The Jeff 'Gryphon' Skalski Interview on UOForums

[Rupert Avery]

Our Ultima Producer kindly took the time out to answer some burning questions over at UOForums.

Interview with Jeff 'Gryphon' Skalski - UO Producer Part 1 - Ultima Online Forums

Find answers regarding Virtues, Garden beds & What Jeff would change in Ultima Online.

hope you all enjoy

 

[Woodsman]

Cool about finally adding in all the virtues, plus making garden beds a standalone purchase. I know a bunch of people who will be spending a lot of money on garden beds.

Everybody should be happy and not feel rushed since Cleanup Britannia is officially permanent.

But this left me slightly confused:

Any hard details on what keeps UO & DAoC off the BioWare Social Network Forums? How did WAR get there? UO & DAoC are 15 and 10 years old respectively, but they are not listed as BioWare legacy games... so why not forums on the BSN, what gives?

UO has a thriving community on Stratic’s and other support sites such as UOForums, and rather than compete with it, we’d rather support it

I know we aren't allowed to say negative things about the devs here, but nobody seriously believes that's the reason why there aren't official forums, especially since Warhammer has official forums. There were tons of active Star Wars: The Old Republic fansites before STWOR.com forums went live as well, yet BioWare had no problem "competing" with fansites there. There are tons of Mass Effect and Dragon Age fansites, yet BioWare still has forums for those. UO and Camelot being kept off of the current BioWare forums has nothing to do with Stratics or UO Forums.

I would challenge Jeff to name a couple of other mainstream MMORPGs besides UO and Camelot that farm out their forums to fansites.

I'm going to quote Hannes Erich

As much as I've enjoyed Stratics over the years, I completely-and-wholeheartedly dislike the fact that non-subscribers, who are not invested in Ultima Online whatsoever, can post freely on the game's "official" community forums, and have been doing so for many years. The Stratics forums are poisonous. UHall alone is a public relations disaster. Trolls from free shards, disgruntled former players, disgruntled former employees, players seeking to raise interest in competing MMORPGs, people who haven't played the game in years can log into these forums and write ranting screeds against the current state of the game. And they do. With abandon. Successful MMOs with decent community standards do not outsource community management to random strangers on the Internet.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

You'd think they might want to post a notice about the interview on the Herald...

 

[Rupert Avery]

You'd think they might want to post a notice about the interview on the Herald...

I don't disagree there

 

[Meatbread]

Are there plans to revamp the rest of the anti-virtue dungeons like was done with Wrong and Shame?
Yes, we plan to tackle all of them. We won't be able to get to the rest of them this year, but my hope is we release a new revamped dungeon every other publish.

I'd rather they just skipped to revaming Doom and got the rest of the anti-virture dungeons later. A revamped Doom would provide a new endgame activity. A revamped Covetous (or whatever) is just going to provide a way to farm Shame garbage in a different place.

If there was one change you could undo in the game, what would it be and why?
I don't want this to be miss understood, but honestly I would go back and not release the EC.

LOOL! All hands on deck, incoming crapstorm!

Are there any plans to create similar events in the future or to redo Treasures of Tokuno again?
Currently we do not have plans to do this, this would require a lot of new artifacts and probably even new art.

Even ToT1 didn't involve any actual new art, and as for new artifacts, well jeez. Thinking up item names and stats isn't exactly hard. Make it a forum contest and the players will do it for you.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

nobody seriously believes that's the reason why there aren't official forums,
farm out their forums to fansites.

