Wow, so in Nov. of 2006 they fixed it so water barrels & fields don't block house placement!
*looks in IDOC sticky thread at water barrel & field blocking tactic suggestions as late as June 2007*
As you say...
this is what actually made the "all shards" publish:
Publish 43 Incremental Update Dec 19 2006 1:09PM CST
During the evening of Thursday, November 16, 2006 PDT the following was published:
* Turned off the Sewer Rat invasion and the Halloween event content (Note: The Shard of the Dead will remain up until further notice)
* The 8th Age quiver is no longer blessed on Siege or Mugen
* The Heritage Collection Boiling Cauldron is now a container (may require re-deeding)
* Peaches picked from the Heritage Peach Tree will now stack with other peaches
* Personal attendants will no longer lose their clothing after passing through a moongate
* Fixed an issue that was causing arcane clothing charges to be used when the player had the required reagents
* Fixed an exploit with aquariums
* Fixed an exploit with Character Statues
* Fixed an exploit with certain skills that could bypass the skill re-use timer
* Various fixes for issues with character transfer
This part is noticeably missing:
"Water barrels and field spells will no longer block house placement"
As a side note, how do you access the INDEX for the news article where your original link is found?? I have searched in vain on the UO.com site. All I can find are the Five on Friday and other archives which are not related to that one.
-Skylark