Town Hall notes thread (10/18/08)...

[Gheed]

Embueing: Requires a "soul forge" a gargoyle item all races can use. Resources required, some mundane (i.e. gems), some rare (Abyssal Claw?)


I've been waiting to see just how Embueing would make the random resource change worth the wait. I guess I still have some waiting to do. For me, I see no reason in this list to buy the new expansion.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

To me, unless they're leaving out some information, I see little difference between Embueing coming to UO and Enchanting in WoW.

I was HOPING that Embueing would work differently in that we'd be able to actually pull a mod on an item OFF of the item itself and attempt to add it to another item, but apparently this is not to be the case.

Instead it looks like we'll probably get the WoW Enchanting skill lifted wholesale (with a few possible differences.

Could be another case of "what could have been", but as always, it remains to be seen.

 

[MalagAste]

...

Flagging rules with things like EVs and BSs and fields have been reversed time and again it seems (I think I can remember at least three "reversals" before UO:R, maybe only two) because each way of doing the flagging can lead to problems.

If using them DOESN'T flag you as an aggressor, then you could PvP/PK without taking a count.

If using them DOES flag you as an aggressor, then you could run into one, suicide and give someone a count whether they were fighting you specifically or not.

Either way created a problematic loophole, so whatever the last version was, I lost count.

I think they problem they were mentioning had to do with the nature of a Revenant.... typically you cast them on a Red and they are meant to attack the red.......

I think the way to fix this would be if you attack the Revenant of a blue player the Revenant should be blue as well.... so it's just like attacking that blue player...... the Revenant should only be aggressive to the original target.. if somone else attacks it they should flag gray to the Revenants caster not the other way around.....

 

[Sara Of Baja]

It would be nice if they would address the fact that we still cannot access the last tile sets without purchasing a 30$ 9th anniversary box off of Amazon. Jeremy did say a few weeks back they were looking into it. It's been two years and that is STILL the only way to get those.

I just searched Amazon for the 9th Anniversary box .. Price starts at $27.90 for USED, which makes me wonder if the upgrade code has already been used. New starts at $47.99.

 

[AesSedai]

...

To me, unless they're leaving out some information, I see little difference between Embueing coming to UO and Enchanting in WoW.

I was HOPING that Embueing would work differently in that we'd be able to actually pull a mod on an item OFF of the item itself and attempt to add it to another item, but apparently this is not to be the case...

- Interesting. I still have only minorly observed WoW from over a shoulder.

What makes me wonder about imbuing is the decision that might be made between: keeping a really good weapon or imbuing it to buff it up just a little bit more & then losing it when it wears out (I kept a lot of sup acc vanqs back in the day & used lesser weapons more often).
The balance is going to be interesting; especially with potentially 3 different levels of imbuing powers, depending on location.

Because: aside from illegal things such as duping, it seems pretty durn tough to put together the right items to match your desires for your templates these days (~since the AoS item's item property mega-increase.)

Sure would be nice to have some sort of in-game organizer for all of those variables *cough* been requested in various forms since AoS - jewelry box, armor / weapon chests *cough*
(Not everyone has spreadsheets for their items / weapons and such.)

Sure would be nice if they made the game less complicated for the player if they intend to complicate the possibilities in the game even more.
(Isn't that an issue that makes things daunting for new as well as casual players? I hope balancing and such is considered greatly by Leuro and other Devs. Hopefully the post by
MrTact about balancing item properties & making it easier to comprehend
is still floating around, as that seems to be the most headway publically made on the issue, that I know of. I still really liked my ideas in that thread, hehehe.)

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

On the last part, I don't think that Mr Tact really ended up coming up with an idea that made anything easier.

Diminishing Returns was a good system and a forward looking system, but it needed a KR-like total mod display to be useful and Proficiencies was a cluster**** from square one.

I think the Devs who did AOS didn't mess up with the new mods in themselves, but they messed up by moving to the "all the numbers are shown" and there are no more nice and easy tiers of item mod intensity.

The 5 teir system of the orginal UO design, while it had a very limited modset was easy to rebalance on the fly because Vanq was always Vanq. You could tweak what Vanq actually did without too much of an uproar. But look at the difference since... especially if you have a few generations of runic items between AOS release and now and how they differ in DI percentages.

I'd still love to see a system based on Essences (or for people who ever played it, I SWEAR I didn't see the game until months AFTER I wrote out the idea, but the game Dark Cloud 2 uses this type of system) where you crafted or purchased the basic equipment and the magic items dropped were not equipment in themselves, but the mods in an essence form that had to be enhanced into the equipment, but I'll bet it would have to be in an entirely new game.

Also the system that UOX: Odyssey was going to use that let items "level up" would have been cool to see as well.

Still I would like to see Embueing look DIFFERENT than the effectively same skill in other games.

 

[bwitched]

...

Town Hall in Canada: Send in suggestions as Feedback


I would love a Town Hall meeting up here in Canada would be sweet to have one in the capital of Ottawa but pop is a little low here, think Toronto may be the best choice, lots of people + close to US border for anyone in upper new york state to come over easily.

 

[bwitched]

Customizing castles: Adding new fixed home designs requires a LOT of work for the design team.

Court yards will be looked into. Recall was taken out due to facet flipping with moonstones


Just a few questions about this subject. I know you said adding new fixed home designs is a lot of work but is it something that will be looked into in the future simple yes or no answer will do, also What do you mean by court yards being looked into is it just for recalling or being able to place items in them?

 

[Ender]

No changes to greater dragons in Pub 56... Because it's SOOOOO hard to implement a 35 damage cap.

"Working on" exploits and cheating on Great Lakes... Let me get my dev to player translator... Ok, "We have no plans for that at this time".

No plans to revamp virtues, even after being asked about constantly for years, somehow never makes it to top of priority list... But new plants and making unnecessary changes that players don't ask for is?

Speedhacking difficult to test, not really but nice try devs.

