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.

Choosing winners from the Atlantic shard was extremely tough. We had received 22 entries from the shard and enjoyed every one!

We hope you enjoy our top 5 winning selections:

The Kindness of Friends & Strangers.

There has been so many memorable moments in my years of playing Ultima Online that it is difficult to pick only one.

Foremost in my mind are the friends and just random people that I have met. These people really enhance the experience of this world we call Sosaria.

During the Earth Year 1998, my goal was to place my first house. Placing even a small house on the Atlantic shard was almost impossible back in the old days before the Trammel/Felucca split.

I was siting up one night waiting for a large forge house to collapse. A large forge spot was large enough for almost any home. I was chatting with a few people there at the time, not really knowing what to expect, because I had never really done a house camping before. Nor, did I didn’t expect all the mayhem that was to follow due to hidden and red people.

A very long night rolled around to 7:30 in the morning. The house finally dropped shortly afterward, and to my surprise people came seemingly out of nowhere.

I wasn’t concerned about any of the items that people were hurriedly gathering up. I was more focused on trying to place my new house once the items and people were cleared from the area.

A group of reds arrived and started killing everyone to clear the area to get it for themselves. A tremendous battle ensued with people still picking through the fallen belongings.

Later that morning, a few of my friends started to wake up and I asked for assistance. I informed them of my situation; that I was in the midst of an ongoing battle without any support.

Luckily, the spot was well known and many had runes marked for that location, and within minutes 20, members from the Lost Order of Akalabeth (LOA) guild and a few others poured through the gates and cleared the area of hostiles so that I could place my house.

I took a deep breath and clicked the deed, and there appeared a house. Sadly for me it was not my dream home. Someone hidden in the house just south of the spot had taken my hard earned placement spot; I was crushed.

Even with the unexpected and impressive support from my friends, our efforts were for nought. All night I had stayed awake hoping for a home.

The guy that had place his house on my spot asked me why I wanted it so much for so many people to show up.

I responded that they came to help me place my first house.

He looked at me thoughfully and to my surprise took me to a little house north of Vesper and handed it over to me.

He said to me with a smile, “There is your first house.”

I guess my memorable moment wasn’t so much a “moment” as it was a period of time. My sister had been working in Sweden for a couple of years as an interior designer. I didn’t get to see her much, but we would talk on Skype and such now and again. Not too often, she was really busy out there.

Then she was diagnosed with cancer. Work was put on hold, and she had a lot more online time. Online especially because insurance woes wouldn’t let her return to the United States and she wasn’t really close to many people out there. I managed to get out there once, but only for a little while. I’m not filthy rich, I have a family and a job, I couldn’t jet off to Europe for long periods of time.

We talked a lot more on Skype and all, but she needed a distraction and we needed something else to talk about besides hospital trips and chemotherapy and such. So I reactivated a couple of old Ultima Online accounts, had her download the client, and passed her the information for one.

Now she is totally not a gamer at all, so it took her a little while to get the hang of what was going on. She did get the hang of it though, especially when she realized she could have a house and design/decorate it however she liked. There was some complaining about not being able to get objects to sit exactly where she wanted, but once she got into the groove we had some very tastefully decorated UO homes.

It gave her something to do that wasn’t too physically demanding. Sometimes after chemo or surgery her hands were really shaky and her reactions were slow, and she couldn’t really handle anything like combat. But stuff like house decoration and growing plants gave her things to do that she could handle.

There isn’t really any climactic ending to this story. She got really really sick for a while, to where she did have to quit playing or doing much of anything, then thankfully she finally got better. She’s back to work now. She’s not on a lot, but she keeps the account paid up, and every now and then logs on to move all the furniture around in her UO house. Even if I don’t see her online, I stop by her house every now and then and see everything moved into different places.

