HEY EVERYBODY! LET’S GO CHAT! [Author: wirehead]

Just in case you missed last night’s UOHoC, here’s what was really said. (and I know someone else did this once before. bleah. I think someone wrote bitchy UO commentary before I did, too.)

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Niobe – *Mr_Bester-DC* Why has a stat control been left out?
toad – Because everyone already has 100/100/25 stats. Except you.

Niobe – *Pyrates* I remember when the housing plan had an idea for a “front yard”, where tiles in front of your house were going to be used for things like gardens, hitching posts(what ever happened to that Idea?), ect. Is there any chance of this happening anytime soon??
toad – Jesus, people, do you want me working on skill locks and anti-recall changes, or pansy-ass things like this?
toad – I mean, damn, have some sense of priority.

Niobe – *Skull_* This evening a large amount of people have experienced account blocks due to unknown reasons, is OSI aware of this?
toad – Because a large amount of people are goddam exploiters and we caught them.
Tyrant – NEXT!

Niobe – *Nikademus* Are there any plans to ever fix the communication problems when large groups of people are present at a location?
toad – Don’t you people have ICQ installed yet?

Niobe – *Thandarian* On your house menu in the test center what does it mean when it says, “this house is of modern design”
Firedog – Well I really like the two-story design.
Firedog – It kind of reminds me of Levittown. Where I grew up.
Firedog – I may attach this tag to other houses, if I like them.

Niobe – *PolluxBaja* Hail and good evening all.. I was just wondering how the skill management system is coming along and how far off it is.
toad – Well, I’m not working on it right now because I’m in this IRC chat and all.

Niobe – *Prescient* Do you have any idea what has happened with the smithing skill requirements yet?
toad – Yes.

Niobe – *Daerin* Player-written books have a lot of potential, but really aren’t utilized in-game nearly as well as they could be. Any chance of a way to “lock” text in a book, and perhaps fix the skill timeout delay bug when copying books with the inscription skill?
Firedog – No, we don’t think text should be locked in a book.
Firedog – This is a multiplayer game and everyone should be allowed
Firedog – to contribute.

Niobe – *Xanthor-Pacific* Tigger, About treasure maps, is there any possibility in the near future that maps like 5th level ones spawn same monster types that they come off of instead of easy ones. For example, a black Daeman colector of Souls should spawn same type, not the easy red ones. More harder the monsters, the more fun the maps.
Lord_Pall – Actually we are going to patch it so that all trolls drop MiBs.
Lord_Pall – With this change people should bitch about maps a lot less.
Lord_Pall – This will also make Wrong somewhat more interesting.
\tab
Niobe – *ONELIST* With Storage becoming an issue in the next couple updates, would you consider allowing players to create addition storage types so that we can add variety to our home d\’c3\’a9cor? For instance, some containers already in the game (but non-player created) are Dressers, Vanities, and Full Size Barrels.
Tyrant – NO.
Tyrant – You pinheads have too much stuff.
Tyrant – You think we’re going to let you have MORE?
Tyrant – Be glad we left you with capes.

Niobe – *C_Kollrick* Exactly how does anatomy factor into damage in combat? And does it add to archery damage and spells?
toad – If you are fighting a female character there is a distraction penalty.
toad – Or if you are female, fighting a male.
toad – Or if you are a male, fighting a male, and you’re “that way”.
toad – We will be implementing a check box in Options so you can mark if you are “that way”.

Niobe – *Fearless_Freep* Would it be possible to have your characters on an account be able to access each others bank boxes?
toad – Yes, we think this is a good idea. Why? So when someone hacks your account, they can clean
toad – your account out in considerably less time, thus lightening our server load.
toad – It’s a win-win. Or a win for us. Either way.

Niobe – *Chaos66* Can’t there be done something about the monster spawning, as it is now, monsters spawn in impossible to reach places, spawn confined in hideous numbers (South Serpents Hold comes to mind) and lahs up the area horrible. I have often had to call GM’s to free totally stuck spawn because everything has spawned inside a mountain or on an inaccessiable ledge…
Niobe – Can’t you optimize the spawn engine so it spawns in more controlled numbers and places
Lord_Pall – We are talking with Todd McFarlane about a new SPAWN engine.
Lord_Pall – The old one is adequate but John Leguizamo was really pretty bad in the movie.
Lord_Pall – So I agree we need a new SPAWN engine.

