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NEWS Ultima Online 20th Anniversary "What's Coming to Britannia" and Q&A- With Notes

Riyana

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The UO 20th Anniversary Party included a two-hour "What's Coming to Britannia" and Q&A session. While streaming was not possible for me personally (and possibly not at all in the Hyatt), I did record it and have summarized to the best of my ability. (If you can help fill in any blanks, please let me know and I will update--particularly during the Q&A session it was difficult to hear even being physically in the the room.)

Kyronix has posted the original PowerPoint presentation in video form:


It includes images of upcoming items, so make sure you check it out! Thanks, Kyronix!

Please also see the official preliminary FAQ for Endless Journey here.

The below is a paraphrased summary of the entire video. Any mistakes are my own--and please let me know about them so that I can correct them.

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Ultima Online 20th Anniversary
“What’s Coming to Britannia” and Q&A

Current team (in order introduced):

Producer: Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong
Quality Assurance: Michael “Misk” Armstrong
Customer Service and Billing Manager: Talal Saad
Secondary Artist: Tori Guarino
Primary Artist: Jim “Onifrk” Crawley
Designer: Greg “Kyronix” Havlusch
Software Engineer: Stephen “Bleak” Brown

-Except for the artists, the whole team plays UO and has for years. (And will never tell you which shards!)

-What’s Coming in Our Next Publish?

Bleak:
-Enhanced client particle effect filters- should help with lag at EM effects and large effects
-Ability to cancel pet training- allow players to remove any remaining points they have on pets
-Enhanced client- ability to scale generic gumps without scaling entire UI

Kyronix:
-Veteran rewards:
-Enchanted writing desk: inscription
-Titan statuettes
-Animated koi ponds (house add-ons)- water source, non-fishable
-Ethereal serpentine dragon
-Holiday Artisan Festival Rewards:
-New vice and virtue themed items (lanterns, sculptures, and paintings)
-Updated pillows art
Holiday Gift Token:
-Jewelry box, holds 500 jewelry pieces, sort by type (ring, necklace, bracelet, talisman, earrings), dyable
-candy cane (hand dipped by dev team members), bells, ribbon (EM team), new holiday garland (light source) (hand strung by alliterative UO creature name)
Valentine’s Gift:
-Four patio-style chairs and table with candle that produces a heart shaped smoke ring, comes in a heart shaped box

Mesanna:
-Store items:
-Day of the Dead veil and tophat, when you put them on you appear dead/white
-Spider trophy
-Five new robes- when you buy the robe you have a choice which one you want
-“UO Swag Store”- shirts, mugs, pictures, canvases--Broadsword providing the art, we can put on whatever we want, will ship international, tentative ETA by the end of the year
-Official UO.com forums- almost finished, can not post without an active UO account, EMs will have own shards, if you post in CS forum he will answer it
-account management is “20 years of spaghetti code” and is not going to be done any time soon
-pushing for ability for players to link and unlink their own accounts
-Endless Journey
-“a way to get players back into the game”
-encourage people to come back, get more people for us to play with
-“not at all going to put this as a “I win button” or “pay to win””
-“very limited”, can not have houses or boats, “not a way for you to pay for one month and get three months free”
-if you cancel your account, you can not go to Endless Journey for 90 days because you can not go into houses
-CAN NOT: go into houses, play EM events, get presents, get rewards
-CAN: go in dungeons, PvP, play with your friends

Bleak:
-EJ: new vault system
-shared storage across entire server for all characters for a monthly fee
-if a player misses a payment, other players can start a bidding war over the contents of the vault
-improvements to general chat, profanity filters, and temporary ban system for spam and inppropriate language
-cross shard direct messaging- after receiving a request, able to chat with players on other shards directly and privately

Kyronix:
-streamline all streams of information devs, EMs, city governors, and guilds to a single gump-style menu-based town cryer system
-use as a way to kick off quests
-in its lifetime UO has had more than a million players
-incorporating governor bulletin boards
-giving every account SA for free

Mesanna:
-Pub 100 &101:
-large bug fix publish
-castle builder for TC1
-VvV update
Publish 102+ Ideas
-High Seas 2.0- new sea creature champ spawn, redoing ships/cannon, redoing pirate loot, redoing quests
-Update community collections
-User-generated quest system- a system for normal players to make their own quests/spawn without going through the PEC

Q&A Session- Questions and answers are paraphrased. Anything surrounded by brackets [ ] was difficult to hear and I wasn’t 100% sure I heard it right. Even being physically present in the room it was often difficult to hear. If anyone can help fill in the gaps please let me know and I’ll update.