Well, I guess I could start from the beginning. I started playing UO right around Age of Shadows along with a good real life friend. I named my first character Miximus, He named his character Norman. Well, now it was time to start training. I think we killed 8 billion Ettins over a couple weeks time. It took awhile but finally we were trained warriors! Now it was time to move on, we needed money for better suits. We ended up getting in the leather business. We farmed leather from lizard men, drakes, and dragons every night. There was a tailor who would buy every piece we got, every week we would meet up at Umbra bank and sell our goods to him. We ended up making a pretty good living doing this. Ok, so we had trained warriors, a job, and money, now we needed a place to live. This brings me to one of my most memorable moments. My buddy and I shared a home at first, it was in Felucca. Now keep in mind this is a real life friend.  Well, He was logging in one day. I assume he recalled to the house and bam, there were 4 reds there waiting for him. He managed to get into the house safely. He could have recalled from inside the house to a safe area, but we were still noobs and were not completely hip on the whole process yet. Well, I got a phone call. It was my buddy, he was freaking out. He starts yelling into the phone “Dude, you gotta log in quick”. Ok I say, what’s going on? “There’s Reds everywhere and they are trying to burn the house down and get me”. Oh damn I said. Ok I am logging in now, be there in a few to help ya. “Hurry man, they are taunting me and calling me out”, “I think they are gonna get in and kill me”. Ok, so at this point he is in a frantic yell. I manage to get logged in, I was at a bank, can’t remember which one. I ask him, ok where they at? I am getting ready to recall in, have the door ready to open. “They are in the front of house, be quick so they don’t kill ya”. Now I am panicking, we have never PVP’ed before. Four people against two noobs, this should be interesting. Ok, here we go I tell him, I hit sacred journey. Bam, I am at the house and see the red names pop up. When I got there and seen the characters, I almost lost it. They where NPC reds! This whole time he thought they were real and trying to burn him outa the house. We had a huge laugh out of this for weeks every time we saw a group of brigands.

You know what’s weird about life? The way the stupidest most random little decisions turn out to be the most important.

It’s years ago and I’m walking through Trinsic at about three in the morning for some reason. To my surprise, someone else is up this late and hanging around Trinsic, specifically a girl in a red dress. Not having anything better to do, I say hello and we begin to chat. After a minute or two she asks if I want to go sit in the tavern. There’s something odd about the way she’s talking, but whatever, I say yes.

After another minute or two sitting in the tavern it dawns on me: This girl is roleplaying or something. Either that or she’s got deep mental issues, because she’s seriously talking to the NPC tavernkeeper before buying a bottle of wine. But whatever, I can play along. So we sit there chitchatting for a while about, you know, the issues of the day. Orcish rights and whether drow should be allowed to adopt, or something. I don’t remember really, it was a long time ago. I just smiled and nodded and chimed in where I could, because listening to this girl go on about the price of tea in China (or the price of mandrake in Moonglow) was a lot more oddly entertaining than anything else I was going to do at three in the morning on a Thursday.

Then I get a little party invite message from her at the bottom of my screen. She says hello in an out-of-character sort of way, we chat like that for a minute or two, and then she gets to the point. She explains that her character is secretly a vampire, and that she’d like to lay the bite on me. In all my life this was the one time I had ever looked at my screen and literally said the word “LOL” out loud.

And then a little mental conversation with myself takes place. I say to myself, you know, silly as it is… why not? It’s three AM, it’s the internet, who’s gonna know? Then I say back to myself, you’ll know, and what’s more you’ll know that there’s at least a 75% chance that this is a man. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not my cup of tea and the idea sort of kills the mood for me.

What to do? Yes or no? Little did I know tis would turn out to be one of those stupid random decisions that ends up being really important.

As it turns out, my little vampire friend was in fact a real live female.

Our daughter is three years old now.

I occasionally let her walk my tamer around in circles with a dragon following. Her mother snickers when I tell her to look out for vampires.

It had to have been late when I finally walked into Moonglow. I wouldn’t have imagined that I’d log into UO that day at all, but the Red Cross had already turned away my friend and I in our attempt to give blood, and one can only watch the same thing on television for so many hours before needing to do something, anything else. What I saw in Moonglow violated everything I knew about the game.

There are two ironclad laws in Ultima Online. One is that if you spin around in place for long enough while standing at the bank, eventually others will start spinning as well. The other rule is that if you place an object on the ground for any purpose other than disposing of it, someone will run by and pick it up. Put down a chair and sit in it? Someone will run by and grab it. Spell your name on the ground in fish steaks? Someone will come along and pick them up just to be a nuisance. Build a little tower out of discarded furniture for no reason? Someone else will walk up and disassemble it just as pointlessly.