More champ spawn type spawns in SA without spawn cams being fixed first, yay EA stupidity...

11th anniversary items, no details.

No x-shard gate to Fel rules due to "terrifying dupes": code it right and that shouldn't be a problem...

No Halloween shard, fail.

Plans for pigments but nothing to report: translating again... "Nothing planned at this time."

Bushido changes, probably... To make it stronger or weaker?

Stop jewelry from breaking the 120 skill cap? Stupid but eh.

Accuracy in archery being looked into? Please say making it more INaccurate.

Jacobs not liking cash for gold sales, but legal in UO. Isn't it illegal in Warhammer?

No news on 11th year rewards, great, they'll be done when there are 12 year vets running around.

Multiple faction artifacts on one character, believed possible, stupid move.

No RvR-type PvP in UO due to dupe worries: again, just code it right, god.

Ancient Samurai Helms not being equipped after looting your corpse, because its a blessed item, well yeah, all blessed items work that way. <_<

 

[Ender]

...
I'd still love to see a system based on Essences (or for people who ever played it, I SWEAR I didn't see the game until months AFTER I wrote out the idea, but the game Dark Cloud 2 uses this type of system) where you crafted or purchased the basic equipment and the magic items dropped were not equipment in themselves, but the mods in an essence form that had to be enhanced into the equipment, but I'll bet it would have to be in an entirely new game.

I loved that game.

 

[Wrath/Loki]

...

Silver Steeds: Unknown... whole good and evil system not active on shards (is on Siege)... probably a dead system

Not to be mean or anything but, it is not a dead system and is very much alive on siege.

 

[deadite]

Overall, sounds like some nice stuff for UO. Always some hit or miss stuff, but you can't make everyone happy!

Hate to go off topic, but did any of you town hall goers stick around for the DAoC portion? I'm wondering if they said anything about Origins or superclustering/merging.

 

[GarthGrey]

Someone asked for the Pristine Dread Horn to be stackable, and the Devs said, yeah that's a great idea????

 

[UltimaSword]

Cannot wait for Halloween event.

As for 11 anniversary they should give all characters one token to choose one reward. Then people can buy more from the site.

 

[Maplestone]

Embueing balance (keeping items from becoming "uber" ) Skill based (all new skills go to 120)
The way this was answered worried me a little - if there's one thing we've witnessed in this game, it's that you can't stop people from reaching max skill in significant numbers. Plus, what is the game going to be like for people who don't reach max skill?

Area Effect and slimes causing durability hits... probable bug, being noted
he... he... I remember the first time I took a hit-area weapon into a slime-hoard thinking I was so smart only to have to reduced to 0 durability in no time flat.

KR vs SA client system performance should be a smaller download and footprint due to more efficient animations
I'm really curious if this means that they are moving away from sprites or just optimizing how sprites are stored/loaded.

Rare fragments for embueing may be in new T-Maps
Woot! (as an eccentric who avoids hind-end bosses, this makes me happy)

Speedhacking is difficult to test in house
Do they have "artifical lag" in their testing? (a router that just caches packets for a few milliseconds before passing them on?)

Permanent Spring Cleaning: Concept was popular, may be done in the future
Community Collections need to be looked at before new features added
*applause*

Silver Steeds: Unknown... whole good and evil system not active on shards (is on Siege)... probably a dead system
I still say they should run an event where the zoo creatures break loose - if a shard has reached max level, it means a small chance to tame a neigh-extinct silver steed.

Useless skills have been discussed for SA uses
I really need to finish GMing camping.

Voice Chat inside the game using distance: Never even considered plans for voice chat, unlikely at this time
The problem with do-it-yourself solutions is that it seems to cut down on the amount of interaction with random strangers.

Customizing castles: Adding new fixed home designs requires a LOT of work for the design team.
The comment about freeshards having already done seemed to catch them a little embarrassed. I think there's still some sting felt from that first magazine review of KR that mentioned EA accomplishments vs freeshard accomplishments.

No loss of 2d until new client reaches 95%+ usage,
It sounded to me like they were pretty confident that at least 5% of the population is willing to dig their heels in forever.

Dev Team looking better than it was a few months ago... grinding away on the SA client.
It was interesting to hear the comments about continuing to add people ... a lot of speculative thoughts crossed my mind there.

Talk about the Soul Forge: One version for house, a potent version in towns, and a special version with max bonus in Garg town
*wonders what the effect will be*

Town Hall in Canada: Send in suggestions as Feedback
*suggests the middle of January so that they will realize the necessity of keeping ice elemental slayer weapons in the game*

And now to WRR for prize giveaways...
listening to a bit of WRR, I was struck by a bit of culture shock ... I had never encountered a Christian Rock radio program before. They're ... a little creepy.

 

[deadite]

You aren't from the south are you?

 

[KVJ]

No changes to greater dragons in Pub 56... Because it's SOOOOO hard to implement a 35 damage cap.

"Working on" exploits and cheating on Great Lakes... Let me get my dev to player translator... Ok, "We have no plans for that at this time".

No plans to revamp virtues, even after being asked about constantly for years, somehow never makes it to top of priority list... But new plants and making unnecessary changes that players don't ask for is?

Speedhacking difficult to test, not really but nice try devs.

More champ spawn type spawns in SA without spawn cams being fixed first, yay EA stupidity...

11th anniversary items, no details.

No x-shard gate to Fel rules due to "terrifying dupes": code it right and that shouldn't be a problem...

No Halloween shard, fail.

Plans for pigments but nothing to report: translating again... "Nothing planned at this time."

Bushido changes, probably... To make it stronger or weaker?

Stop jewelry from breaking the 120 skill cap? Stupid but eh.

Accuracy in archery being looked into? Please say making it more INaccurate.

Jacobs not liking cash for gold sales, but legal in UO. Isn't it illegal in Warhammer?

No news on 11th year rewards, great, they'll be done when there are 12 year vets running around.

Multiple faction artifacts on one character, believed possible, stupid move.

