A new edition of the Ultima Online Newsletter has been released you can read the newsletter via the Continue Reading link below.
Continue reading...
Continue reading...
-
Hail Guest! We're looking for Community Content Contribuitors to Stratics. If you would like to write articles, fan fiction, do guild or shard event recaps, it's simple. Find out how in this thread: Community Contributions
-
Greetings Guest, Having Login Issues? Check this thread!
-
Hail Guest!, Please take a moment to read this post reminding you all of the importance of Account Security.
-
Hail Guest! Please read the new announcement concerning the upcoming addition to Stratics. You can find the announcement Here!
Running several accts at once on 1 monitor. So several small game windows. And then set the clients to follow the one you are controlling. Mainly at idocs and em events You can see some videos on YouTube showing people cheating this way. Idoc cheats I think they are called. 4 videos
This is NOT multi boxing. Multi boxing is using a single command stroke to control multiple clients simultaneously. For example:
You hit a macro for Ebolt and 4 clients cast it at once. Playing multiple clients at the same time as long as they are controlled independently is perfectly legal.
20 years old video game and you still dont know the difference between Multi-Client and Multibox
@Merus is 100% correct.
- Awards
- 3
You might want to read the second paragraph of the newsletter. Mesanna has provided yet another fun outlet for griefers. Keep your houses private.
If theToS is violated in your house you get actioned too. Lock those doors.
She cannot bother looking at 20 entries in the last keep contest to make 3 players happy but she can help the griefers one more time. (no I did not enter)
Lock your doors.
IF they meant it applies only to co-owners or friends of the house they should have said so.
If theToS is violated in your house you get actioned too. Lock those doors.
She cannot bother looking at 20 entries in the last keep contest to make 3 players happy but she can help the griefers one more time. (no I did not enter)
Lock your doors.
IF they meant it applies only to co-owners or friends of the house they should have said so.
Last edited:
Not a newsletter at all.
Very light on the news.
More like a cheerleading letter.
Vague notions and wording about what might or might not be coming up.
Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid
Very light on the news.
More like a cheerleading letter.
Vague notions and wording about what might or might not be coming up.
Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid
- Awards
- 1
Yeah... after reading that paragraph I could only sit here... look at the screen and think.. wtliteralF??You might want to read the second paragraph of the newsletter. Mesanna has provided yet another fun outlet for griefers. Keep your houses private.
If theToS is violated in your house you get actioned too. Lock those doors.
She cannot bother looking at 20 entries in the last keep contest to make 3 players happy but she can help the griefers one more time. (no I did not enter)
Lock your doors.
IF they meant it applies only to co-owners or friends of the house they should have said so.
Asinine...
- Awards
- 5
Hmmm so they do everything backwards yet again, let's make a change that will encourage spiteful griefing but do nothing about areas where scripters are impacting gameplay 24/7...good job! NOT!
It's not like they have no proof of the scripters actions, they have been sent enough videos and screenshots...
It's not like they have no proof of the scripters actions, they have been sent enough videos and screenshots...
- Awards
- 3
Put your houses on private or be banned. I think we need to get on the soapbox and voice our opinions here about this, this is a game changer, I had to reset the security of mine public homes, and clear a long listing of friends. Now people cannot get to the repair stations and have to sit on the steps to shop and mine homes are in the wild, you are a neeb shopping for cheap training suit, and along come something that can eat you where you are standing. @Mesanna I hope you are reading this.
Almost speechless still.
The idea they could even think this up, much less make the concept public to the players, should explain to anyone still curious as to the mindset running this game.
So they will back off this, or else say we meant to say "and they are friended to the house" or some such, just to cover tail.
And then they wonder why the game is failing...
The idea they could even think this up, much less make the concept public to the players, should explain to anyone still curious as to the mindset running this game.
So they will back off this, or else say we meant to say "and they are friended to the house" or some such, just to cover tail.
And then they wonder why the game is failing...
This is just insane! So now anyone can come into any public house and start yelling obscenities and vulgarities and have a house owner's account actioned? As written it's just that simple.
It may be time for me to come to the realization that I've spent way too much of my life and treasure inside an online fantasy world. My life, my wallet, my family and my health will all be the better for it.
Last break I stored as much as I could anticipating the obligatory eventual return. This time I'm gonna give some away and delete the rest.
It may be time for me to come to the realization that I've spent way too much of my life and treasure inside an online fantasy world. My life, my wallet, my family and my health will all be the better for it.
Last break I stored as much as I could anticipating the obligatory eventual return. This time I'm gonna give some away and delete the rest.