So I was quite surprised to see a massive torchlit American flag decorating the grassy field between the Scholar’s Inn and the Second Defense Armory, built from dyed pieces of cut cloth and bandages. Or rather, I was surprised that no one had come along to dye it green and cart away random pieces of it. It stayed there, quite intact, surrounded by chattering people, for several hours at least, until I finally decided it was time for bed.

To my knowledge the only time in fifteen years the second ironclad law of Ultima Online was ever broken was that particular night, September eleventh, eleven years ago.

Please join us in witnessing the Coronation of Lord Blackthorn the New King of Britannia, on your resident shard.  This re-enactment is for all the citizens that were not able to join us for the live party in Va.

Baja 10-10 @ 10pm EST

Catskills Not Announced Yet

Chesapeake10-10 @ 8:30pm EST

Lake Superior Not announced yet

Legends Not announced yet

Napa Valley 10/09 @ 7pm PST

Pacific 10/11 @ 7pm PST

Siege 10/14 @ 3pm EDT

Sonoma 10-8 @ 9pm EST

Drachenfels 10-10 @ 2pm EST

Oceania 10-14 @ 6am EST

Please check with your town crier for additional information regarding your shard’s events.

The Oceania shard’s contestants remind us that though some moments are full of strife, it’s the people with which we share the challenge that make the moment special.

We had three entries from the Oceania shard so all of them are winners!

Most Memorable Moment in UO

In all my time of playing UO, there have been quite a few memorable moments,
But to be honest nothing really captures the very first time I logged in (On my very first account – way back in 1998)

It was Chespeake, the shard I first played on; because Oceania didn’t exist yet. I remember installing the game, downloading the patches, and eagerly logging in to see what I bought.

I remember reading the back of the box, and it saying “you can do whatever you want to do in UO – or words to that affect” – and I wanted to steal things.

I spent my first 3 days in UO basically in a grey robe of death, because I couldn’t quite work out how every time I tried to steal something from a person, or a guard I’d end up dead? – I mean the back of the box said I could do it right?

It was a brave new world in my time of gaming, I was young back then, I was on a 56kbps dialup- because anything faster just didn’t exist.

It was 3 days of UO before some kind soul (that I had tried to rob), had finally taught me a little of UO, I honestly can’t remember his name but he was a member of the Chespeake player run town north of Britain. His help enabled me to mine and sell my ingots in order to buy my first tent (which of course was the pauper version of a house back then), I eagerly placed my tent, and got gated back to the bank, where sadly the key was stolen (Irony right?)

I think from that moment, having my keys stolen made me want to learn about the game more, and even though player versus player interaction was hard for me on Chespeake due to latency problems (Until Oceania came along), it made me want to strive to learn the game better.

I must admit I also looked forward to DD’s (Designer Dragon’s) posts on Stratics. So I guess my most memorable moment in UO, is having my first ‘house’ stolen from me (Back when you needed keys) in a fit of Irony after what I had been trying to do to people – Karma right?

My memorable moment was when our player run event group (Fox-Emporium Events) ran a ‘Survivor’ competition over 4 weeks in April 2006. 

The event was open to all players on the shard.  We had approximately 30 players attend and they met in our Luna HQ.  They were told they would be participating in a ‘best of three competition’ to determine the twelve contestants who would form two opposing ‘survivor’ teams to compete over the following three weeks.

The first selection event was called ‘Click go the Shears’.

We built a woolshed and had our tamers taming sheep and transporting them to the woolshed all day prior to the start.  We ended up with over 500 sheep in our shed. 

Competitors were issued with a dagger and gated to the woolshed. Outside they were given instructions, they should stand at the woolshed steps, we would ‘open’ the doors and they would run in to the teleporter’s in the entrance chamber.  They were to shear as many sheep as they could, and then ‘pen’ themselves in the sheep pens on the roof to await the wool count.

It was absolute chaos once they all got in and all started running like mad to shear the sheep.  The smarter players ran to the second and third floors first so that they had less competition to get to the sheep.  Watching the shearing proved to be highly amusing! 

Once all players were penned the wool count began.  Players were listed from highest to lowest on their wool collection.

The second selection event was called ‘Mushroom Madness’. 

Players were gated to another venue.  Here we had built a ‘mushroom’ cave, consisting of various types of mushrooms, varying from single mushrooms to stacks of ten. 

