[NEWS] A Question of Quests

[Community News]

​

[SIZE=+1]Ultima Online Stratics Weekly Announcement: [/SIZE]
​

​

This week we offer information on more of the new quests, we visited the humans in Underworld:

• Gretchen The Alchemist.
• Elder Dugan the Prospector
• Quartermaster Flint
• Quest items and rewards have also been added to the item catalogue Quests section

The rest of the week was spent creating something nice for our News teams, with a great deal of help from Lord Gareth and Xena Dragon, to whom I offer many, many thanks.


We've done a lot, but there's still a lot to do. If you'd like to help please send submissions, suggestions or snippets of information to
[email protected], [email protected], or you can just send a pm to Petra Fyde.

​

More...

 

[MissEcho]

Why do the 'search' features on stratics suck so much? In all my years of using stratics I have never found a 'site' search feature so frustrating as the one used here.

eg, type 'quest' or 'quests' into the 'Item Catalogue' search bar in the search feature (it isn't a creature or a map so this is the only category to use) with the HOPE of getting a list of quest items and/or reward items and you get:

Here are the results for your search of the UO Stratics - Item Catalogue:

0 results returned

I find this to be the case with 90% + of anything I am looking for. Unless you know the 'exact' name of a particular item, you may as well forget trying to use the 'seach' feature to find it. Search the item catalogue for 'veteran', 'veteran rewards', 'anniversary' 'anniversary rewards' etc and you get exactly the same result '0'. Pretend you are looking for a list of birthday bells, type in the word 'birthday' or even 'birthday bell' again you get '0'. Unless the 'item' you are searching for is actually entered into the catalogue as a totally separate page you won't find it, even if the item in question actually 'appears' on another stratics page. Eg type 'holiday bells' into the item catalogue you get '0', although if you go to the 'items' link, scroll down to 'holiday & special items' link and then scroll halfway down the page you will see a section on 'holiday bells'.

Most of the time people are searching for something they more than likely only know a little about it, hence the reason for the search, to find out MORE. Darned if I know why there isn't a general 'search' that does not have to be in a particular category of 'creature', 'item catalogue' or 'maps & locations'. If I type in 'birthday' or 'birthday bell' into the 'search' feature on UO Guide I get at least three hits, one of which is a list of the the 2006 gifts, naming all the birthday bells. If I type in 'veteran rewards' I get, guess what?, a whole page dealing with veteran rewards by year and item etc.

The creature search feature is just as bad.

Type 'mongbat', 'ettin', 'drake' or 'dragon' into the creature search and I guarantee you get NOTHING appear for any of these accept another 'search' box. Use this and you get a whole list of 'irrelevant' links that may or may not have anything to do with a particular 'creature'. Conversely if you type 'dragon' into the 'search' feature located ON the stratics hunters guide itself, you get a list of the different types of dragon, and may select whichever. This means you have to actually 'KNOW' of the existence of the Hunters Guide which you may or may not realise lurks under the 'monster link' in the side menu's.

Seems the 'maps & locations' is the only reasonably decent search feature box, most of the time you will get a map as long as you are not 'too' specific in your search.

I don't know, sometimes I have spent upwards of an HOUR or more searching for something on stratics which I KNOW is there, as I have seen or used it before, but trying to actually 'find' anything with the main 'search' bars is next to useless.

Is there any way a 'normal' search engine can be applied to stratics that lets you 'search' the whole 'site' for the actual 'words' you type in?

 

[Stupid Miner]

Because, in short, it's broke.
For now, you'll just have to get familiar with the side-bars. Once you get used to it, it's actually quicker anyway.

 

[MissEcho]

LOL @ for now

It's been like this for years. And it is only 'quicker' if you know what you are looking for and what subheading it is under, or even if you actually 'know' if what you are looking for exists. It is most difficult when you are trying to find out 'where' something came from, whether it is a 'legitimate' item or some kind of scam/dupe etc.

EG: You come across an item called 'Melissa's Cloak' after returning from time away and want to know what drops it, if it still drops or spawns, if it is a 'legal' item, if it was an event item, what event and when was it etc etc. I searched about 10 different item 'links' as well as tried searching in the item 'catalogue' for NIL result. Is this because there actually is nothing on melissa or her cloak on the whole of stratics?....... or just the fact that I am not looking at the right 'side menu' or 'link' and that the search engine is hopeless. If I type 'melissa' into the other site's search engine I get 'melissa's cloak', 'melissa the mage', a whole bunch of links to story arc mentions of melissa etc etc.