If someone gives me a pet at any level, Using a piece of paper or the Pet Planner on Cah, I could remove the points that were added and the pet would be the same base pet. The exact HP str and resist would be different but it would be the same built pet when done. The pets have starting ranges for each value. This is not a mystery.
Either they do not know how their own game mechanics work or they are too afraid to say, we have said no to that request over and over and we are saying NO again.
3. Is it possible to add a pet-respec token?
All creatures, including pets, spawn with a random set of starting stats. This is how variation within pet species is simulated in the game world and how pet training accounts for some pets being on the cusp of one slot level vs another. The starting stats of a pet are not tracked and training progress is not saved. Due to this we unfortunately cannot offer pet-respec ability.
random set of starting stats.
They are random within a known range.
Either they do not know how their own game mechanics work or they are too afraid to say, we have said no to that request over and over and we are saying NO again.
3. Is it possible to add a pet-respec token?
All creatures, including pets, spawn with a random set of starting stats. This is how variation within pet species is simulated in the game world and how pet training accounts for some pets being on the cusp of one slot level vs another. The starting stats of a pet are not tracked and training progress is not saved. Due to this we unfortunately cannot offer pet-respec ability.
random set of starting stats.
They are random within a known range.
All it needs is a tool that works just like the training but removes things... every single property has a weight when it gets added... you subtract it by removing the same weight... and adding it back to the pets spending points to reallocate.
My guess: the new rule is meant to cover cases where the house owner is a willing accomplice, e.g. providing safe storage for ore mined by a throwaway scripting account.
I doubt that they're planning to ban house owners for illegal actions committed in their house without their knowledge or consent...
But the wording of the rule is way too vague, a clarification would be in order.
I doubt that they're planning to ban house owners for illegal actions committed in their house without their knowledge or consent...
But the wording of the rule is way too vague, a clarification would be in order.
not quite, but close: it's controlling the accounts simultaneously usually with a few simple commands. not just following which, technically, would be legal. and officially this confusion, about which is which, is one reason why it's hard to combat. hard to tell certain allowed things from non-allowed things.
unless of course you go to IDOCs or EM events like you said in which case it becomes fairly obvious.
For 5 slot pets:
Exactly. A tool that removes 1501 points from your pet. Puts the pet at 4 slots. The player chooses the points. No category can go lower than the max start points. (you cant take 1501 points of mana from a Serpentine Dragon.)
That would fix many pet mistakes.
[We would also like to update everyone on a new policy as it relates to how we handle ToS violations within a house. If players are caught in a house violating the ToS, in any form, the account which owns the house will also be actioned.]
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*starts up some junk accounts to get people banned*
oh wait, people can do it 2 me too. damn it.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*starts up some junk accounts to get people banned*
oh wait, people can do it 2 me too. damn it.
My guess as well that it means those who have boxes out on the front and script miners are recalling in and out all day everyday sort of thing... but yeah... seriously would be a griefing tool to use to get people you don't like banned.
So hopefully they will clarify that and all... I mean IMO if the house is public and someone is scripting there and doing something against the ToS but they are friended/co-owned or whatever to the house then yeah ban them both... but if it's just some random person in a public house and you get banned for being the owner that would close down every rune-library and every other public house in no time... everyone would move to private housing...
That's what I said was great turn all my houses private then... most all of my homes have ALWAYS been public... I don't really even have private houses save on Siege and even there many are public but just locked. I don't know... seems to me that they didn't think that statement through...
But then my reading that I said "Sounds to me like they are saying NO to pretty much everything and doesn't sound like they are going to be doing anything... " To which I got chastised for and I said OK then lets break it down...
The letter was rather small doesn't really say much we didn't know... the Q & A part was like this:
Blackthorns: Not doing anything now gonna talk about it... maybe take suggestions blah blah but not doing anything right now...
Stuff with the Fellowship and Pirates: No answer to anything, nothing specific just they promise to tell us something at a later date about it ... non-answer.
Pet respec token: Nope not doing it ... even though many of us tamers would be ok to buy this token and get a random pet back but IMO there ought to be some way to add into the game a way for the game to actually know WTF your pet started at... seriously LAME excuse...
