Patch 1.23.27

• You can target ogres--we found the problem!
• Bulletin boards work correctly now.
• We have added many more new notoriety titles, in order to make notoriety more visible to players.

• Titles for Lumberjacking and Mining skills should now be in.
• We've got some new networking code up, which was the main point of the patch.
• We think some of the problems with null items in shops are now resolved.

August 12, 1997

      To Our Faithful Ultima Online Testers,

      First, we would like to thanks to all our Beta Testers for your extraordinary testing, and
      all the great bugs you have been submitting. With your help, Ultima Online will certainly be
      one of the greatest games ever, and it is in large part thanks to all of you.

      It has, however, come to our attention that some players are finding and exploiting bugs in
      the game to artificially advance their characters. This is a small percentage of all the
      testers, but is creating enormous problems with testing and perfecting game balance.
      Because the world is a closed ecological system (where everything depends on everything
      else), when a bug is exploited, it can and does severely alter the way the game works.
      Finding these bugs is crucial, but once you have found a bug, write it up and move on.

      For example, someone finds a bug that allows them to raise their hit points past the
      maximum level, and precedes to kill all the monsters with ease. We in turn increase the
      number of monsters in the world to try and preserve game balance. Once that hit point bug
      is fixed, suddenly there are too many monsters in the world, and lots of new problems
      arise.

      If you are found to be exploiting a bug, you will be warned and reprimanded. If you are
      found to be exploiting a bug a second time, your character will be deleted and your
      testing privileges may be revoked.

      Remember, exploiting bugs makes it very hard for us to perfect the game, and will almost
      certainly delay its final release. We want to again convey our great appreciation and
      thanks to all the Beta Testers for their time and effort. Keep up the great work, and happy
      bug hunting!

      Thank You,
      The Ultima Online QA Team
 

      6:45pm, Aug 11th
      IMPORTANT!
      We will be conducting a stress test on the registration process next week, as we continue
      to work on upgrading its capability and speed. To this end, we will be wiping the account
      database clean on Monday, August 18th, and asking all testers to recreate their accounts.
      In addition, we will be shutting down the registration process on Wednesday, August
      13th at 9pm Central time in order to prepare for this test. The process will remain closed
      until after the wipe on Monday. We will notify testers once the registration servers are
      available again. The game servers will be available for testers as normal during this
      period.

      In addition to this, we expect some downtime tomorrow as we test some new networking
      code. The downtime will probably begin around 10am Central and should be over by the
      evening.
 
 
 
 

From Designer Dragon:

      Game Balance Issues We're Tackling. I just got out of a big meeting on game balance
      issues and thought you'd like to know some of the things which we are tackling, and what
      our approaches are.

      Probably the biggest balance issue which we are focusing on is the game economy. Right
      now, shopkeepers run out of money fairly quickly (we timed one provisioner at fifteen
      minutes to bankruptcy!) because players do not buy from them and because they are
      failing to restock properly. A major reason why they run out of money is that they are not
      disposing of the items that they have too many of; they are supposed to trade them in for
      gold. In addition, we are going to make shops pay less and less money for items which
      they have a lot of, and finally have them refuse to buy if they are already well-supplied.

      We expect to be slowing the rate of attributes changing relative to skills. Currently, the
      two change as around the same rate. This, quite aside from any changes in skill learning
      rate, should result in a fairly different balance.

      We're very concerned about the various abuses of resurrection. We're planning on
      limiting the amount of resurrections within a given time span, so that those who die
      purposefully will suffer for it. We discussed having permanent death for overly frequent
      deaths, but decided against it for now.

      Lastly, creature populations remains an issue. Not only quantity, but variety, locations,
      and abusability of known haunts and spawn areas such as orc forts. We've got a couple
      of nifty ideas in mind for resolving some of these problems.

      Those are the main areas of game balance we are working on at the moment, though of
      course there are other areas we are addressing as well.

      -The UO Team
 
 

Whilst on a tour of his kingdom Lord British met with an untimely fate at the hands of an assasin! Events are sketchy right now at best, but this reporter has been told that an unknown individual cast the spell Firewall right upon Lord British killing him outright. Lord Blackthorne immediately jumped to his aid by summoning several deamons who slaughtered everyone in sight. Lord British was resurrected soon after and continued on his tour of his ragged kingdom. One can only speculate upon how he may react to this turn of events.
 
 

From Designer Dragon:

Patch 1.23.22

• We patched the map and static landscape, which should make many terrain bugs and unused tiles go away.
• We also put in some packet changes to help network traffic.

      These are things we are working on for upcoming patches. It is by no means everything
    that we are working on, but just some things that we thought you might like to know about.

