Where best to catch up on official lore? [ANSWERED]

[Hannes Erich]

Calling all lore hounds!

I realize the past several stories leading up to Time of Legends can easily be found on UO.com.

And I realize the event moderator pages (like this one) keep a record of shard-specific fiction events. Just to get that out of the way.

But I've been out of the loop regarding official Ultima Online fiction for the past few years, really. So the other night, I set out to catch up on the stories, that lead to the stories, that led to the stories. And I discovered something possibly horrifying, not to be too dramatic.

I can't find the stories that led to the stories.

When Broadsword delivered UO's new website, they included official lore stretching back only about a year ("New Friends, Old Enemies", September, 2014). UOGuide.com stopped archiving official lore in November, 2012 (What's up, @JC the Builder and wiki type people?). Stratics stopped archiving official lore in 2002. Forum searching turns up nothing, and Archive.org doesn't archive 100% (especially links deeper than a homepage URL).

Someone please, please tell me there's a fan site out there, somewhere, that's been archiving responsibly, preserving Ultima Online's official fiction for future readers.

P.S. And give me their website address.

 

[JC the Builder]

You see the problem with a wiki is it needs people to actively update it. We used to have Nimuaq and Cogniac and others who used to do a fantastic job organized all this stuff. Unfortunately they don't update anymore and no one else has stepped in to fill the void.

All that information you seek is probably on UOGuide but it is buried in news posts instead of being organized under the BNN section. A lot of it can most likely be found here: http://www.uoguide.com/UOGuide:UO_News_Archives

(thank goodness at least Andrasta still updates the news!)

 

[Viquire]

Thank you for continuing to host the resource JC.

 

[Hannes Erich]

Well, after digging around, I'm happy to say that nothing seems to be missing or gone! But as you mentioned @JC the Builder it is buried in the news archive.

Whoever this @Andrasta is (hope I'm tagging the right person), they're awesome.

Here's what I sorted out in a nutshell:

UOGuide has every ounce of official world-wide fiction archived (fiction affecting all shards), from early 1997 Alpha to the present.

But after The Awakening story arc, Broadsword dropped the newspaper format entirely in favor of fiction, and UOGuide didn't adapt its format to cover that.

UO marched on, and throughout 2013, a few pieces of fiction were released, mostly by EM Drosselmeyer.

You can read these ONLY by scrolling to 2013 in UOGuide's news archive, and picking them out from between the non-fiction news bits. UOGuide still archives official fiction, but links to it through the main news archive.

When UO.com was redesigned leading up to Time of Legends, they created a Fiction archive in their new wiki, but ONLY archived back to September 2014, as mentioned in the OP.​

Nitty-gritty details:

In 2012, during the long-running Awakening arc, Broadsword began employing a fiction format for official story arcs, alongside the long-used newspaper format (The Yew Times by that point).

In addition to archiving each piece of fiction or fictional news as it came out, UOGuide created a comprehensive page for The Awakening.

It isn't linked to from anywhere extremely obvious--neither the Libraries section in the main directory, nor the BNN & Town Crier page--but you can get to it via individual pieces of archived fiction.

The Awakening-related updates at the top of the BNN & Town Crier page are complete; The Awakening page is about 70% complete. It's missing coverage of the last two acts, plus the epilogue.

Unfortunately, after The Awakening concluded, UOGuide stopped maintaining any new or existing pages for UO fiction and lore.

I'm guessing somebody burned out while maintaining that Herculean Awakening page.​

 

[Andrasta]

Thanks for the mention guys. I believe that UOGuide is a very important resource which is why I volunteered to do my small part. I take a look at what you have referenced and see if I can do more to update it. I have hundreds of pictures from many of those events and some would fit well with the Lore you speak of. I hope to have more time in the future to build on my contribution.