Ask & Answer No. 8

             Posted by Kai Schober | 2012 Oct 31 20:43 -0400 GMT        

  Ask & Answer No. 7

             Posted by Tim Chappell | 2012 Oct 23 15:12 -0400 GMT        

  Ask & Answer No. 6

    Posted by Tim Chappell | 2012 Oct 15 14:45 -0400 GMT

    Its Monday again and we have another set of questions that were answered by the development team. There were even a couple questions answered by one of our GMs.

Can we get an option added to crystal portals to hop over to the Heartwood Gate in Yew? It would making visiting Heartwood that much more convenient! (sablestorm)
Mesanna: Sorry this is not possible to do the fact that Heartwood is on a Dungeon Server

UOForums – There’s several different types of chats so Im wondering if there is a personal message system in the works? Though I kinda enjoy the classic UO “drop me a little book in my mailbox” thing, I think we’ve evolved past that now. Thanks! (Quintus Batiatus)
Mesanna: The team has talked about different ways to improve on the existing mailing system but nothing concrete as of yet.

UOForums – I am looking forward to the Vendor Search option. Is there any details that can be given on this yet? Will you get coordinates to the vendors location, or be teleported to the vendors location, or be shown a map of where the vendor is? Thanks!(Quintus Batiatus)
Mesanna: How about all of the above? We want to give you options and make it useable by all.

UOForums – Im a veteran player since 1997. Ive come and gone a few times now. Though I enjoy the game as it is currently and find it fun to discover new things thats been added in recent years, I sometimes long for the days of the original release. Or maybe, the post Trammel release. The days when GM smiths sat outside the Brit Blacksmith shops, selling their wares. You know, the “stand outside the bank repeating the same items your trying to sell” days. My question is this, would it be possible or have a shard just for classic game play? Thanks! (Quintus Batiatus)
Mesanna: Not to give you a short answer on this one but it’s been hashed many times and the answer is still no.

‘Ello all! We have this fisherman in the SRC who is constantly frustrated by using his bait. He moans, that having to attach them individually everytime you cast is so fiddely for his clumsy hands, he doesn’t even bother with it anymore. Is there a way you can make it more manageable even for slightly inapt fisherman? Maybe create a hook which can be charged with bait and then work like the lava ones? I am sure fishermen (and women of course) around the realms would be glad for it …. and stop prodding me Vaughan, I did ask them now …. so stop it! (John II, A&A4 Comments)(also asked by Frarc, Ask the Devs)
Mesanna: Our stealing skill has just increased by .05 cause we are going to steal this awesome idea =)

If a house falls next to you and you resize a house next to it. Will you be able to place on the idoc spot? Or will you not be able to place because of the Idoc placement timer?(Lord Gareth)Mesanna: Gareth *shakes head* you should know this! There is a delay and the time delays is from 30 minutes to 2 hours it’s totally random.

UOMania clorenz – after paging a GM with one character, if I log off and switch to another character on the same account will I stay in queue and still receive an answer?
GM Inarea: Yes as long as they are on the same account.

UOMania clorenz – could we get also GM support via e-mail? It would be easier to explain the problem (especially for non native English speakers!)
GM Inarea: So if English is not your native language, when you page state in the beginning that you would like to be contacted via email instead and give a brief description of the issue.

UOMania clorenz – I left my Personal Bless Deed on Europa when I transferred my character to another shard. When I transferred the character back to Europa, the Personal Bless Deed was not working for him anymore. How do I get it fixed?
Mesanna: Short answer a GM can fix it for you, long answer is we have this on our list to fix in the big bug push next publish.

UOMania Sir Bolo – I’ve heard that under Lord Blackthorn’s rule the players will be able to run for office in the cities of Britannia. Is this just for roleplaying or will the player-run city councils also gain in-game powers? Can we have an example of the things they could do?
Kyronix: If you mean in terms of having the ability to add or change your city? To give your city random buffs or a facelift or add a soda jerk or additions like this? Maybe. All I can say right now is that it is roleplaying with a twist. All the details are not worked out, nothing is in stone . As soon as we have more details we will be happy to share them with you.

