In all fairness, maybe you should have posted Draconi's response too:
On April 4th we will be celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the current UO storyline. Wait, what? Two years of the same thing? That can't be right!
Oh but it is.The current story has been going on for 2 years now and has countless branches which don't seem to interconnect except in the most subtle of ways. This has led players to become disenfranchised from the story and just view each new event as "some monsters to kill". Here is some of the plot lines I can recall:
- Ricardo Being Executed
- Something dwelling under the abandoned City of Mistas
- Time rifts throughout Britannia and the appearance of the Time Lord
- Magincia being invaded, destroyed and evacuated
- That guy we defeated in the dungeon and Kingdom Reborn being announced (is that even active anymore or did it just end because we found out it was just about a new client?)
- Blackrock and Blackrock elementals spawning all over
- Britain Sewers maze
- All that stuff we learned about the Armageddon spell
- Book of Truth
- Candle of Love
- Ophidian Invasions (this may have been resolved, I'm not sure)
It is just one new thing after another, never tying into the old. No moments of discovery connecting things together. One of the biggest issues is there hasn't been even a hint at who is the main villain behind all this. Draconi has already mentioned that there is someone orchestrating all these events. Well that is quite obvious, how else would Daemon Berserkers be re-appearing all the time?
There needs some major pruning of what has become an overgrown tree of plot lines. Even if it is just a series of BNN articles. And this entire story should be wrapped up as soon as possible, so something fresh can begin and bring back the excitement we all had when Inu was first introduced. It is literally impossible to sum up what is going on because we still don't know after two years.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*gets out his shears*
No, seriously, let's organize and prune.
*** SPOILERS ***
Q: How can the events over the last two years be organized?
A: I'd divide it into four sections:
KR Announcement plotline
Old plotline, setup for major world changes for KR
New plotline
Filler
You can consider a new plotline started *now* (though I'll include the events of Magincia.) The old plotline basically supported major worldbuilding changes (Haven, Blood Dungeon, etc), and was split between many different peoples' efforts - hence multiple story branches and differing events.
The new live events team is a subset of the live design team, and we've established a unified goal around this event arc, featuring one final epic event at the end in a few months.
Now, admittedly, the new plotline is very much related to the old one, just as most previous arcs had some influence from the past ones. The old plotline can be considered backstory for this one.
A key difference in our production will be maintaining a single thread to the plotline, and tying up loose ends from last year. I believe there'll still be a lot of freedom and fun in the event, even if it's more linear, with coming changes to certain game systems.
Meanwhile, for those looking for the overarching "hand" that's been causing all the chaos of last year, they're here. Kronos unleashed them. More info soon. Everything else can be seen as their machinations from afar, or their followers'.
Part of the goal for the Live Events page on uo.com is to actually organize this sort of information and make it easy for players to jump into the events without reading half a book's worth of fiction and forum posts. Stay tuned!
Q: Will previous events have influence on the new plotline?
A: Yes. In fact, as mentioned above, the current plotline will at the least tie together everything but the filler events, and it'll do it pretty quickly.
Q: When is the next "major" content addition for the event arc?
A: Publish 52
Q: Will anything be happening until Pub 52?
A: Yes, the rift in Moonglow will continue to present problems and opportunities. Expect weekly or bi-weekly changes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim "Draconi" Cotten - UO Lead Designer - EA Mythic