Q: When is Endless Journey going to be made available?
A: No more RTB
-House must fall before EJ can become available on an account
-Shooting for March but not promising

Q: Why were the chocolate colored Medusa dragons reverted to normal color?
A: They were an exploit.

Q: Will cooking bonus full aprons be usable by gargoyles?
A: They are working on it.

Q: Can we have an item search/organization system for our houses and/or banks?
A: A grid style view for banks is in the works. House search is difficult.

Q: How many subscribers does UO have?
A: EA will not allow Broadsword to tell subscriber numbers, but we are doing really well.

Q: Will the jewelry box take one lockdown for 500 items?
A: Yes.

Q: Will Yew get a tree this year in the Artisan Festival? (It did not last year because it was the last on the list and the Festival ended before it came up.)
A: We can flip the order so that Yew will get a tree.

Q: Does the possibility exist to get a grid view of the backpack in the classic client?
A: Yes

Q: Can you make some of the old deco gifts craftable?
A: No

Q: Will your account lose your its house if you go to Endless Journey?
A: Yes. An Endless Journey account can not have a house.

Q: Can BOD skill bonus rewards be guaranteed to be worthwhile? (The example given was an 11/11 bonus item.)
A: We have to be able to reproduce issues to address them. Email us with specific details so that we can try to reproduce it.

Q: Can we get turn-in points for [something to do with crafting]?
A: This is something we are always looking into.

Q: Can a setting be introduced that allows teleport tiles be set to alliance-only?
A: Yes

Q: Will decay rates on IDOCs be changed? The timer is too long and advantages scripters.
A: At this point in time we are not adjusting the IDOC system or decay rates but we will talk about it.

Q: Can an Endless Journey account upgrade to a subscription?
A: Yes. Within 24 hours of upgrading to a subscription, an account will have full normal account status.

Q: Is there a possibility of putting in a status bar on the mannequin for suitbuilders so they can see the stats as they build a suit?
A: That’s a good idea and they will look into it.

Q: Can mastery primers be made bindable?
A: They’ve discussed this many times but are probably more likely to make them worth [turn-in or donation?] points.

Q: Can smaller population shards be given a lower threshold for increasing the level of the Artisan Festival tree?
A: Kyronix visited as many trees as he could last year and most were able to be raised to the last level. They will look again at the levels.

Q: Multiboxing?
A: When EJ is released, multiboxing will be illegal. Until then, it will not be enforced. (Note: I specifically asked Bleak at the barbecue the next day if that meant that multi-CLIENTING would be deactivated. He stated that multi-clienting would be okay; only actual multi-boxing, controlling multiple accounts on the same keystrokes/controls, would be prohibited.)

Q: Is fixing the particle effect issue actually going to help at EM events?
A: Yes. Particle effects currently aren’t working correctly in EC.

Q: Classic client healthbars that are linked all disappear when you remove one. Can this be fixed?
A: We will work on it.

Q: Can fishing baits be made more useful?
A: We aren’t touching the fishing baits right now.

Q: Can BOD books be made to be one lockdown for the book like the new jewelry box will be?
A: No

Q: Can we get new quests for the old Tokuno minor artifacts?
A: No, we would rather keep them for possible future use/reactivation.

Q: Are there any discussions taking place about rebalancing artifact power versus craftable power?
A: This is constantly under discussion.

Q: Can you consider a boost to imbuing?
A: [asker went directly into next question--this one did not get a distinct answer]

Q: Human and elf loot are superior to gargoyle loot.
A: We agree.

Q: Are the current invasion weapon drops going to be useful for anything?
A: They are yours to keep. The bane property on them is very nice.