The competitors had to ‘count’ how many mushrooms were in the cave, note their answer in a book and hand it to one of the Fox organizers.  The answers were ‘ranked’ from closest to the actual amount to the lowest and were given points accordingly.  This was ‘hard’ as with so many people running around counting was challenging!

 
The third selection event was called ‘Brenna Says’. 

As with all games of ‘Simon says’, players had to follow Brenna’s instructions or be ejected from the house. Once ejected they could return to cheer on the others! The order of ejection determined the overall point scores for the competitors.

Competitor’s scores for the three events were then combined and ranked.  The top two scorers became ‘team captains’ and were issued a robe. The next ten top scorers were announced, and the team captains ‘picked’ from them (in turn) to form two teams of six. This formed our teams for the next 3 weeks of events!

This first day of ‘Survivor’ selection was especially fantastic, and is a day I will always remember! 

Lady Kat leader of the ‘red’ team went on to ‘win’ the series, became Oceania’s first Sole Survivor and was awarded the $5 million dollar prize!

Pixelated Friendships

            Rushing home after a long day of work, I came home and cracked open a can of soda. I sat down with my laptop resting on my legs and decided to log onto Ultima. Excited to log on and play on my newly finished tamer, I noticed something fishy. Where were they?! I quickly shut my client and reopened it, hoping it would refresh. My fingers smashed across the keyboard as I entered my password as fast as I could, only to realize nothing changed! Panicked, I made sure I was on the right shard and behold It was still Oceania. Shocked, I started to scramble around and message everyone to see if they knew if anyone was on my account. I got a message back and said someone had gotten into my account and deleted everything. Frustrated and disappointed as to why someone would ever do that, I shrugged it off and said I’m just going to quit, it was too much work building everything back up. Once I told people I was quitting everyone rushed to help me, told me they’d buy me anything I needed to get me up and ready once again.

            Moping around Luna with my gimpy minimum skill character, made me more upset. At this point, I probably couldn’t even kill a mongbat. I moped my way to the Moonglow woods to start taming some cows for days on end, trying to give it one last effort. I see my friend running up to me shouting my name like a maniac. I turned to face him as he gleefully handed me an advanced character token. Shocked, I took and ate it, boosting my skills. I was surprised as how generous everyone was being when they had no obligations to do anything. My friends really stuck their neck out for me and were there for me when I needed them most. It showed me that there really were people who cared enough about you and enjoyed playing with you that they would do anything to keep you around. The amount of money people spent trying to help me buy back powerscrolls and gear was phenomenal.

            I had always experienced the people who when you say you’re going to quit, they ask you for all your items. Making true friends who, instead of wanting your things and watching you walk away, would try to help and keep you. These friendships are with people can care just as much about you and your wellbeing as those you have real life relationships with. These are also the people that keep the UO community alive and help make this game as enjoyable as it is. It taught me that the friendships you make inside of game are just as strong as ones you have outside game.

It is time to announce the next set of winners in the Memorable Moments Contest. Players on the Formosa shard mixed it up with entries containing poetry, epic battles and a holiday event. We hope you enjoy their tales as much as we have!

We received four entries from the Formosa shard and, once again, all entries are winners!

It was the year 2006, almost a year had passed by and business had picked up that year since the relocation of the Chocolit Shoppe in Formosa. With the year at end and the joyous atmosphere in the air, I had planned an anniversary event for the shop to give back a little something to everyone on this little shard that had made the shop what it is today. It had been my first time planning an event.

The house planned to hold the event had been specifically constructed and designed for the event, with mistletoes and wreaths hung up, big Christmas tree lights lit, a newly fallen layer of snow, bartenders ready to serve out hot chocolates to all and Santa’s sleigh parked by the side of the house readily bearing gifts.

Little did I know then of how many people would show up on this quiet little shard of mine. Apparently news of this event had spread fast, anyone and everyone that could walk through a moongate showed up, great warriors and mages of the legends came, peasants and thieves came, even a few polar bears, orcs and ogres made appearances. All came for a chance to feel the Christmas spirit in Sosaria, enemies from the underworld had sat next to each other drinking eggnogs together and long lost friends that hadn’t seen in awhile were drawn in. Seats were quickly filled up and the course of the event ran quite smoothly for a one-person-running event.

