Dead Easter?

[Poo]

So that would be a no for Easter this year?
im just guessing as there as been no word from the Dev's about anything, unless i missed it?
not even a repeat of last year?
nothing.....
not a really good start for the new Producer.
no Valentine's Day swag and now no Easter, next thing you will tell me he has never heard of second breakfast.
or third.

 

[Amber Witch]

In the UO Community Manager's last live stream interview with Kyronix that question was asked and he said there wasn't going to be an Easter Event. There was a discussion about that and I don't remember what exactly his response was. Here's a link to the interview:

 

[DM Wyvern]

In the UO Community Manager's last live stream interview with Kyronix that question was asked and he said there wasn't going to be an Easter Event. There was a discussion about that and I don't remember what exactly his response was. Here's a link to the interview:

Yes, TLDR (or listen) Kyronix wants to move the dev team away from expending time and resources on yearly cultural events that might not translate well for an international audience - and instead focus team resources on developing global events like the recent Shadow's Awakening series of events:

Shadows Awakening - UOGuide, the Ultima Online Encyclopedia

www.uoguide.com

 

[Izzy MBC]

Yes, TLDR (or listen) Kyronix wants to move the dev team away from expending time and resources on yearly cultural events that might not translate for an international audience - and instead focus team resources on developing global events like the recent Shadow's Awakening series of events:

I'm a little torn on this. It's a break from 'tradition', but from an 'Ultima canon' perspective, perhaps real world religious calendar events never made sense anyway? If they are replacing it with universe-specific stuff, especially if they reflected on momentous events from the Ultima series, then that'd be really cool. Unfortunately, as a millennial, the Ultima series of games kinda passed by me so I can't really speak to any of it (although I have briefly played Ultima VII and VIII recently, cool games tbh).

 

[Potgut]

not a really good start for the new Producer.

To me, I like to think that it's a sign that new producer is actually using his small dev team he has available to focus on something different instead doing the same rinse and repeat of the last many years. Hopefully what Kyronix will focus on now will amount to something different, interesting, or greater down the road.

Plus, holiday related gifts flooding everybodys storage and vendors from prior years, I don't know how much more of this clutter we need. Maybe it will encourage more of us to dust off our old holiday decos and put them into use.

Since we just got a new producer so recently, I'm going to be patient and give Kyronix a chance. Because of small dev team they have, maybe sacrificing some holiday content might be the price to pay for some bigger UO overhaul or content that UO has needed. Time will tell. I would love to see more UO lore related content, something that's more original that ties into the UO history and events.

 

[skett]

NL will probably be the main focus with this team (the last team)

 

[Lokea]

If they are replacing it with universe-specific stuff, especially if they reflected on momentous events from the Ultima series, then that'd be really cool. Unfortunately, as a millennial, the Ultima series of games kinda passed by me so I can't really speak to any of it (although I have briefly played Ultima VII and VIII recently, cool games tbh).

The Ultima series has a very large amount of anniversaries/events that could be celebrated if they want to go that route:

Timeline of the Ultima universe - The Codex of Ultima Wisdom, a wiki for Ultima and Ultima Online

But yeah, if getting away from holidays speeds up other content, I'm all for it. When I came back, I looked through all of the holiday offerings I had missed over the last 10+ years, and while there were plenty of cool things, and they were all easy enough to find on vendors, I wonder how much time was spent on them and what it could have been used for instead.

I highly recommend you spend more time on U7 and U8 and maybe jump back to Ultima VI (which gets into the gargoyles). I know a lot of UO players are too young to have experienced 6-8 when they were originally released, but it was an amazing time and an amazing run of games that were really pushing RPGs along - I like the earlier games as well, but 6-8 are still very playable (and there are modern game engines/emulators that will let you play them on modern systems with some quality-of-life changes), and you'll see the roots of UO.

 

[Poo]

my 3 adult kids who are playing since last summer where all waiting for the Easter stuff after i bragged it all up.... and now nothing.
i guess if they put on more global arcs and stuff then that would be fine, but wouldn't it be easier to turn on small event stuff and rinse repeat since you have already made it to keep people occupied instead of just hoping they will enjoy your once a year arc?
like the Halloween stuff, they turn that on and every couple years chuck in something new.
you don't hear people complaining about that, gives people stuff to do.
Easter last couple years was fun.
had some excellent stuff to get off it, everyone enjoyed it for the couple weeks.
literally low hanging fruit.
toggle is on and let the paying people keep themselves occupied while you make your arc.
that's what i would do.
like Valentines Day, put up a rose or a plushy bear clicky.
they have done it in years past, just change the colour and its label, what is that 30 minutes of coding to tweak an already existing item?
shuts people up for all of February.
same thing for April, turn on the bunny hunt and counterfeit egg hunt.
that shuts up people for April.
Halloween eats up Oct-Nov
Christmas eats up Dec.
Sept is eaten up by the Anniversary.
that leave 6 months open for your Arc for the year, run a story ark May-Aug that leaves 2 months of the year that are open for your paying clients to busy themselves.
bored people tend to wonder off....
and if enough wonder off.....

