Written by the EM Team

    Looking out over the water from his balcony, Lord Blackthorn steepled his fingers in front of his face. It had been a long time since he’d seen these waters and had the chance to enjoy the gentle movements caused by the current, and he savored it. Heckles had certainly done a good job of having the place repaired, and even had it furnished the way that he himself likely would have. Looking to the left, he glanced at the travel chess set he’d carried with him all this time, and once again his thoughts started to drift back towards simpler days…though this thought brought a bit of a wry grin to his face. They only seemed like simpler days in retrospect, of course…at the time they were every bit as complex and difficult as these days were.

    Rising, he began to stroll through the castle, taking stock of the place and its vast array of rooms. There was no doubt that he’d need to hire on some of the townspeople to staff the place; he chuckled to himself and hoped that Heckles hadn’t completely emptied his treasury for the castle. It felt good to once again be in the city of Britain…and it felt even better that finally, things seemed to be on the road to redemption. The Honor moongate had been fixed, the rioters almost all quelled, the nobles sated, and Exodus routed…despite the progress though, there had always been one person that Lord Blackthorn had hoped against hope he’d have had a chance to see again.

    Leaving behind his castle, he walked through the streets, many recognizing and greeting him, and being stopped by a traveling gargoyle who insisted on thanking him many times for healing his sister who had come down with the plague. Once he’d managed to slip away without taking any sort of gift, he finally came to the gates, locked still after the riots he’d been told about. His hand clasped around the cold metal and he peered through the gates towards his old friends castle, staring at the untended garden and foliage. He wondered for a moment if he’d ever see him again…but then he’d had the same thoughts during his imprisonment of ever seeing the city, and that had come true.

    Turning, he headed on his way back to his own castle, and coalesced his thoughts into a purpose. Whether or not he would ever see his friend in these lands again and get a chance to match wits against him once more, he would make sure that it was a land worth returning to, and one which he could come back and be proud of. It had been too long in this land since the name of Blackthorn was associated away from the dark and terrible legacy that his mechanical surrogate had left, and it would be a long road to the final redemption…but he intended to walk it for as long as he could.

    It had been longer than Dupre could remember since he needed to polish his armor for ceremonial reasons. Still, he believed that this was the right course, and the only way for Britannia to advance. He sat back to look at the armor, gleaming in the glow of the torchlight. It was as good as it would ever get…and a smile came to his face as he looked over to the other perfectly polished and shining object in the room. He set the armor down and approached it, lifting it up and holding it in one hand. It was made of fine metal, and almost…delicate. Still, Dupre could feel the weight of the crown in his hand, and he didn’t envy Blackthorn to wear it. He wondered what Cantabrigian would have to say about this turn of events, and chuckled softly to himself, gathering up his things and preparing for the trek to Britain.

The time for celebration is close and preparations are under way. We are excited to see all of you and have many surprises in store! If you are unable to make it, don’t worry we haven’t forgot about you either!

We are going to stream the event with our special surprise guest as well as the Q&A with developers. The stream will take place from 1:30pm – 4:00pm EDT on our Ustream channel at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bioherald. So be sure and tune in to watch the story unfold!

That’s not all though: UO Stratics is going to be hosting an all day event at Castle Blackthorn on Test Center 1! We are collaborating with them so attending players can participate in the Q&A and even win some fantastic prizes! Check out all the details below:
 

So no matter where you are, be sure and join us to celebrate the record setting MMORPG!

For those of you traveling; be safe and we’ll see you all soon!

Another Memorable Moment comes from Anthony Castoro, Producer for Ultima Online from 2022 to 2005.

“So, I thought a lot about different stories I could tell about UO, the people, the players, the game itself.  I’ve decided to stick with this one story.