No RvR-type PvP in UO due to dupe worries: again, just code it right, god.

Ancient Samurai Helms not being equipped after looting your corpse, because its a blessed item, well yeah, all blessed items work that way. <_<

Wow,

Why don't you join the Developer team and stop whining!! Yeah, it's easy for you to sit back and be negative behind a computer screen, but yet you won't do anything about it besides cry. I'm actually going to try to better this game and bring more people into the first MMORPG that ever existed in this world. So it's easy to be negative, but try to be more positive, at least they are working on fixes.

 

[Violence]

About the 11th Anni stuff

Where I come from, the person who's celebrating pays when they take out their friends, and are optionally given gifts.
In UO's case, a "friend" I've had for 11 years, I have to PAY 30 USD to participate in their Anniversary?
Heh.. I'll pay I ain't cheap. But if EA doesn't give EVERYONE at least 2 Tokens for the new items, is. Uber-cheap!

About bug fixes in 56 and the new engineer

I see nothing solid for 56 yet. I could care less for stackables although it's a plus. I don't even wanna speculate about the new guy and his chances in the Hell that UO's code is.

Imbuing augmenting Mysticism PLUS a complementary skill!?!? Where exactly are we supposed TO SHOVE THESE IN?

"Artificer" is about the best title we've seen since before SE.

Mysticism using regs? Big dissappointment.

Purge Magic: Debuffs a current buff
Uhm guys, I don't wanna hit you too hard but UO IS NOT A BUFFS GAME LIKE LINEAGE IS.
And people will now be able to mess my armour's resists if it's based on Reactive Armour/Reflection?! As if abusing Arch Protection isn't insane enough- if it's still around. MEGA FAIL.

Enchant: So a mage can imbue their weapon with a [Direct Damage Mystic Spell], pre-cast an Explo, run up to me and hit Explo/[X]/Armour Ignore?
Why do you want to put more power to Mage classes? FAIL.

Animated Weapon: I couldn't care less for a new Blade Spirit.

Stone Form: Buffs my Defense only to be debuffed by Purge Magic? ;P And slows me down how, in movement? Then NOBODY will use it.

Spell Trigger: Exactly how is this different from "Enchant"? Store a spell effect on a weapon, both. Unless one is even more UBER by storing ANY spell, even from Magery. If that's the case, FAIL.

Mysticism title: No surprise. Not lame, not cool.

Throwing: Plain silly. Give us Dual Wield already, this is ridiculous. And weapon auto-return!? ROFL! RIDICULOUS GUYS. Out of ideas, are we? Or are we all members of the Predator race?

Title: Bladeweaver = LAME. What exactly do you WEAVE by throwing a weapon? I could go on. Plus Bladeweave is already a name for a special move, gimme a break with being UNoriginal.

Special Moves will be out of the current special moves? Oh, more imba stuff that will take AGES to properly balance Vs. existing stuff.

A person working for Leuro doing a HUGE balance pass = "A" PERSON!? ONE SINGLE GUY? DOING A HUGE PASS? SZOMG. FAIL.


Imbuing Intensity level: 100, 5 items max on an item?
So I can make a ring and a bracelet with 5 mods that will never break. Goodie. Bye-bye Ecru Citrines.

Imbued items can no longer be fortified = FAIL.

Self Repair cannot be imbued = FAIL.

Scripting prevention = FAIL. We know this from now, trust me.

Adding Balanced to two handed weapons: A huge balance pass is being done, will be brought up. YEAH BY ONE SINGLE GUY.

Dispelling Mortal Wound as though it were a Curse = LEAVE IT AS IT IS, THIS MOVE IS ALREADY COMPLETELY UBER.

4/6 Chiv vs 2/6 Magery: Chivalry needs no look. MAGERY does.

"Useless Specials" : part of the balance pass = PART OF A SINGLE PERSON'S SLAVE LABOUR IN THE BASEMENT. ETA 2142.

Exploiters and cheaters on Great Lakes: No they are not JUST on Great Lakes, and NO you cannot do ANYTHING to stop them anymore.. LOL!

Plans to revamp Virtues: FAIL.

Sounds in SA: "Investigated"!?!? WHAT'S THERE TO INVESTIGATE.

57 before end of year : ARE WE SUPPOSED TO SAY "WOW!"?

Speedhacking is difficult to test in house: FAIL. Everyone's testing it, in their house, and it works.. ;P Okay yeah I know what it means "In house" but FAIL.

SA artifacts like Tokuno: Oh great, EVEN MORE MUST-HAVES.

Champ Spawn cams: AGAIN WHAT IS THERE TO INVESTIGATE, INSTANCE THE CHAMP SPAWNS AS A BANDAGE FIX. IT'S SICKENING.

11th Anniversary items: Come on already. Give us SOMETHING.

Useless skills have been discussed for SA uses = PLEASEZ, TURN 1 OF THEM TO DUAL WIELD.

No loss of 2d until new client reaches 95%+ usage= FAIL.

Artist coming back from the T2A days= So?

Team picture taken 2 weeks ago, could be posted soon= Please, no.

Exclusive offers are TEMPORARILY exclusive= WTF?

Question on inventorying certain Doom artifacts for dupes= DELETE THE GLADIATOR COLLARS LURKING AROUND FIRST! ;D

Bushido changes= Not "PROBABLY" but "MUST BE DONE". Confidence/LS are reasons alone.

Chivarly needs to not be a 60 point skill anymore= And Magery needs to not be such a Jack of All Trades skill anymore.

DCI for archers: Not remembering an exception for archers= Ok who asks this nonsense?

Accuracy in Archery is something to be looked into= LOOK INTO WHAT!!!??

DCI may not affect Dismount= Yep, every 2nd attempt is succesfull.

Special Moves may not be working properly in terms of defending against them= False. I have had people dodging a lot of specials on many occassions. Like AI, Infect, Bleed, Crushing.

