Ultima Online Storm Chat 5
Date: December, 2002
Topic: Community Team
Moderated by: LadyTygress, Ian Stormbringer, and Kehleyr
Kehleyr - Welcome to 5th IanStorm.com Dev Team Chat!
Kehleyr - This chat will be moderated, general chat can continue during in #ultima-online. To submit a question, please /msg one of the question takers listed in the channel topic. Please do not message myself, or anyone from EA: Origin, they will be ignored.
Kehleyr - Our question takers are: DarekSteele, TrinityX & Ravenspyre
Kehleyr - Tonight's topic will be: OSI and the Community. All inappropriate questions will be ignored!
Kehleyr - Just a quick reminder, we are also running a monthly house decorating contest! Next month's shard will be Catskills. The prize is a gametime coupon, so get decorating!
Ian - This months shard is Chesapeake
Ian - Remember tonight's discussion is about OSI and the Community
Kehleyr - this is NOT a dev chat so only community related questions will be answered
Cynthe_OSI - JUst a note - we're looking to answer questions about community, rather than specific gameplay questions. Those questions are better for the dev team. :)
Ian - Questions will be taken about, FYI's, Spotlights,Playguides, Boards, OCR Events. etc.
Cynthe_OSI - Fansites, playguide, interviews, chats, board posts, update center docs, etc
LadyTygress - Actually, to start off tonight, we would like each of the community team members to introduce themselves, and give a summary of what they do.
LadyTygress - Cynthe, can you start us off?
Cynthe_OSI - I'm Cynthe, OCR Manager. I basically try and provide whatever tools the team needs to be able to keep information coming, via boards, update center, interviews, FYI and other front page stuff, patch notices, etc.
Cynthe_OSI - I also spend way more time in meetings than is healthy.
LadyTygress - Greywolfe, would you like to go next? :)
Greywolfe - I'm Greywolfe, the Online Community Coordinator. I work primarily on the message boards and try to be a conduit of information between players and the Dev team.
Sannio - I'm a Sannio, Online Content Coordinator. I'm sort of the "news and research guy" of the team, focusing on FYIs, Update Center, and general research. I have my own projects, but end up helping out with all aspects of the Community responsibilities.
Kerowyn - Hello-hello! I'm Kerowyn, the Online Content Editor for UO.com. I help the web team with UO.com updates, which includes the Playguide. I also work with the fansites and schedule interviews and chats with the Dev team.
LadyTygress - There you have it! There's the Ultima Online, Online Community Relations team. Now let's get started...
Kehleyr - *Talbot* Is there any chance of allowing players to post "BNN" type stories for their shards in order to help create an "official" to player RP and shard specific lore?
Cynthe_OSI - Talbot, that's a good question, and one I've thought about before. About a year ago, I wrote up a proposal to take the BNN and open it up to player submissions, sort of like a neighborhood newspaper. The reason it didn't take off was the fact that it would require a person to read through and edit/approve all submissions, since it's a given that we can't open up our site to just anybody for posting -- and the time required to do that woul
Cynthe_OSI - It's not something that will never happen, though, as far as I'm concerned... I'd still love to see it happen. We'll just have to see.
Kehleyr - *Orlandau* Will we ever see OSI give us more characters space for our sigs on the boards?
Cynthe_OSI - the issue with that is that we get a lot of one-liner and two-liner posts...
Cynthe_OSI - ...and if we allow really long sigs we'll fall prey to the phenomenon you see on a lot of message boards where the sigs are longer than the posts
Kehleyr - *Zellorian[BUB]* Are there more plans for other events such as The Festival of Spirits? Can we also start having more events on the weekends for those of us who work =:-)
Sannio - You liked the Festival of Spirits, eh? Well, so did we! We've been talking a bit on and off about what sorts of social events we might have in the future.
Sannio - Although I thought the Festival of Spirits was very successful, there were a few aspects of it I'd like to ensure we improve upon. For instance, we had too many people in one smallish location.
Sannio - That and other factors will need to be ironed out, but I see no reason why we can't have more social events of that nature. We'll post announcements when we have something more concrete to talk about.
Kehleyr - *Kelynn* Cynthe stated that the AoS mini website will be updated weekly till the release of AoS. Is there a day of the week we can expect that or will the days be random?
Cynthe_OSI - Heh... that's a tough question to answer. Yes, we do have a day that we have scheduled in as the release day each week... but the moment we tell people, it becomes a promise, and we're sunk if a document gets delayed...
