Welcome Back to Britannia houses.

[In Flames]

Is there a time frame in which these should be falling?

Still waiting on one that's currently coming up on 3 (or 4) years.

I've had an extra account open holding a house waiting for that last one to fall for a VERY long time now and I very much wish to stop losing those 10$ a month (well, 60 every 6 months) for what for all intents and purposes, is a blank account.

Is there someone we can email or PM about these homes and perhaps get a GM to fix them? Something?

I'm TIRED of waiting for a fix that isn't considered a priority.

 

[LordDextonious]

Ditto.

 

[THP]

deffo lot of bugged come back to brit houses form the first campaign what 3-4 years ago??

surely theres an easy fix..

 

[jfkeach]

What shard are you playing on? I think shard population might be an issue. I have a house on cats on an account that has been closed for 3 years. The house is still there. One of my chars from another account is friended to it, and I checked out of curiosity. On Atlantic, I think they fall more regularly.

I think that they dont want some of the lesser populated shards to look desolate or something. Maybe i am off base, but thats the only reason I can see.

 

[In Flames]

LS.

 

[Experimental]

It was a guy named VooDoo who was in the V^P guild. He came back a few yrs ago during the promo then quit.
Meanwhile, the house he placed still stands even tho the acct is deactivated.
I've tried to get hold of him via ICQ multiple times and the house has been sent in to bug reports three times now.
Yet it still stands.

 

[LordDextonious]

I sent this question to "Ask Devs" section, about houses. To no avail... Sure wish someone would shed some light, something more than just "We can't do it." They know that people are holding houses just in hopes of upgrading their plot. I for one have about 3 accts, that have empty keeps in hopes of someday holding another castle. They know that we are subscribing more accts, which might hurt their bottom line.

If the world fills up with castles, just make more land, or cut some trees down. I could care less if the shard "looks empty". Just let me store more items!!

And... What exactly was the "back to britannia" all about, was that where you can use your accounts that are shut down for a limited time for free??

 

[Reximus]

And... What exactly was the "back to britannia" all about, was that where you can use your accounts that are shut down for a limited time for free??

Yes, and because from the account management standpoint the accounts were never 'closed' after RTB, the system doesn't kick in to decay the houses.

I don't like it, there is over 500 houses on Oceania where in reality that figure should be like 150 at best.

 

[Damien Softstep]

I sent this question to "Ask Devs" section, about houses. To no avail...

*gasp* So what your saying is you turned in a question to "ask the devs" and they didnt answer the question...im shocked...really i am...im guessing from their feedback of three questions a month...i liked FoF better and it was garbage too...atleast all the layoffs arent affecting the quality of the game...

 

[Xenobia]

LS.

Lot's of folks have been waiting for that house to fall. Surely there is ONE person at EA who can fix the issue.

 

[Poo]

oct 2'ish 2005 was when they where placed.

so they are over 4 years old.

 

[In Flames]

Lot's of folks have been waiting for that house to fall. Surely there is ONE person at EA who can fix the issue.

"That house"? I can assure you nobody else is waiting on the house I am. It's in the middle of nowhere.

^^

 

[~Antzy~Pantz~]

"That house"? I can assure you nobody else is waiting on the house I am. It's in the middle of nowhere.

^^

Lies, i'm waiting on it! geeesh!

 

[Tina Small]

http://www.uoherald.com/news/news.php?newsid=392

 

[Damien Softstep]

http://www.uoherald.com/news/news.php?newsid=392

Maybe make it the EM's job or have the GM's do it im sure with all the canned responses they send us they could do it...

 

[In Flames]

Maybe make it the EM's job or have the GM's do it im sure with all the canned responses they send us they could do it...

I'd say "pass" to having the EM's do it.

In my experience, the EM's I've run into aren't very bright.

Yet again, I don't really trust the GM's either.

 

[In Flames]

http://www.uoherald.com/news/news.php?newsid=392

Can anyone confirm if this still works?

Also can anyone confirm if this works for non-OSI owned homes?

 

[Tina Small]

Maybe make it the EM's job or have the GM's do it im sure with all the canned responses they send us they could do it...

Sure, but only if the only way they can do it is to delete the house and all its contents in one action. Even then, I think the potential for abuse may still be too great (e.g., an EM charged with this responsibility MIGHT be tempted to drop hints to friends he has made on the shard about a house he is going to drop in a particularly desirable location).

