DD - OK everyone, before we start the chat there's a couple of things I'd like to talk about in the upcoming phase 3 housing update.
DD - I fear that many of you may receive these three items of news as bad news :( But please don't freak out, because they're all basically temporary. :)
DD - First off, the tailoring changes are NOT going to make it for the update next week. That means that tailoring will not gain maker's marks, exceptional quality and below average quality stuff, nor be difficulty based yet.
DD - We still plan to do this, but it won't happen until the next update, the first one of the new year.
DD - It just wasn't quite done enough in time.
DD - The second thing is that the update (which btw we are targeting for Monday, but as always, it may slip, that is a tentative date) will NOT include interior lockable doors yet.
DD - This is a largish change, and it'll have to involve expanding tinkering to allow addition of locks on doors, and so on. So it won't make it in at the same time that ownership does. :(
DD - The third thing is that guard regions on houses will NOT be in the update next week.
DD - We are still assessing balance factors, like guards tackling monsters that attack people that are on the doorstep, and so on.
DD - Rather than put in a feature like that which might be destabilizing and which might have to be yanked for balance reasons, we dcided we should work on it some more, and evaluate how things go with the ban and eject commands first
DD - We realize many merchant types will be made nervous by this, but we ask them not to worry too much--we will be continuing to work on this feature until we can determine once and for all whether it needs to be there--and if it does, it will go in, once we get it working the way we need to.
DD - The good news is that other than these three items, the update is looking very good for installation next week. We've been reading the feedback from the test shards and web boards, and have made many fixes and adjustments in the last few days. Tomorrow a fresh build will go on TC to get yet another run through.
DD - So many thanks to all those players who have tried out ownership on the various test shards all week--you've been a great help in making this the system it needs to be!
DD - OK, so now that that is said, please do start sending your questions to the moderators listed in the channel's title (Aphrodite, Fallo, Troll, or Uziel)...!

Glamdring - *SirRobin* Will other skill aides be made to help combat skills like anatomy aides healing? (ie will arms lore aide damage or accuracy, will item identification allow a tinker to make an item he can identifiy, and will forensic evaluation have any use at all?)
DD - We've been considering what to do with armslore. It may assist in combat, probably by aiding in defense. It might also help smiths craft better weapons and armor. We haven't discussed much with item id yet, but we do have plans for forensics to be better.

Glamdring - *Duskwalker* Greetings DD & staff. I am all in favor of the changes being made to tailoring. However, is it possible to include a way to repair leather armor (and possibly clothing) as well. Perhaps have it take 1 cloth or leather hide per repair for patches and what not. The coding and interface would probably be nearly identical to Blacksmith repairs.
DD - We don't have plans at the moment for repair, but I wouldn't rule it out for the future.
DD - repair of cloth and leather, that is :)
DD - OR of bows, before I get asked

Glamdring - *TheLearnedMage* What is the proposed ETA on channelling and approximately what will the mana regeneration rate be with 100 channelling? (PS tell Den we all love his EQ journal, great job!)
DD - Channeling will go in in January. With 100 channeling and no armor, you should expect to be able to cast low level combat spells effectively infinitely. I don't have the math handy, but that's the effect.
DD - As far as Den's EQ journal, I'm the wrong guy to ask to tell him, don't you think? I agree it was fun reading, but I missed the parts about his pet and his house and the time he bought an exceptional sword from a fellow player's shop. :)

Glamdring - *_Solstice_* Any info on being able to change hairstyles?
DD - My sole hint is "wait till Xmas" ;0

Glamdring - *^Xander* What exactly is an abbatoire and will it have any use in the future ie pentagram for necromancy.
DD - An abbatoir in UO parlance is a stone pentagram with blood spatters on it... (don't ask me why it got that name, I don't know either). It may indeed have a future use for necromancy, or possibly for recalling or teleporting, or for other magical purposes.

Glamdring - *IronWolf* What are the plans to expand and improve cartography? Both factual and proposed?
DD - Well, one of the first, which you should expect to see in January (the code is already mostly functional) is the addition of treasure maps on certain creatures. These treasure maps require cartographers to decipher, and lead to buried treasure located at random locations throughout Britannia. This new style of quest was cookedup by Runesabre and Faceless, and is really cool. :)
DD - Beyond that, proposals have ranged all over the place--most though seem to focus on using cartography as a way to limit recall or to limit access to the radar window. I am of mixed feelings about tboth these approaches.

Glamdring - *Krozy* -Anything on the horizon for a skill such as "THROWING" using things like daggers and small swords?
DD - Dart boards are coded, and you should expect them in January. They are sort of our first whack at the possibility of doing throwing knives and axes :)
DD - Currently, overall AR. That may change however.

Glamdring - *Bainite* Is the Channeling / Meditation armor modifier based on armor type or on overall AR?
DD - Currently, overall AR. That may change however.

Glamdring - *MemnochSR* will anatomy effect wrestling and make it a useful combat skill? Also, will there be any benifit to mastering all combat skills-perhaps a bonus?
DD - It may. We may also expand wrestling into a skill tree. If you read Rich Vogel's interview over at the Vaultnetwork (http://www.vaultnetwork.com) you may have seen mention of skill trees...
DD - Basically, the idea there is that you have a base skill, and then you learn additional skills that have that as a prerequisite. We are looking at the idea of doing a revmp of the skill system to have more skill trees (currently there's only one, and it's kinda partial--the bardic skill tree)
DD - It's more accessible, and also allows us to add many more specialized skills and abilities for those who really want to pursue a given profession
DD - So with wreslting, we might add in things you could spend skill points on like choke holds and the like, so that wrestling becomes a form of combat (and a specialty) all its own
DD - Similar things could be adding a weaponscrafting skill on top of blacksmithing, so that only high level blacksmiths can make special weapons... or an enchantment skill that only Master Mages can even pratice, etc..

Glamdring - *Atalakis* Do you have any plans, not necessarily in the near future, to change the Poisoning skill to increase its effectiveness and to discourage putting it on mules? As of now it is fairly weak, especially if you focus your character around being an assassin; not to mention the skill generally has a very limited range of options...
DD - I have the following changes planned for poisoning: 1) require a passive check of your poisoning skill every time you swing a poisoned weapon, so poisoners are effective at using poisoned weapons, and people who just pick them up are not. and 2) a karma loss every time you swing a poisoned weapon, so that you are labelled as the poisoning scum you are. :)
DD - If we go the route of skill trees & the like, and we manage to limit the use of poisons to poisoners, then we can expand into special types of poison (nerve posions, blindness, etc etc)

Glamdring - *Nova* I as well as other conventional warriors appreciate the recent change with resistence that prevented gains to one's intelligence. I believe however, we can take this one step further as warriors true to heart would also prefer to avoid skill gains in that department as well. Would it be feasible to provide a toggle for skill gain with regards to magic resistence via the uo.cfg or options screen?
DD - Probably not. In hindsight, it would have been better to make magic resist be a stat, not a skill. :( Butwe're stuck with it the way it is now, pretty much

Glamdring - *Stacey* Will evealuate intelligence be able to veorcome monster's natural Resist Magic?
DD - Yes, it should.

Glamdring - *s-away* Is the skill limit going to be raised with the addition of these new skills. Some older characters will already be close to skill cap, and have to give up another skill to get channeling
DD - Absolutely, unquestionably, positively NOT.
DD - We are NOT going to raise the skill cap. Characters will have to specialize. We already have a system whereby they can change professions if they so choose. So we do not feel the need to effectively add to every character's capability int he game. We'd much rather add to character diversity instead

Glamdring - *Farrah* In the previous chat, you mentioned something about how you'd like to evolve the current rogue into an 'adventuring thief'. What ideas does this consist of-stealing skill wise-and is this another way of saying 'bye' to one of the leading 'evil' profession? Is the deb team planning on making the skill more attractive cause personally,I don't see it looking that great for the future of rogues.
DD - I have grown cynical enough to think that players don't need "evil" skills to be evil to one another. They do it regardless. :P
DD - As it is now, everyone hates thieves. (Yes, thieves, you may as well admit it). Nobody currently likes a thief except the thief himself. In fact, even other thieves don't like the PvP thief.
DD - I want to make thieves a valued, interesting, and FUN part of the game. Meaning, fun for everyone.
DD - It will retain its PvP aspect, but I want the emphasis on it to be on its traditional fantasy RPG role of an adventurer thief.
DD - As far as what that can entail--the reappearance of locked, trapped chests in dungeons. traps appearing and spawning randomly in the dungeons & in specially spawned encournter points (like the evil mage towers that used to spawn, and may again with the smaller amount of houses)
DD - Possibly the expansion of the stealing skill to cover stealing of items that are "locked down" to normal players... you get the idea.

Glamdring - *Joseph* Would DD be willing to come hang out for one night with a roleplaying rogue's guild to see how hard it is on us as it is before he completely destroys the Rogue class?
DD - If it woul dbe on a trip to watch while you stole hardwon possessions from players who are losing weeks of work as a result, then probably not.
DD - I don't mean to sound harsh, but the fact is that rogues right now aren't rogues. They generally are "hang out near people, run in, random steal, run away, don't roleplay" people. :(
DD - That's not to say that some people don't roleplay real rogues, but they are vanishingly few.
DD - And I suspect that those that DO roleplay rogues would much rather be respected as roleplayers and not reviled by most everyone
DD - Something that I have on the table as a likely tack to take with thievery is to make victims become "hyperaware" for a while after a teal attempt, so you can't steal repeatedly from them
DD - Making stealing an aggressive act to curtail the "steal to tease you into fighting me" mode of blue PKing is also possible
DD - My intent here is not to destroy the rogue class, but to reshape it. And I'd welcome ideas from roleplaying rogue guilds on ways to do that--reshape them into something that is an adventuring class, and not just a scourge on the face of britannia and an annoyance one encounters on every road

Glamdring - *magsangel* Are you planning on making Animal Lore more useful? In regards to control of pets, or tied in with animal taming, or for transfering dragons and other beasts.
DD - Anything which we do with anatomy in combat with humans, will probably also apply to animal lore in combat with animals. So that's one enhancement. As far as the key thing I would like to do with animal taming, I want your pets to actually gain skill and stats as you "train them up" over time, so that we no longer have silly dogs named "a" and bears named "z" but instead have pets that tamers have worked hard to make into really useful and valuable companio

Glamdring - *warren* DD: Will the craftable items go in on Monday? and, when is the next crowd pleaser patch? (I remember you talking about player races etc for Christmas)
DD - Yes, craftable items will go in Monday. As far as the next crowd pleaser, we'll see if we can't do it in January, maybe as the first one we do. We have a bunch of stuff queued up for it already after all, including ballot boxes attachable to houses, dartboards, the tailoring revisions, and channeling. :)

Glamdring - *Pi-FjP* DD, do you plan to make more items craftable, like the current rare items, such as marble tables and skull candles?
DD - Yes, over time we'd like to make *everything* craftable. Even interior walls in houses.

Glamdring - *`Logan* Will there be a skill that allows the use of two weapons EVER be put in *Smiles with glee*
DD - Hurm, it requires substantial new 3d animations, so probably not :( POssibly you could wield one and throw a secondary weapon though

Glamdring - *RXX* Is barding ever going to become a really usefull and viable class of charictar?
DD - Huh, everything I've heard lately is that barding IS a really useful and viable class of character right now.
DD - Would we like to expand it? Oh yeah. There are many more kinds of bardic skills we could add into that tree, even aside from some of the stuff like adding the ability to enter your own music.
DD - Stuff like the ability to give paeans and satires to riase and lower other people's karma, for example. Or lullabyes to make people sleep or be less responsive in combat. Or inspirational songs that give benefits to warriors inspired by them

Glamdring - *Cain* Will naval warfare be catered for in the near future? NPC pirates would be a fun new foe...
DD - Just today I was looking at ways to do something really cheesy: make boats themselves actually spawn creatures nearby when they are out in the ocean. So a sailing trip would be guaranteed to be exciting (boats attracting sea serpents, etc). The ocean is really underutilized and I want to make it more interesting.
DD - There are technical issues to solve to make boats more viable though.

Glamdring - *SharnaBly* Is there any chance that skills like fishing, cooking, and camping will be exempted from the cap? It's fun to fish or light a camp fire from time to time, but doing that shouldn't affect a character's ability to defend themselves or earn a living.
DD - Probably not. Instead, we'd rather make those more important. Casual use would be fine, and shouldn't affect you that much skill point wise anyway. (I also an a fan of aplay style that doesn't obsess over the cap and everysingle skill point, of course)

Glamdring - *Aardwolf* Tinkering improvement: Mineable raw gems that can be cut and faceted into real gems, and set into jewelry, of course jewelry needs to be more expensive than the gem, which is currently not the case and wrong
DD - Been on our list for a really long time. :) Also recently, I saw a suggestion for golems craftable by tinker-mages, which would use gems as fuel. I've actually been looking for a way to put in programmable golems, so that one sounded good to me. :)

Glamdring - *DreamWind* Any chance that Polearms could be moved to a combat class of their own? Have to admit fighting with these types of weapons should be very different than fighting with swords.
DD - Yeah, as we look at skill tree stuff, adding polearms as a specialty would indeed be a possibility. Then again, with a skill tree, we could even add skills specifically for "katana" and "longsword" and so on

Glamdring - *ElowynOfMoonglow* Is there any chance of using an alchemist to grind gems to produce a laquer that a smith can apply to armour to colour it ?
DD - The method I prefer is actually to have miners have access to wider and wider choices in types of ore to mine as they gain in skill, and then be able to smelt different metals out of them that can be crafted into colored armor
DD - I've been asked to let all the bards know that Samwise is doing a bard class at the Lycaeum in Moonglow on Great Lakes right now. :) So go there and learn from a great bard!
DD - I think the chat is actually over now, so I just want to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday. :)

Glamdring - Thank you everyone for coming and thank you once again DD for keeping us informed on what you guys have planned
DD - I don't want to spoil the holiday surprise for you though, so I'm not going to answer all the questions about what it is this year. :)