Anti-Virtue system for reds= *Yawns*

Multiple faction arties on one character= FAIL

Exorcism: No plans to make "wider" in effect= WHY NOT!?

New client cannot get rid of ALL outside programs= Is okay don't feel bad, since 2D will be there we don't care. Cheaters use that one.

Mysticism will have some complementary skills= Again, where do we put these? FFS.

Leuro asks Rico: What the heck does "la" mean? It means nothing, it's pure arrogance and attitude. La. "In your face". Something cooler maybe.

All in all, NOTHING I SEE ON THIS LIST MAKES ME WANNA BUY SA EITHER. I mean.. If the graphics client of it is free!! rolleyes:
Except being able to craft 5-Mod CRAZY rings and bracelets BUT I CAN LIVE WITH MY CURRENT RING/BRACELET TOO, SO NO.
Still waiting for the big patch too.

 

[Sweeney]

Aside from the stealth-tamer attack fix and some stackables, nothing new is coming. If 56 hits TC on Monday, it only gives a day or two for Halloween content. Anyone else notice how the 11th anni items won't hit the non-Japan shards until mid-November? About 2 months after the anniversary. If they were planning for it, shame on them. If we expected them to plan for it being close to the actual anniversary, shame on us.

[edit] "You fool me, you can't get fooled again" George Bush Jr. [/edit]

 

[BadManiac]

Big huge balance pass is as needed and sounds as promising now as it did 3 years ago when we were first promised it...

SA client getting 95% userbase? Only if it is better than 2D. KR clearly wasn't. KR was released way ahead of time, it STILL isn't finished and it requires a pretty good PC to run. This is something UO can't afford, UO is the ONLY MMORPG option you have for an old or entry level PC. Don't ignore this market segment.

And lastly, something that caught my eye too:

After playing with the warhammer-client I still think the new UO-Client should be real 3D !
I didnt believe it myself, but a real 3D client can be beautiful aswell - not just a Wow-Comic...

Err, you do realize that WAR and WoW are IDENTICAL right? You can't possibly think WAR looks good if WoW doesn't?

 

[Belmarduk]

Big huge balance pass is as needed and sounds as promising now as it did 3 years ago when we were first promised it...

SA client getting 95% userbase? Only if it is better than 2D. KR clearly wasn't. KR was released way ahead of time, it STILL isn't finished and it requires a pretty good PC to run. This is something UO can't afford, UO is the ONLY MMORPG option you have for an old or entry level PC. Don't ignore this market segment.

And lastly, something that caught my eye too:

Err, you do realize that WAR and WoW are IDENTICAL right? You can't possibly think WAR looks good if WoW doesn't?

You are wrong there - WAR does have a different grafik than Wow - Its less comic and everything it sharper defined - Not sure if its even the same grafik-engine.But even if it is , its totally different.
WAR is fun for a certain time but it misses the freedom there is in UO
If there is a modern good client I will be back not before...

 

[kennykilleduo]

Japanese 11th anniversary items exclusive to Japan for 30 days then will go up to buy online.

So we don't get an anniversary this year and have to pay for gifts? again ?

Upgrade codes online: More info when it becomes relevant

Why no boxes , some players play on dial up , 9th ann was last cd right? ( hopes that word relevant wasn't used)

Plans to revamp Virtues: No plans at this time, always asked about, but never makes top of priority list

Wasn't this Wilki's baby a long time ago ( 2-3 years?) ?

11th Anniversary items: no detail off the top of Jeremy's head.

Great community rep , forgets info.....

No Halloween shard this year due to lack of time
Retribution shard is the Focus group shard (not very active) (Draconi's Toys)

Sure now you take this away from us , good thing WAR is getting daily updates

Dev Team looking better than it was a few months ago... grinding away on the SA client

Should be the best expansion in years , no excuses...

Marketing for UO: good for visibility, not as good for revenue. Retail margin on console and used games better than for computer games

You are kidding me right , one of the biggest video game companies with the marketing power they have..

Dermott of LS

Good work and thank you...




Sadly this is why UO is on life support , we the p(l)ayers put up with same old excuses , all these years wasted to upgrade our game and make it better , UO should be in WOW's place in history , after all we got the community , great fan sites , some really talented Dev members , but a company who seems to not care ONE bit about there game...

 

[Nok]

News item - Chicago UO Town Hall Wrapup.

 

[DevilsOwn]

thanks Nok...... the cake and presentation box are just too cute!

 

[Flora Green]

Thanks Dermott.

 

[Masuri]

Japanese 11th anniversary items exclusive to Japan for 30 days then will go up to buy online.

Wow. Just... wow.

I took this to mean: We paid to have the retail boxes in Japan, so we need to sell them. If we offer online at the same time box sets go out, box sets will not sell. Therefore, 30 day lead on boxes. They sell. Then we offer online.

Cheers.

That's how I took it also. Hence my shock that they would seriously be trying to sell us anniversary stuff after all their lack of support in the last two years and their complete indifference to the anniversary as it passed. The fact that it's three months late and delayed here, is just salt in the wound. I keep waiting for AOS-style mea culpa bonuses or clothing or something from EA acknowledging how they've let UO slide. Instead they offer to sell us more empty promises.

 

[Der Rock]

That's how I took it also. Hence my shock that they would seriously be trying to sell us anniversary stuff after all their lack of support in the last two years and their complete indifference to the anniversary as it passed. The fact that it's three months late and delayed here, is just salt in the wound. I keep waiting for AOS-style mea culpa bonuses or clothing or something from EA acknowledging how they've let UO slide. Instead they offer to sell us more empty promises.

do it like i do,
(or like mark jakobs demand:dont pay if u dont like so we can see whats wrong)
since they tweaked ML to trash, i never ever buy anything,
even if SA comes out, i dont buy it at first,

PRIMERY i will see that
1.this new client is COMPLETE playable
2.scripter/cheater are a minimale load for us
3.the FUN factor is back

they ask for customer reflection, they can get it, basta

 

[Nexus]

Japanese 11th anniversary items exclusive to Japan for 30 days then will go up to buy online.