  Discuss this article.

Ask & Answer No. 5

Posted by Tim Chappell | 2012 Oct 09 23:49 -0400 GMT

It is time for another Ask and Answer and this week we answer a lot of great questions from UO Mania.

UO Mania clorenz – Are there any plans to add books to store Scrolls of Alacrity or Powerscrolls similar to the books for Scroll of Transcendence?
Mesanna: When we did the SOT book we had planned to add these other ways to store items. There are just so many things we want to get done we have to take them one at a time. Please be patient they are coming.

UO Mania clorenz – Are there any plans to add jewelry boxes to store rings and bracelets similar to the seed boxes?
Mesanna: This is something the team as talked about several times, but it’s not as simple as the seed boxes. As soon as we can figure out a way to do this correctly to everyone’s satisfaction we will give you guys a jewelry box. The best part about this is I found a wonderful antique jewelry box that would be fitting for the art.

UO Mania clorenz – Can we have a preview of the 15th year Veteran Rewards? Are they useful or decorative?
Mesanna: All the 15th year vet rewards are useful except for the new statues we have added this year. (But the statues are pretty sweet) We will post some pictures close to the publish date for everyone.

UO Mania Bl4ckFir3 – Why do we still have to pay a monthly subscription, while many games have moved to a free-to-play model? Have you considered going Free-to-play with extra features and expansions for sale and the possibility to earn currency in-game to unlock them?
Mesanna: The option to take UO free to play is not up for discussion at this time.

 

UO Mania Wanderer – are you planning to provide some improvements for thieves in PvP?
Mesanna: Honestly no we don’t have any specific plans, but we do want to start the Topic specific HOC’s soon, PVP will be a topic we are going to want to talk to you guys about. I will say that the team wants to give thieves things to do in and out of PVP.

UO Mania Sir Bolo – the Singing Balls and Secret Chests are only available on the UO store in Japan at the moment. Are you going to make them available for sale also on origin.com in the US and in Europe?
Mesanna: I can add the Secret Chest in the future when I have other things to add to the origin store. I need everyone to understand this is a normal chest that has the ability to have a combo lock on it thus a great role playing tool.

UO Mania Sir Bolo – codes for the 15th Anniversary Commemorative Robe were handed out to players at the anniversary party in Virginia, and to the winners of the Memorable Moments contest. Are we going to get other opportunities to win the promotional codes for this robe?
Mesanna: Not at this time, we do not have any plans outside of the contest and the party to distribute the robe.

Recently, the veteran rewards are overflowing with Sosaria. 

How about “Re-activation of vet rewards”?  I mean, a reduction point is decided according to years of rewards and it returns to the acquisition point for a new rewards. For example, “1 year vet rewards” is 0.1point and 10 “1 year vet rewards” will be point for “Getting one 1 years vet rewards”.
Thank you for your time. (Peil)
Mesanna: I can see pro’s and con’s to this. This is not a decision that can be made lightly but we will bring this up at a later date for discussion.

Do the devs have any plans to make Gargoyle Clothing (Gargish Robes, Gargish Wing Armor, Gargish Talons) able to be used with a Arcane Gem to create Arcane Clothing for Gargoyles? The only Arcane Clothing that a Gargoyle can use right now, is the Arcane Robes, which there’s quite a few Robe slot items nowadays which are better (Conjurer’s Garb, Shroud of the Condemned, etc). (PlayerSkillFTW)
Phoenix: : Right now we don’t have plans to create Gargoyle versions of Arcane Clothing, because there are alternatives on equipment that make all spellcasting reagent-free.

Is it possible to change the color of the font on the menu for the peculiar seeds? The font is dark and the background is dark. Its hard for my old eyes to see how many resources there are on the plant. On the plain plants the font is white with the black background. Can the pecular seeds be changed to what the plain plants are. Thank you. (Sara Dale)
Kyronix: This is something that can be adjusted, I’ll go ahead and submit an unconfirmed bug report into the system so it can get added.

