LOLLY LOLLY LOLLY FIX YOUR VENDORS HERE [Author: wirehead]

The UO patch message was updated at noon today with this note:

Vendor Owners: If your vendor is giving you the message “Hmm, I seem to have lost my master”, please page a Game Master in game immediately. You can page a Game Master by using the Help button on your paper doll. The Game Master will come check your vendors and get them functioning correctly. We currently have no plans to revert the shards at this time due to this problem.

This would, of course, contradict the earlier “Common Issues” post on uo.com which basically said that if your vendors were acting screwy it was all your fault.

Meanwhile people are still reporting the decay of locked down items. Most of these problems seem to be related to co-owners locking down the items in question.

Speaking of unresolved programming “issues” involving Origin, even though Ultima 9 isn’t an online title, as both a new RPG that most of you are playing and as Origin’s last non-online title, it’s worthy of some comment. Especially when an “Origin insider” reports, as posted by the pimp daddies at Voodoo Extreme:

U9 had a ‘thanksgiving or the projects killed’ deadline, which wasn’t Origin’s idea, it was Electronic Arts that forced it. Origin wanted to wait until January, which shoots the holiday sales theory to shit. So bash EA for caring more about money than games.

Seems to be a recurring theme with games these days: release now, patch into a somewhat working state later. Ultima 9 is a great game, but it would be nice if it actually worked. Everything about the game screams rushed: the documentation is worthless (lots of background “in character” material, with 4 or 5 pages of “Key Command Summaries” which sort of tells you how to actually, you know, play), the game engine still has horrible clipping problems, and, of course, if you have the latest D3D cards (which would be, um, most of you) your Ultima 9 experience consists of a long install and a short drop to desktop immediately thereafter.

Of course, Origin is promising a patch. No word on if we’ll get a FANS.TXT with this one, too.