Blocked locations... Now we all know this is a copout... I can't tell you how many times I've been told there is something blocking me from recalling home only to log in there and there isn't anything there at all..... and I know for a fact Malag doesn't recall to the house anymore with his rune though it's marked the same as every other character I own... he recalls "home" and it moves him to a safe location out in front of the house next door... though every single other character I have recalls in front of my house... he doesn't... he gets moved to in front of the house next door... which is dumb but it's all good... so there is really NO reason they can't do this other than they are LAZY. And they can get mad at me all they want but prove me wrong. There are several examples of ways that are already in place in other parts of the game that allow this to work... so the excuse is bogus IMO... but it's another NO not doing it...
So pretty much the entire newsletter was No, followed by more no and a serious lack of any real information.
From a coding standpoint, what they're saying makes sense. When a pet is trained up the old stats are overwritten by the new ones. So there's no way of knowing what a pet started with. Sure, each pet has a range, but where was that pet in the range?
The ranges are not that large and its based on points. You can deconstruct a pet with a spreadsheet or on paper. If you use all the points when building, a 2 slot pet that ranks 89% will rank 89% at 5 slots. If the pet re rolls to 89% it will build the exact same way when you put the points back on. Try it on the Cah pet planner.
The news letters are always small. Think they are running out of things to make up.
isn't that what I said? Using main char and the others are set to follow? At least that's what I was trying to say. Having 3 monitors up and having 3 clients running is legal as you can switch from one to the others. But having multiple accts auto following in not......... Prob me just articulating badly as usual
I did not include to say, auto looting or like above, main acct fires weapon, the others auto fire following main acct. at EM events, etc multiple hits for the price of 1
Naa you said running three client on one monitor and them following. Having three clients on one monitor is perfectly legal as long as each client is operated solo by switching between each open client. As others have said it is when you have characters on multiple clients (either on one monitor or several monitors) all doing the exact SAME ACTION by pressing one set of keys. So cast ebolt on client A and the characters on client B and C also cast at the same time with ONE keystroke.
At least we know now. I knew what I wanted to say Now hopefully we will get a reply form the Dev's, not here though, the forum with regards to action taken against public houses
Now hopefully we will get a reply form the Dev's, not here though, the forum with regards to action taken against public houses
- Awards
- 3
Ok.... I am from the Atlantic shard... born and raised there... I was just about to open a casino/tavern/chicken fighting pit- @Mesanna
What do I do? can I go forward? Im holding my breath here. Please respond before I turn blue and faint.
Oh wait a minute- what about my houses that have vendors-im gona have a nervous breakdown
Thank you
Queen Arya
Toad Town
Atlantic shard
What do I do? can I go forward? Im holding my breath here. Please respond before I turn blue and faint.
Oh wait a minute- what about my houses that have vendors-im gona have a nervous breakdown
Thank you
Queen Arya
Toad Town
Atlantic shard
- Awards
- 3
Had a couple friends by to see if they could enter any of the open space of the castle, also I strongly suggest you keep the detect hidden icon on the game screen to check for hidden people I plan on make sure all our characters have it
Attachments
Last edited:
I feel like some of you are behaving slightly paranoid about these changes. What have you done that is so egregious you think people will waste their time to try and get you banned? My thoughts, if you have that many enemies in a game then you probably did something to deserve it. Just make the doors in your public house accessible to only your friends. Problem solved.
Mesanna and company definitely missed the mark- I get it. Their attention should be spent less on the Gen Chat Trolls, people farming iron and lumber AFK, or unattended training skills and WAYYYY more time watching the events, idocs, and certain areas where high tier loot can be farmed without punishment.
Mesanna and company definitely missed the mark- I get it. Their attention should be spent less on the Gen Chat Trolls, people farming iron and lumber AFK, or unattended training skills and WAYYYY more time watching the events, idocs, and certain areas where high tier loot can be farmed without punishment.
I have lots of enemies, and continue to make more every chance I get. I hate all of you.
That being said, I have no fear of anyone macroing in my house to try to get me banned. As a matter of fact, I invite anyone to come give it a try! If I have no fear of this, I find it unreasonable for anyone else to.
You are delusional! The fact that there are scripters running at all at places like events and idocs is evidence that there are unscrupulous people playing this game for personal gain. These kinds of people are exactly the kind who would see a nice prime property or museum whose owner might not be actively playing right now and decide to use the newly announced system to get the account banned so they can loot it or sell a newly placed house.
- Awards
- 6
exactly.
last night someone asked me how I was (in General Chat) and I asked if they had seen the newsletter.
they hadn't, so I told them.
And right away someone else mentioned time to get rid of... (named someone who has a Luna house & known to have Castles)
what gets me is that they are more worried about this... when afk people at Dungeon Blackthorn gets a reprieve, but they take the spawn away.
And you believed them?