Discuss this article.

Ask & Answer No. 4

Kai Schober

1 Oct 2012 16:43:28 EST

It is Monday again. Although the Dev team already answered a ton of questions during the Anniversary Party on Saturday (a recording of this will be eleased later this week), they took the time to address these questions gathered on the different fan sites, too.

Slayer properties on instruments:
Was wondering if we could ever get a way to craft slayer musical instruments. Either thru runic saws or possibly new recipes for carpenters to make? (Xalan Dementia)
Could maybe someday imbuing move to instruments? (JamesC )
I’d like to be able to imbue GM instruments with slayer properties using the same ingredients as slayer weapons and to employ the currently unused ‘essence of persistence’ to either a) raise the number of charges to 1600, in line with the minor Ilshenar artifacts, Iolo’s Lute and Gwenno’s harp or b) add the ‘renewable’ property found on the minor Tokuno artifact flutes.
Kyronix: We are constantly talking about new ways to revitalize crafters, and this is another great series of suggestions to give some love to various crafter classes. We will add it to our backlog list.

When the punishment for murderers, banishment from Trammel, was introduced it actually did not deny access to content, because all that was in Trammel was also in Felucca. However as more and more content has been added over the years, access to content has been denied, making the punishment, in effect, more and more severe. Is the punishment for murderers therefore now too severe? Should they be allowed access to the other facets? Forged pardons exist in game, but is there any possibility that ‘full pardons’ might become available, possibly from Origin Store or clean up points, to allow long established red characters to ‘repent’ and become good citizens?
Kyronix: Do truly red players want to turn blue? I don’t know the plausibility of releasing an item that would erase all murder counts, but adding new ways to make Felucca a more attractive area to play is something we’ve talked about.

Can you fix the language filter? There should be a way to toggle the language filter on or off, besides just the chat filter. While marking runes for a rune library, my wife and I have come across many words that cannot be put onto runes. The filter denies the name as inappropriate. Here is a small list of words that are inappropriate: basement, frozen, passage, companion, titan, assassin, compassion, counselor and I am sure that we will come across others as we mark runes. With all of the character names, guild names, pet names that people can make which are much worse, you would think that we would not have these problems while making a rune library.
Please look at adjusting the filter so it is not so ridiculous. (Dreadlord Lestat)
Phoenix: We do believe the obscenity filter is a bit too harsh, because it filters sub-strings that contain only slightly naughty words like “ass” and “tit”. We are considering how to adjust the filter and believe that relaxing it a bit would be the right thing to do.

Although we’re now approaching the 15th Aniversary: I would like to ask if the 14 yr. vet reward shard shield will be offered for Siege’s 14 yr. vets even if as deco, or are ye all thinking of something else perhaps that the dev. team or artists could create for Siege’s 14 yr. vets to claim as their 14 yr. customer vet reward? Perhaps if the shard shields just can not be offered even as deco only for us, maybe the art team could create a Siege shard RUG ? That would be awesome looking, like the dolphin rose or skull rugs for the 10 yr vet reward.
Hopefully yall will yet come up with, a 14 yr. vet reward for ye Siege customer base. Thank ye kindly! (Queen Zen)
Mesanna: We can provide deco shields for the 14th for Siege only.

The Brit Boat since this big monolith of a boat costs so much damn money, what say we make it so that either it doesn’t rot and die or that its stages are 20x more then normal boats. I rarely if ever use the ones i bought cause im afraid ill get busy at work and forget to refresh them and loose them. Which makes them useless if they are not being used no? (poo)
Kyronix: I have probably spent a small fortune in boats only to have them decay on me because I forget to refresh them and they go poof. While making the Brit Ship being completely nodecay is unlikely finding a middle ground is doable.