 

[Petra Fyde]

I see these gaps between global events as the ideal time to do player events without losing most of your potential participants to whatever global event is happening. This past Tuesday Europa governors hosted a vorpal bunny hunt, which had a bit of a surprise for us, because as well as the brightly colored eggs we said we'd give a prize for, we found curiously adorned eggs were spawning too.

 

[Keven2002]

i guess if they put on more global arcs and stuff then that would be fine, but wouldn't it be easier to turn on small event stuff and rinse repeat since you have already made it to keep people occupied instead of just hoping they will enjoy your once a year arc?
like the Halloween stuff, they turn that on and every couple years chuck in something new.
you don't hear people complaining about that, gives people stuff to do.
Easter last couple years was fun.
had some excellent stuff to get off it, everyone enjoyed it for the couple weeks.
literally low hanging fruit.
toggle is on and let the paying people keep themselves occupied while you make your arc.
that's what i would do.
like Valentines Day, put up a rose or a plushy bear clicky.
they have done it in years past, just change the colour and its label, what is that 30 minutes of coding to tweak an already existing item?
shuts people up for all of February.
same thing for April, turn on the bunny hunt and counterfeit egg hunt.
that shuts up people for April.
Halloween eats up Oct-Nov
Christmas eats up Dec.
Sept is eaten up by the Anniversary.
that leave 6 months open for your Arc for the year, run a story ark May-Aug that leaves 2 months of the year that are open for your paying clients to busy themselves.

I can see both sides.

I agree with you for the most part about using the prior years efforts to "re-run" things like V-Day etc; these are just small code changes that likely require minimal testing and would probably be quick/easy wins for people who like to collect clutter pixels.

That said, I see the thought about making it about one certain culture... so instead of calling it Easter they would call it something like Spring Solstice (which is essentially what they've done the past couple years).

At the end of the day, I think most people would be in favor of more, not less, content... whatever they call it doesn't matter to me (but I guess some people feel strongly otherwise).

 

[Silent Singer]

I don't mind missing Easter content. Even though I wish New Legacy had not happened and instead all that work went to prodo, it didn't. And I have revisited NL since publish 2 and wow! I consider this the Easter content. The new Blackthorn dungeon is a blast so far. And the rewards are things I've always wanted, like the golden armor sets from Blackthorn treasury. And the tmap antiquities are super rad. Named unique EM type items with my name on them, hell yeah! Any time we have to chunk Easter gifts for this type of stuff I am all for it.

 

[DM Wyvern]

I don't mind missing Easter content. Even though I wish New Legacy had not happened and instead all that work went to prodo, it didn't. And I have revisited NL since publish 2 and wow! I consider this the Easter content. The new Blackthorn dungeon is a blast so far. And the rewards are things I've always wanted, like the golden armor sets from Blackthorn treasury. And the tmap antiquities are super rad. Named unique EM type items with my name on them, hell yeah! Any time we have to chunk Easter gifts for this type of stuff I am all for it.

Hey @Silent Singer!

Really glad you decided to revisit New Legacy following Publish 2! I agree with you, now is a great time to check out New Legacy - between the Legendary Foes, Vesper Museum Antiquity Hunt and the Forsaken Bloodline event, there's a lot to explore and do on New Legacy now.

And the developers are fully committed to ensuring a great production experience, too. You may recall that when New Legacy launched at the end of last year, production had two consecutive events, resulting in several months of fun for production players. We on New Legacy had to content ourselves with the handful of Legendary Foes in the meantime. But the wait was worth it - and moving forward, the developers plan to toggle back and forth between production and New Legacy. ^_^

I see these gaps between global events as the ideal time to do player events without losing most of your potential participants to whatever global event is happening. This past Tuesday Europa governors hosted a vorpal bunny hunt, which had a bit of a surprise for us, because as well as the brightly colored eggs we said we'd give a prize for, we found curiously adorned eggs were spawning too.

I think this is an excellent suggestion too, Petra!

 

[Zynia]

I guess my question would be if they are "cancelling" traditional holiday gifts and events (Valentines, Easter) and focusing on international players; what "international" holidays have they added for that player base?