IS there anything about 'Melissa' and her cloak on Stratics? If so any link?

It is why for the first year and a half I played I never used stratics because whenever I went to the site to 'find' some information all I got was stuff that had no relationship to the info I was after or actually NO information at all. I used every possible site ACCEPT stratics when I ran my auction house for many years when trying to find information on the provenance of items. Stratics was the LAST place I would look due to the poor search facilities.

BTW, I am NOT having a 'go' at anyone, lately the effort towards 'content' and 'content updates' has been very impressive, my comment is more to the point that to search this site is totally frustrating and impossible, and to my mind should be the number ONE priority to get fixed. Take my comments as constructive criticism of the biggest hassle with it being 'user friendly'.

The reason people use 'other' sites is that the information is MUCH easier to find due to the search facilities.

 

[Pawain]

Thanks for the info!

I couldn't do the first two quests beause I never found fertile dirt or bones down there and I never found any other bodies but the ones by the entry and I could not interact with them.

 

[jbfortune]

LOL @ for now

BTW, I am NOT having a 'go' at anyone, lately the effort towards 'content' and 'content updates' has been very impressive, my comment is more to the point that to search this site is totally frustrating and impossible, and to my mind should be the number ONE priority to get fixed. Take my comments as constructive criticism of the biggest hassle with it being 'user friendly'.

The reason people use 'other' sites is that the information is MUCH easier to find due to the search facilities.

I have to agree. When I can find the information, its great, but often I give up without finding what I need and go to other, more easily searched sites.

 

[deadite]

www.uoguide.com

While I appreciate the Stratics updates, I only visit here for the forums. If I am playing and need to look something up quickly, I always hit UO Guide. Perhaps contributions of UO knowledge would be better served there...

 

[MissEcho]

Not really as that is a privately owned site up to the 'whim' of the owner to keep running. As is my site http://www.spellweave.com. Wiki's are great while they are running, I contributed a lot to the wiki when it was uostuff.com, then they decided to 'quit' they gave what they had to uoguide.com. What will happen to the stuff if uoguide owners decide to quit? I suppose stratics is also 'privately' owned, however it covers a huge amount of other gaming sites as well as UO so is more likely to be around longer, well in theory anyways!

Personally I think all game basic info should really be on UO.com. That 'should' be the first place to look for anything UO related. That is a pipedream.

When I was running an auction house there were times when I couldn't 'find' any reference to an item. I had to 'take the persons word for it' as to where the item came from and that it was legit. This is basically due to the fact that EA couldn't be bothered to supply even basic 'help' manuals, stopped doing 'boxes' with game info booklets, didn't supply even basic gameplay info on the web, let alone any record of items/events etc. Stratics for a long time didn't do any real maintenance, it has basically only been the in the last year that has shown a huge improvement in getting the stuff updated. Many 'private' sites and wiki's took up the recording functions of what 'should' be a basic game item 'database' and the records of the items have been lost as those sites 'disappear' etc.

Even some of the old 'rare' sites I used to use have now gone so a huge resource of info is now lost to the majority. It is nearly impossible now to find info on some items that used to be available. I used have a dozen 'rare' sites bookmarked, now I am down to 2 and they are pretty hit and miss on finding a lot of items. Just try and find a 'list' of what server birth rares there were on your shard when it was created. I think that is nearly impossible now, tho at one time I bet some site had it listed. No way I could ever find that info for my shard Oceania.

If you go to my site there is a link for UO Links on the menu, the sites I have there are pretty much the only ones I know of now that are regularly maintained or at least maintained in some kind of fashion and have content that covers a reasonable number of UO items, ie that are not just 'guild' or 'one topic' related. There could be more but those are the only ones I know of. As you can see the 'rares' section is pretty much non existent.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Believe me, no one is more frustrated by the lack of searchability on Stratics than me. I would dearly love to fix it, but all efforts I have made in that direction have so far failed.

However. Looking again at the existing search boxes, given what little I've managed to learn over the past months. I think I've fixed the creature search! Test it someone?

 

[MissEcho]

Yep it works now, thanks.

 

[Anakena]

Because, in short, it's broke.
For now, you'll just have to get familiar with the side-bars. Once you get used to it, it's actually quicker anyway.