      Chest opening animation
      We're adding a UO.CFG line that allows you to configure whether you want this to
      happen or not. :) By popular demand...

      Selling problems
      We've seen reports of problems selling items, and prices going crazy afterwards, and
      will be looking into the problem.

      Gold and eq duping bugs
      We're looking for the causes of these; unfortunately, no two reports we have read thus
      far actually portray the same circumstances. Please keep posting your descriptions of
      when this happens to you! And if you are reliably able to repeat it, please let us know,
      rather than keeping the secret to yourself with the goal of personal advancement. Not
      only is it contrary to the spirit of the beta tets, but we'll frown upon it once we do fix
      the bug.

      Alchemy starting equipment
      The wrong empty vial was in the starting equipment; we're changing it to the correct one.

      Healing rate tweaks
      We'll be adjusting the rate at which you regain stamina and health further to account for
      the new food requirements (see Latest Patch for info).

      Caps on dummy use
      Since you can only learn so much from a dummy, archery butte, or pickpocket dip, we will
      be capping the skill you can get from these at 50%. They will also start to cost fatigue to
      use.

      Bankers working correctly
      These are in now in Central, but not in Atlantic.

      Arrow speed
      We can't completely fix "heat seeking arrows" (see the Comments from the Team section)
      but we can make them fly a lot faster so the effect is not as noticeable.

      Archery buttes and pickpocket dips
      These should work soon.

      Scaled blacksmithing
      The quality of the items you smith should soon depend on your skill level, so that you can
      not only make worse-quality plate armor, but also be able to make plate armor that is
      better than anything you can buy in stores.

      Crafting failure consuming materials
      Failing to use a craft skill will soon consume a small quantity of your raw material, so that
      you do not have infinite tries at it.

      Use of shop trade goods
      Since this has become a problem, we are making shop trade goods unusable unless you
      first steal the item.

      Quest frequency
      We're aware that virtually everyone has a quest for you and are working on a fix for it.

      Scaled difficulty for skills
      We're working on making difficult skill tasks reward you more in terms of learning, so
      when you succeed in taming a really tough animal, for example, you get better at taming
      than if you had tamed yet another bunny.

      Stealing
      We're aware of the many problems with the current implementation of stealing and are
      working on a better method of handling it. What we are planning on doing should allow
      you to move books and chairs and the like without problems, and not call a steal check
      unless you actually walk away with the item--and it will warn you before you actually do.
      In addition, we will change regular stealing so that it must be invoked via targeting, and
      will include weight limits and the like. We'll also make it so that repeat stealing in the
      same location will have increased chance of being spotted, and lastly, we will make it so
      that you can yell 'Guards' if you witness a crime, and they will come. Some details may
      well be changing as time goes on, but that is the gist of it.
 

Well, there hasn't been much to update lately. Seems OSI have withdrawn to their inner sanctum and aren't being as visible anymore.
 

     This last week seems to have been pretty tumultous (all the PKers can look up that word in the dictionary) with all of the
beta testers who were whining and didn't really understand what they were doing as testers and with Origin finally firing back a semi-sarcastic QA letter. I am not really taking sides on the issue because I think both sides are a little to blame. Mostly the "beta testers" who even when the OSI team tells them that they are not focusing on gameplay issues, they still whine and complain that they got PKilled or they can't do this or that. On the other hand, Origin is a little too non-committal on what kind of pace they are trying to stay on and when they plan on getting the game out. As far as any of us know, they could be shooting for a November release and are exactly on schedule for their time frame. Good news is that Origin have set up two new servers, one for the Eastern Time Zone and one for the Central Time Zone. It seems that they will be using the Central server for the more radical tests and leaving the Eastern server pretty much alone so people can actually play the game and test gameplay issues. I applaud this idea and hope it works really well for them.
 

1:30pm, July 31st

    From Designer Dragon:
      Just a note to clarify the difference between the Atlantic and Central servers. The
      Central server is our testbed server. New code will go in here first and be tested in a
      limited fashion. This server will remain closed to the public except on occasions when we
      want to stress-test some new addition. It is also likely to be far more unstable, as it is a
      testbed. The Atlantic server on the other other hand will remain open to the public.
      Periodically we will update the version on Atlantic to match the latest new features and
      code from the Central server. On the whole, Atlantic will change less frequently, but will
      be far stabler to play in.
 

      Patch Updates:

       Patch 1.23.21
 

• A lot of bandwidth reduction code went in with this patch.
• We also set a cap on the number of status gumps you could have open, to eight, as

part of the bandwidth reduction.
• Autocombat is working again; you automatically defend yourself when attacked.
• You can use campfires to cook.