Only thing that bothers me about this is no disk it's a download of an installer. I wouldn't mind so much if they at least put an ISO image up for us to download so we'd have the option of burning it to a disk, or of mounting it to a virutal drive when we need to use it.

 

[Der Rock]

thx dermott, great job
and thx to WRR, was a pleasure again to listen .

btw.it is so nice to hear a TH life,
(to notice, when jeremy have to take a deep breath before answering, was from a psychological examination very interesting, i cant explain details here.

all i can say is, as an PR manager you should have to graduate a psycological-manager-training

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

Disappointed I missed it, had the kids this weekend, they had no interest...even if it was at Dave & Busters...la

 

[Lady Lovely]

"Bone, Fertile Dirt, Dragon's Blood, Daemon Bone are the four new reagents"
I really hope that the New Dragon's blood they are talking about will be different in some way from the Rare vile of Dragon's blood. Please! Please! Please! Don't ruin what those of us have had for years just to add new content

 

[Beefybone]

I see another craptastic "Dude is this even part of the same game?" expansion like ML being crammed into UO. I see giant ugly blue glowy "soul forges" crammed into every town where they look totally out of place. I see amateurishly drawn gargoyle characters trundling around in front of the bank looking like broken robots. (Seriously, I'm embarassed for this game everytime I see how a Cu Sidhe is drawn.) I see people soloing "epic encounters" while the devs scratch their heads. I see Draconi running some sporadic story events that only he understands and never feels like explaining.

And I still can't believe how shamelessly they're plagiarizing WoW now.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Did anyone who was there catch something they started to say about Magincia, early on in the event?

It was during the static.

-Galen's player

PS: Not a criticism of WRR btw.....A little static is understandable, and I very much appreciate what WRR does with bringing these events to us. Greatly appreciate.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

While I appreciate the work WRR does, it'd be nice if they were able to do sound checks and get a good feed going prior to the actual broadcast.

 

[Ender]

Wow,

Why don't you join the Developer team and stop whining!! Yeah, it's easy for you to sit back and be negative behind a computer screen, but yet you won't do anything about it besides cry. I'm actually going to try to better this game and bring more people into the first MMORPG that ever existed in this world. So it's easy to be negative, but try to be more positive, at least they are working on fixes.

Because they'll totally hire a high school student... Right. And I've already got med school planned anyway :/

 

[MalagAste]

As far as the building of new designs like the castles and all what I would like to see would be the ability for "We" the consumers/players being allowed to redesign the castles ourselves.

NO I'm not talking about making castles and keeps customizable. What I AM talking about is allow us using a program like "House Builder"... To redesign the castle and the keep. Using the exact same footprints. I know this means the courtyards would still be basically useless still in the Castle but this would mean quite a bit to keep users and it would mean quite a lot to castle owners as well. I know there are several VERY talented individuals out there who could quite nicely redesign both to be practical, updated, and far more useful, not to mention more aesthetically pleasing. Not that I hate the castles now, I just think they could be far less blah. At any rate I was thinking we could have a contest and the top 3 designs would be made available to the public.... those with an existing keep or castle would have the option to have everything move to a "design crate" that would allow them to chose one of the new designs. Anyone wishing to place a new castle/keep would be given a gump at placement of which of the four castle designs or keep designs they wished to place.

This makes perfect sense to me ... if it's done right using a program given to us by the Dev team we would be doing a majority of the work while all they had to do was polish up the code for the actual addition of the new styles and the design crate.

This way at any time a Keep or Castle owner would again have the option to change the look of their castle.... it would of course stink to have everything go into a crate but it's MUCH better than not having any design options.

Putting the actual designs out for the public to create and build would be cool as well. And of course with anything the Dev team would have the final say in any of the designs and they would have to be "workable" designs... meaning they would have to be something that would be functional in-game so the definite outline and such of the buildings could NOT be changed.

As far as coding goes I'm not sure how this would work with a Keep and those empty spaces as those seem to be NOT really a part of the actual footprint. Though I really don't see why that couldn't be revised..... castles as well.

 

[Kaleb]

They want to move away from skill jewelry being able to "break" the skill cap

WooT!!!

 

[EDA_GL]

Ultimate Resisting Spells Fix:
If you don't agree with this fix, your a character that only knows the new uo...not what it once was. You used to actually resist all types of magic based off this now useless skill. Example, an ebolt with 100 resist (yes 100 was the cap then) would do 12 damage. That same ebolt with 0 resist would do 30+.

Your highest possible resist with 0 magic resist would be 35. Your suits resist could not pass 35 unless you have magic resist. Once you achieve 100 magic resist, your suits total is fully " unlocked ". Example, your suits actual resists add up to exactly 70s across the board, if you have 0 magic resist your at 35, if you have 100 magic resist it is 70. At 105 resist your natural resist cap is 71, at 110 resist your cap is 72, at 115 its 73 cap, at 120 its 74.
Does that make sense to everyone? You actually will have a benefit of having resist....what a brilliant idea!

Regarding the 100% legitimate pairs of inquisitor's resolution. They spawn every 4 months (not sure on exact time), that means in the course of one total year there is 3 pair per shard...multiply the number of shards by four, then take that number and multiply by how many years Doom has been out.....see the problem? Theres that many pair on Great Lakes alone! Can the non-existent GMs do anything? they claim no due to xsharding...my solution? WIPE all the quizzies out of the game and start over, just like they did with the vine cord sandals, only these actually re-spawn after time!

Punk buster anyone? I'd gladly give up a small percentage of my current connection (DSL) if its using that to check my connection. This will solve MANY problems across all shards.

Trapped boxes, how can you actually trap a box if your not very skillful at it? There can actually be two possible fixes for this.
Example one:
Scale the number of uses a trapped box has based on its crafter
Example two:
Your only able to trap a box at GM tinkering

Either of these two fixes will balance the multi skilled dexxers, and attempt to restore " old school " templates back into the game.

