Ask & Answer No. 2

The Ultima Online team has received another set of questions last week. Here are the answers (September 17, 2012).

Concerns

• People using High Seas boats, moored along side each other, to 'house hide' in PvP.

Mesanna: We have written this up as a bug and hope to have it fixed soon.

Questions

• Are there any plans to make gargoyle horn dye and/or restyle available on hairdressers? Daslo, Neverplay UO, Cerwin Vega

Mesanna: After speaking with the team we think Horn Dressers is a good idea…Thanks for the suggestion.

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

Mesanna: CKTC, Doom is on our list, it needs updated as much as champ spawns, dungeons and peerless do.

• So awhile ago, I inquired about this and someone said the refer a friend program would be making a return. I recall someone saying the program would be back, but now I can't find where this was said. Is there any chance the program will be making a return soon? I am asking because there are many players who gave their accounts away or sold them. Some of them that I have pestered mean to return via the trial so it would be really great to get referred by them if the referral program returns. (Sablestorm, Stratics)

Mesanna: Sablestorm, at this time we are not starting up the Buddy Referral program. With all the account management changes this is something that was not moved into the new system and would require.

• A while back I read about EA's plan for WAR/UO/DAoC: They planned to switch from 'continuing content patches' to so called 'booster packs'. For UO that resulted in the 'High Seas booster' and the 'Gothic' and 'Rustic' theme packs. My question is: Will you continue to add boosters? And if so, will they be more in the line with the theme packs or the High Seas expansion? What is the time-frame in which you will add new content (other then differently colored items... . (from Knuckleheads.dk)

Mesanna: No UO is not going to be working on a booster pack or a theme pack for a while. We want to take the time to do a big bug push. We want to put in an in game Vendor Search, we want to be able to update the outdated armor in the game, we want to improve the fishing rewards, we want to finish virtues, and we want to finish the high res art. So at this time we don’t have a booster pack or expansion in the works. I am not saying we never well but just not at this time.

• When will the Virtue system be completed? (from Knuckleheads.dk)

Mesanna: We have come up with several ideas but just don’t feel they are worthy of the last two virtues. We have read some of your ideas on stratics but would love to hear more.

• Will the "brainstormed" Order/Chaos involve Warfare in usual None-PvP areas, Such as Trammel? (from Knuckleheads.dk)

Mesanna: We have not gotten that far in the discussions with this, hopefully we can talk to everyone during the 15th Anniversary Party and get a good discussion going. Since a lot of you are not able join us we will also start a thread when we are at the point of go or no go on the project.

• Non-medable armor is underpowered compared to Medable armor. Is there any plans to boosting non-medable armor without ruining the usefulness of leather? (from UOForums.com)

Mesanna: We are in discussion regarding updating armor, making all armor useful again. We are going to do our best not to mess up leather but still make the other materials a viable option.

• It is very bad impression gold spammers leave on newbies and returners, with the default channel being help, trials unable to change, and returners often not know they can switch channels. Could you at least make the default channel "General" if the account privileges grants access to it? (from UOForums.com)

Stephen (Bleak): If you account is not a trial account we will make the change to have the default as general instead of help, this will be made in one of the upcoming publishes. Trial accounts will still be placed in the help channel. Please keep in mind the gold spammers are trial accounts those have to stay in the help channel.

• Is it possible to see if your character is friended to the Ants? If not wish they could make something on the character sheet.(Ingame Question from Drachenfels)

Mesanna: Currently there is not a way to tell if your friended to the ants other than not getting attacked. It is something we can add in the future so I will add it to the backlog.

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

Mesanna: Everyone will be happy to hear (or I hope they will be) that we as a team have talked about it and want to make a change to the housing co owners. Instead of 10 co owners we want to change it to 10 accounts which is 70 players total.

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See Also

• Ask & Answer

References

• UO.com | Ask & Answer No. 2