I would believe that people would use it to "get rid" of people. People grief others all day every day... why would it surprise you that they would use a mechanic such as this to get folk banned? They do so many terrible things to one another all day long.
What gets me is she focuses on this... though I'll say that I'm glad they are focusing on afk scripters.
Now I don't much care about folks in their house working up some boring skill.... but the guy who is 23/7 mining, lumberjacking, doing whatever recalling in and out all day farming what-ever to turn a profit and sell stuff so he can make RL $$$ that I do really care about.
Those are generally the ones who aren't above duping, multi-boxing, griefing and scamming... and their kind of ilk I'd be very happy to have gone from UO.
I wish they took an equally strong stand against griefers and scammers. But as I said their kind are usually the ones doing other nefarious things... like duping and scripting.
What gets me is she focuses on this... though I'll say that I'm glad they are focusing on afk scripters.
Now I don't much care about folks in their house working up some boring skill.... but the guy who is 23/7 mining, lumberjacking, doing whatever recalling in and out all day farming what-ever to turn a profit and sell stuff so he can make RL $$$ that I do really care about.
Those are generally the ones who aren't above duping, multi-boxing, griefing and scamming... and their kind of ilk I'd be very happy to have gone from UO.
I wish they took an equally strong stand against griefers and scammers. But as I said their kind are usually the ones doing other nefarious things... like duping and scripting.
I went back through the last 1.5 years of the newsletters, back to when the TOS violations started being reported, and put the numbers in a spreadsheet. The results are a little interesting. The way the numbers jumped in the last period makes it look like there might have been a hefty increase in (cheating) players, something happened to the GM staff (increased numbers? different tools? started paying attention to player reports?), and/or the reporting period was longer than in previous newsletters.
- Awards
- 5
It looks more like numbers were just 'made up' on this last newsletter to justify this change, it doesn't actually show a steady increase, some months are much worse and some are much better. An announcement that they are making changes and suddenly this newsletter shows a huge jump in UM, Multi-boxing and disruptive behaviour....
Call me cynical, but I just don't believe anything they say any more.
Call me cynical, but I just don't believe anything they say any more.
The sudden rise is because of EJ, I am fairly certain. Why not, when you can do it without repercussion? If you get caught you can just make another EJ account...IP bans don't mean anything anymore.
The Return to Britannia was a much better program, they could come back for a month, see if they wanted to play again, and how many of their old friends were still around. Then it was done for a year.
With EJ, you can play year-round with as many accounts as you want to make up. And since they are throw-aways, who cares if they get banned? Yall have confused the scripting/UM'ing issue. Very few are scripting in a house-not the idoc people, the EM event farmers, the roof farmers, etc. They're just macro'ing skills-who cares? That doesn't effect others if you go 7x gm overnight from macroing in a house....botting and scripting at idocs and events does however. And banning a homeowner and Um'er for skilling won't change the root complaint.
IT's just blah blah blah to make things look good.
The Return to Britannia was a much better program, they could come back for a month, see if they wanted to play again, and how many of their old friends were still around. Then it was done for a year.
With EJ, you can play year-round with as many accounts as you want to make up. And since they are throw-aways, who cares if they get banned? Yall have confused the scripting/UM'ing issue. Very few are scripting in a house-not the idoc people, the EM event farmers, the roof farmers, etc. They're just macro'ing skills-who cares? That doesn't effect others if you go 7x gm overnight from macroing in a house....botting and scripting at idocs and events does however. And banning a homeowner and Um'er for skilling won't change the root complaint.
IT's just blah blah blah to make things look good.
- Awards
- 5
I agree that Return-to-Britannia was a better idea and it was much less restricting for players that were unsure whether to bother returning. I guess EA wanted a version of free-to-play because everyone else has one and as usual the Dev team went about it all wrong. I don't even object to people raising skills in their own home with one eye on the screen, it's different if it's in the middle of Haven, Luna or inside your guild shop....the real issues are still not being tackled and a lot of innocent people will get burned with this change, I'm pretty sure of that!
I seldom go to EM events, so I was a bit surprised to see the reported jump in actions taken for multiboxing and disruptive behavior. Did people who go to EM events notice any of "the usual suspects" being whisked away from EM events in the October-November timeframe? Or did any of the multi-boxing teams found in dungeon hot spots suddenly go away for good? I will admit my playing time has been severely limited lately and I don't always get here to read about what's going on, but I really don't remember anyone talking here about seeing a big difference in multiboxing and disruptive behavior. Has it really happened and it just wasn't worth mentioning?