• The sell window is now in. Say 'sell' to an NPC to get them to open it. From now on,

giving items to an NPC is considered a gift.
• Numerous map problems and data problems were patched as well, which is why this

patch was largish (1.8 megs).

•  Provocation will result in guards being called in town.
• Tracking revisions are now in. When you track, you will be presented with a

window to select which of the tracks you see you will choose to follow. Then when
you follow them, they will periodically tell you what direction the tracks are
leading for a short while. The tracks you see depend on your skill level.
• Carpentry is back in, and makes movable furniture items, and chests with locks in

them.
• Mining and lumberjacking should now show in your skills list.
• Blacksmithing will make differing quality items based on your skill level.
• Female armor can now be made by those who can tailor.
• The range for training dummies has been reduced so you can't take up four

dummies by yourself.
• Begging will now give a correct message when the target has insufficient funds.
• Taming now requires line of sight.
• Shops won't sell to you if you have very low notoriety.
• Ordering pets, hirelings, or summoned creatures to attack will call the guards on

the person giving the order too.
• We added the release command to pets so you can set them free. It also works to

release hirelings early.
• Anatomy no longer works on the self.
• We added delays to basic actions in order to reduce macroing. Players who play

without macros should not see any difference.
• The campfire message (you know, "one minute has passed") should be fixed.
• Alchemy should be fixed.
• Hiding will be back, with the permanent invisibility bug fixed.
• Delivery quests will be in as well, where an NPC asks you to take an item to another

NPC. These can link up with fetch quests and murder quests now into long multi-stage quests.
• You will no longer heal on an empty stomach. Currently, there is no way to tell if

your stomach is empty except not healing. So you'll just have to eat. :)
• We've reduced the range on stealing and using items a little. You now have to be

next to someone to steal from them.
• Your steal skill is checked outside of cities now (oops, not sure how that got turned off).
• We've found where stats and skills were exceeding 100 and have prevented it from happening.
• Line of sight checking for witnessing crimes.
• Line of sight checking for learning skills by watching others.
• Player corpse dismemberment is in now.
• Starting equipment for bowyers is fixed.
• Economic tweaks to the value of raw materials versus refined goods.

     From the Development Page:

      3pm
      PocketSoft informs us that they have plenty of data now, so please do not email them
      anymore. They also said that we have the most willing testers they've ever seen! :)

      1:45pm
      We are not yet officially open again!! Please don't bother flooding the chat zones and the
      like with reports of problems getting in; they all stem from this fact. We will post here
      when the game is open again, but do not expect to be until this evening.

      10:45am
      IMPORTANT Ensoniq sound card udpate!
      Many of you have been suffering from problems such as the following:

           Crashes to desktop shortly after running UO.
           Blue-screen crashes or full machine lockups running UO.
           MIDI volume or MIDI playing in general disabled after exiting UO.
           Corruption of the Windows registry, related to the above.

      Most of the problems can be traced to the Ensoniq sound cards. These cards, a very
      popular OEM bundle, particularly with Gateway computers, are not certified for DirectX
      3.0a, which is on the UO Beta CD. The result is extreme instability and the possibility of
      corruption of your hard drive.

      Disabling your soundcard drivers or using another soundcard are fixes to the problem,
      though the former will mean you have no sound at all. We have heard reports that
      Microsoft has released DirectX 3.0b which may fix the problem, but we have not had a
      chance to test this.

      10:30am
      Player corpse dismemberment is in now. Those few who bopped onto the servers last night
      when they were up for a brief test got to try it. :)

      We've spotted Shuma's post on LaWiz' Chat Zone saying that skill failure when crafting
      should use up some of the raw material. This has always been the plan, and we hope to get
      it in very soon, like in the next week or so.

      A brief note about "heat-seeking arrows"... basically, when an arrow is launched, the
      server decides whether it hit at the moment of launch. It has to, because otherwise
      latency would make missile weapons impossible to manage. When you encounter a
      heat-seeking arrow, it has in fact already hit you and the damage has been done
      already--watch your health bar and you will see that this is the case. So what is left is
      really an aesthetic problem, that of arrows moving way too slowly. We're working on
      rectifying this.

      We've added in line of sight checks in several places that they were missing. Most
      particularly, they will be in for witnesses to crimes, and for learning skills by watching
      others.

      We're aware of the problems with starting equipment, particularly the bowyer/fletcher
      starting items. These should be fixed now.

      Lastly, we've got some economic tweaks ready as well. Raw materials will be worth less
      than the next stage of refinement, so that ingots are more valuable than ore, to reflect
      the labor involved.
 

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