Publish 23

Character Transfer System

Transferring a character from one shard to another. It’s long been on your wish-list, but such a system could never be possible — or could it?

If you have ever yearned to be able to move your character from one shard to another, you may soon able to do so.

Can you imagine being able to migrate your favorite characters to new shards without painfully recreating them from scratch? And it’s not just their appearances, stats, and skills that would move across, it’s most of their equipment as well!

The Character Transfer Process: The character transfer process would be fairly simple:

Purchase a “character transfer promotion code” from our web page or telephone support representative
Log in with the character-to-be-transferred, move to a “safe log-out” area such as an inn or your house, and use the “help menu” to enter the promotion code in the menu’s new “Promotions” section.
Once the transfer process has begun, your character will enter a non-playable mode. You won’t be able to interact with the world, but you’ll be able to make your transfer selections and confirm the items that will be transferring with your character.
Select the destination shard—nearly all shards will be available for transfers, but you’ll need to have an open character slot on the new shard for the process to work.
Confirm the items that will be transferred to the new shard along with that character. If you suddenly realize you don’t have all the items you planned take during the transfer, you can cancel the process and attempt it again at a later time.
After the transfer process is initiated, you’ll be temporarily logged out of the game as the character begins the process of moving from one shard to another. However, you’ll be able to log into and play any character on other shards as normal during this time.
Once the transfer is complete, the old version of your character will no longer exist on the original shard.
Within a few moments, the transfer will be complete.
Log into your new shard with your old character!

If you’re worried about unforeseen issues that might arise during the process—for example, if your computer crashes while starting the transfer—we’ve got that covered. You might feel comforted knowing that, if anything goes wrong, the entire process cancels itself and no change is made. In such instances, your original character is back, safe & sound, right where you last saw him or her.

Transfer Location Details: In short, any character can be transferred from any UO shard to nearly any other UO shard, with few exceptions.

You cannot transfer your character to or from Siege Perilous or Mugen. (Transferring characters from shards with the standard rules to these specialty shards would cause game balance issues.).
You cannot transfer your character to or from any Test Center shard, including Test Sosaria.
Transfers from any worldwide territory to any other worldwide territory will be possible.
Characters cannot be transferred from one account to a second account.

Inventory: But let’s not forget that your character has collected a lifetime of custom gear, crafting resources, rares, keepsakes, and other items. Your characters won’t be moving over to their new home without their gear.

All items that the character has equipped, in his backpack, in his bank box, or stored in his pet (including pets themselves) can transfer, except for a small selection of items (noted below).

Here’s a slightly longer breakdown of what can transfer with the character:

Character name
Appearance (skin, hair, facial hair)
Stat & skill points
Reputation (Fame, Karma, murder counts)
Virtue points and Virtue title
Custom title (such as those awarded during some past OSI events)
Most equipment on the character, in the character’s backpack, and in the character’s bank box, including (but not limited to) any of the following items that character may currently own:
- Artifacts
- Scrolls of Power
- Bulk Order Deeds and Bulk Order Deed Books
- Faction silver and items
All pets, including all stabled pets and any equipment carried by pack animals
All the “monster points” you’ve accumulated by participating in champion spawns, including your special champion spawn title Vet Rewards and gift items (including holiday gifts and Personal Bless Deeds, etc.)
Current status of any quest in which you are participating

However, there are a few things that will not be transferred with the character to its new shard:

If you are part of a guild, you will be removed from it
If you are in a Faction, you will be removed from it
Faction Sigils
If you are listed on a house’s Co-owner or Friends list, you will be removed from it (However, if you own a house, you will remain its owner)
Items locked down or secured in your house, including house add-ons
Vendors & barkeeps
Companion and Volunteer status (the latter applicable only to our Asian region, which still maintains Volunteers)

When the character transfer process is begun, all of the items that will be transferred will appear in a special “transfer crate.” This will allow you to visually verify that the items that you want transferred will be transferred. In fact, your transfer crate will stick around for 7 days after the move to the new shard is completed. (You’ll be able to access this crate with the context menu on your character.) This will give you some time to organize your belongings after you’ve moved to your new home—but move everything out of that crate as soon as possible, because after 7 days it will disappear, along with anything that you left inside of it!

Housing Note: If your transferring character owns a house, that house will not transfer to the new shard as well. The house will remain in its current state on its original shard. As with normal housing rules, you can acquire another house on the new shard, but please remember that acquisition of this new house will condemn the original house.

Service Details: Character Transfers would be offered as our newest PowerUp! service. As with those other enhanced character services, there will be a charge for character transfers, but we haven’t determined the exact cost at this time.

Additionally, we do not yet have a launch date for when this service will become available. However, it is currently in development.

Finally, characters cannot be transferred from one account to a second account.

Holiday Gifts Deactivated

Any trees still placed in houses will be automatically turned back into deeds with the release of Publish 23, the “Character Transfer publish.”
- These deeds will be stuck to the floor where your original holiday tree once stood, and only the characters that placed them will be able to pick them up.
- These deeds will not take up any storage lockdowns.
- Although they will not decay as quickly as normal, these deeds will decay within 7 days unless you store them someplace safe! Please make sure to store your deeds in your backpack or bank box, or secure them in your house, within that time.
Players will also not be able to place holiday trees (until next holiday season).
No new 2003 Holiday Gifts will be given out.

Items

Mahjong boards should now continue to work correctly after maintenance or crossing a server boundary.
An issue with item properties not being sent under some circumstances was fixed.

Pets

Golems no longer get weaker after maintenance or crossing a server boundary
Summoned creatures will no longer move slowly after maintenance or crossing a server boundary

Miscellaneous

Players will now receive a warning message two minutes before a shard begins “gracefully” shutting down, such as before morning maintenance periods (but not before unscheduled shard downtime)