To hopefully clarify the flag issue with followers. Lets say were inside fire, your grey for whatever reason. I flag on you, chasing ensues until the original two minute timer passes. I then summon a rev/pixie/pet to attack you, since its now " entering the fight " and didn't flag within the first two minute timer, I now flag grey. If my follower or myself hits you and you end up dying, you can count me.

Specials on archers. Running shot....your on a mount and moving attempting to shoot an arrow. It only makes sense that your accuracy isn't still capped! Dev's defiantly need to look into this.

If you want a player-base to return to the game. Address ALL of this post and I can guarantee that you will see quite a few vet players return. We do not want to see more patches involving plants/addons/trammy crap....pvp is unique in UO, always has and will be. Return that to us, and you will reap benefits.

 

[WildStar]

Did anyone who was there catch something they started to say about Magincia, early on in the event?

It was during the static.

-Galen's player

PS: Not a criticism of WRR btw.....A little static is understandable, and I very much appreciate what WRR does with bringing these events to us. Greatly appreciate.

Something will happen with Magincia in Pub 56 is what Jeremy said - No Details.

WildStar

 

[Nexus]

Something will happen with Magincia in Pub 56 is what Jeremy said - No Details.

WildStar

If nothing else I hope they make the parts that are left of it part of the map and not placed Statics so you don't lag as bad when you accidentally hit the wrong rune or moongate....

 

[UOKaiser]

If you want a player-base to return to the game. Address ALL of this post and I can guarantee that you will see quite a few vet players return. We do not want to see more patches involving plants/addons/trammy crap....pvp is unique in UO, always has and will be. Return that to us, and you will reap benefits.

You wont see vet players return especially if you put more restrictions on the game. Vets left cause there templates where nerfed or the world became empty or they didnt like a change or many other reasons. Those who still like playing ultima online moved on to freeshards where they have more freedom with there characters and dont have to pay monthly fee or worry about being nerfed the next day. Once a vet player is lost there lost.

 

[kitiara-atlantic]

Here are my notes from the event:

UO Town Hall Meeting – Chicago 2008
Notes by Kitiara - http://www.uocraft.com

Five on Saturday

• Jeremy apologized for the FoF AWOL this week, as she left her VPN key and laptop charger at home.
• Publish 56 should make it on to Test Center next week.
• 11th Anniversary Items:
  • The items were supposed to be announced in a communication to BOTH Japan and the US, but there was a communication breakdown in marketing.
  • The package will be released as a retail box in Japan in November.
  • The items available in Japan will be exclusively available via the Japanese retail box for 30 days. After 30 days, they will be available in the US and elsewhere via the UOGameCodes.com store.
  • Jeremy will release more details next week at the earliest, though more likely closer to December.
  • There will be stuff included in the 11th Anniversary celebration that will be free.
  • A suggestion for 11th Anniversary chariots was “noted” by Jeremy. Leurocian responded with, “That would be pretty cool!”

Publish 56

Factions:

• There will be new buyable things with silver.
• A bug that allowed faction members to grief their own players by killing them to lose kill points will be fixed.
• Factions will play a role in the next live event arc.

Halloween:

• Trick or treating will be available with new treats.
• Beggars will have an advantage in trick or treating.
• A bug with begging will be fixed in Publish 56.
• There will be themed activities to participate in.
• There will not likely be a “Shard of Screams” or Halloween shard this year. Jeremy explained that this is usually something the dev's do in their spare time, and with the Stygian Abyss expansion coming up, the dev's don't have much spare time.

Live Event Content:

• There will be “changes” to Magincia with the upcoming live event content in Publish 56.
• Leurocian: The live event content in this publish “is comparable to an expansion in itself!”
• Factions are tied into the next live event arc.

Taming:

• Tamers will no longer be able to command a pet to attack while hidden or stealthed. The tamer will be revealed.

Plants:

• Plant seeds will NOT become stackable. Jeremy noted that they will really need a BOD style storage system due to the way that the individual seed items are handled. Since seeds with different ID's look the same, making them stackable would be confusing for players, aside from the lack of feasibility from a programming standpoint.
• Naturalist Quest – the new cactus with flower will be the only new plant available in the Blaze color via the Naturalist Quest. All other new plants will be available in the other rare colors.
• The bug preventing new plants from being cared for while locked down will be fixed.

Miscellaneous:

• Blank scrolls will be able to use commodity deeds.
• Cooking items, amongst other things, will become stackable.
• The patch for KR for Publish 56 is huge – over 700MB. This is due to some new artwork and animations. Jeremy thinks that when we see the new art, we will definitely think it was worth the large download.

After Publish 56:

• There will likely be one more publish in 2008.
• It will likely include bug fixes, more stacking items.
• In early 2009, there will likely be one publish before Stygian Abyss is released. This publish will likely push out the balance changes prior to the release of the expansion.
• Will the Treasures of Tokuno be turned back on? Jeremy: “That is not on the schedule to get turned back on.”
• What about squashing scripting and cheating? You could tell that both Jeremy and Leurocian wanted to tell us something, and several times they alluded to legal reasons why they could not elaborate, but did say that within 1 to 2 months, we should here some significant news on what is being done to prevent cheating. Jeremy specifically referred to speed hacks at one point.
• Will Dread Warhorses spawn again? Unknown.
• Will UO ever add built-in voice chat? Jeremy: There are no plans to add voice chat, as third party tools like Teamspeak and Ventrilo do a good job of serving that purpose.
• Will we get more fixed house designs (like the Classic houses)? Jeremy: Fixed house designs take a huge amount of work to implement from the art team, and it is not likely that fixed house designs will make it high enough on the priority list anytime soon.
• 11th Year Veteran Rewards are in progress.
• Will we get additional character slots? Maybe.
• Will we get additional points added to the skill cap? No. Instead, skills will be fixed in the balance pass to allow for template specialization as it was intended.
• Will UO get any sort of system similar to “Realm vs Realm?” No.