Gone back in time more than a few years ago and I'd be inclined to believe differently than what he has quoted, but today, this sounds as good as any, to me. Given the control, direction, and stability both major fan sites have developed, they are very well suited and manned vs EA starting from scratch. Considering the enormous amount of written resources alone, plus that which UOGuide can offer, each with their own established fan base, seems silly for them to wanna have their own - what a tremendous duplication of services, that could be end up under utilized in the end. I've been to some other game forums, but they also had a huge organized help database, much like Stratics, but run by the game company which might be farmed out, but it appears seamless and how the board help get paid is an unknown issue. I think he took the more efficient direction and also look for new lines of communication to happen between 'them' and 'us'. Just as Grimm's Corner was birthed, that may be just the beginning of things to come.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I'm going to quote Hannes Erich

As much as I've enjoyed Stratics over the years, I completely-and-wholeheartedly dislike the fact that non-subscribers, who are not invested in Ultima Online whatsoever, can post freely on the game's "official" community forums, and have been doing so for many years. The Stratics forums are poisonous. UHall alone is a public relations disaster. Trolls from free shards, disgruntled former players, disgruntled former employees, players seeking to raise interest in competing MMORPGs, people who haven't played the game in years can log into these forums and write ranting screeds against the current state of the game. And they do. With abandon. Successful MMOs with decent community standards do not outsource community management to random strangers on the Internet.

That may have been true at one time. I don't believe it still is. Looking at the front page now, can you show me a thread that hasn't been started by a current, active player?
We try very hard to find a balance between allowing people to voice their opinions and not trolling everyone who doesn't agree with them. Some people think we're too lenient, others think we're too strict. I have multiple pms from people who swear I am descended from a certain gentleman prominent in Germany about 70 - 80 years ago.
Whatever else you believe, believe this. The uo Stratics staff care about uo, passionately.

 

[AirmidCecht]

That may have been true at one time. I don't believe it still is. Looking at the front page now, can you show me a thread that hasn't been started by a current, active player?
We try very hard to find a balance between allowing people to voice their opinions and not trolling everyone who doesn't agree with them. Some people think we're too lenient, others think we're too strict. I have multiple pms from people who swear I am descended from a certain gentleman prominent in Germany about 70 - 80 years ago.
Whatever else you believe, believe this. The uo Stratics staff care about uo, passionately.

I think the point Woodsman may have been trying to make through that quote is, official forums are less likely to be trolled with greater consequences (banned acct) for those that take things too far. I can't imagine anyone who has been an active part of any official forums feeling that is the case. You will see more raging and DIACF posts from people posting already on their way out.

We've been accomplishing our goals rather well under Petra's guidance. No worries here

 

[Meatbread]

Actually, I shudder to think of this dev team redeveloping Doom. Say hello to bosses with 400k health that hit for 90 damage, teleport everyone to them, and have that stupid anti-sampire field they put on everything now.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

If there was one change you could undo in the game, what would it be and why?
I don't want this to be miss understood, but honestly I would go back and not release the EC. The reason for this is not that it doesn't look great, because I really think it does (it's my preferred client), but just the shear effort and time UO devs have spent supporting both clients and will continue to spend moving into the future I just have to wonder how that effort could have been spent if only one client existed.

I PARTIALLY agree with his statements here, specifically about having one client, but I would have taken the option to push the game forward technologically. I would have had each new client REPLACE the older client and go forward from there. Of course this is also with the very GLARING caveat that I would NEVER have allowed a new client to be released in the states that 3D,KR, and EC were (3D and KR being released FAAAR too early and EC being released in such a low resolution).

Rather than think simply "what could be done with only one client", my thought process is "what could be done if all we had was the NEWEST client and were not anchored to a 15 year old technology?".

As for Treasures of Tokuno, I think they should take the event, but rotate it between facets with unique rewards in each facet (i.e. each set of dyed would be a different colorset based on the facet when active, each facet would have their own minors and majors, etc). So for say 2 months of active time, you'd have one facet "active", then a couple of months of inactive everywhere, then a 2 month active period in a different facet. So for dye colors you could have:

Tokuno: original ToT dyes and artifacts
Ilshenar: Colors based on the current cleanup and Compassion dyes, use current Ilsh Minors, create new majors
Felucca: The Metallic (ToT2) dyes from the original NPC armor colors as Felucca was the original facet, new artifacts
Trammel: Dyes the colors of the current mined metals (Dull Copper, Shadow, etc), new artifacts
Malas: ToT3 dye colors, new artifacts

 

[Vlaude]

He likes Zelda: A Link to the Past and Final Fantasy VI, good man.