It had been tiring yet exhilarating in the end because everyone had loads of fun especially me. It was quite a memorable part of my UO life and to top it all off, I got wind of a Christmas housing contest during that time on Stratics which I threw in the event house and won first place. It was also the first time I’ve ever won any contest related to UO and one of my most memorable moments in UO.

-Choc of Formosa.

Will my dream come true?

Towns filled with fire,
Citizens cried with tears.
Demons are roaming freely in our land,
Humans seem to have no chance to stand.
Monsters pass through our defenses with ease,
Britannia citizens whom hear this will not be please.
News quickly sent to the ears of the Royal Guards,
Guards are then brought to the Castle’s Yards.
Armors are prepared weapons are sharpened we are ready for war,
We have arrived near the demons and easily hear their devils’ roar.
It was nearly the dawn of the day where the fight has begun,
So many causalities and death the royal guards have barely won.
My sword is filled with daemon’s blood,
The streets are red as endless flood.
As we are going for victory enemies main protagonist revealed,
Exodus’ the most powerful weapon that Mondain and Minax once yield.
Only his war cry are hurting both our ears and mind,
In our life, we have never seen powerful foe as such kind.
Despite this the royal guards belief are never dropped,
Until the moment this fearsome beast is stopped.
Dupre will be leading us into this final war,
We are then to end Exodus once and for all.
Before we set afoot to the dungeon’s depth,
Dupre decided the guards to first take a rest.
That day I make a dream of peaceful lands,
We dance happily together holding hands.
Birds are flying in the beautiful sky,
The dream indicates such a wonderful sign.
However, will my dream ever come true?
I would have to say, no one have yet a clue.

My guild and I have to take risk all the time, to venture into Felucca to fight the champion spawn, and often, we were raided by other players. The only time that was safe for hunting was actually on odd hours where people are sleeping or working.
My guild has a system going on back then. We had to hunt together for the champion spawn, and we would share the power scroll at the end of it by rolling the dice, and whoever had the biggest number will be able to choose from the scrolls first.
I was in need of a 120 magery power scroll back then, and on that very night when my guild mates asked me to join them for a champion spawn. It was quite late in the night, but I still joined them despite, having to go school the next morning.
We did the Vermin Horde Champion Spawn in Despise (Felucca). Everything was smooth until Barracoon the Piper spawned. Our rival guild, sDo, came with a bunch of hunters, and fighters. We started a brutal fight, and our side was losing. All of our guild mates available were activated. We brought all sorts of characters. There were tamers, mages, archers and stealth ninjas.
We rally all our troops to the guild headquarters, and used the stealth ninjas to screen and spy what the other guild is up to, and we coordinate an attack. We plan, and we strike. Together as one, our forces were strong enough to break through our rival guilds defense on the bridge to Barracoon the Piper, and we killed most of the rival guilds players. We got defense up, and we managed to pull off.
As we defeat Barracoon the Piper, we knew that our rivals are actually waiting for us to enter the gate open to the Star Room. We sent our stealth ninja down, so that we have an eye there. True enough, our rival were planning to trap us there, and we all took the other exit of despise.
Then, we gathered to dice for scrolls. As my guild mate place the scroll on the floor for us to see. I immediately saw a 120 magery. I was so eager for it, as I wanted to further train my mage. As we all started to dice for it, I was keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that I will win.
At last, it was my turn to roll the dice; I went forth and rolled the dice. To my surprise, I got a 12! I was so excited. As I picked up the power scroll from the floor, my guild mate ganged on me. I was resurrected, and killed several times, before my guild mates stopped and allow me to consume the 120 magery power scroll.
I love my guild, and the people there. Those people were the very reason I play UO to this very day. They make my UO experience a wonderful one.

Longest battle of my UO experience!!!
This a couple years back when Stygian Abyss had just hit main lands. Me (tickle me) and Lord Tathian where in a battle. so far it had lasted about 15 minutes and by the time we were all said and done it took an hour 62 minutes to be exact. we are sitting here fighting swinging swords back and forth with no progress in mine or his health bars. they kept bouncing between 100%-72%-90% but never hit lower than 50% health. It was a long battle and many of band aids were used to heal each of us. Much mana was used to cast the spells to protect our self’s from the next swing of a weapon. We went at it for a good 50 minus before we finally ran out of band aids (or well i did) and I had died finally. I was a mass murderer (red player) and he was nice enough to go criminal  heal me up. We sat on a old fallen log and we talked for a few. We thanked each other for the duel and asked what the templates of our character was and we figured out that we had the exact same skills and stats as well as our gear was almost exactly identical. We thank each other yet again for the amazing battle and set out for more of the good vs bad war that is Felucia.

