DenDragon - Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
DenDragon - Tonight's topic is "Proposed Changes to UO". Please phrase your questions accordingly.
DenDragon - Glamdring will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Aphrodite, Fallo, Ssendam, Troll, or Drax.
DenDragon - Please /msg different ops at different times, in order to balance the load and speed this process up. Do not msg anyone form OSI, myself or Glamdring--these questions will be ignored.
DenDragon - Please remember that we may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, some questions may not be answered if the people from OSI feel that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.
DenDragon - Thanks for coming, everyone. Once the meeting has ended, you will find a complete log of the chat at http://uohoc.stratics.com. We will now begin accepting questions.

Glamdring - *C_acetyl* Approximately how long is t2a beta going to last?
DesignerD - Well, it's going to be a fairly focused test. We have specific things we need to have the beta testers look at : the chat system, the international support...
DesignerD - and of course the new area :)
DesignerD - But all in all, we dpon't expect it to be a huge affair... it's for Second Age-specific issues, after all.
DesignerD - But other than that--as long as it takes. So... as long as it takes, but we feel it won't be that long overall

Glamdring - *Savoir* Have you read the artificial life proposition at http://members.tripod.com/gmathon/ALProp yet? If so, do you have any comments?
DesignerD - Yes, i have! It's rather cool, and in fact shares many elements in common with the artificial life system that we originally intended for UO
DesignerD - We do still hope to get an AL system back into UO, if we can solve the problems we had with the first one: it needs to be
DesignerD - both efficient, and highly visible... if it's not visible, it's not really worth it in bang for the buck since AL systems at this scale are very expensive computationally
DesignerD - A lot of the ideas in the proposal went along very nicely with things we've been thinking about. So we hope to be able to make use of some of those ideas in the future.
DesignerD - In the meantime, I have the page bookmarked :)

Glamdring - *RedR* when does osi intend on going back and resolving the bugs, or remaining promised changes in previous patches? Sind before the rep patch, things have been left out to be done at a later day, and never seem to be gone back to, even in the new T2a, you state it will not be finish by release.
DesignerD - Well, we just this evening published the latest update to the TC. And it has a lot of bugfixes in it.
DesignerD - Also a lot of exploits in it, and some presents for UOE users. :)
DesignerD - Exploit fixes, that is. And NASTY presents. ;)
DesignerD - As far as stating that T2A won't be done when it's released, I dunno where you got that from....

Glamdring - *fred* Will barrels be available in the game again? I see them, my neighbor has one, but can't make or buy.
DesignerD - I think we are adding the ability for carpenters to make them, but I am not positive.

Glamdring - *TemplarX* With The Current Problems of 3rd Party programs it seems the majority of exploits and exploiters are thieves. With few exceptions I concider thieves as lazy and non roleplayers anyway. Any chance of eliminateing the skill and the class from UO?
DesignerD - Gosh, just today I was flamed off the Crossroads of Britannia board because people though I was going to gut thieves....
DesignerD - I don't have any intention of gutting thieves or removing the class. They can serve as a valuable class in RP. I think your real question is whether stealing from players should remain.
DesignerD - We definitely want to solve the problems with excessive player thievery in UO, and there's a variety of things we can do there. First of all, is of course plugging the holes that the exploit programs are using
DesignerD - Which this new update does
DesignerD - After that happens, we'll assess what we can do to help the legitimate, interesting, roleplayed thief, and harm the obnoxious, bank lurking, pkill-oriented, hit and run rude throwaway ghost thief
DesignerD - Reminder: please send your questions to one of the folks int he title of the chat, not to me...

Glamdring - *Thrain* Would it be possible to make the bount board list only the top 20 murderers who are online? Now it is hard to bounty hunt since you don't even know if the murderer is online. If it listed those online it would make it possible to actually "hunt" that person.
DesignerD - Nt really easily possible given the current system,... :( Sorry... it's a cool idea, though.

Glamdring - *MaStA-P* Any word on Guild Alliances? As in, make allies green, or purple, or something else that you can do stuff with em in town & etc.
DesignerD - No plans for guild alliances at the moment...

Glamdring - *Mr_Chips* Will the "suprises" for UOE exploiters be in effect on test center, allowing the programmer to code around them?
DesignerD - No. But I don't want to talk more about this because I don't want to give any more advance warning. basically--if you use UOE, stop. It is a bannable offense.

Glamdring - *Sandstone* Stat loss on death, whats your opinion on it DD? Will we be seeing it? I personally hope not.
DesignerD - There was enough controversy that it's not currently planned for.

Glamdring - *BlackWolf* Does the new update on the test center also fix the decay bug which seems to be hitting Baja harshly of late?
DesignerD - No, it doesn't. :( Instead, it has profiling information so we can nail down the cause of the problem. We see this as a top priority and are trying to get is resolved as quickly as possible. But we need to figure out what is happening first.
DesignerD - I've been asked to wish Twiggy-2 a happy birthday. :)

Glamdring - *Metaxa[CC]* If channeling is implemented will the base skill cap be increased from 700 to 800?
DesignerD - No. The intent behind making it a skill is to get pure mages to further specialize by sacrificing skill points in other areas.
DesignerD - If you don't want to expend the skill points (like say if you are a tank mage) then you should just pass up the skill, and settle for the current mana regen rate
DesignerD - the current rate is clearly viable, after all, for tank mages ;)

Glamdring - *Shamino* Any plan of having a system of Pentargam candles and reagents for recharging an Item's magical charges?
DesignerD - Not at the moment...

Glamdring - *KalVasFlm* Please forgive me, I'm a tad late, just got off work, anyword on what those of us that made it into the beta app that night can expect to see the cd's or get a confirm??
DesignerD - To my understanding, those people who got into the beta registration web page all made it in, and should be getting an email about the beta.
DesignerD - But I have heard from many folks who have not yet gotten an email. I don't know what the story is on that--it could be that the emails are going out in phases (not beta test phases, but staggered mailings--it's a one-phase beta)

Glamdring - *SirValiant* Will PC sailors ever be able to do something similar to escorting? ie: shipping of cargo for NPC's?
DesignerD - Great idea, not in the plans just now, but I'd love to do it. If we can find some way of making it impossible to do with just gate or recall ;)

Glamdring - *SirValiant* How long after the release of T2A will it be before houses can be placed?
DesignerD - Exactly as long as it takes to get the house ownership stuff in :)

Glamdring - *Dupre* Would it be possible to disallow agressive creatures (monsters) from being trapped in houses?
DesignerD - Sure. We've been talking about having aggressive creatures trapped in houses simply start looting the housem then break out thru the door and leaving it open.
DesignerD - we talked about doing it for the ownership update

Glamdring - *[DKB]Drako* why are some houses now being placed in town and others not being permitted??(ex: Atlantic house sitting beside provisioner shop)
DesignerD - we don't know, and are investigating.

Glamdring - *airwalk-* Any updates on the changing of the house locks?
DesignerD - Yeah, it's part of the house ownership. We plan on having the final spec for that next week, and I hope to put it up on the Update Center for people to comment on then

Glamdring - *Valek* would it be possible to scedual downtimes much earlier, like during early morning hours, the time warps have been imensely bad
DesignerD - The time warps and the irregular downtimes are both symptoms of the same thing--the backups being very large. That profiler I mentioned earlier will also be analyzing that and we hope to have measures in to make backups fast and regular soon.

Glamdring - *Badger* TO get a good idea of how the player base really feels about issues surrounding the game, might you implement a polling mechanism on the login servers that would accept one answer per suestion from each account?
DesignerD - That question has come up no fewer than five times this afternoon, by my count. The answer is, I'd LOVE to have it. When we can do it is another question... :)

Glamdring - *Trevian_the_Orc* Are there plans to play non-humanoid characters like Orcs, Trolls, Ettins...
DesignerD - Yes, there are plans for adding three nonhuman races: gargoyles, orcs or half-orcs, and probably something elvishy but with a different name.
DesignerD - Personally, I'd like to have them go in right around with EverQuest comes out... ;)
DesignerD - So it's a ways off, but definitely on our radar.

Glamdring - *Ads49* will a town stone type system be emplimented in t2a?
DesignerD - no, not with T2A. We hope to have it eventually though

Glamdring - *JapaneseNinja* I am a japanese ninja in real life, I was wondering if wrestling could be changed to more ninja style combat so as your wrestling raises you could do more moves etc. such as a GM Wrestler could do the Sav punch (a japanese karate punch), etc. Wrestling as it is, does not compare to weapons at all, please change it
DesignerD - I don't know about implementing ninjitsu, particularly since we lack animations for all the moves... :)
DesignerD - However, we have indeed talkde about adding in real-time moves to wrestling, so that it becomes more of a martial art.
DesignerD - This would make combat with wrestling a lot more latency-sensitive than other forms of combat, but it would also be more interactive, so you could do moveslike headbutts, kicks, throws, etc.
DesignerD - That's just in the category of "idle talk" at the moment though.

Glamdring - *ilot* Any plan on been able to sell your house to the banker with the upcoming patch? That will clean the land faster :)
DesignerD - It's under consideration for the ownership update. After ownership, it should be possible to sell houses.

Glamdring - *DigitalVoid* Will the ceasing of Gateing of monsters also cease the gating of escorted NPCs?
DesignerD - I think that's actually covered in the Update Info page--has everyone noticed that it is updated with info of the new update?

Glamdring - *Bosola* DD, can you specify what craftable items are planned for the skill patch? You have stated things like forges, spinning wheels and things that generally replace shops. But what about things like plates, silverware, pewter mugs, etc?
DesignerD - No, i don't have a full list right now. :( Sorry... I DO know that the rewrite made it MUCH easier to add new items, so that from now on it will be easy to add items like the ones you asked about.

Glamdring - *SickOfPks* What about making keys unstealable like spellbooks till the housing problem is fixed. Would eliminate players having to buy new houses when they get keys stolen. PS: Orcs never put the toilet seat down!
DesignerD - We're not planning that for now. And all the orcs *I* Know are perfectly polite...

