moonglow only in Trammel? Why nothing in Fel? Draconi answered we should look forward to some stuff in Fel.
In Fel, you can sometimes see people coming through the moongates and they are gray. How are they able to do this? It's a potential exploit and it will be dealt with.
How are blues able to attack blues in GZ, but when you call guards nothing happens? They will have to look at it.
If you are on a miner or LJ and get attacked by a reaper in Fel, you can't get away or get in your house because you're a criminal. Why is that? Draconi's answer was they will have to look at it. He said his guess is that it was a harsh requirement from years ago and they will have to reevaluate it. [I'm still scratching my head over the question itself...doesn't seem like an accurate scenario.]
What's the future for hardware requirements for 2d and KR? Do I need to buy a gaming computer to be able to continue to play? The 2d client runs on just about anything. The goal for KR was to have a totally new graphical engine that takes advantage of some of the latest technology. It uses the Gamebrio engine and naturally requires a much more powerful video card than you would ever have to use for the 2d client. As far as KR goes, they are saying that yes there are higher requirements. They are constantly trying to adjust it though, so that it can run on low and mid-level machines. They are investing heavily in KR but they do want players to enjoy UO as best they can.
Will there be any new weapons coming out? Yes. (They can't talk about it.) Also some cool new stuff that no one's ever seen before, with new abilities.
Will you be able to continue turning in the stuff you can turn in now (e.g., rubble) in later publishes? Yes.
What's going on with tenth anniversary rewards/presents. Also what about a jewelry book like BOD book? [There was quite an interruption with music here and couldn't hear most of the answer. All I got was that we might get jewelry boxes, but they aren't promising anything.]
Can golems get some love? They are the most underpowered 3-slot critters in the game. No plans for golems. Mr. Tact wanted to turn them into controllable robots, but there are no plans now.
Will we get fey slayer bows? I think the answer Draconi gave here was meant to be a "yes."
Will Wrong ever get the juka back? Maybe.
Will the new armor set be meddable? No. It will be different and awesome (mods for having whole set). There will be more suits coming (e.g., for mages). The Knight's Armor is more of a dexxer's suit.
Catskills needs more town criers. The town cryer system has been underused, especially for events. Introducing a new system in Publish 53. It will spawn NPCs and will have a controller so they can run around towns and find people and tell them something is happening.
Can we get more stable spots? The developer that answered said that this is probably the most commonly asked question they get. Some comments were made back and forth between the developers about how many stable slots various critters take up, e.g., 5 for dragons, 3 for golems.... Then a statement was made that there is no way that there can be more than 5 control slots the way things are set up now. In short, they didn't really answer the question about adding stable slots. Draconi mumbled something about balance and more power for tamers, but nothing that I could quite understand and make sense of. LOL (Maybe you had to be there....)
What about the recall crash bug? The engineers are investigating.
Why do we have to wait so long between event changes and why aren't we better informed? This depends on the publish schedule. Currently publishes are running about a month apart, depending on the bugs they are finding/fixing and testing. When they do the event publishes they are also rolling out bug fixes. They are working to improve the event location on the web site to see what's going on, what's coming up and what happened in the past. UO's history is nothing but a series of events, over and over. They said that they don't do a good job of keeping track of all this and want to change that. They've started implementing something, but it needs more tweaking.
Will there ever be any love for reds, like a quest of indemnity or virtue for reds? Something is in the works as a way to reduce counts for the reds. Will be in a future publish. It's pretty cool and it makes sense. It will be fun but will require some sacrifice on the player's part. [There were more comments by the devs but music played over it.]
A question was asked along the lines of doing the townhall meeting that will be in Texas in Houston or San Antonio in October. [I think the questioner was trying to see if this meeting could line up with a Paxlair event.] They have one set for Austin in September.
Why aren't there monthly events anymore? They are trying to have events more often and we should expect to see more small events in between the bigger ones.
Why does it take so long for GMS to respond? The GMs are having some problems with the system that gets calls to them. It breaks sometimes and they are trying to fix it.
What happened to the counselors? In the US, for legal reasons we no longer have a volunteer system at all. The event moderators were compensated. [There's a possibility I misinterpreted what they said about moderator compensation, so don't take that sentence as gospel.]
Are the 10th anniversary items still dropping in the anti-virtue dungeons? The rate at which they drop seems to have decreased. As far as they know, they are still spawning.
Will there be any updates to t-map artis and BOD rewards? Yes.
[Question about crafters that was overridden by music.] The focus group................[covered up by music again]......... They are coming up with a master plan ..... [most of this was too garbled to understand what they were saying.]
What about all the art that is in the art file and actually isn't being used? The artists know they exist but Draconi isn't sure what they are doing with it.
How about the missing virtues? The virtue system is on the radar. The virtue's are core and haven't gotten the attention they deserve. They want to finish them at least before reevaluating anything.
What's the process for deciding where the town hall meetings will be? They look at where the UO and Dark Age players are located. They try to shift things up some and they know they don't hit everyone and will try to do better.
Will you ever bring back cutting off heads? No, for legal reasons and because UO went to a T for teens rating. In some countries (e.g., Germany) it is illegal to have those animations in the game. Someone suggested some sort of trophy you could get for killing someone and the response was that its something they could look at.
Can there be a statue engraving tool? Would be nice to have as a way to memorialize departed players. Although EA can't recognize deceased/departed players, perhaps they'll come up with something like this for the players themselves to use for this purpose.
Is there any way to improve the chances to get the resources when you do find them? Over the next year they will be further tweaking the resource randomization.
What's up with marketing plans and getting shelf presence for UO? They can't talk about it but news will be forthcoming. They are aware of the issue and working to correct it in the future.
Love for thieves. [Not answered.]
What about escorts to Magincia? They will fix it. [Magincia doesn't really exist right now.]
Is metal weapon enhancing going to become more usable like add mods? Can't talk about it. [Big hint was dropped: Look for old stuff Leurocian has talked about and it's there.]
Is there going to be a way to get rare items such as the shrouds that are out right now? The shrouds that are out now will have a real purpose coming up, which is why they are not a turn-in item.
Is it intentional that the monsters spawning in Cove are spawning in private homes? They are working on fixing that.
Will stealables be a turn-in for Publish 53 and what will be their base values? They won't comment on it.
RECORDING FOUR
Interview by Trollman of WRR with Draconi
Draconi: There is the live design group and the development design group. Live has three things they are working on: Content, bug fixes and tracking down cheaters, and live events. They are trying to bring the UO timeline in line with the Ultima timeline so all the content and ideas made for the Ultima series has a place in UO. As you've seen, most of the expansions have been unrelated. The Second Age probably came closest to bringing in stuff from Ultima.
Will there be more value returned for donating to the zoo? Takes a lot to get anything and people get discouraged. Newest designer has been working on that so the zoo is easier to maintain and it makes sense. People have donated so much to the zoo that we deserve for it not to have such an insanely high decay rate. They are going to fix it and Draconi thought perhaps something had already been submitted.
Can there be a new shard for KR only? Nothing to say, but it was considered when KR was being released.
Will there ever be pet dye tubs? No.
Will there be any more changes made to bags of sending? No.
Anything coming for dragon scales? Maybe.
When will we get basements? Not in the plans.
Anything coming for thieves? Factions. Join the focus group for Publish 53 because thieves are involved.
Will there be any new pigment colors? Good idea but can't talk about it.
Is luck working? Draconi couldn't answer this question but suggested perhaps someone could submit it for Jeremy to address as a FoF question.
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