 

[Lokea]

I guess my question would be if they are "cancelling" traditional holiday gifts and events (Valentines, Easter) and focusing on international players; what "international" holidays have they added for that player base?

I don't think they plan on any new "holidays" for the foreseeable future, at least not like we've had them in the past.

I mentioned this on the official forums, but they could transition to something more automated, similar to say the Darkmoon Faire in WOW, and Ultima IX even provided a nice little setting for it, quoting myself:

Doesn’t have to be an island, could be something like this from Ultima IX: “ Now there was a certain inn, located midway between Britain and Yew, and famous for its excellent autumn ale. So good was the brew that many fine folk were given to retire to that place for a fortnight's holiday when the new casks were breached. Tents had to be pitched on the grounds to hold all the guests, and for two weeks each fall the place took on the air of a fair or festival.”

One week a month (or a weekend) just a fun thing to run around or meet up with friends there. The item collectors get items, for newer players there are things to do hat can help them out, for existing players it’s a chance to see other players outside of Malas or the spawns, etc. and because it’s like clockwork, unlike most events, there’s no stress if you can’t make it that month.

And being monthly, it won’t feel like a waste of dev resources for a one-off event.

Wouldn’t be hard to figure out what it could look like (but it would take some dev time) - we have 9 Ultima games and a handful of expansions (plus the two Worlds games) plus UO’s past, to poke around looking for events. A starting point would be having a Gypsy wagon at the entrance, and the paragraph I quoted above and looking at the Solstice and Spring Festivals from the games. Neutral ground between Fel and Tram players as well. There’s tons of NPCs from the games that haven’t been tapped.

 

[Pawain]

Since there is such a small team and they are constantly working on content, I imagined that some time after the events are over, one of the team said, anyone notice its already March? And they see which of these holidays they could put a deco item in. New Year, Valentine, St Pattys, Easter, or Spring. We have not been getting any of those each year. Its mixed with sometimes 2.

Sometime between Feb 1st and April 31st would be a good time to get a Clicky. I think the Animated Heart Balloons would be quite popular. People fall in love everywhere. IMO the valentine ones have been the best!

 

[Ivory Norwind]

I don't like NL and I don't like that you have to lose (in favor of NL) something in Classic UO. I'm already quite angry about the change a few years ago to the dungeons that are now inaccessible beyond the first level (first levels that are sometimes already too strong for one person). That then they have to lack essential things for fun on the simple Ultima Online especially if in favor of the MMRP I just don't like it. You're just capable of doing events for months (which completely blocked Solen Hive unless you went in a group) in favor of team games. I have been playing solo for I don't know how many years and I want to continue to be able to play alone.

 

[Cinderella]

my 3 adult kids who are playing since last summer where all waiting for the Easter stuff after i bragged it all up.... and now nothing.
i guess if they put on more global arcs and stuff then that would be fine, but wouldn't it be easier to turn on small event stuff and rinse repeat since you have already made it to keep people occupied instead of just hoping they will enjoy your once a year arc?
like the Halloween stuff, they turn that on and every couple years chuck in something new.
you don't hear people complaining about that, gives people stuff to do.
Easter last couple years was fun.
had some excellent stuff to get off it, everyone enjoyed it for the couple weeks.
literally low hanging fruit.
toggle is on and let the paying people keep themselves occupied while you make your arc.
that's what i would do.
like Valentines Day, put up a rose or a plushy bear clicky.
they have done it in years past, just change the colour and its label, what is that 30 minutes of coding to tweak an already existing item?
shuts people up for all of February.
same thing for April, turn on the bunny hunt and counterfeit egg hunt.
that shuts up people for April.
Halloween eats up Oct-Nov
Christmas eats up Dec.
Sept is eaten up by the Anniversary.
that leave 6 months open for your Arc for the year, run a story ark May-Aug that leaves 2 months of the year that are open for your paying clients to busy themselves.
bored people tend to wonder off....
and if enough wonder off.....

I have a bunch of green thorns

we could always do our own event

 

[skett]

I see these gaps between global events as the ideal time to do player events without losing most of your potential participants to whatever global event is happening. This past Tuesday Europa governors hosted a vorpal bunny hunt, which had a bit of a surprise for us, because as well as the brightly colored eggs we said we'd give a prize for, we found curiously adorned eggs were spawning too.

I see the gaps as a good time to trash / sell stuff /junk and close accounts down

 

[Ivory Norwind]

I see the gaps as a good time to trash / sell stuff /junk and close accounts down

Ok, but then where do you go? What's an alternative to the old dear Ultima Online????