- Hi Cal!
Thanks for the update, sir Uriah!
Now I'll try to share some constructive accolades and criticisms...
It says 'Producer's Letter', but your title says Dev. Manager? ... I'm confused.
Factions revamp: Sounds good. Interesting how you may, or may not, tie factions into the Magincia revamp. But as others have already said, including yourself, making factions more meaningful ~aka improving the initial foundation~ would be a great UO addition that would indeed make a much more meaningful experience, imo.
Classic Shard: Please consider history & available Dev. resources before doing more than discuss this. In relation to this, I found this section to be somewhat reassuring:
What follows is in no way a schedule or in any way meant to imply that these things will happen in the near term, but instead to give you a peek where my head is and what the team is iterating on …
- I do hope this was moreso the team iterating what
some of the community will
always desire, rather than where your head is; I say this because of UO history as well as the examples other MMO's have provided, as well as... limited Dev. resources. I mean, why would you want to spend resources on something that already proved to be debilating to UO? Unless your definition of Classic is a significant hybrid version of what was prior to Trammel -or- even a verion pre:AoS that includes Trammel... further clarification would be necessary in order to try to provide much more relevant feedback.
Please before you spend more resources on this idea,
please have a chat with one (or in my case 10+) of the developers that worked on UO between the times of Richard Garriott and Anthony Castoro & pick their brains as to why 'Classic' 'Classic UO' did not / could not work for the long term, as well as to why that 'social experiment' failed due to a lack of adequate GM & player policing -because of a lack of an adequate foundation of tools for both GMs and players... then imagine the choice users would have nowadays between what is production now and the addition of alternate classic shards. I'll give you a hint: wolves versus wolves without sheep; heck even the wolves will get bored with uber pwning each other after awhile... As I've said for many years: I predict such an addition would briefly stimulate the playerbase. Yes, briefly. Much like when Gary Marshall decided to have the Fonze 'jump the shark'...
That being said,
please concentrate on what is production, S&M, & EC (
especially the establishment of the EC foundation) and CC before adding classic shards - unless developer resources (including GM and CS) are to significantly increase in order to handle all that is already on the plate, plus more; of which we already need an increase, and not downsizing, of all of those human resources as it is, in order to improve UO's profit margin and sustainability, imo.
Speedhacking and movement: This alone could go a long way towards improving the desire for many to compete in PvP... this encompasses many aspects of UO, including factions. Sounds great; another foundation-al / fundamental and long-necessary, improvement.
3rd party detection afterwards...?!?- Are you just trying to butter my roll?

Seriously, if you could limit the mass abuse of UO that illegal tools use these days, that would greatly improve the desire for the legitimate players to spend more time in all of UO.
Another little suggestion here, if I may: Detect those that alter the existing client and prevent them from playing until they stop cheating (stump hacks, changing tiles... you know what I mean).
Cheaters are bad... and they definitively kill others' fun and profits too, heh.
Story arc and EM tools: Sounds great. I've always been an advocate of improving the foundation rather than tossing extra layers on a possibly faulty tower, & providing EMs, GMs, Devs et all with better tools is certainly a part of that.
Btw, you do not -have- to have 100 LRC... it is just the lazy,
easy water flowing downhill, in us that desires such a bonus

& the McLuna house is a cute and creative example of what is possible in UO, imo & I also find it to be a comical parody of what Dupaville unfortunately came to be, due to a lack of adequate resources ~ err
official policing ~ over a billion served, heh.