Posted to <a target="_blank" href=http://www.uoherald.com/news/>uoherald.com's</a> <a target="_blank" href=http://www.uo.com/fof/fiveonfriday102.html>Five on Friday:</a> <blockquote><span class=osi>
<font size=+1>FoF: Prickly Publishes
</font> Jeremy Dalberg
21 Mar 2008 17:43:05
As a week in which I had considerable difficulty spelly my own name draws to a close, I present you with thoughts, musings, and the AoE spell that REALLY needs nerfing</p>
"Why is this patch removing the ability to sell insured items?" </p>
One of the biggest concerns we have is making sure players don't lose items to bugs. If you've ever experienced this, you'll understand why - the GMs can't replace them, and potentially months of work can disappear in a puff of bits. We've gotten a fair number of reports of items dropping to players' corpses even though they were insured, and we believe we've narrowed down one of the possible triggers to buying a previously-insured item off of a vendor.</p>
It doesn't fail every time; there's no obvious reason in the code why it would fail at all. But we decided that the best strategy to prevent this bug from occurring was to eliminate that trigger as best we could, and that means requiring that items placed on a vendor not be insured. (Existing for-sale items are fine, however buyers may want to consider re-insuring the item themselves. As near as we can tell, trading insured items, whether via the trade window or just leaving stuff in your house for multiple characters to use, is also fine.)</p>
Yes, this makes shopping in Felucca much more dangerous - a Bag of Sending might be a good thing to take with you when you're bargain-hunting! And we will keep checking the bug reports for other instances of the elusive Insurance Bug.</p>
"Why are you un-nerfing Archcure? Why did you nerf it in the first place?"</p>
Leruocian says:</p>
"When we were looking into a flagging issue for archcure, we noticed that the cure percentage for archcure seemed very high for a spell that was only two circles higher than cure and it affected an area of effect. </p>
So on paper, it seemed like it needed an adjustment. </p>
However, there are other variables to consider as you all have pointed out. </p> [*] 1. Poison can be applied very frequently. [*] 2. Frequent interrupts can occur. [*] 3. A lot of our high end mobs use poison regularly. [*] 4. Players who like to play medic style characters would be drastically affected by [*] this change in peerless encounters. [*] 5. The spell casting time of archcure.
And so on. </p>
So after further internal analysis as well as reviewing all the player feedback, we've decided to put the cure potency percentage back to what you all are used to. </p>
I didn't mind taking credit for leading the recent PvP effort which the team feels was highly successful. I'll also take the blame for the proposed archcure change. </p>
Thanks again to everyone who expressed their feedback on this issue."</p>
"I have a question about the spell weaving spell "Essence of Wind". How much does it slow the targets' casting? Does it go from 2/6 to like 1/6? Or what part of casting does it take off?"</p>
It reduces Fast Cast by 2 * (1 + focus) That means that, with a focus of 5, it reduces FC by up to 12 (Fast Cast can become negative.) The Swing Speed penalty is -1 * (1 + focus), meaning it reduces SSI up to 6%. The alert reader may note that this is utterly insane, and we confirmed that it is, in fact, backwards. Look for this bug fix in an upcoming publish!</p>
"Where are the faction changes and the housing changes we were promised?"</p>
In testing, in the case of the faction changes - we're hoping to get those in to the next publish. Once they stop crashing servers, we'll give you some more info about them
The housing stuff is waiting on a fix for the housing server that handles the test shards - without that, we can't test any of those changes internally or externally. So, with a little luck, the next publish should have both sets of fixes, and you should have previews of them much sooner than that.</p>
What's To Come:</p>
The new publish is up on TC for your testing and bug-reporting pleasure, and will remain so until early next week. Then it will take a brief tour through Origin, and, barring unexpected complications, be published to all shards. Once that happens, things will get MUCH more exciting...</p>
Fansite News</p>
UO Toolbar has been redesigned </p>
Whispering Rose Radio has some events coming up!<b/></p>
"The new studio is ready. Whispering Rose Radio is bringing the best game within a game to Europa!! Come join Howie SandManDel and Vana Mana Rose this Saturday March 22nd at 10pm GMT - 3pm PST - 6pmEST. Gates will be from West Brit Bank 30 minutes prior to game time. This is a weekly cross shard event meaning all gold paid out is delivered to the shard of choice. </p>
We will be bringing many players from different shards with us to Europa. Some follow us weekly as we hold the game (at the same time) on different shards every week. Listen to Howie broadcast on <a target="_blank" href=http://www.wrrad.com/> Whispering Rose Radio </A>throughout the entire event. Everyone has an equal opportunity to be chosen as a contestant. </p>
There will be 1 main contestant, 4 semi-contestants as well as 5 - 250k door prize checks handed out during the game. If you want to receive your winnings on a different shard just let us know and it will be transferred free of charge.</p>
Check <a target="_blank" href=http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/uo/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=6908912&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1> Here </A> for more information and pics.</p>
*wink* Vana Mana Rose" </p>
The K-D guild has a shard-wide event coming up on Napa Valley!</p>
"Come join K-D guild as they hold their shard wide Vorpal Bunny Hunt on Saturday March 22, 2008. </p>
Gates will be provided at 5:30 PM PST, behind both the tailor shop in Luna and in front of the Skara Brae Community Center. Participants will be gated to the large wheat field in Moonglow. </p>
The hunt will start at 6:00 PM PST and last for 1 hour. Regs will be sold on site at cost.</p>
All participants who remain the whole hunt will receive a grab box as they leave the field. </p>
The prizes will consist of: </p> [*] 1st place: 500,000 and special grab box [*] 2nd place: 250,000 and special grab box [*] 3rd place: 100,000 and special grab box
Remember, if you want your event or news item included in the FoF, send it to jdalberg AT ea DOT com. I'm expanding this to in-game events as well - if you run inclusive in-game events and want some love, send me the announcement!</p>
Happy Friday, everybody!</p>
Jeremy </p>