It's probably better to have a regular full-time EA staff member plug the house coordinates into a program that drops all the known abandoned houses on one shard all at the same time and with nothing left behind to advertise that a house fell. Seems like that's the fairest way for active players to stumble on the empty spaces and try to place a house of their own.

 

[In Flames]

Fired off an email to em. Hopefully it works >.<

I want more money sinks in game. Not in my wallet.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

The WBtB houses are not Owned by OSI houses. There's a difference. Most Owned by OSI houses were confiscated from banned players and such. I'm sure there are some other reasons too, like demolition pending bugs etc. Some of these houses may say "Owned by OSI" some may not. Some have no owner listed at all.

The WBtB houses were placed by players on inactive accounts during the Welcome back promotion. These houses have owners when you look at the house sign. Basically except for being completely abandoned there is nothing to tell that it's a house on an inactive account.

 

[Tina Small]

I've been under the impression that housing-related programming and information is stored on the same server(s) that controls account log-ins and keeps track of faction and guild/alliance statistics. If that's the case, then maybe for all these years it's just been too cumbersome and the data too poorly organized and/or too massive in amount to successfully write and test a program to locate houses owned by OSI and by inactive accounts. It's not like that server (or servers) can ever be brought down for a considerable length of time without setting off a firestorm of protest and the data may just be too massive to copy to another server to use for testing programs to run against the data.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

I agree Tina. For the developers not to be able to write a program to find either of these types of houses, the database must really be borked. We all know the old code in UO is hard to deal with and that almost no one is left that even remembers anything about it. Plus they lost so mnay tools and such in the multitude of transitions to new teams. Even so, surely there's someone out there bright enough to write something worthwhile and deal with some of these. The processing power of today's computers could surely handle the task in short order. Start with one server and move on to the next.

 

[Xenobia]

"That house"? I can assure you nobody else is waiting on the house I am. It's in the middle of nowhere.

^^

Now this one cracked me up! LoL Are you serious? There are people who make their lives in UO and their LIVING finding houses just such as you metioned so I can GUARANTEE that there are tons of people who are stationed at and/or who check that house daily. Get over yourself.

EDIT: Unless, of course, you just posted for the sake of posting and have no idea which house it is I am referring to. That is always a possibility

 

[Lady Storm]

Tina
a few months back the Dev stated they were needing player help in finding houses marked for demo as their system lost data and they were hard pressed to find "some " of these homes. They asked that players send in location of any they knew of so the demo's could start.

 

[LordDextonious]

Can anyone confirm if this still works?

Also can anyone confirm if this works for non-OSI owned homes?

I have sent NUMEROUS emails here. All the info they required was listed, I titled each email different each time hoping it will catch someones attention. I have the sent emails saved in drafts, some of the titles included... "BUG REPORT", "GIVE LAND TO PAYING CUSTOMERS", "DROP THE BUGGED HOUSES" and related entries. This was within a 3 month time-frame, when I did this.

 

[In Flames]

Now this one cracked me up! LoL Are you serious? There are people who make their lives in UO and their LIVING finding houses just such as you metioned so I can GUARANTEE that there are tons of people who are stationed at and/or who check that house daily. Get over yourself.

EDIT: Unless, of course, you just posted for the sake of posting and have no idea which house it is I am referring to. That is always a possibility

I don't know what house you're referring to. I posted because it seemed you assumed to know the house I speak of, and I assure you the one I speak of is just a tiny plot in the middle of nowhere. I was waiting on one house to fall in my location, a guy came back during WBtB, we spoke a bit, he placed a house, and never logged in again. The house I was originally waiting on, I got in contact with the owner and now I own it. Now I'm just waiting on the ill fated tiny plot that was placed mostly out of boredom, and has since cost me roughly (2 extra accounts, yea technically two granted one actually has characters but I never use it. 3 years, 120 a year per acct x2 accts x3 years = ) $720.

I'M IN TO DEEP! I can't give up on it now >.<

 

[Disease2]

Pretty simple to resolve this problem, use the feature that was originally built in for housing.......Bring back Manual Refresh!

 

[Reximus]

Pretty simple to resolve this problem, use the feature that was originally built in for housing.......Bring back Manual Refresh!