Q: [Praise for a shard EM, but I could not make out which shard]

Q: There seems to be an issue with pet AI. Have you looked at it?
A: We haven’t looked at it at this time. Please let us know about specific problems.

Q: [Could not hear question]
A: No, not at this time

Q: Most of the invasion weapons are junk--only the bows with bane and spellbooks are worthwhile.
A: We don’t want to introduce all high end items at once; we try to cycle through different classes to help minimize power creep.

Q: Was it intended for mages to spawn initially with a spawn then not spawn anymore?
A: This invasion re-used old code. If we do future invasions we will look at this issue again to prevent the most desirable loot from being primarily at the beginning of a given spawn.

Q: Are there any dungeon revamps in the works?
A: No, not right now.

Q: [Could not hear question]
A: We are talking about adding to the store. We are putting in a tool that gives you 100% smelting. We are always looking for things to add not as “I win” button but that lets you do something in a shorter amount of time. We were talking about a tool that allows you greater control over resists on an item.

Q: Can we remove SDI from an item?
A: We’ll talk about it.

Q: Can we brew beer?
A: You can already make some liquors and wines. There is an ale table coming out in the horn of plenty and cornucopia. Brewing can be added to the list.

Q: Can we get a tool for CC that will let you see the hue of an item?
A: That is just a couple lines of code.

Q: Can we get longer names on our alcohol brews?
A: Probably not.

Q: Can we create a blueprint from a customizable house design for trade with other players?
A: That is more difficult than it sounds.

Q: Can we get a tool to engrave clothes?
A: Mesanna has no problem with that.

Q: Can the vendor cap be raised above 175M per item?
A: We would have to discuss that.

Q: Can we ever equip our musical instruments?
A: It is doable.

Q: Could we get an API added to the client to make UO Mapper and other programs not rely on UOAssist?
A: We would have to discuss that. It is not a high priority because of resources.

Q: Can goblins get knees?
A: No. However, we will be introducing an item in the store you can hold in your pack that will let you play a goblin (and potentially other creatures in the future) without using an item slot.

Q: How is the loot determined in the town invasions?
A: The rank of the npc (recruit being low, general being high, etc.) determines how good the item can be. Drops are determined by “top attacker”, which is a bit of a misnomer as it is “an aggregation of the damage you do to the mob, the damage you take from the mob, and the damage that is healed that the mob gives you”; anytime you get a “backpack drop” that is usually the system in play.

Q: What other restrictions will be in Endless Journey?
A: Limited bank access.

Q: Will Endless Journey accounts be able to do Fel champ spawns? Specific concern is ghost cams.
A: We will be looking at ghost cams for EJ. Otherwise, we are still evaluating restrictions.

Q: [Could not hear question]
A: No

Q: For Endless Journey, have skill caps been considered?
A: Skill caps are not affected by Endless Journey.

Q: Is there a way for PKs to contribute to the Artisan Festival trees?
A: At this time, no. We have talked about holiday content that is more geared toward that playstyle.

Q: Can you comment on the future of Rares Fests?
A: These are entirely player run. Mesanna only decorates for them.

Q: Could runics be put in the sewing/blacksmith machines?
A: This would result in high charge runics on production, which happened once and was bad, so probably not.

Q: With Endless Journey coming out, if you let your account lapse, will your house fall?
A: Yes, at the end of the ninety days. During that period your characters will be inaccessible. After the house falls the account will be eligible for Endless Journey.

Q: Can health bars in the Classic Client be made to only go gray when the player is actually out of casting range?
A: That’s what it should do. We will take a look.

Q: Will the town criers incorporate a city-specific board?
A: We can make sure there is one in each city.

Q: The invasion armor sets seem to be incomplete. Are there rare pieces?
A: The invasion NPCs drop what they actually wear. If there are pieces they don’t wear, they won’t drop.

Q: The invasion yumi and crossbow never drop.
A: If they are equipped by the invasion NPC they should be potential drops. They are in the table.

Q: The New Magincia dock is cluttered with burning carts. Will those go away after the invasion?
A: They should automatically delete.