Now where garg necless and earrings are a part of a garg suit, I have to trash alot non gm jewelry as I can’t smelt them back to ingots. Will we see a fix for that? It’s really a pain when making suits to the Gargs. (FrejaSP)
Misk: Providing some sort of salvaging for tinkering has been discussed by the team. Up to this point my solution has been to craft these items near the Ter Mur Jeweler so that I can simply sell the ones that I did not need. Hey, 1 gold is 1 gold after all.

Did not see this posted, so was curious about it. Has there been any consideration to adding the mystic and necro equivalents to mage weapons? Some templates use magery as a weapon skill with -0 to -20 mage weapon. I think there would be definite interest in a -20 mysticism or -20 nercomancy weapons. Might breathe some life into some older templates and add variety. Could this be considered?(Shadowdark)
Phoenix: This suggestion has merit, and we are always looking for ideas for new and interesting item properties to help keep things fresh.

You can, as a rule, only get a group of Spellweavers together for a Focus in the busy evening hours which means Spellweaving is only useful between mid-evening and around 4 0r 5 in the morning because the Spellweaving timer runs out real time. Can it be switched to character time in game so that we can get the Focus when it’s available in the evening and then log out the character until we want to play it as a Spellweaver in the morning or afternoon? (Tanivar)
Phoenix: This is a good suggestion and we will consider a solution like is proposed here.

Certain item\item groups were removed from Cleanup turn in list. Would items listed below be returned as they were once where worth significant points?
– Books (mainly books gotten from fishing and quest reward from turning in Ancient Tome) turned off due to bug fix (old point value 100-250 points)
– Old Holiday Wands (100 charge and 500 charge ones) (Old point value 10000)
Also would the following items ever be added?
– Old charged weapons (hit curse\febleminded\Clumsy\ect charges) Excluding Hit MM\Fireball\Lightning\Heal Greater Heal (point value suggested 5000 same as other charged items currently can be turned in)(NBG)
Kyronix: Our goal is to keep a consistent rotation of items in the Cleanup list so that both the rewards and the turn-in items are fresh. Thanks for the suggestions!

f you have something you want to know about Ultima Online and the team, post your questions on your fansite. All interesting questions will be collected and send to our team, so we can continue to answer them.

Discuss this article.

Ask & Answer No. 3

Kai Schober

24 Sep 2012 12:36:20 EST

The Ultima Online team has received another set of questions last week. Here are the answers.

The Rustic and Gothic theme packs can not be bought together, as they could from uogamecodes.com, are there any plans to make that possible? (Snyder330) 
When the change was made to Origin Store that was left out, we will add it back in next time we go to put something up on the store.

Some Origin stores outside of the US don’t all have the full range of items – when the High Seas booster will be available in EMEA region? (Sir Z), – Stygian Abyss is still not available in Brazil store (Bealank). Will the missing items become available?
We have reported this to my contact, also inquiring when the items from the Korean store will be back, when we hear something definite we will let you guys know.

Is there a reason to keep town loyalty up other than for the banners and the town titles? (Ingame Question)
Mesanna:  Yes there is, we have another reason that will be revealed very soon.  Sorry don’t want to spoil anything.

Will there be more and new casino games added in the future? (Ingame Question)
Phoenix:  Yes!  We are planning another dice game, plus a card game.  Both will be in the style of the casino table games.

While I appresiate the good new new player guide you made for the “Playguide” section on herald.. is there any particular reason you removed alot of valid pages that people frequently used as a look up guide, such as the material bonus page? And why is the new new player guide in PDF? It is terrible to navigate for specific info. (Knuckleheads.dk)
Mesanna: We are moving over to a new site named UltimaOnline.com and it is in a html format, no more PDF.

Here’s my question: With everyone asking for new content and revamps for old dungeons like Doom, etc, would the DEVs consider re-instating imbuing artifacts/replicas as long as the item caps remain the same for non-exceptional items, meaning all artifacts/replicas would be imbueable to 450 property cap? I mean its a huge undertaking to come up with new artifacts/properties, think about the balance required, and most of the stuff will probably be a rehash of older items anyhow. Why not let us have some fun with it? I think it would really invigorate older lesser/minor artifacts without making anything overpowered, considering how some reforged/new shame loot is insanely good now. (Arcades)
Kyronix: This is a really interesting idea, but one that would need to be tread upon very carefully.  What we’ve talked about is trying to incorporate allowing players to revitalize outdated artifacts via traditional crafting means and at the same time revitalizing the crafter class.

