World Designers: Why have some locations been messed up?

[hawkeye_pike]

Dear World Designers,

I've been playing UO (with a break) since the very beginning. Now, after re-activating my account, I found some of the locations being messed up. Examples:

Underground caves of Buccaneer's Den: There have been several exits (cellars of Buc's Den houses) where you could leave the caves via stairs. The stairs have been changed so they are now unusable (steps are missing).

Hedge Maze: The secret passages and underground tunnels of the Hedge Maze are broken. Similar problem like in Buccaneer's Den. Stairs are broken etc.

Britain Sewers: You cannot enter the sewers anymore from the Lost Lands side. There is a stair you cannot get across (not even by teleporting).

And there are many more.

All those place have been working perfectly well, now they cannot be used anymore. Why have they been broken? Can they be repaired?

Here's a sample picture of the broken stairs in Buccaneer's Den:

 

[Azureal]

Im sure the Buccs Den thing was from many many years ago, to prevent an exploit or something. I know youll ask for a link, but I dont have one, just vague memories.

Someone help me out.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

I don't know the why, but I do remember that Buc's Den caves were screwed up years ago.

I was unaware the entrance to/from the Lost Lands was messed up.

The hedge maze was messed up quite a long time ago too.



It'd be nice it someone of the developers would work on these. They are were very cool places to visit back in the day with old friends long gone.

 

[Tomas_Bryce]

Wasn't hedge maze broken by the KR patch?

 

[Piotr]

Wasn't hedge maze broken by the KR patch?

Yes...

 

[JC the Builder]

Wasn't hedge maze broken by the KR patch?

Yes and their fix was to remove the hidden part completely. Thanks Kingdom Reborn!

 

[hawkeye_pike]

So, you basically are saying that the "messing up" of secret and exciting locations has been done intentionally? Because the KR client didn't work in those locations? Sounds unbelievable! But then again... concerning the "effort and expertise" that was put into making KR a good product... you may be right.

 

[love2winalot]

You can mine/fish/and open all the containers under Bucs Den. I will never understand, after 10 years, why that location has never been used for anything? This would have been a great spot to have the Invasion start from.

 

[MoonglowMerchant]

Dear World Designers,

I've been playing UO (with a break) since the very beginning. Now, after re-activating my account, I found some of the locations being messed up. Examples:

Underground caves of Buccaneer's Den: There have been several exits (cellars of Buc's Den houses) where you could leave the caves via stairs. The stairs have been changed so they are now unusable (steps are missing).

Hedge Maze: The secret passages and underground tunnels of the Hedge Maze are broken. Similar problem like in Buccaneer's Den. Stairs are broken etc.

Britain Sewers: You cannot enter the sewers anymore from the Lost Lands side. There is a stair you cannot get across (not even by teleporting).

And there are many more.

All those place have been working perfectly well, now they cannot be used anymore. Why have they been broken? Can they be repaired?

Here's a sample picture of the broken stairs in Buccaneer's Den:

Here is what they did.

They created new tiles for KR. Then, they hired people to go over the old world and tile over it one tile at a time, sort of like making a map in HOMM if you ever used that map editor.

Unfortunately, sometimes the wrong tiles were used. Other times, they didn't have a tile that worked like the old tile did so those places got messed up.

They were trying to fix it for a while, but seem to have stopped. My favorite example is in Covetus where the lich lords spawn. That area used to be full of old broken things. Now, a lot of the broken things got replaced by unbroken ones i.e. the ruined paintings are just paintings.

It was sloppy and cheap just like everything else EA does.

 

[Basara]

Q1. Underground caves of Buccaneer's Den: There have been several exits (cellars of Buc's Den houses) where you could leave the caves via stairs. The stairs have been changed so they are now unusable (steps are missing).
A1: These were broken at or before the launch of Age of Shadows, as I started playing March 2003, and they were already non-functional then - and was told by the friends who brought me into the game that they'd been that way for a while.


Q2: Hedge Maze: The secret passages and underground tunnels of the Hedge Maze are broken. Similar problem like in Buccaneer's Den. Stairs are broken etc.
A2: This was more accident than anything, and they made some (rather bad) changes to attempt to compensate - but at least they tried.

Q3: Britain Sewers: You cannot enter the sewers anymore from the Lost Lands side. There is a stair you cannot get across (not even by teleporting).
A3: This was broken during the Britain sewer events a couple years ago, where rats with special coins were spawning in the sewers, and there was an event area added to the dungeon (the area with the poison elementals, orcs, etc.) The sewers were made no-recall at the time, for a while heavier spawn was in the main sewers as well, and the blocking of the other side was probably either accidental with the addition of the new sections, or deliberate, to keep people from coming in from the short, safer, side of the sewers to the event area (that unfortunately also propagated to the Fel side of things).

While these are bad, what I consider worse are people who scream bloody murder when such issues resulting from events are brought up, claiming that they should be left unfixed "As a reminder of the event". The event's long gone - so should be the obstructions.

 

[Nosuperiors_Damnfewequals]

I never knew the buc's tunnel stairs to work, but then, was ingame quite a long time before I ever tried.

The sewer problem, and the hedgemaze problem, should be fixed. They are part of our heritage and we enjoyed them, even after countless trips thru them. They are also part of the ongoing problem of no bugs fixed, and original UO being slowly removed from the game.

 

[Spree]

Are they going to fix the Roads they have been messed up ever since KR came out.

 

[o2bavr6]

There is also the east bridge in Despise doesn’t let you target more than one tile away and the west bridge does.

It used to be that the west bridge was that way, so they fixed it. At the same time they added the east bridge but it is broken like the west bridge used to be.

Same way with the liche lord room in Deceit, you can only target the tile next to you.

I used to think all this was done on purpose, but after 10 years of dumb mistakes, I can only surmise that this was unintentional as well.

 

[Joyous2K]

What is the word? Borky? No. Snarky? No. Funky? No.

Ahh yes.... wonky. Wonky is your answer. You will not be informed of our decision. Sandbox.

 

[Revenant2]

There are a number of weird world tile instances in the world right now, but the one that seems strangest of all in terms of its invasiveness is the Felucca east bridge in Despise.

It's so different that it creates it's own set of characteristics for raiding and defense of the island. To defend it from raiders, you just drop 2 e-fields and maintain them - nobody can teleport/shadow jump past. If you're a hider, it's possible to hide right on the east bridge with 10 people trying to attack you. It seems that as long as those attackers aren't standing on a tile that is adjacent to the hider, there's no line of sight and the hide works. Mages cannot cast at people on the East bridge and archers cannot shoot unless they push up and get within one tile of the target. Pets don't take kill commands properly either.

Trying to grab a person or monster's health bar while they are on the East Bridge in a situation where you would normally use ctrl-shift is problematic. Every single tile on and around the bridge throws up its own name tab and the person or monster's name tag may not appear among them. If it does, it may be buried under the bridge tile names.

Making the despise East bridge work properly (like the west one does) would make the island harder to defend from raiders. Without going into whether or not that is a good thing (I don't have an opinion on that), I can say that in terms of malfunctioning world areas that impact people on a regular basis, Fel Despise east bridge the biggest one I know of.