Cynthe_OSI - ... but as long as you promise to not call us all sorts of nasty things if we have a document issue ... our goal right now is wednesdays. :)
Kehleyr - *terrapin* anychance of adding an ignore feature to the boards so the players can eliminate those who profess nothing but dislike for the game?
Cynthe_OSI - Yes! Yes! Yes! A very good chance, actually. :)
Kehleyr - *VegetaDsR* From a Developers Standpoint What Do You Feels is missing from the community now in UO in this current time period?
Ian - I like that answer!
Cynthe_OSI - Hey, tell Darek to stop calling me nasty things.... :P
* LadyTygress slaps Darek's wrist
Sannio - Actually, we're not developers, so I can't answer specifically from their personal perspectives. But as a community representative I wouldn't say anything is "missing." But as participation is key to community, I'd just like to remind everyone to keep strong ties with one another
Sannio - Use your message boards as well as the official OSI boards, share info about your events on the official UO.com events calendar, and make use of other such community tools.
Sannio - Telling people about your community is the best way to help it thrive. :]
Kehleyr - *JC-AFK* Will elder, ledgendary and other titles ever be added to the MyUO boards list of post count titles?
Greywolfe - No, it doesn't look as if we'll be adding those to the message board titles.
Kehleyr - *Mishra* Do you consider the tournament of champions a success?
Cynthe_OSI - Actually, the Tournament of Champions was conducted mostly by our support team, so we can't really take credit for it, but I personally do consider it a success.
Cynthe_OSI - There were some issues with spectator rules, etc, but overall, the response was overwhelming.
Cynthe_OSI - With this event, we managed to touch about 3000 or 4000 thousand people individually and give them something out of the orinary to remember... something that's not your average night in UO. And in my opinion, that's always a good thing, because those are often things people remember.
Cynthe_OSI - Maleki was actually one of the leading foks in carrying it off, with a lot of website help from Sannio and GM Spada, so be sure to give them some recognition next time you see them. :)
Kehleyr - *IronSmith_RCB* I know at least some of you have been following the "Reds in Malas" and "Malas needs to have Felucca Ruleset" threads. Is there any way to get that as a Hot Topic so we can get people posting in one place and get a more cohesive overview of what players attitudes are, rather than having threads running all over the place?
Cynthe_OSI - Well, that's an issue that's pretty much been decided at this point, which may be why we haven't opened up a new thread about it specifically.
Cynthe_OSI - But it's certainly a hot topic, and as the return of necromancy proves, there's no topic too dead to keep discussing... so we may reconsider it as a Daily Hot Topic. :)
Kehleyr - *Billie_Piper* The playguide still implies there is perma grey ("for two minutes after stealing, a Thieves’ Guild thief is freely attackable by anyone in the area"). Is this a bug to be fixed, or an outdated skill guide?
Kerowyn - The guide needs to be updated. If you happen to have the exact link handy, send it to kerowyn@uo.com, please. :)
Cynthe_OSI - As a note, Kerowyn works on the Playguide quite a bit, but those pesky devs keep changing things on her, so it seems like she never gets caught up! :) Do send her suggestions and correction ideas - with over 300 pages in the PLayguide, it's tough to always know exactly what is on every one of them. :)
LadyTygress - *TrinityX* Hey Cynthe, when are you going to tell the dev team to put Vanilla Coke in the game?
Cynthe_OSI - Vanilla Coke, eh? I'll have to bring that one up in my next conversation with Sunsword, in bet
Greywolfe - Trin can have Vanilla Coke after I get coffee in the game, maybe?
Cynthe_OSI - Dangit... I tried to write a witty response, but failed, In the interest of getting on with the next question, I'll leave it at that.
Cynthe_OSI - Sannio's asking me what "in bet" means. It means I had half of a joke written, re-thought it, and accidentally hit send anyway. :)
Cynthe_OSI - and no, it had nothing to do with a bed!
LadyTygress - uh huh...
Kehleyr - *PGoHTristonsArmsCo* Can we expect to see any kind of guild alliance function formally added to the guildmasters menu anytime soon? *winks*
Sannio - Although that's a question more appropriate for the Dev Team to answer, I can say that we don't have any plans for an alliance feature at the moment.
Sannio - However, when you're interested in certain ideas and improvements, make sure to share your thoughts on the official UO.com boards (http://boards.uo.com).
Kehleyr - *Amplify* How has the players competing in the tournament of champions been selected? Many pvpers i have spoken to (best on europa) havent recived any reply from osi yet...
Sannio - The GMs, the ones who are managing that event, made the choices based on who submitted themselved for the event.
Sannio - Although I don't know the specifics, it was all done through e-mail, and no event line-up was closed until the scheduled slots were filled.