The first time I worked on UO, I became co-lead designer with Todd “MadToad” Bailey. We encountered a problem on several of the servers where the forests had become completely barren. For some reason, not enough creatures and monsters were spawning, but we couldn’t figure out an obvious cause. We tweaked the spawner settings on the live server, trying to see if there was a tuning problem. We eventually did an index of every creature type and discovered something really odd. There were a lot of birds. I mean A LOT of birds. More birds than any other creature in the game, by a significant factor. But where the heck were all these birds? Well, as it turns out, because some of the “dynamic ecology” code was never fully removed, we had this strange problem where birds would fly into an area of the map where they couldn’t get out and there were no predators to kill them. So every time some creature died in the game, there was a chance that the game would spawn a bird. And every once in a while, that bird would get stuck. This went on for YEARS until some servers (maybe Lake Superior?) had no deer, no wolves and no rabbits. Just a TON of birds that no one could see or hear. Unfortunately, soon after this was discovered, if you played UO that day, you may have heard a great many birds cry out all at once. A little while later, you may have noticed the forest got a lot more interesting. That’s the kind of thing that makes UO so interesting and so challenging all at the same time.

– Anthony Castoro

Thank you, Anthony.

Have you read the previous stories from Bonnie Armstrong and Richard Garriot? So many memories…

With all the anniversary preparations going on we had almost forgotten to send our best wishes to UOForums which turned 10 on September 24th.

To celebrate their birthday UOForums is hosting a series of events and a contest (among other things).

“10 Year Anniversary Grand Event!

UOForums staffers will be touring Ultima Online shards all through this event. We will be visiting American, European and Japanese shards. Announcement of schedule will be made the 26th September. At these events we will be passing out gift pouches filled with very valuable loot and perhaps even unique things. Though the exact content will be a surprise. 😉 So make sure you join us at these events where you will also have a chance to meet the dedicated team of UOForums.
All tours will take place in the Skara Brae Counselor Hall.

10 Year Anniversary Grand Contest!

From September 24th to October 30th UOForums 10 Year Anniversary Grand Contest will be running and at the end we will be drawing prizes to active community members. If you’re an active community member, then we’ll add your activity since July 1st 2012. From the 24th September to 30th October posting on UOForums and subscribing to our youtube channel will increase your chances of winning. This contest will include physical prizes as well as Ultima Online prizes, including a prize of 12 months of game time for Ultima Online and a grand prize of a 512 Gb Solid State Disk. Complete list of prizes will be announced on October 5th.”

Read the complete announcement.

Happy birthday, all the best, and thank you for your continued support!

It’s time to release the final three pieces for our Anniversary puzzle. This should allow you to finish the artwork and get a nice impression of the complete piece.

If you like what our Artist has created, head to the Bioware store. The artwork is available as a lithograph over there. Check it out!

Also available in the store to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Ultima Online is a new tshirt. Take a look.

Let’s get the celebration started.

In line with the writing contest and the Memorable Moments Bonnie gave us at the beginning of this week, we asked Richard Garriot to shared some of his memories with us. He was kind enough to come up with two stories:

The Thief

One day, early in the life of UO, I was participating as a GM and going to the aid of people who requested it. A note flashed across my screen from a woman, who said something like “Today is my first day trying to play UO, and every time I try to leave town a thief steals all my stuff, so I have to restart, and he does the same. If this continues I will quit and never come back to this game.” So I arrived in her presence as Lord British, not that she cared, she did not know or care who I was, and only wanted her problem fixed. I felt I was up to the seemingly simple task. I told her to come with me, and I would escort her out of town. As we left town, suddenly *ZIP* a thief flew across the screen at speeds I could hardly understand, and stole her gear and disappeared! I told her to wait here, as I teleported to try and get in advance of the speedy ruffian. When I finally froze him with a GM command, I revealed myself as Lord British, and told him to leave this poor woman alone, that this would drive away potential new players which we could not allow. Stop or else I would ban him from the game! He begged for forgiveness, and pledged to never do it to her again.

Satisfied, I returned the stolen items to the woman and told her, she should be safe now for at least a while, when *ZIP* the same thief came by again and stole all her items and disappeared. So, I chased him down a second time, and told him, hey, you had been warned, now I am going to ban you. He pleaded and pleaded and exclaimed how exuberance had overtaken him, and that he swore this time he would never do it again! Reluctantly, I believed him, and took the belongings back to the woman, again.

But then, for a third time, the same thief *ZIPPED* by… I froze him to the ground and told him, I was about to ban him! Then for the first time… he broke character, and refered to me out of character as well… “Look Richard Garriott”, he said, “You guys made the rules to this game, the rules include the role of thief, I am playing just as the role would be intended to be played. If the King tells a thief not to steal, of course he will beg for mercy and swear he won’t again. But what do you expect of me… I am a thief!”