The Balance Pass:

• Will likely be pushed as a publish in early 2009, prior to the release of Stygian Abyss.
• Greater Dragon fire breath will be nerfed for balance. It is much too powerful as is.
• Weapon accuracy is currently much too dependent on HCI and DCI and needs to be balanced.
• Chivalry will get a good amount of attention in the balance pass, as the team is not happy with how it is currently a 60 point skill – ie. There's really no reason to train it over 60, as you get a majority of the benefits of the skill even at that low level. Skills will be evaluated to make sure they scale properly to their maxes.
• Special moves are being investigated in the balance pass.
• Spell casting will be scaled to match the caster's skill level to the power of the spell effects.

Stygian Abyss:

Skills:

• Imbuing
  • Allows players to bestow magical item properties to items.
  • Any race can use the skill – not just gargoyles.
  • Imbued items cannot be fortified. (So, fortify items before imbuing them).
  • Max intensity level of a property: 100. Max number of properties per item: 5.
  • Offers crafters more control than enhancing.
  • Items won't break upon failure, but resources will be consumed.
  • There will be no Self Repair property on imbued items.
  • Can be trained up to 120.
  • Will likely have a crafting-related method for acquiring power scrolls (as opposed to the current Champ Spawn loot).
  • Will use a new item called a Soul Forge. The Soul Forge will likely come in 3 flavors: a house add-on, a public forge that will give a bonus to those using it, and a “Queen” forge in the gargoyle city that gives a maximum bonus when used. Players will need to earn the trust of the gargoyles in order to be allowed to use the max-bonus soul forge, and will need to be highly skilled in imbuing.
  • Imbuing skill title: Artificer
  • Those of us that like to hoard stuff should start stockpiling plain-jane magical weapons from loot, as they will be able to be “unraveled” to create imbuing ingredients.
  • Unraveled items will create one of 3 levels of imbuing ingredients, called “relic fragments.”
  • You may also want to start stockpiling granite, fertile dirt, dragon's blood, demon bones, taint, white pearl, eye of travesty, and regular gemstones.
• Mysticism
  • A new school of magic with 16 new spells, requiring reagents.
  • Skill title: Mystic
  • Will be scaled by skill level to achieve maximum spell effects. For example, a summoned creature's power will depend on the caster's mysticism skill.
  • Can be trained up to 120. Power scrolls will be available through Champ Spawns, as usual.
  • Lower Reagent Cost (LRC) will work with mysticism.
  • Spells:
    • Purge Magic – Debuffs a current buff from a player or monster
    • Enchant – temporarily enchants a weapon with a hit spell effect
    • Animated Weapon – conjures a weapon to attack with, similar to blade spirits or energy vortices
    • Stone Form – buffs the caster's defense at the expense of speed
    • Spell Trigger – stores a spell on an item to be used later. (Trapped boxes were compared to the concept of this spell).
• Throwing
  • A new ranged combat skill
  • Thrown weapons automatically return to the wielder.
  • Boomerang, Cyclone, SoClaive
  • Skill title: Bladeweaver

Technical:

• The SA client has been in development all year.
• The dev team has been working to squash every single bug in the KR client for its re-release as the SA client. That's why we haven't heard much about bug killing in KR – because the engineering team is hard at work making sure that every problem in KR will be fixed for the SA release.
• The SA client will use 2D art wherever it looks better. One example: housing walls. Some spell effects and art will be taken from KR as well.
• The SA client has a much smaller memory footprint.
• Memory leaks have been plugged.
• It handles animations much better, and this will contribute to easier expansion in the future and smaller patches.
• Jeremy will solicit a call for client feature requests within a month or so.
• There will be a beta test for SA. When? Unknown. The timeline is “fuzzy” right now.

Miscellaneous:

• Will there be new artifacts in SA? Yes
• Are the SA lands like a facet? Yes
• Will there be new housing? Yes, but the team could not elaborate at this time.
• Are there any plans for new ridables in SA? No
• Regarding the new Flying ability of the gargoyle race: Flying behaves like riding an ethereal mount for purposes of combat. (ie. Similar to how you can be dismounted from a mount, you can be knocked to your feet from flying).
• “Epic Encounters” in SA: Peerless combat is intended for player groups of 1-5 people. Champ spawns, 5-10 people. SA will introduce “Epic Encounters” intended to be completed by groups of 10-20 people. They will be in the Felucca ruleset.
• Will there be anything new for fishers and treasure hunters? Yes, but there will be no changes to sea travel itself.
• Will there be changes to the Virtue system in SA? No
• Will we be able to convert from human to gargoyle? Probably, but there won't likely be a storyline or quest attached to the process a la human-to-elf because the team could not think of a storyline that didn't sound completely stupid. It will likely be something you “purchase” at an NPC shop or something along those lines.
• Will SA be on store shelves? Unknown. Jeremy explained that while store placement is good for visibility, it's not good for revenues due to packaging costs and the like. Aside from that, it is difficult to get retail stores to stock PC games in general due to the fact that the game stores make a good profit from reselling used console games, and that resale market does not really exist for PC games. So, PC games get a very small percentage of overall shelf space in the game stores to begin with, and then to get stores to stock a game with a niche market (read: small market) like UO is difficult. The stores are looking at their rate of return on that 6 inches of shelf space.

Future Bug Investigations & Fixes:

• Taming gains: many people have reported the inability to gain taming through normal game play at high levels (117+). Leurocian cited a similar problem with Spellweaving, whereby there was a glitch in the code that prevented skill gains because no spell in the game had a difficulty high enough to qualify for a skill gain. The same thing may be happening with taming, ie. No pets have a difficulty high enough to qualify for a skill gain (other than the GGS gains). This will be investigated.
• The team will investigate a possible accuracy issue with moving shot/special moves as part of the balance pass.
• The team will look into problems with pet pathing (ie. Pets getting caught on corners of things when they're following their owners).