Sannio - All slots have been filled, and you can see the ladder listings at http://town.uo.com/tournament.html.
Kehleyr - *Ian* Are there plans to promote Ultima Online throughout the US. Something that SOE did for EverQuest?
Cynthe_OSI - We have a marketing team at OSI that's always working to promote UO in North America - we have another group that handles our overseas marketing. You can expect to see Age of Shadows in several gaming mags and on some of the big gaming sites this spring as well.
Kehleyr - *Dacar* So many shards hold specific events for those intrested, such as the Festival Of Spirits. But they arent always on all shards. For example, Pacific seldomly does any events for our communities. How can this be fixed?
Cynthe_OSI - Well, Sannio is actually very in-touch with the player communities, and he's actually posted a series of Comments from the Team with insight on setting up and running events. As far as the OSI-sponsored events go, we plan to alternate as much as possible.
Sannio - As we ponder future social events, we'll certainly keep it in mind to touch a variety of shards.
Sannio - We'll make sure to not have them on the same few shards again and again. We may have them on an East coast shard one time, a European shard another, Oceania still another time...heck, maybe even a Test Center. It may depend upon the theme and needs of the event.
Kehleyr - *Talbot* Why has the burden been placed on individual players and Fan-Sites to preserve the history and IC lore of Ultima Online? One of the strongest forces that can tie a community of players together is a shared sense of history and purpose...yet by thrusting this responsibility into the hands of fansites/players the information is easily forgotten or ignored when new communities develop leading to a fractured hodge-podge
Kehleyr - of in that have no real concept of the IC history of their shard or of the metastory of the game itself.
Greywolfe - I don't think that it's so much that the burden has been placed on the individual players and fan sites as it is that the players are the ones that really make the IC part of UO shine. We can write the basic fiction for the game, but the players make it what it really is, filling in the cracks with the role-played events and player towns-all the things that make the game what it is. In truth, we're currently not set up to track the combined, and s
Greywolfe - We've given some consideration to the concept, don't get us wrong, but the idea of collecting and support that amoutn of information would be a massive undertaking.
Greywolfe - We'll do what we can, with event calendar presentations, message boards for the community to share, etc., but the history of UO in many ways belongs to the players, and under their control.
Kehleyr - *Silverfoot* Is OSI planning on doing anything to help the development of player run towns?
Sannio - Not specifically, but indirectly maybe you've seen the House Design Tool (at http://www.uo.com/ageofshadows/)
Sannio - I've been able to play with it once or twice, and I have to saw it's an awesome feature. Imagine: being able to take a foundation and subdivide it into multiple houses. You could set up your own streets!
Kehleyr - *JC-AFK* Whatever happened to the trinsic proposal that was posted a while ago to turn trinsic into a sort of pirates paradise. Did it go through some kind of review?
Greywolfe - The Trinsic proposal did indeed go to the Dev team, but nothing has been decided yet
Kehleyr - *Peaches* If you do more events , such as you did with the festival of spirits, is it possible to have it spread across shards to help cut down on the severe lag?
Greywolfe - We have been considering having slightly smaller social events, but also having them across multiple shards
Greywolfe - That would mean that the same event might appear on more than one shard during a certain time period, perhaps over a couple of days
Cynthe_OSI - We're also looking at trying to plan events that span more areas on the same shard - which would get more players involved, as well as better distribute the traffic to reduce lag
Cynthe_OSI - so basically, yes - we definitely are looking to conquer the lag issue. It's not easy when you have over 600 people that want to be in one place. :)
Kehleyr - *Barrackas* Something which is not generally done with UO is showing the concept artwork. Would it be possible, with the AoS mini-site, to show some of the various drawings/sketches/paintings of monsters, items, Malas etc. which were created for its development?
Cynthe_OSI - Actually, we aren't the ones who determine what concept art goes out and what doesn't... that's pretty much our marketing group. But it's something that's definitely cool to see, and I'll be sure to ask around on Monday and find out if concept art is in any plans for the AOS site. (Yes, that was a long way of saying "I don't know".) :-)
Kehleyr - We would like to thank the team from Origin, that has allowed us to gather here tonight, it is much appreciated by everyone here :)
Kehleyr - So guys, thankyou!
Sannio - You're welcome!
Cynthe_OSI - Thank you!
Kerowyn - Night all! Thanks for coming!
Ian - This will end out 5th UO chat. I want to thank the Community team for spending time with us this Friday evening. I especially want to thank all of you that attended tonight. Thank you.
Sannio - Our pleasure, Ian!