Q: [Something about Artisan Festival trees and Trammel vs Felucca players--could not fully hear]

Q: Can you elaborate on the chat system? What restrictions will Endless Journey have?
A: We are looking into opening all chat channels to Endless Journey accounts (as opposed to the Help channel that current trial accounts are restricted to). “Players will be able to potentially ban other players form chat channels based on the amount of people who are ignoring you.”

Q: Can a pulled mount pet bar go gray instead of disappear when the player remounts it?
A: There are concerns about being able to damage mounts that people are sitting on. It is being looked into.

Q: Bola hit chance was reduced from 100% to 50%. Can HCI or skill be made factors over this 50% so it’s not a pure coin toss to put someone on foot?
A: We can look at that when we look at VvV. Bleak thinks it is higher than 50%.

Q: Could you consider lowering the conflag timer for GM alchemy in PvP?
A: We would have to discuss.

Q: Would you consider adding content to High Seas to attract PvP?
A: We would need to do the High Seas 2.0 pass before considering PvP-specific adjustments/additions to High Seas.

Q: In future invasions can you make sure mages can cast area effect spells? Seventh and eighth circle spells are mostly unusable for town invasions.
A: To do this we would have to turn off the guards completely, which is not an easy or desirable process.

Q: Are there any plan to update currently useless/underused skills?
A: Not right now.

Q: [Something about turning orange in regards to rezzing, healing or un-debuffing an orange as a blue]
A: It sounds like it is working as intended. If you engage with anyone that is orange, you will turn orange too.
 
Last edited:

Larisa

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Bummed about the ridable ~ Dragon ~

When Bonnie said Dragon I thought she mean DRAGON....

Serpentine Dragon isn't really a dragon...she cheated! ;)

Thank you Ry for posting this, good to hear it all as you did.

Thanks team for all your hard work, nice to put faces to names now..Onifrk? The Titans?? AMAZING! GREAT job on those they are awesome!
 

Jovi

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I was looking for this: Large Bug Fix Publish... and finally its coming according to Mesanna.

However, I think it's best to have continual fix between major content publishes. Bugs can't wait and should not be accumulated and resolved after a Long period esp. in "years or months".


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 

Basara

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I believe the last question was about persons rezzing, healing or un-debuffing an orange.
 

Larisa

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Oh and about the ~dragon~

Kyronix you mentioned Falcor? Now THAT is a ridable dragon....can we has that please? ;)

Will they look the same in the CC as they do now?

The ponds are really neat too..hard to see from a picture but from the way they are explained they should look really cool, sure we can make ponds but they will still look flat so adding some depth is awesome.

Also about the Artisan festival on smaller shards...yeah Origin managed to get the full tree ONE time....and you know I had 3 people from other shards TRANSFERRING filled BODs and empties for me to fill and turn in?

PLEASE take a look at that this year, I was deflated after the first one and never turned another BOD in because it was just too daunting :/

About this question:

Q: Can BOD books be made to be one lockdown for the book like the new jewelry box will be?
A: No

Not a problem with that BUT are you going to make them so we can take BOD's OUT when they are locked down? That would be awesome!

Also about the weapons that are dropping right now from the current invasion....you said they are ours to keep...meaning they will NOT be used for anything?

About the burning carts littering the lands...you said they should auto-delete? Last I checked there are still burning carts from day one...might wanna look at that, they are still EVERYWHERE! lol
 

Jovi

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I hope Falcor can be an alternative for Swampy... with armor protection.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 

Kylie Kinslayer

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@Riyana 's post proves that Stratics needs a LOVE button beside the like button. :ten: ? Heck naw... 1,000,000/1,000,000. Thank you for all that work and dedication.

Q: Can you elaborate on the chat system? What restrictions will Endless Journey have?
A: We are looking into opening all chat channels to Endless Journey accounts (as opposed to the Help channel that current trial accounts are restricted to). “Players will be able to potentially ban other players form chat channels based on the amount of people who are ignoring you.”
This is the only question/answer that really gave me pause. Not because at it's base it is a bad idea.... but only because I can see to where some unscrupulous types with 40+ accounts could potentially ignore and bad honest players from chat. Hopefully they can find a way to prevent that scenario from happening before they launch it.
 

Larisa

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:rolleyes:

Serp Drag > Normal drag

:twak:
I shall slay you for saying such things!