There is an alternative : just use google and type what you are looking for followed by "site:uo.stratics.com". it will limit the google search to the site uo.stratics.com.

e.g. "melissa's cloak site:uo.stratics.com"

 

[Petra Fyde]

Unfortunately just before I started working on content we were switched over to a system called 'Drupal', Something in the way that was set up means that no content we've done in it shows up in a google search.
Searching as you've suggested will find any entries that our reporters have submitted to their various shard pages, but not the Drupal content.
It is a source of much frustration that no one I've asked so far has been able to find a solution to this problem.

 

[Basara]

Part of the problem is a lot of the sites we've updated using Drupal won't show up on Google (petra beat me to it, darn it). It's frustrating - especially when someone using Google finds an obselete page on Stratics that we replaced 2 years ago with up to date info, and updated several times since, but not the new one.

And, the idea of a wiki being something seached easily is laughable. Wikis are are even more prone to lying to you, and telling you something doesn't exist, if you spell the name wrong (or don't have a name for something listed by its name, and are going by description), than other types of web pages. UOGuide's done pretty well for a wiki, but there were still times where I have looked for something there, not found it, then found its page there later in the same session via a link from a distantly related item on the site. I'm sure that there's been work done on it since, but last year, the Quest NPC pages were particularly bad about this, as an example (and my web fu isn't strong enough to even attempt to mess with tables on wikis).

Simply put, all types of web pages have search problems, though not always the same type. It's best to check all sources that have been constantly updated. Stratics and UOGuide might be competitors of sorts, but they are quite complementary in many ways, helping find and confirm data (and often covering areas the othe doesn't).

 

[Petra Fyde]

*cough*
Forgot to update 'pic of the week'

Nominations of screenies posted during this coming week would be most welcome, let me know if you spot something interesting.

 

[BlackMagus]

Part of the problem is a lot of the sites we've updated using Drupal won't show up on Google (petra beat me to it, darn it). It's frustrating - especially when someone using Google finds an obselete page on Stratics that we replaced 2 years ago with up to date info, and updated several times since, but not the new one.

Your robots.txt is misconfigured.

Remove the following line from this file:

Disallow: /php-bin/

This line effectively forbids the search engines to visit your content pages, which are hosted at /php-bin/show_content.php according to your side menu links at the uo.stratics.com main page.

Then wait for the engine spiders to index the missing content.

--
BlackMagus, Elder Web Debugger

 

[Petra Fyde]

oh wow! honestly, it's that simple?

One question. Why is searching that folder disallowed in the first place?

 

[BlackMagus]

You will have to ask your web administrators who have put the file there in the first place... ;-)

 

[Community News]

[News]A Question of Quests

<blockquote> [SIZE=+1]Ultima Online Stratics Weekly Announcement: [/SIZE]

This week we offer information on more of the new quests, we visited the humans in Underworld:

• Gretchen The Alchemist.
• Elder Dugan the Prospector
• Quartermaster Flint
• Quest items and rewards have also been added to the item catalogue Quests section

The rest of the week was spent creating something nice for our News teams, with a great deal of help from Lord Gareth and Xena Dragon, to whom I offer many, many thanks.


We've done a lot, but there's still a lot to do. If you'd like to help please send submissions, suggestions or snippets of information to
[email protected], [email protected], or you can just send a pm to Petra Fyde.

More...

 

[Petra Fyde]

Re: [News]A Question of Quests

heheh, I guess we know what happens when you edit the news item now

 

[Xena Dragon]

You will have to ask your web administrators who have put the file there in the first place... ;-)

That would be me Most of our content is/was located in the content folder. However, our new content management system shows new content via the script in the php-bin folder. When we started to use that new system, I simply forgot to update the robots.txt file. Thanks for the hint

 

[Petra Fyde]

Someone put me out of my misery, how long are these spiders likely to take? How long before I know if this change has fixed my problem?

 

[BlackMagus]

No way to really tell until you see the missing content in the search results.

Might happen tomorrow, might happen in a month... but since your site is quite popular, I guess it should be a matter of days.

The robots file looks good to me now. That will solve your problems, you will see...

 

[Ally Oop]

What I do since I never could find anything in the Stratics search is I go to Google. Type in the name of what I want, say 'quests uo ' hit enter and 9 times out of 10 I find what I want.

 

[BlackMagus]

FYI, just noticed that your missing pages are beginning to turn up in google.

E.g.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=uo+abyssal+lair&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&fp=c26c79a56c95bda8

Now you just need to do some basic SEO like putting the page titles into the url, and you will outrank all UO resources like you should...

 

[JHall]

so far so good