 

[Mervyn]

secret of mana, zelda a link to the past, the 2 greatest games ever made.

What a guy!

 

[Woodsman]

Given the control, direction, and stability both major fan sites have developed, they are very well suited and manned vs EA starting from scratch.

I'm confused, nobody said anything about starting from scratch.

The UO.com redesign that Jeff said is underway is based on the UO Herald and the previous 15 years of UO and OSI websites (and technically the UO alpha/beta websites although I think those were not public). That's not starting from scratch. If anything, it's finally getting the official UO website back up to where it should have been years ago before it started being seriously neglected.

Forums? BioWare has well over 100 forums and subforums already located at BioWare Social Network.

Moderators? BioWare has a proven process for finding unpaid volunteers and for setting up new forums. They do it every year or every other year.

SWTOR.com forums. Won't even go there, but they dwarf the forums for any of the other BioWare games, and it wouldn't surprise me if they have twice as many moderators as Mass Effect 3 (ME3 has around 30 moderators, although ME3's moderators have been working under a lot more fire lately ).

Nothing to start from scratch - adding the forums would consist of clicking on a button marked "Add Category" followed by "Add Forum", and using BioWare's established processes for finding volunteers to act as moderators.

Look at the other Mythic MMORPG - Warhammer Online has nearly 30 forums and sub-forums, and well over 30 forums/sub-forums if you count the sub-forums for each major patch.

Click on this link or I'll save you the trouble and point out that it's the official BioWare Social Network forums for Shattered Steel. Shattered Steel is an MS-DOS game.

Warhammer Online, a game that has fewer players than UO has nearly 30 official BioWare forums.

Shattered Steel, an MS-DOS game that is approaching 16 years old, has more official support forums than UO and Camelot combined.

UO and Camelot have more players and bring in more money than Warhammer Online, Shattered Steel, and MDK2 combined. But you would never know they were considered BioWare games these days.

 

[Woodsman]

That may have been true at one time. I don't believe it still is.

I was referring more to the end quote about the fact that EA is farming out its community relations to fansites and that UO and Camelot are the only successful MMORPGs that do this. I shouldn't have quoted his whole post.

Other people that I know, have talked about this since I came back, both in-game and on other websites, and they talk about how it's not good for new players. I know the guy who was running UO Journal and who is now one of the people at UltimaCodex.com (Deckard). He's talked about it a lot. I know a few other people who have talked about it here on Stratics as well.

They are right, but I don't think they fully understand why they are right, because most of them don't seem to have any major experience with other MMORPGs outside of UO (I won't name names because some of them may have had experience with other MMORPGs and I'd look foolish for thinking they hadn't).

I have taken breaks from UO, or played alongside UO, the following MMORPGs: Star Wars Galaxies, EVE Online, World of Warcraft, Asheron's Call and EverQuest (and their sequels), Guild Wars, Rift, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Warhammer Online, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Lord of the Rings Online. There have been plenty of other MMORPGs that I've done the free trials and never played again, that are forgettable as far as I'm concerned, especially some of the Asian ones where I had no clue what I was doing.

Everytime I started one of those MMORPGs, including the forgettable ones, the official websites and official forums are where I started out. All of the above games, with the exception of UO and Camelot, have currently updated official websites and forums. That's a huge part of how these companies show that they support their games and believe in their games and how they communicate their support of those games.

Those people I mentioned that talk about how important it is for new players probably don't realize that new players to UO are probably not going to be new to MMORPGs. Any player coming to UO from any other successful MMORPG is going to expect an updated official website and official forums and PR people.

When they see UO's website and click on Community and Live Events, what do they see?

UO Herald Live Events

I'll spare you all the clicking. The most current "live" event there is from October 2009.

And fansites? A lot of those links have been broken for years.

Forums? Not happening. If they find their way to BioWare.com, they'll find forums for anything but UO.