Hello Mesanna and Dev Team, because of the all-time discussion about the UO graphics I like to ask if there are any plans for the 2D/Classic Client to get better a screen resolution? We still have 800×600 max, this is quite outdated for today’s games. (Medea, Ultima Online Bibliothek Forum)
Kyronix: There are draw issues associated with the world building when increasing the size of the client window in the 2D/Classic client.  We’ve experimented with it, but unfortunately the results were not aesthetically pleasing.  You can always come over to the dark side and switch to the EC….*evil grin*

Hallo Mesanna and UO Dev Team, are there any plans to have the small, round Radar Map in the 2D/Classic Client replaced by a zoomable/bigger version of it or even a real map like the Enhanced Client has now? (Ultima Mapper works not on my system so I have no really usable solution at the moment.) And if a new map would be built in, is there a possibility to add Towns, Dungeons and important points too? (Waldschrat and MeneTekel, Ultima Online Bibliothek Forum)
Phoenix: Currently we are not very likely to make any significant changes to the Classic client. The Enhanced client has a much-improved map. Since that client’s UI can be completely customized, player-created user interfaces for the EC offer greater improvements still.

Dear UO Team, what about completing the house- and roof house building tiles? There are some of them and it would be fantastic to have with every set the complete (small) walls, windows, archs and for the roofs all directions of them. (Medea, Ultima Online Bibiothek Forum)
Mesanna: We do know there are missing directions of certain tiles but if you could email me the wall tiles and roof tiles you would like to see in the customization gump that would help us with adding the tiles you guys want.

Dear Dev Team, I am thinking about new instruments for bards – what about a bagpipe? It would fit quite perfectly for some of the races/classes! (Raknar Skarsol, Ultima Online Bibliothek Forum)
Mesanna: First off before I answer this question, are you JP in disguise? *grins* I think bagpipes would be different, but since the instruments are not equippable some of the magic would be lost don’t you think? Of course if you just want some for display and sound that would not be as difficult.

If you have something you want to know about Ultima Online and the team, post your questions on your fansite. All interesting questions will be collected and send to our team, so we can continue to answer them.

Discuss this issue.

Ask & Answer No. 2

Kai Schober

17 Sep 2012 12:13:34 EST

The Ultima Online team has received another set of questions last week. Here are the answers.

Concerns

People using high Seas boats, moored along side each other, to ‘house hide’ in PvP.
Mesanna: We have written this up as a bug and hope to have it fixed soon.

Questions

Are there any plans to make gargoyle horn dye and/or restyle available on hairdressers? Daslo, Neverplay UO, Cerwin Vega
Mesanna: After speaking with the team we think Horn Dressers is a good idea…Thanks for the suggestion

Are there any plans to revamp Doom? By this I mean changing or evolving the bosses, changing the loot, artifact pool or drop mechanics. There are several problems, for one an increase in players causes more bosses to spawn, however there is no obligation to complete a full round (which would be my definition of running a gauntlet), so people do the 5 rooms then leave before the Dark Fathers, usually leaving one skilled soloer to spend 30 mins plus killing each of them. Now we have gargoyles some gargoyle drops should probably also be included. (CKTC, ask the devs)
Mesanna: CKTC, Doom is on our list, it needs updated as much as champ spawns, dungeons and peerless do.

So awhile ago, I inquired about this and someone said the refer a friend program would be making a return. I recall someone saying the program would be back, but now I can’t find where this was said. Is there any chance the program will be making a return soon? I am asking because there are many players who gave their accounts away or sold them. Some of them that I have pestered mean to return via the trial so it would be really great to get referred by them if the referral program returns. (Sablestorm, Stratics)
Mesanna: Sablestorm, at this time we are not starting up the Buddy Referral program. With all the account management changes this is something that was not moved into the new system and would require.