After some thought… I agreed with him. So instead of banning him, I teleported him to the far side of the world. Then I gave the items back to the woman who could finally go about her business. After that, I began to think more carefully about the rules we ourselves put in the game, and the inevitable play styles that would come of it.

The Fisherman

One day, I was walking along the banks of a small river. I was doing so *invisible* so that I would just wander and observe the world we had created. Along the bank, I saw a man dressed clearly as a fisherman, repeatedly casting into the water and setting his catch in tidy rows along the bank. I was struck by how much fun he was having in spite of the thin fishing simulation, which was merely 50% catch a fish each cast.

After a few minutes a warrior walked by wearing plate armor and caring large weapons. When he saw the poor fisherman, he strutted over, and said something like: “Poor fisherman, I see you are without weapons and armor. I am a great warrior and have just returned from the dungeons with great bounty, I would gladly share it with you to help you up from your station.” With that he began to lay out valuables along the bank, as gifts for the poor fisherman.

The fisherman replied: “Warrior, take back your implements of violence! I am a fisherman! What need have I of swords and armor. You call me poor, but every day I sit by a beautiful riverbank, watching the world and catching my fish. Every evening I take my catch to town and sell it, then retire into the pub to share drinks and stories with my friends. I live a rich life! Be gone ruffian!” And with that the warrior huffed and went on his way.

This was the day, where I knew we were creating something of more transcendent power than I had expected before.

–    Richard

Richard also mentioned the death of Lord British but he was sure that everyone has heard that story. We have and we made it part of the art work. In honor of that moment we give you another puzzle piece – to complete the burning Lord.

Everyone here is very excited to get the party started. Official beginning on Saturday is 10:30am EDT. When you arrive at 4035 Ridge Top Road please come to the 2nd floor (just follow the smell of fresh brewed coffee, we will also have tea for those that do not drink coffee)

Ultima Online’s 15th Anniversary Party Itinerary

10:00 am – 11:00 am  – Greet players and have coffee and donuts
11:00 am – 12:00 pm – Welcome Speeches
12:00pm – 1:30 pm –  Lunch and cake
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm – Special guest – question and answer period
2:20 pm – 4:00 pm – Dev Q&A –Open discussion about what direction the team is going and where the players would like us to go.
4:00pm – 5:30 pm – Give always and opening EA store (credit cards only please)
5:30 pm – 7:00 pm – Happy hour at Marlin and Rays

For those that cannot be with us: We will stream the afternoon on UStream in the BioHerald channel, starting at 1:30pm EDT. Please join us if you have a few moments.

On a different note, we are putting out a publish and patch today to fix the loyalty decay.  Below is a breakdown of exactly how it was addressed:

• The buffer will be increased to 40 hours from 36, and will use a different method to track the daily rollover for decay. Before doing point decay for loyalty and virtues, the system will check to see if the player has logged in or logged out in the last 40 hours of real time.
• If the “moons align” to prevent decay, the decay timers will be correctly updated. This will prevent a “catch-up” of missed decay.
• For City Loyalty, the decay prevention will now only work for the city’s Love. Notoriety and Hatred values from cities will always decay. The decay prevention will instead only prevent cities’ Love for you from decaying.

We are also publishing out the Halloween surprises  it will run from October 1st to November 12th, so make sure you visit the pumpkin patches and the graveyards for a ghoulish experience.

For those driving please have a safe drive and we all look forward to seeing everyone on Saturday!!

Are you waiting for more pieces? Here are the next four:

UO’s 15th anniversary triggered several articles and reviews. Here is the EA Press release:

EA CELEBRATES 15 YEARS OF ULTIMA ONLINE
Mythic to Crown a New King To Mark The 15-Year Anniversary Of The Longest Running MMO Of All-Time

Electronic Arts and Mythic are proud to announce the 15th anniversary of the massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG) Ultima™ Online. Originally released on September 24, 1997, Ultima Online is a fantasy MMORPG set in the legendary Ultima™ universe and was the first game of its kind to gain a dedicated widespread audience. To celebrate this occasion, the development team at Mythic has crafted a long running seven month story arc that will usher in a new king in an upcoming in-game event.