PR people? Not happening either - nobody is making a serious effort to update the UO site with comments from devs. Hell, this interview is not even on the UO Herald, and it's probably the best interview with a UO producer in a long time.

Folks, this isn't about whether Stratics or UO Forum or UO Guide are pulling their weight - they are, and they have been for many years.

This is about whether EA/BioWare is pulling their weight - they aren't, and they refuse to do so.

If you don't care about new players, you can get away with farming out your community relations to fansites.

If you care about new players, you better prove it to them with the official websites and public support because first impressions are everything.

It's why EA and BioWare spent a lot of money on Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mass Effect and BioWare | Dragon Age and Command and Conquer and Battlefield 3 and EA Forums

 

[Tina Small]

Those people I mentioned that talk about how important it is for new players probably don't realize that new players to UO are probably not going to be new to MMORPGs. Any player coming to UO from any other successful MMORPG is going to expect an updated official website and official forums and PR people.

When they see UO's website and click on Community and Live Events, what do they see?

UO Herald Live Events

I'll spare you all the clicking. The most current "live" event there is from October 2009.

And fansites? A lot of those links have been broken for years.

Forums? Not happening. If they find their way to BioWare.com, they'll find forums for anything but UO.

PR people? Not happening either - nobody is making a serious effort to update the UO site with comments from devs. Hell, this interview is not even on the UO Herald, and it's probably the best interview with a UO producer in a long time.

Folks, this isn't about whether Stratics or UO Forum or UO Guide are pulling their weight - they are, and they have been for many years.

This is about whether EA/BioWare is pulling their weight - they aren't, and they refuse to do so.

If you don't care about new players, you can get away with farming out your community relations to fansites.

If you care about new players, you better prove it to them with the official websites and public support because first impressions are everything.

It's why EA and BioWare spent a lot of money on Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mass Effect and BioWare | Dragon Age and Command and Conquer and Battlefield 3 and EA Forums

I bumped into someone about a week ago who had recently returned to UO. She was under the impression that the UOForums website was the official forum for UO and wasn't aware it's "only" a fansite (no disrespect intended). She didn't know about this site and I didn't think to ask her if she knew about the UO Herald website.

 

[Rupert Avery]

I bumped into someone about a week ago who had recently returned to UO. She was under the impression that the UOForums website was the official forum for UO and wasn't aware it's "only" a fansite (no disrespect intended). She didn't know about this site and I didn't think to ask her if she knew about the UO Herald website.

That the trouble when they go into google.. whats the first thing you would looks ofr when looking for a uo releated forum?

'Ultima Online Forums or UO Forums'

I do disgree with his answer to the forum question but such is life... at least we are still about (Stratics & UOForums)

 

[Meatbread]

I just want to point out again that I have absolutely no earthly idea why Jeff Skalski thinks Treasures of Tokuno involves new art. As for the fact that it involves new artifacts? Cry me a river. You guys had the time to code, test, and patch an "event" literally based in part on picking up garbage, for reasons nobody understands, to get rewards nobody cares about, complete with a hysterically overcomplicated reputation system that tracks like three different variables per city.

Next time do something someone actually WANTS.

 

[AirmidCecht]

Next time do something someone actually WANTS.

*raises hand as someone that had what someone really wants*

 

[Ludes]

Personally I don't see why they would try to compete with or replace Stratics or UOForums..

The idea that their time would be much better spent elsewhere sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Also, count me in as another long time MicroProse fan!

 

[Woodsman]

Personally I don't see why they would try to compete with or replace Stratics or UOForums..

The idea that their time would be much better spent elsewhere sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

The development team is not the same team that codes websites or engages in public relations or deals with the BioWare forums. Where do you all get such odd notions?

In fact, if the UO developers were responsible for the UO website, it would have been improved a long time ago - it's just as easy to fix a broken link in Drupal on the UO website as it is to edit your post on Stratics and change a link.

For those of you who have been around and/or don't care about attracting new players, I can see why you don't care about all of the problems with the UO website. You have no use for the UO website, especially since MyUO was removed (because the team responsible for UO's website doesn't have the expertise to address the security concerns since they aren't developers).

But if you ever want UO to really grow again or if you had played other MMORPGs, you would be pissed at the shoddy state of the UO website and lack of support from BioWare.

 

[AirmidCecht]

Woodsman,

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with the state of the UO website and whether there should be official forums or not. Both typically run side by side with the official sites supporting and appreciating fansites. Stratics has always thought of itself as an addition to, not instead of anything. I will say though, Stratics will be celebrating it's own 15yr Anniversary this October. In the same amount of years, even with the hiccups and downtime along the way, we have stood side by side with the oldest MMO (nods to MUDS) since almost the beginning. There are over 30 volunteer staff members for UO alone, not to mention the other portals we are growing.

Until Ultima Forever and the whole Franchise concept, I think we could all agree that the UO Team was not getting much attention, certainly not in the website department. They may not be responsible for the actual website but it didn't seem that anyone was truly supporting the UO Team itself, so why the site? When the archives were on the chopping block, we arranged to host it for however long they needed so it wouldn't go away. Why? Because the staff here could handle it until they could.

I guess my thought is, if you did not have all of our collective fansites all these years, UO very well may have faded to black long ago and I think that is acknowledged and appreciated by Jeff. There are other titles that had official forums like SWG and it didn't matter. UO is unique in so many ways and until such time that there is more support we all become the surrogates to support this team and let them know we are invested in whatever way we can.

We know they are working on an updated UO.com (not Herald) which is needed more than anything. There is nothing any fansite can do to point players to the correct information at the official site. I'd like to see better use of the Patch screen that EVERYONE sees upon logging in that points them to the most current information.

Official forums wise? They had them years ago and if they have them again we'll support it as before and still do our best as a fansite to report shard news, updates and events. Nothing will change for all of us fansites regardless of which players prefer

 

[Woodsman]

Like I said earlier, this isn't about whether the fansites are pulling their weight - they are, and they have been.

This is about the official sites.

Fansites can help games survive, but Official sites are critical to whether the game brings in new players. Somebody who has been playing World of Warcraft and hears about UO on another site isn't going to think they should go to Stratics. They are going to go to the official site, and things go downhill from there.

 

[Nimuaq]

Somebody who has been playing World of Warcraft and hears about UO on another site isn't going to think they should go to Stratics. They are going to go to the official site, and things go downhill from there.

This is unfortunately true, I personally don't care about an official forum at this point but it would have been much better if they had fixed even a single item on this nearly year-old thread:
Updating the Official Website | Stratics Forums

 

[Woodsman]

Just so people know, I'm not criticizing Stratics, and I don't believe Stratics is paying to be the semi-official forums or keep official forums from happening or anything like some of the rumors.

I was there when the UO.com forums were shut down, I saw how bad things got between some players and EA executives. Plus Camelot doesn't have forums.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Really? Some people have said that? What kind of a mind comes up with a wild theory like that??

 

[Meatbread]

Everyone knows you're paying kickbacks to ride the gravy train that comes with being a UO fansite! Post the pictures of the yacht you bought with your Stratics millions!

 

[LordDrago]

Everyone knows you're paying kickbacks to ride the gravy train that comes with being a UO fansite! Post the pictures of the yacht you bought with your Stratics millions!

Petra's summer "home".
If you look closely, you can see Petra working on Stratics in the 3rd window from the left on the second (Aloha) deck.

 

[Woodsman]

Really? Some people have said that? What kind of a mind comes up with a wild theory like that??

The same kinds of people who think developers are being paid off by the gold sites to look the other way on scripters.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

I'd rather they just skipped to revaming Doom and got the rest of the anti-virture dungeons later. A revamped Doom would provide a new endgame activity. A revamped Covetous (or whatever) is just going to provide a way to farm Shame garbage in a different place.