Niobe – *Fly19* when will phase 2 be inplemented into the game?
toad – Actually we decided to go straight to phase 4, Sudden Random Uncontrolled Decay of Everything. This was put into place ten minutes ago.

Niobe – *OneList Question* When you brought in a new Quest Engine a few months ago to help out Newbies, it was assumed that you would also be using this same engine to create quests (via NPCs, Monsters, etc) for Intermediate and Veteran players as well. What’s the deal? Quests would add a lot of spice and be a nice reward for us players that have dedicated so much time to the game.
toad – We think quests suck. Especially the paladin ones.

Niobe – *Darketower* During the summer, you had mentioned that the “Party System” would not be worked on till at least the later half of the year. Well, it’s certainly the later half, so I have to ask…
toad – We have developed a party system but it is currently waiting on determining who is bringing the beer.
Lord_Pall – Also who has a spare room.
toad – Once those issues are resolved we should have some good parties. Systematically.

Niobe – *Ibn_Shaun* It is highly peculiar that when a healer with “superhuman dexterity” slips, he incurs the same penalty to healing as…
Tyrant – Look, pinhead, if you ask another question about healing at these chats, I will personally
Tyrant – delete each and every one of your accounts. Capisce?
Niobe – *Ibn_Shaun* *squeak*

Niobe – *Batir* With the newer multi-skill and multi-items being added in the (fairly) recent past, what are the chances of reworking some of the older items so that, for instance, a halbred actually takes wood to make the handle. Possibly as a seperate item made by carp’s, or just using the wood as you smith…
toad – So, it’s possible for us to do this, we just think it’s a profoundly stupid idea.

Niobe – *spac3* How do moongates actually work, and why do they keep taking you to the same place over and over sometimes? Why not add more moongates around each one, and have them to specific towns, and when single clicked, it’ll tell you which town it goes to. It would be much easier to travel without being able to recall, they are really troublesome and annoying.
toad – The moongates are really a part of Ultima History, for many of us who played the older ultima games, this would be sacrilege, to have multiple moongates in one location, with names no less, that lead you to wherever you wanted to go. 🙂
toad – Honestly, though, as soon as we can slip it into a patch without Lord British looking, it’s in.

Niobe – *Eddie* Is there any plan on fixing the cure potions so that the higher cures are needed to cure the higher poisons? Right now lesser cures have a large percentage to cure even deadly, and magic cure can cure all of them way too easily, making poisoning pretty weak.
Firedog – Alchemy. It’s big. Really big. You should see the compile time on that sucker.

Niobe
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*Lupio41* When you put a “stop” on a skill, under the new skill locks, will you still gain points, until you’ve eaten up all your bonus points from your stats, or will you not gain anything in that skill, bonus or regular?
Runesabre – When you lock a skill, all your skills will immediately decay to zero.
Runesabre – This should resolve all problems with skills.

Niobe – *Arthur-LoD* is there ever gonna be ocean combat? ships are a waste of space at the moment, and could really do some good pvp. maybe new boat types… like a battleship, 2x as wide and capable of holding cannons… and make the masts have colored sails to go with guild colors. and make them boardable if there are no living enemies on an enemy boat.
SunSword – CANNONS!!!!
* XenaDragon hides *
SunSword – I’d love to do ship combat.
Lord_Pall – ohdear
SunSword – In fact, I QUIT.
* SunSword joins the “Wooden Ships and Iron Men Online” dev team *

Niobe – *Dartagne* Toad, why do u say “So,” at the beginning of sentences? 😛
toad – It’s a bad habit I’ve picked up from Tyrant. 😛
toad – (I am so fired.)
Tyrant – RIGHT!

Niobe – Time is up for this edition of the UOHoC. Thank you all for attending and thanks to our question takers, toad, SunSword, Firedog, Lord_Pall, and Tyrant for attending this evening.
Niobe – Please be aware that satire is constitutionally protected.
Lum – (My accounts are so gone.)
Tyrant – RIGHT!

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