With 15 years under its belt, Ultima Online is a sandbox RPG that has truly evolved into a creature of its own. Players have 58 skills they can build in any way they want to become whatever kind of character they want, such as a warrior, mage, miner, lumberjack, among others. The player choice within the game is endless – players can engage in Player vs. Player combat, fight against the game’s many types of monsters or even just sit at a bank and talk to people.  The only element that holds players back is their own creativity and imagination.  To learn more about Ultima Online, the 15th Anniversary celebration and how players can become a part of this still vibrant community, visit http://www.uo.com.

“I personally have worked on Ultima Online for more than 13 years and I’m still inspired by our players and actually learn something new from them every day.  We truly have any amazing community who have been responsible for keeping the game alive for 15 years,” said Producer, Bonnie Armstrong.

Spanning over three decades, the fantasy world of Ultima has entertained millions of players from around the world with dozens of award-winning titles. The passionate and loyal fans of Ultima have braved perilous dungeons, faced off against fearsome enemies and creatures, conquered expansive lands and seas, and saved worlds. It’s time to revisit this enchanting universe and step into the shoes of your very own Avatar to find out where your choices will take you.

 

A very interesting aticle was written by the original Ultima Online developer Raph Koster, bringing some insights of the early days of the game.

“A lot of the time we were trying to solve problems like stairs, or buttresses. For those who recall the Mage Tower in Britain, I created the templates for arches and flying buttresses just for that building. Trinsic was the reason we got sloping walls at all. I also created the templates for how to do stairs, and later, sloping terrain.”

 

Last not least we recommend to check Massively’s Twitch TV channel every evening until Friday at 5pm EDT (9pm GMT) when Beau Hindman explores the game again. You can find the recording of the first session including several members of the UO team already online.

Happy Birthday Ultima Online!!

I wanted to drop you guys a note on this extremely memorable day. Can you believe its 15 years already? I have been reading all your stories, which are great I have to say. Some have made me grin, some I have shared with people not on our team and some I just shook my head thinking yep I know what they are talking about.  *grins*

So with that said I want to share a few of my memorable moments that stand out to me, I hope some of you can relate.

Back in September 1997 when I first logged into UO, I was in Skara near the bees at the bank, and these bees started talking to me … I swear I logged out of the game after that thinking ‘ok, talking bees are just too weird for me.’  Of course this was back in the day when you could stay hidden and talk to people.  My friend talked me into logging back in after that, so I continued on with my quest of building my first character, man I thought it was a badass cause I could kill a troll…*chokes laughing*.  Then I ran into my first PK … not only did he kill me but he killed my husband. I was sooo upset, I had gathered a lot of liquor and backpacks to make money and he got them all!!! To this day I will never forget my first PK’s name MIM.  That name stayed written on a monitor for years and years.

The next one was the first time a GM pulled me into a closed in area (not jail) and tells me not to go anywhere. Do you guys remember when the game would drop those awesome vanquishing weapons … the ones that did like 80 points of damage in one hit?  Yes I had one!
I was out one day with my lumberjack when I got PK’d again….Please remember we are talking about when if you were red you stayed red. If you were a GM in anything you were good!  So after this guy kills my little resource gather I went and got my red, I found the guy and killed him and took my stuff back … then he calls a GM … I lost my weapon =(  Oh well it was a good while it lasted. *laughs*

The last memory that I will share today is the one where it opened the door to where I am at today, a group of us were playing on TC, this was when there was not a set skill ability … you had to make your characters. This was when Devs would come there and get their special groups to help them test things. What I mean by special groups is each dev had a group of players they liked to work with the most … one liked the PK’s, one liked the crafters and one liked the overall players that liked all of it. We all needed to blow off some steam one day, so the two Devs had a bet I think to see whose group was the best. Good guys outside and bad guys hide in a house. Each dev could not interfere but could feed us potions or regs. We all had a blast, and of course my side won cause we rocked! And this is how I was introduced to my beginning with Origin – now EA. I was a Mechanical Engineer working in aerospace. One day I just needed a change and I started working as an external tester back in 1999, I have been with UO ever since. I love the players, I love the game. Everyone I meet amazes me how creative and informed they are. Every day I learn something new and every day I look forward to coming to work. Now that is not something everyone can say!!!

Thank you everyone for helping make Ultima Online the best game unlike any other out there!!  *hugs*

Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong
Ultima Online Producer

Also, some more pieces to the puzzle: