Directing players from the official website to
any fan website for information is not a good solution, we need first hand information on the official website that is managed by someone whose full time job is to update the site with reliable information.
Japanese website is doing this successfully for quite some time, did you know that they released guides for the items on the theme packs?
Here's their Distillery guide:
Distillery - ultimaonline.jp
Here's their Raised Garden Bed guide:
Raised Garden Bed - ultimaonline.jp
While both stratics and uoguide had no idea what the signs ++ or -- on yeast did, Japanese players already had that information from their official website,
and here is the good part, before these theme packs are released to shards.
Their site is up-to-date for High Seas too, here's their lobster fishing guide:
Lobster Fishing - ultimaonline.jp
And talking about beginners, here's their Moving Your Character page:
Move Your Character - ultimaonline.jp
they explain moving for both clients with additional graphics for Gargoyle flying. They also explain global chat on their Basic Conversation and zooming on the next page for EC client. We have the same page on our playguide here:
Moving Your Character | Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online
without any info on EC, Gargoyle flying and the list of facets doesn't have Ter Mur.
So, no, not a fan website, we need someone like the person editing the Japanese website. All we have is a single community coordinator who is responsible for three different games and only posts things like publish notes or brief messages regarding maintenance or a bug on uoherald. It is quite obvious that it is not her/his job to update the website, cause if it was, he/she could at least fix the year 1970 on the
Live Events page which is there for more than six months.
Edit: Here's one of their beginner pages translated using Google Translate, also check the menu to the right:
Google Translate: Beginners - Fighting - ultimaonline.jp
Not too complex with full of details, but nothing is left out either, just right for a beginner.