Pretty simple fix, they just need to write a script to enumerate through all houses, get the owner, then check to see if the account is active, if it isn't, start the decay process.

 

[Mapper]

Pretty simple fix, they just need to write a script to enumerate through all houses, get the owner, then check to see if the account is active, if it isn't, start the decay process.

More like if the account has been inactive for 90 days, Otherwise thats a little unfair.

 

[Disease2]

More like if the account has been inactive for 90 days, Otherwise thats a little unfair.

Screw Fairness, go back to the days when you had to open your front door to refresh your house and if you didn't then your house would drop after a week., It will stop people leaving accounts open just to hold a house, this game needs active players not inactive ones.

 

[Reximus]

Screw Fairness, go back to the days when you had to open your front door to refresh your house and if you didn't then your house would drop after a week., It will stop people leaving accounts open just to hold a house, this game needs active players not inactive ones.

Under the old system, if you don't remember, people would have houses of inactive accounts, and friend(s) of the house would refresh the house, so you still had heaps of houses of inactive, non paying accounts, if some dude wants to pay $12.99/month just to hold a house, then good on him, it's better for UO with more people paying.

 

[Reximus]

More like if the account has been inactive for 90 days, Otherwise thats a little unfair.

People only reactivating their accounts every 3 months for 1 month to save their house is a problem though, you should have to pay all the time to keep your house.

 

[Disease2]

Under the old system, if you don't remember, people would have houses of inactive accounts, and friend(s) of the house would refresh the house, so you still had heaps of houses of inactive, non paying accounts, if some dude wants to pay $12.99/month just to hold a house, then good on him, it's better for UO with more people paying.

Non paying should decay, but they should also bring in manual refresh, the housing problem boomed as soon as they put in auto refresh.

 

[Xenobia]

More like if the account has been inactive for 90 days, Otherwise thats a little unfair.

I agree. On Friday I had a conversation with somene at work and he stated that he shut his account down several years ago and his house still stands. I told him he was a jackass for not dropping it. I don't know the truth in what he told me but if what he said is true then the system needs to be dealt with for inactive accounts. It isn't fair to the paying customer.

 

[Fireman Sam]

ive emailed 2 or 3 times about a house on europa that no one has visited in years and didnt even get an acknowledgement, maybe if they keep ignoring it itll dissapear

 

[Sindris]

I agree it should be fixed. That being said, I used a friends old account to place a house specifically for mining during the last promotion. Just a little place to haul ore to for stockpiling and a base with which to fight Ore Elementals. It has shown not the slightest hint of decay yet and I'm glad that I can enjoy the benefits this particular programming oversight is affording me. Its a 8x10 and no one other than myself has ever placed there as far as I know, so I don't really feel like I am taking anything away from anyone. If it falls eventually, oh well. There will be other promotions...

 

[Experimental]

Now this one cracked me up! LoL Are you serious? There are people who make their lives in UO and their LIVING finding houses just such as you metioned so I can GUARANTEE that there are tons of people who are stationed at and/or who check that house daily. Get over yourself.

EDIT: Unless, of course, you just posted for the sake of posting and have no idea which house it is I am referring to. That is always a possibility

I know which house it is and if anyone is waiting for that house to fall, they seriously need a life. It's not an OSI owned house, the house sign is just like every other normal house on a PAYING acct, it's a very small plot, little to nothing in it and a larger house can't be placed where its located soooooooooooo.....if someone's waiting for it they will be seriously disappointed.

 

[Xenobia]

I know which house it is and if anyone is waiting for that house to fall, they seriously need a life. It's not an OSI owned house, the house sign is just like every other normal house on a PAYING acct, it's a very small plot, little to nothing in it and a larger house can't be placed where its located soooooooooooo.....if someone's waiting for it they will be seriously disappointed.

Well it's obvious that the OP is waiting on it and I'm sorry to say that many in the game think they may uncover some extrordinary rare from under the steps sooooooo......*shrugs* I could care less. I'm just saying that true idocer's know exactly where each house is (no matter how large) and almost to the minute when it went idoc. These people keep spread sheets for pete's sake. I know them...I'm on the internet! lol (sorry but I couldn't resist that)

 

[RD Gumbie]

Well there is a very simple fix which im still suprised they havent done, when they run the welcome back program they do not actually activate old accounts they are still suspended when you look up the information but they are allowing you to play it anyway. What they need to do is activate all suspended accts for 1 day or hr or min and then in 90 days every acct that is not active and has a house would start decaying.