Ideas That Were Noted by the Dev Team:

• Add chariots as an 11th anniversary item.
• Make champ spawn areas a free for all (ie. No murder counts). This might encourage Trammel players who want to remain blue and therefore don't want to go aggro and receive a murder count to go fight at the champ spawn areas. Could encourage participation from players who wouldn't normally do champ spawns.
• Give preference to players who achieve real skill as opposed to those who are buffed up by skill items. This was discussed in several contexts, including the issue of assigning how many stable slots a tamer should have. (It was also discussed in terms of combat skills).
  The dev team explained that they do have a general preference toward real skill over item buffed skill, but it is a tricky thing to change due to the fact that skill items (such as jewelry) DO exist in the game and are a huge part of the way people have played this game for years. Sweeping changes that affect peoples' playstyles must be very cafefully considered and handled on a case by case basis. That's not to say the team isn't working on ways to favor real skill over jewel-buffed skill, but that such changes will be made over time as opposed to a sweeping change in rules. The recent change to spell forms and jewelry was cited as an example that was theoretically a proper change, but got strong reactions from players because it affected the way they've customized their character templates and how they've been playing the game.

Miscellaneous:

• Does the team endorse any third party sites for buying UO gold? Jeremy responded: Buying and selling items for cash in Ultima Online is NOT ILLEGAL. However, UO does not endorse any sellers and completely stays out of it. The head of Mythic is strongly opposed to the sale of in-game items for cash in MMO's, but UO has long held the stance that it is legal and that will not likely change.
• Regarding the fact that the login servers went down during the Town Hall Meeting: somebody accused Jeremy of forgetting to feed the hamsters before she left for Chicago. Her response: “That's not my job! I don't feed the hamsters – I just report on their condition!”
• Leurocian was hoping that the Scoundrel Rico would be in attendance to explain what the “la” means at the end of each of his posts in the forums.
• Does UO have GM's specifically trained in UO? Yes. How many? Not sure, but there is a dedicated UO customer support team.

 

[Flora Green]

Plant seeds will NOT become stackable. Jeremy noted that they will really need a BOD style storage system due to the way that the individual seed items are handled. Since seeds with different ID's look the same, making them stackable would be confusing for players, aside from the lack of feasibility from a programming standpoint.

And still no timeline on this book or when the 9th Anniversary tiles will be available again.

Thanks for the notes, kitiara.

 

[UOKaiser]

Chivarly needs to not be a 60 point skill anymore
Now thats gonna be funny only way to cast enemy of one and conscrete wep would be with 100 points in chivary lol where are we gonna cramp that in our 720 points template. nerf=balance=nerf. raise the skill points to 1000 if you really gonna make things more difficult.

"Epic encounters" where in the world we gonna get 10-15 people at once in dead shards. Everyone will try a way to do it with 3 people or less. Trying to find 10-15 people that you get along with and at the exact time you go is gonna be 1000 times more difficult than trying to find spellweavers to make a circle with and we all know how hard that is already. I give it a short time of people getting toghether for it then it will be maybe once every blue moon a group get toghether and go. We are not WOW with million subsrcibers! We are UO with lucky 100-200 unique players in a shard thats active.

Hell I can pretty much recognize everyplayer that actually plays on atlantic and pacific and those are some of the most active shards. When we see a new face in the shard its usually a existing player with another account or character.

Oh one more thing stop restricting players nerfing everything. If somethings too overpowered just boost up the power of the other templates to match it. Lets go forward not back. As I said before if players want everyone equal make a shard with no armor,no weps, no skills and everyone with the exact same stats of everyone else then they can play nice and equal to each other.

 

[Tina Small]

Many thanks to both Dermott and Kitiara for the time you took to listen to the meeting and post your notes.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Thanks to all who provided their notes; and to WRR for the live coverage and the download.

-Galen's player

 

[Maplestone]

[*]Will we be able to convert from human to gargoyle? Probably, but there won't likely be a storyline or quest attached to the process a la human-to-elf because the team could not think of a storyline that didn't sound completely stupid.

And they didn't even ask?!!

* Cultural exchange project.

* "Hey I think I have an idea on how to improve polymorph. Gather these exotic reagents. Ok, now ... oops."

* Once Soulstones are shown to work, mystics begin to investigate the possibility of a deeper connection between all sentient species, theorizing that an aspect of the gem of immortality covers not just lands, but souls and that there are facets of a being spread across many forms. By assembling fragments of a soulstone-like fatestone, one can access those other facets of one's being. The human-to-elf-to-human quests turn out to be a special case where the facets of souls are so close that one can cross over between human and elven bodies relatively easily. By collecting and assembling the correct fragments of fatestone (minor artifact rarity puzzle pieces), one can polymorph permanently in body and mind between two species. For now, human, elf and gargoyle are the only known fates, but perhaps some day others will follow.

Anyway, just a thought.

 

[Sarphus]

...

To me, unless they're leaving out some information, I see little difference between Embueing coming to UO and Enchanting in WoW.

I was HOPING that Embueing would work differently in that we'd be able to actually pull a mod on an item OFF of the item itself and attempt to add it to another item, but apparently this is not to be the case.

Instead it looks like we'll probably get the WoW Enchanting skill lifted wholesale (with a few possible differences.

Could be another case of "what could have been", but as always, it remains to be seen.

Yeah, that was a big disappointment to me too.

I see wow enchanting as being not as cool as the ability to build custom items by adding/removing mods from items.

 

[Maplestone]

I see wow enchanting as being not as cool as the ability to build custom items by adding/removing mods from items.

I tend to agree that for flavor it would be nice to have fragments marked with the property they will embue ... but that's a cosmetic change. Either way, the barriers to limit the rate of valorite-runic-level (or *shudder* 5x100% items) creations would still need to be the same.

 

[AirmidCecht]

I had a great time at the meet up and look forward to posting some pictures for you all as soon as I get home Monday night. Thank you Jeremy and Leurocian!

*hugs*