There is my amazing moment in Ultima Online.

We would also like to note that we have selected one winner from the Arirang shard. However, we decided not to publish a translated version as it will not do the story justice.

Thank you for your fantastic memories and be sure and check back tomorrow for another set of winners!

We are patching out a new client this afternooon for an art  and cliloc updates. A new publish version will arrive with the next regular maintenance to update in-game links to the new website.

See you in the game!

Another former producer of Ultima Online took the chance to share his memorable moments. Starr Long who was our special guest at the 15th anniversary party used the speech after the coronation of Lord Blackthorn to answer several questions including some of his fondest memories. Here are some more:

My fondest recollections are always about the unexpected ways our incredible players were able to create their own experiences. Each one of them illustrated how we had moved from makers of this world to the caretakers. The players were as much the makers as we were now, if not more. One of my favorite examples was the mass protest against lag in Castle Britannia where everyone stripped down to their skivvies, got drunk, danced, and threw up all over the courtyard. Believe it or not it really made us pay attention and love our players even more. I also loved the power of our housing system which was so popular it even began to have real world value. I remember distinctly when someone came up to me and said “You’ve heard of eBay right?” Remember this was late 1997 and eBay had only launched 2 years earlier and had coincidentally changed their name to eBay the same month we launched Ultima Online. “Yes,” I replied “but what does it have to do with us?” “You won’t believe this but someone just sold their castle for over $1000!” they answered incredulously. I was floored and proud that a bunch of 1s and Os could inspire someone to pay real money for it. Now of course with gold farming and micro transactions this seems pedestrian but fifteen years ago it was entirely new. Another wonderful expression of player power were the orc clans. Ultima Online only supported human characters but we had orc masks, armor, and weapons. Several groups of players began to wear orc gear and to role play orcs. Some of them even chose to speak orcish to each other! They would build player towns for “orcs only” or sometimes occupy NPC orc locations (a real challenge since they had to constantly keep the “real” orcs at bay).

My last recollection is about a letter we received shortly after launch from a player who wrote to us about how much they enjoyed playing. They then began listing all the things they loved like fighting orcs, defending innocents from Player Killers, owning a house, and being leader of a guild. For them however one of their favorite features was the simple act of running through the world, because they were confined to a wheel chair in the real world. That letter along with other social examples like weddings and people maintaining long distance relationships through the game showed me that these virtual worlds have powers to be more than entertainment.

-Starr

If you have missed the previous moments, check out what Bonnie Armstrong, Richard Garriot and Anthony Castoro wrote!

In the past few weeks your entries have tickled our funny bones, tugged at our heart strings and stirred up many enjoyable memories. In some shards the competition was fierce and forced many of us to diligently scour through many entries. Other shards the choice was much simpler. In either case, we would like to thank all of players for their amazing memories and announce our winning picks for your memorable UO moments.

The first moments we would like to publish are the ones from the Balhae Shard. We received only four entries, so all of the entries are winners!

In the game of Ultima Online, I am not the greatest fighter, always preferring the crafting aspect of the game, but I’ve always wanted the artifacts and rares that people got from difficult spawns and quests. Being from a shard that’s not highly populated, it was even harder to obtain these coveted items since there weren’t too many vendors around. Then I experienced my first IDOC, and it changed the way I play Ultima Online. This Structure Is In Danger Of Collapsing. Those seven words always send a sense of excitement through me. I happened along it accidentally, the house already in its final stage of decay, so I stuck around. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait very long before, *poof*!, the house disappeared and all this free stuff fell to the ground, including artifacts which I had longed after. There were a few other people there, and while I raced frantically from one box to the next, trying to decide what I should take, these people were swiftly loading up their pack horses and gating all the treasures away. I didn’t end up with very much since I was inexperienced and only grabbed what I could carry, but it did give me a glimpse of all the possibilities this offered.
From then on, I only got more efficient. I started marking recall runes for every house I came across, I’ve bonded pack horses to me so that they can recall with me, and I’ve set up chests right on my front steps to dump the items in. I’ve pretty much taken over my boyfriends account for my IDOC’ing tendencies as well. I do what I call ‘house checks’ for any sign of decay. Just recently, I’ve even bought a second account just so I can have an extra house for even more storage. If I don’t win this contest and receive the robe as a prize, (even though I hope I do) – I’m sure there will eventually be one in one of the houses that go in danger of collapsing. And I will be waiting.