Glamdring - *Torollin* is it possible that hiding will not be allowed while an aggressor or criminal? i cant stand the hiding right after i get stolen or attacked.
DesignerD - Not planning it at the moment... I understand the reason though... it's worth discussing. I'll bring it up to the team. You do know that with the new update, if there's an active fight i nline of sight, hiding is impossible....

Glamdring - *Madras* How about adding a spot on the paperdoll for scabbards and such? For an auto-arm/disarm feature. And also so thieves cannot steal ones weapon?
DesignerD - no plans for scabbards, but we DO plan to put in equip/unequip macros and also last target macros with the conbat revision. I did a brief Q&A with Lord Hades on the Stratics website about the combat revision which you may want to go check out...

Glamdring - *Mobus* What about the implementing of colored ores...and smithing of colored weapons, what is the ETA?
DesignerD - Not sure when we will get to colored armor and ore... FWIW, the plan that came out of the polls on the Unitd Blacksmiths of britannia is basically the plan we intend to follow...
DesignerD - We did manage to tackle improvements to healing and detect hidden for this update... maybe next update we can do a fe wmore non-combat skills.

Glamdring - *Erik-The-Viking* As with weapon skills, can you modify the magery skill into multiple catagories (Offense, protection, other) to make magery and fighting more seperate?
DesignerD - not easily at this point... the traditional Ultima spell system isn't split up that way, and that's what we'v got right now...

Glamdring - *Erik-The-Viking* I would like to hear more about the weapons fix and when its coming.
DesignerD - Well, we have arrived at a spec, and now we're going to develop a timeline for the full changes. The basic goals are to encourage a wider diversity of tactics, to make dexterity matter, and to bring things into line with archery
DesignerD - We want to make the lightly-armored agile fighter viable, for example. We plan to make stamina matter a LOT--so dex will matter too. You'll be able to get worn out from fighting, so the guy who conserves his engery will have a good advantage, as will the guy with more stamina...
DesignerD - and for archery--there will be a chance of interruption
DesignerD - You may want to check out the little q&a with Hades for more ifo... it is on uo.stratics.com

Glamdring - *Embassy* Are we going to see an increase in Seer support for people who dont play on the same shard as Oasis or Kazola's?
fiasco - We have four to five seers on each of the nine shards.
fiasco - Many shards other than Sonoma and Great Lakes have seen wonderful seer activity

Glamdring - *GodComplex* Would it be possible to add a new option of being teleported to town when you die? This would help the problem I sometimes encounter of being stranded at the bottom of a dungeon that is half way around the world from the nearest town.
DesignerD - We haven't discussed having that option for death, but we HAVE discussed changing recall into working that way.
DesignerD - Uh, on that "support the Linux client you fools" thing... how can you call us Microsoft ass kissers when we actually went to the trouble of MAKING a Linux client? :( * DD sighs

Glamdring - *Denna* Concerning house ownership: I bought a house that was already "in place".. how will it's ownership be determined when that patch comes?
DesignerD - It will depend on who has the keys. Hopefully, if you bought a house, you were smart enough to ask for all copies of tje key, including the master one that went in the bank box of the original builder.

Glamdring - *Big_D* What's the current status on Channeling?
DesignerD - Well, it's still being actively discussed on the mage tower, and there's a lot of wrangling over specifics like how the armor penalty would work. Hopefully we'll be able to get a final spec together soon.

Glamdring - *DeathWillow* Are there going to be desease, like smallpox or whatever.. that healers need to give RL daily treatments to? or curable by healing skill?
DesignerD - That's come up off and on... the big problem with contagious diseases for players is that they aren't any fun to catch--they're just sort of obnoxious.
DesignerD - OK, I am getting ready to head out, but I do want to say something about 3rd party programs
DesignerD - Last night we had a VERY good meeting, between myself and the exec producer of UO and ladyMOI (our "online community person") and a whole bunch of the 3rd party tools developers
DesignerD - attendees included Xena Dragon, Tug of Tugsoft, Alazane of InsideUO, and others.
DesignerD - We feel very good about the meeting and with any luck, we'll be bringing good news about the 3rd party software agreement to you soon.

Glamdring - Here are a couple interesting comments directed towards DD during the meeting:
Glamdring - *learner* I've had your writings from previous logs analysed. The results showed several distinct writing styles. Either you're insane, or you are more than one person. I went through considerable effort to do this, not to mention cost.
Glamdring - *Gehn* DD: I would like to thank you and your associates for giving us such a wonderfully dynamic game. I am sure that none of us appreciate how much hard work goes into keeping it running. Thanks.
Fallo - These were a few items we received during the chat that we thought we'd share.

DenDragon - Well, we'll end it on those notes ;)
DenDragon - Thanks for coming everyone! We look forward to seeing you again in two weeks for the next Open House.
DenDragon - The log of the chat will be available at http://uohoc.stratics.com in about 5 minutes
DesignerD - Night all...!