I wounder how many of those were paying accounts, my guess is that the majority of them were EJ Accounts
With all of the restrictions placed on EJ accounts for gathering resources, are they even used for that? They can only gather iron ore and regular logs and ML gems (if mining or LJ skill is GM). They can't put stuff in mailboxes or secured or locked containers and they can't drop stackable items on locked down piles. Assuming they are "new" accounts/characters and therefore don't have tons of existing stuff in the bank, they can only access 20-28 bank slots, depending on expansions purchased. They don't get double resources in Fel.
So if EJ accounts are being used for resource gathering, are they recalling to the bank and just piling up iron ingots/ore, regular logs/boards, and ML gems? After accounting for the ML gems (6 from mining, 1 from LJ, and 1 from fishing), that leaves 12-20 bank slots for piles of ingots, ore, logs, or boards. How long would it take for those slots to be filled up and the bank is no longer usable because the account can't use commodity deeds to remove the piles of resources? I've never run scripts, so I don't know if the bank would also have to hold other things like extra shovels, extra tinkering tools, or repair deeds, thus limiting room for gathered resources.
Have people seen a big increase in the number of characters recalling to banks that could be engaged in mining or lumberjacking? Endless Journey came out in April 2018. Why would there be a sudden spike in using EJ accounts to script resource gathering now, a year and a half later? Has there been a sudden increase in demand for iron ingots and regular boards and ML gems that would push RMT operations to start relying on armies of EJ accounts to gather them? And if the spikes in enforcement actions are from EJ accounts engaging in other content, which content would that be that occurred in the October-November timeframe? And how would you use EJ accounts to benefit from it when they have such limited abilities for storing or dropping off anything useful they acquired? I'm probably just naive about the scripting and the multi-boxing. Have never done the scripting and my laptop would burn up quickly if it had to support multiple accounts running.
It feels to me as if those increased numbers are either bogus or something happened with the GM team to improve their abilities to catch and take actions on cheaters or they started focusing on areas of the game that they previously ignored. I'm having a hard time picturing the increased actions coming from enforcement on EJ accounts, especially for resource gathering.
So if EJ accounts are being used for resource gathering, are they recalling to the bank and just piling up iron ingots/ore, regular logs/boards, and ML gems? After accounting for the ML gems (6 from mining, 1 from LJ, and 1 from fishing), that leaves 12-20 bank slots for piles of ingots, ore, logs, or boards. How long would it take for those slots to be filled up and the bank is no longer usable because the account can't use commodity deeds to remove the piles of resources? I've never run scripts, so I don't know if the bank would also have to hold other things like extra shovels, extra tinkering tools, or repair deeds, thus limiting room for gathered resources.
Have people seen a big increase in the number of characters recalling to banks that could be engaged in mining or lumberjacking? Endless Journey came out in April 2018. Why would there be a sudden spike in using EJ accounts to script resource gathering now, a year and a half later? Has there been a sudden increase in demand for iron ingots and regular boards and ML gems that would push RMT operations to start relying on armies of EJ accounts to gather them? And if the spikes in enforcement actions are from EJ accounts engaging in other content, which content would that be that occurred in the October-November timeframe? And how would you use EJ accounts to benefit from it when they have such limited abilities for storing or dropping off anything useful they acquired? I'm probably just naive about the scripting and the multi-boxing. Have never done the scripting and my laptop would burn up quickly if it had to support multiple accounts running.
It feels to me as if those increased numbers are either bogus or something happened with the GM team to improve their abilities to catch and take actions on cheaters or they started focusing on areas of the game that they previously ignored. I'm having a hard time picturing the increased actions coming from enforcement on EJ accounts, especially for resource gathering.
- Awards
- 5
I tried to use an old account that was EJ as a resource gatherer and it was a major pain in the neck! I could gather near my house but since I couldn't be friended or use containers I just had to drop everything outside my door, switch accounts and pick it up with the other account. EJ is very restricted, even if you have other paid accounts it's hard to use it for anything much, I only needed wood for arrows and had no room for LJ on my crafter.
Its not resource gathering the EJ's are doing, obviously since they cant access bags or boxes. They are legendary farming in various different spots of the game nowhere near any homes. Most people who post in here seem to have no real idea what is actually going on. EJ accounts are completely broken as a idea for this game, just remove them. EJ's can still get drops at places in the game such as the roof and it shouldn't be allowed, they can also get stat scrolls from the harrower even though the devs think they cant. Just shutdown the EJ system and the game will get better overnight.