-Amber

MY FUNNY WEDDING!

So there we were me and my in game wife Luna trying to have our wedding without the EMs present (nothing against EMs ) and we are trying to do this in Felucia Britain in the Big castle there…. we are part of the COM factions and we have our guy who is marrying us is in SL …. We get the place loaded with plants and such for decoration and we get like 14 cakes and stacked them high enough and wide enough to try and make a pyramid and when we just got to the part where he says “speak now or forever hold your peace!” BAMB there comes TB a little purple Llama with a sigil and he start just destroying our minister so me and my wife get out of our wedding suits and into our pvp suits are try and stop him…much to our advantage we got him into stat loss mode due to he was opposing factions. so for the rest of the wedding he kept eating the cakes popping in and out of hiding and every time he came out until we were done my best man wrestled him to death. Later he became a good friend of ours and we now fight together in most out battles…
there it is my best memory in UO my wedding
 

Some years ago, our shard was very crowded. There were many persons in anywhere. We wanted tranquil world and we wanted to do our likely. And we decided to restart in the new shard. It was Balhae. Awesome world! We could stay any time on our favorite place. It was comfortable and we decided to build our guild house on Balhae. Only one problem, we could not buy what we want. The only way is to get or make it ourselves. But that was not big problem, because it was what we wanted. Half a year after, one of our friend has quitted from britania. His main job was to collect the ingot and leather. And another day, one of member was away from our team. She was animal tamer. Two years later, I am alone in guild castle. I did not desire to be alone in this castle and world. To be or not to be, that is the question. One month after, I thought seriously that about away from this world or from this shard. One day I visited again my old shard. My sand stone patio is there. And I met few persons I know. I had felt nostalgic. I decided one more restart again at here. I can’t leave from this world. I opened the vendor shop in my house, made money, bought new house, made new guild member and made new friends. What I wanted most was a lot of communication rather than silence. This is the story of my only I know. I am supposed to got a rest from britania for 3 years. Now I am living on here. Last week, I visited our guild castle on Balhae. There is it, it is the same as those days.

-Tao

The three of us were following the trail of blood. Luckily, it lead us straight out of the champ spawn area. Pvping someone of this skill level was difficult enough to combat alone, let alone being swarmed with ratmen mages. We followed the trail up to the mountains and knew we’d have him trapped eventually. Smokey’s connection was faster, so he was able to run ahead and keep him from reaching the tunnel that leads to Marble Island. The three of us have attempted to defend many champ spawns from Cotswold, but we have always failed. All of that practice was about to show through for once as we push on to execute the threat. I had a flame strike precaste and Cotswold’s bar pulled out. I was just itching for his bar to light up on my screen. I don’t typically pvp, so I did not have a plan after the initial flame strike, but I was tired of dying to the same guy day in and day out. It was time to fight back. Normally, we would just try to escape from Cotswold as his wrath has been undefeated. I caught back up with Naroo just in time for us to approach Smokey and Cotswold already fighting again. Cotswold was injured badly from Smokey’s bleed attack, but I could tell he had too much time to heal up before being forced to fight again. The three of us were tiring out as Cotswold seemed to run circles around us, but relentlessly we kept the battle going. I noticed that Smokey and Naroo kept getting Cotswold down to just a sliver of life left on his bar, then suddenly he would be back to full health. I started to caste the spell flame strike again, and this time I was going to wait for the opportune moment to target him. I watched his life bar go down and up for a short while. Finally, his life was only a sliver left and I targeted him as fast as my reflexes would allow. His body dropped to the ground face down. The site of Cotswold’s naked corpse lying on the ground spread eagle was so awesome, I had my character dance all over it. Not only did we FINALLY defeat this undefeatable Cotswold, but I got the kill shot!

-Pooper

Thank you again for all your wonderful memories and keep an eye on the Herald for more winning announcements!

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 itemitem 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 cursefeblemindedClumsyect charges) Excluding Hit MMFireballLightningHeal 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!

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.

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.