Extensive calls to revamp Doom didn't start until after they had responded to the many calls to revamp the Dungeons of Sin. Most I ever saw was requests for new artifacts there (and really there's no good reason I can think of to not do something like that; can throw, say, 10 more new artifacts into the rotation and leave the old ones).

It makes an alarming amount of sense to do the revamping in the order the Dungeons came out in, and to honor the original dungeons. There's also no reason they can't put an Endgame into the Dungeons of Sin (Dark Fathers move to Hythloth!), and not everyone wants to focus on an Endgame anyway.

-Galen's player

 

[Petra Fyde]

The same kinds of people who think developers are being paid off by the gold sites to look the other way on scripters.

Conspiracy theorists with cynical minds?

To the best of my knowledge the only people getting any kind of payment from Stratics are the guys hosting the servers, and that's kind of essential if you want to stay online.

 

[Taylor]

Conspiracy theorists with nasty minds?

To the best of my knowledge the only people getting any kind of payment from Stratics are the guys hosting the servers, and that's kind of essential if you want to stay online.

Everything that doesn't go to the server guys goes to my swimming pool:

 

[Rupert Avery]

Perhaps we could get back to topic...
Jeff answered some very good questions with very honest answers.. For that us at UOforums are thankful

He also replied to our thread for the questions with his idea of doing more Q&As every few months. which is fantastic

He didn't managed to answer all the questions we sent him so I look forward to the next round which had some very good questions from the posters of UOforums

 

[Coldren]

Rather than think simply "what could be done with only one client", my thought process is "what could be done if all we had was the NEWEST client and were not anchored to a 15 year old technology?".

Am I safe in assuming that you are being even handed and saying not only the client should be new, but the 15-year old spaghetti code on the back end? Perhaps a modern relational database that could have endpoints to the web so we can actually have things like a detailed and working MyUO? Rewrite and properly documenting the code so there is no more guessing about how skills, stats, and other systems interact?

Which would be the same as saying a completely new UO.. which I wouldn't disagree with.

But if it's just a reiteration of the tired client discussion, then nevermind.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Anything that helps on the back end as well is also needed. Obviously the client is the biggest thing that the end user sees so is an obvious issue, and was the specific issue being discussed in the question, so that's what the response was dealing with. General rewrites and revamps that use better, more efficient code will help everyone regardless of client.

One of the big things I learned in the EC/SA closed beta was that old code dating back 10+ years was still in the program itself, which was how the Carpet quest came about. This means that there's God only knows how many other tests, ideas, concepts, and failed projects that are simply commented out. Even the 2d client had unused artwork that sat dormant for a decade that was used in Alpha and Beta builds up until High Seas changed how the artwork was used in the game.

The thing is though, UO, being a persistent game/world CAN becaome a completely new game, and really if you think about it over the years especially in the mindset of the various "Build a Classic Shard" and the different points in time that people put forward (T2A, UO:R, Pub 16, Pre-AOS, etc etc etc) UO HAS become effectively a "completely new game" several times over, just not all at once. The game has updated the systems and content within it for years, as well as the physical hardware, and Grimm is and has been reworking how the "art pipeline" works, so all of what you're saying has been and is being done.

Nostalgia is all well and good, but not if you cannot accept the flaws in what you find nostalgic. I've been reading and watching a lot of stuff about Golden Age Video Games and systems and owned a ColecoVision "back in the day". Wonderful system, especially for the time, but it did have its own set of flaws... scrolling as horrible (when present) and the connection from the console to the TV was the old school "hold it in just the right spot or get a static-filled picture" style (complete with manual TV/Game switch). It also had the behemoth of behemoths of plugs/power supplies. So yes, I think I am being even handed, I even pointed out that the release of the newer clients have been sub-optimal, usually far too early causing too many issues with being able to move from an older client to a newer one.

Yes, I'm rambling as the thoughts hit me... short version, yes, I am in favor of all of the above as stated Coldren, but was answering in the context of the topic/question provided, that being focused on the client and that the game would be better with a single client instead of multiple ones.