A while back I read about EA’s plan for WAR/UO/DAoC: They planned to switch from ‘continuing content patches’ to so called ‘booster packs’. For UO that resulted in the ‘High Seas booster’ and the ‘Gothic’ and ‘Rustic’ theme packs. My question is: Will you continue to add boosters? And if so, will they be more in the line with the theme packs or the High Seas expansion? What is the timeframe in which you will add new content (other then differently colored items… . (from Knuckleheads.dk)
Mesanna: No UO is not going to be working on a booster pack or a theme pack for a while. We want to take the time to do a big bug push. We want to put in an in game Vendor Search, we want to be able to update the outdated armor in the game, we want to improve the fishing rewards, we want to finish virtues, and we want to finish the high res art. So at this time we don’t have a booster pack or expansion in the works. I am not saying we never well but just not at this time.

When will the Virtue system be completed? (from Knuckleheads.dk)
Mesanna: We have come up with several ideas but just don’t feel they are worthy of the last two virtues. We have read some of your ideas on stratics but would love to hear more.

Will the “brainstormed” Order/Chaos involve Warfare in usual None-PvP areas, Such as trammel? (from Knuckleheads.dk)
Mesanna: We have not gotten that far in the discussions with this, hopefully we can talk to everyone during the 15th Anniversary Party and get a good discussion going. Since a lot of you are not able join us we will also start a thread when we are at the point of go or no go on the project.

Non-medable armor is underpowered compared to medable armor. Is there any plans to boosting non-medable armor without ruining the usefulness of leather? (from UOForums.com)
Mesanna: We are in discussion regarding updating armor, making all armor useful again. We are going to do our best not to mess up leather but still make the other materials a viable option.

It is very bad impression goldspammers leave on newbies and returners, with the default channel being help, trials unable to change, and returners often not know they can switch channels. Could you at least make the default channel “General” if the account privileges grants access to it? (from UOForums.com)
Stephen: If you account is not a trial account we will make the change to have the default as general instead of help, this will be made in one of the upcoming publishes. Trail accounts will still be placed in the help channel. Please keep in mind the gold spammers are trial accounts those have to stay in the help channel.

Is it possible to see if your character is friended to the Ants? If not wish they could make something on the character sheet.(Ingame Question from Drachenfels)
Mesanna: Currently there is not a way to tell if your friended to the ants other than not getting attacked. It is something we can add in the future so I will add it to the backlog.

Still I must ask, Will you please fix houses to allow more than 10 Co-owners? Many of us have multiple accounts and are sick and tired of being nothing but a Friend in our own homes… I know I’m not alone and I know I’ve asked time and time again but PLEASE can we have at least 70 co-owner slots on our house. From MalagAste, Uhall. Risso, Ask the Devs (Clarification: Only the owning account characters are all counted as owning. Subsequent account characters are treated individually. Therefore it is not possible to co-own more than 8 characters from other accounts, any above that number can only be friended.)
Mesanna: Everyone will be happy to hear (or I hope they will be) that we as a team have talked about it and want to make a change to the housing co owners. Instead of 10 co owners we want to change it to 10 accounts which is 70 players total.

If you have something you want to know about Ultima Online and the team, post your questions on your fansite. All interesting questions will be collected and send to our team, so we can continue to answer them.

Discuss this article.

Ask & Answer No. 1

Kai Schober

10 Sep 2012 10:35:40 EST

You ask and we answer. In the last days our team took the time to address some of the questions that keep coming in. If you have something you want to know about Ultima Online and the team, post your questions on your fansite. All interesting questions will be collected and send to our team, so we can continue to answer them.

Here are the first seven:

1. Would it be possible to convert the older quests to the new Quest system? The older system only allows one quest to be active at a time. (Drachenfels, General Chat)
Mesanna: Are you speaking about the context questions vs the paperdoll quests? I know this is not the answer you want to hear but without looking deeper into the code we can not give a definite answer for this question.

