Five on Friday - December 8, 2006

"I logged in to the Sweet Dreams Inn in Britain and got my head ripped off by a Terathan! That is NOT a sweet dream! What's going on?"
Congratulations, you just found an EM event :) From time to time our Event Managers set up events that may involve more-or-less safe areas becoming... unsafe. While this is lots of fun when you're looking for adventure, it can be a little disconcerting when just waking up from a nap, so we've added a "Traveler's Advisories" section under "Known Issues" on the patcher - keep an eye on it to see which areas of Britannia are more dangerous than usual.

"So what's the real deal with No Drop/No Trade?"
There has been some discussion - and confusion - about the No Drop/No Trade item property. I hunted down MrTact and got the goods on it - here's a few interesting and/or relevant points:

This system was added specifically to keep the event items unique. It's not the beginning of a larger trend - UO has a heavy player economy and we don't plan to add in large numbers of items that can't be a part of it.

The property doesn't prevent items from being moved to another shard using character transfer. However, if an item is no-trade, it can't be traded on the destination shard either.

We realize this makes it a pain for those who want to display these items in your house. This is a feature we can look at adding in the future.

Quest items are a slightly different story - the quest items you get during a quest that are supposed to be turned in are not intended to be used for any other purpose - that's why you can't drop or trade them.

Some players have reported that they can't get rid of the items at all. MrTact says, "As for not being able to trash these items - that's not how they're supposed to work. If you encounter this situation, please email uobugs@uo.com with the details." You can call a GM to help with stuck items from your backpack if for some reason you are unable to use them to complete the quest or put them in a trash can.

"Is the blackrock enhanced skill gain area intended to be a temporary feature or a longer term feature? If the feature is to have a limited lifespan, how long do you intend to keep it in the game?"
This is a temporary feature - it's still active right now, but the Mother Lode event will end to make way for further developments. While it's up, you may want to grab some folks and take advantage of it - but be careful, with the reward comes significant risk.

"What's up with the runic text? That's an awfully short anagram."
It's not actually an anagram this week - click on it and see where it leads. We're going to be changing things up with the runic text from time to time - sometimes it will be an anagram, sometimes it will be a riddle, and sometimes, like this week, it'll be something completely different. I'll point you in the right direction here in the Five on Friday.

"Why don't you ever answer MY questions about [insert pet concept here]"
This seems to come up regularly on Stratics, since the good denizens there make at least one thread every week suggesting questions. Most of the questions are along the lines of "When are you going do [x]?" or "How do you intend to fix [y]?". You may have noticed that I don't so much answer those questions here. The main reason for that is that there's already a process for announcing upcoming publishes - usually when they are ready for public testing, although for big publishes and expansions we'll start talking about them as features are finalized. The Five on Friday is aimed at questions, rather than requests - areas of confusion, current problems, and, because UO seems to be made up largely of folks who like to take things apart to see how they tick, "how does that work?"-type questions. That's not to say I won't invent filler if I've got nothing useful for you, or that we won't occasionally drop hints about forthcoming stuff (particularly event stuff, since Draconi always dances around trying to get my attention about this time of week ;) ), but please don't expect business plans or huge revelations.

Have a good weekend, everyone! It's Holiday Party time, and I'm going to go gather blackmail material. ;)

- Jeremy