For me I dont care anymore, since I knew it was broke I placed about 18-20 houses over 3 shards with the old free 15 day accts on the last welcome back to brit and they are still up and prolly will stay forever because if they cant fix the ones from past welcome backs, im sure they cant fix the ones this round. Allows me to play multiple shards and hoard more stuff with less accts.

 

[THP]

I AGREE we my olde idoc matey RD Gumbie ...easy fix would be to reactvate every single account banned or not for a random minute on a random day then close/ deactivate em again...hence activating the new 90 day timer.....and 90 days laters the problem is finally solved....[end]

 

[Salya Sin]

Screw Fairness, go back to the days when you had to open your front door to refresh your house and if you didn't then your house would drop after a week., It will stop people leaving accounts open just to hold a house, this game needs active players not inactive ones.

And with house customization... not everyone has a front door. SO what then... they just lose their houses?

AND I totally agree with the above mentioned idea... reactivate every account for one minute... or however long it would take to reset the server. If they have to... shut down the log in screen for the time frame. Then we can all wait 90 days... and have a bunch of IDOC's and if we're lucky... some of us might get that castle we've been waiting for.

EDIT** I put your suggestion up as a question on Ask the Dev's... although... they have yet to answer my other two. Don't count on them answering this one.

 

[In Flames]

I really don't see them having anything in place to be able to turn all accounts on for one minute.

 

[LordDextonious]

Well there is a very simple fix which im still suprised they havent done, when they run the welcome back program they do not actually activate old accounts they are still suspended when you look up the information but they are allowing you to play it anyway. What they need to do is activate all suspended accts for 1 day or hr or min and then in 90 days every acct that is not active and has a house would start decaying.

For me I dont care anymore, since I knew it was broke I placed about 18-20 houses over 3 shards with the old free 15 day accts on the last welcome back to brit and they are still up and prolly will stay forever because if they cant fix the ones from past welcome backs, im sure they cant fix the ones this round. Allows me to play multiple shards and hoard more stuff with less accts.

HAHA!!! Well let me know if you have any on pacific. Fel minoc. I'd pay HUGE for these houses to disappear.

This is actually pretty sad. It should be considered an exploit, even though it wasn't our fault. Not saying these people exploited per say, but it was allowed to happen, and still is allowed to happen. And probably will be allowed to happen again. You know I'll be adding some plots next time my 30 accts are able to play for a month. and I sure as hell will be deactivating the accounts I am paying for to hold land.

Maybe if we keep this thread hot enough, something will come about it. Keep em comin!

 

[In Flames]

Maybe if we keep this thread hot enough, something will come about it. Keep em comin!

Don't worry. I'm pulling it up daily.

 

[Experimental]

I'll help.

 

[LordDextonious]

Sure would be nice to have a dev chime-in on this.

 

[In Flames]

Sure would be nice to have a dev chime-in on this.

Yep. Sure would.

 

[Xelious Norwood]

I know for a fact some of the OSI owned homes were taken down, I dont know when but I IDOC alot on Baja and had 2 runebooks full of these homes and knew right where they were and some are gone and new homes placed in there spots, as for today I dont know if they are still doing it or not. I myself have a 18x18 I placed during the WBtB and its still there, and to my surprise a keep will fit in that spot but im not going to reopen the acct to just upsize plus I dont remember the acct name and password anyway and as anyone that does REAL ESTATE will tell ya back when we could place houses right as soon as an acct was created they had tons of accts, I dont use the home either and emailed the issue twice but no one has responded. So I said forget it, let it rot, they wont contact me about it.

 

[Llwyd]

Wasn't one of the reasons for getting rid of house refreshing due to the number of players serving in the military? Those deployed overseas didn't have regular access to the internet, and I imagine they still don't. I knew one guy who lost his house because of that (none of his friends remembered to refresh it for him).

 

[Ozymandies]

I thought the issue is that you have to turn off your acct using the webpage, which de-activates your acct and sets the clock on your house(s). Those welcome back accts never had their owners use the webpage, so they never got de-activated.

And yes, it was after 9/11 when the manual refresh was turned off because so many players were sent to Afghanistan.

OZ