2. Are Harpsichord rolls a permanent or time limited drop? If limited, when will they stop? (popps, Stratics)
Mesanna: This is a permanent addition to the game, hopefully in the future we can add additional music rolls.

3. Can you mention Fansites by URL in game…. there has been talk in the past you can and then some say you cannot (Rupert Avery, UO Auctions)
Mesanna: Yes, you can advertise any URL in game on your profile as long as it DOES NOT sell any items.

4. There’s a number of items that were introduced with SA that resemble & relate to the other Imbuing crafting ingredients. But they have no current use. Fey Wings, Fur, Horn of Abyssal Inferno, Kepetch Wax, Lodestone, Primeval Lich Dust, Slith Eye, Vile Tentacles, Void Core. Are there plans to make all those items, or some of them usable at one point? (Nystul, Ask the Devs)
Kyronix: We’re always looking for new and creative uses for underutilized ingredients and are currently working on adding some to upcoming content.

5. Hello, I just want to ask a question about Distilling. Are there any plans to expand it so that wines, beers, ales and sake can be made? Thanks (Edward Striker, Ask the Devs)
Mesanna: I will add this to our list of things to do, good suggestion Edward.

6. Is there any plans to make Golems semi “bondable” at some point in time? The big problem with Golems nowadays is that not only are they mostly underpowered, but also that any training put into them is undone when they can die so easily. Another part of the solution, would of course be to lessen the cooldown incurred upon healing the Golem. The cooldown is currently like 30 seconds, which is WAY too long. It should be shortened to something like 10 seconds. (PlayerSkillFTW, Ask the Devs)
Mesanna: We have talked about adding new golens to advanced Tinkering, but we are not going to add another golem to be a training punching bag for Luna.

7. Are there any plans to review getting to and from certain areas of Siege? There are many places on the shard that you cannot gate to from the Ter Mur facet and also from many places in the Tokuno facet, for example to areas around Luna and also areas around Yew and Skara Brae. (When you try, you get a very unhelpful message that says your spell doesn’t seem to work.) The inconsistencies make no sense at all and cause a lot of frustration for newcomers to the shard, especially when they work hard to make enough gold to place a house in an area that looks ideal for housing (because it’s sooooo empty) and then find out that the reason for the emptiness is just plain old bugginess. (Tina Small, Ask the Devs)
Mesanna: Tina we agree, and we are entering a problem report on this today.

That’s all for today, but we are sure you have more questions.

Keep them coming and we’ll see you in the game.

Discuss this article.

A Few Questions and Answers to give an insight to:

Stephen “Bleak” Brown

Software Engineer

For those of us who don’t know, what has your “career track” been with the gaming industry?

My “career track” track begins with Ultima Online, I joined the team at the beginning of 2008. I got my feet wet with Publish 53 it seems like it was just yesterday  Being an engineer I have worked on pretty much all of the systems UO has to offer.

What project that you were involved in are you the proudest of?

 Where do I begin…I can’t choose just one:  NPC Ship AI, Gargoyle throwing fixes, Item Insurance Gump, Random Treasure Map System, and Focus Skill Spec just to name a few.

I think most of us understand and respect Dev’s having to remain tight lipped about upcoming content etc. However, when it comes to past content only, what was the hardest thing for you to personally remain tight lipped about?

 I’m not one to spoil a surprise but I would have to say the hardest thing to remain tight lipped about was the most recent patch to the Enhanced Client which fixed some serious client crashes.

When it comes to the current team, who is the practical joker of the bunch and have they gotten you? OR What was your best retaliatory strike against “the joker”?

Why So Serious? It would be a tie between Misk and me. As for retaliatory strikes, most just end with nerf gun wars.

When you are not chained to the desk working, what do you enjoy doing?

 When I’m not chained to my desk I enjoy reading, playing MOBA games, watching football, duking it out on test center, and constantly checking the boards.