With my REAL Dragon! ;)

I wanted to ride something majestic with wings!

Not..this...
Serpt.jpg

I'm sorry but he looks like a cartoon!

And what kind of dragon doesn't have wings?

Geesh! ;)
 

Jovi

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It is a horribly bad imitation of the Chinese dragon, which looks much better than this. Yes Chinese dragon doesn't have wings and it looks more like a snake rather than the western version (Game of Thrones) style that looks like a bat with the way it uses its claw in mid-wing?


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Slayvite

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I shall slay you for saying such things!

With my REAL Dragon! ;)

I wanted to ride something majestic with wings!

Not..this...
View attachment 72551

I'm sorry but he looks like a cartoon!

And what kind of dragon doesn't have wings?

Geesh! ;)
We now have cartoon Phoenix so you can make do with the cartoon Serpentine "dragon"..... :p
 

Slayvite

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What is clear from alot of their answers is that None of them play UO.
I don't care that they say they "all" play (apart from the artists), you would not be giving blatant wrong answers if you actually played and saw for yourselves the issues....
 

ShriNayne

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Thank you @Riyana that was a very helpful and informative post!
Lots to think on there, I agree with @Larisa I also thought they meant an actual dragon or at worst maybe a wyvern, the serpentine dragon is cute, but not what we hoped for.
If they introduce some form of ignore list for global chat I think some people might actually use global chat... Most of the games I've played with global chat systems had an ignore function.
I also agree about the artisan festival, Europa is not as low a population as some shards and we only managed one finished tree, why not make just one tree and give us the whole month? Make it need a lot more BODs, but it would be more doable.
The ponds are okay, but many players have made much nicer ones and they didn't take a huge amount of time either. I guess for people who don't want to spend time decorating it's okay.
The Valentine gift sounds really cute, I loved the chairs in the Wedding package, hopefully this will be similar.
Day of the Dead items sound nice! As does the enchanted writing desk.
Updated pillow art - does this mean ALL pillows/cushions? I quite like most of them as they are. Or does it mean the new ones from the artisan festival?
 

Merlin

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Thank you very much for sharing!
 

Belmarduk

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Nice about the pet training being able to be cancelled and unlocated points removed !!!

Regarding endless journey this makes me feel a bit nervous - Warhammer Online also had an Endless Journey - until they closed it down a few months later.....
 

MalagAste

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Thank you @Riyana that was a very helpful and informative post!
Lots to think on there, I agree with @Larisa I also thought they meant an actual dragon or at worst maybe a wyvern, the serpentine dragon is cute, but not what we hoped for.
If they introduce some form of ignore list for global chat I think some people might actually use global chat... Most of the games I've played with global chat systems had an ignore function.
I also agree about the artisan festival, Europa is not as low a population as some shards and we only managed one finished tree, why not make just one tree and give us the whole month? Make it need a lot more BODs, but it would be more doable.
The ponds are okay, but many players have made much nicer ones and they didn't take a huge amount of time either. I guess for people who don't want to spend time decorating it's okay.
The Valentine gift sounds really cute, I loved the chairs in the Wedding package, hopefully this will be similar.
Day of the Dead items sound nice! As does the enchanted writing desk.
Updated pillow art - does this mean ALL pillows/cushions? I quite like most of them as they are. Or does it mean the new ones from the artisan festival?
Wait till you really "see" the pond to critic it...

The pillows from the Artisan festival because they looked more like a postage stamp than anything that one would consider a pillow... believe the art for the old ones may have already changed.
 

Basara

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Nice about the pet training being able to be cancelled and unlocated points removed !!!

Regarding endless journey this makes me feel a bit nervous - Warhammer Online also had an Endless Journey - until they closed it down a few months later.....
WAR closed down because the IP owners are greedy gits that try to force their customers to rebuy everything printed every four years or so by changing rulesets, and make illegal entire armies of miniatures. WAR was based on the outgoing ruleset, and too much was wanted in terms of revisions (to the payment plan and to the game) for the license to continue.

At the UO 15th, they were letting us take all their WFRPG books they'd been using as reference material, as they would be worthless to them even if the license got renewed at the last minute (which it wasn't).
 
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