DenDragon - Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
DenDragon - Tonight's chat is considered General Discussion, so feel free to ask anything relating to Ultima Online.
DenDragon - Before the meeting begins, Rich Vogel, Producer of UO, would like to make a few comments.
DenDragon - Glamdring will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Aphrodite, Troll, Uziel, Kyra, or James.
DenDragon - Please /msg different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed this process up. Do not msg anyone from Origin, myself or Glamdring--these questions will be ignored.
DenDragon - Remember that the DevTeam may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, some questions may not be answered if the DevTeam feels that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.
DenDragon - In addition, please do not submit any questions that have already been answered during past conferences. We encourage you to read the logs of the previous Open Houses, which are available at http://uohoc.stratics.com.

RVogel - Hello everyone
RVogel - I would like to make a comment on the exploit programs that people are using in UO
RVogel - If people find exploits they should tell us and NOT post them to everyone
RVogel - This causes us to work overtime and move our current priorities around to fix them
RVogel - If we find out really bad exploits, we will take quick action and fix them
RVogel - We have a lot of new and exiting changes coming up and we want to make sure we spend our time working on improving UO and Not chasing these exploits caused by third party programs
RVogel - In the coming months we will work hard to improve our client/server encryption to stop these 3rd party exploit programs
RVogel - I am confident you will see some really good progress on this in the next few months
DenDragon - Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions.

Glamdring - *Trendkill* Do you plan on working with the complete randomness of smithing anytime soon? I am GM smith with 100 str and it sometimes takes me 1k ingots for 1 exp. plate chest. It seems to be a problem that all smiths have, and the guild I belong (UBB) to is very concerned with this.
Faceless - We don't have plans for altering the probabilty of success for skills at the moment
Faceless - Altering such equations would have impacts on how much smiths charge etc
Faceless - But it is not out of the question for future updates.

Glamdring - *Joseph-RB* Could DD please explain how an agressor flag for stealing will work? And what will keep people from commiting suicide and adding a murder count to someone who merely stole
DesignerD - We're still discussing what exactly we will do for PvP thievery. An aggresdor flag is merely one of the things we are investigating. It does have pitfalls, as you describe.
DesignerD - However, our goal is to radically shift thievery from being a PvP profession to an adventuring profession. So you SHOULD expect life as a PvP thief to become very difficult

Glamdring - *FatherTime* It has been rumored that for placing houses in the new lands, new buildings will be required (new art like stilts). Is this true and how will it affect us that already bought our deeds for towns?
DesignerD - We haven't made any requirements yet for building in T2A. Nor will we have specific plans for housing in T2A until after we feel confident that the home ownership system is meeting its goals of house reduction.
DesignerD - At this time, we still expect to have to add house maintenance to reach that goal.

Glamdring - *Batlin* Is anything going to be done about Recall.. to encourage players to travel by foot, or with parties more & explore; maybe move it to a higher circle? Perhaps you've read Blade Essay on Recall.. he makes some very valid points on why it should be limited and or removed.
DesignerD - Recall has been much discussed & debated here, just like everywhere else. The Dev Team is divided on the matter just like the players are. At this time, we have no concrete plans for any changes to recall.

Glamdring - *Narvi* Here's a simple one (hopefully), for all us bakers out there. Will we be able to craft water troughs someday, or are we expected to carry water pitchers from across the world for baking in our houses until the end of time ?
DesignerD - Eventually, carpenters and other crafters will be able to craft pretty much anything. :)

Glamdring - *Elera_GL* The most-asked question that I know of -- when's channeling coming out? DD said January, but when?
DesignerD - We're gonna end up missing January by a couple of days... look for it in the first week of February.

Glamdring - *Storm* colored armor? what ever happened to it??? lost in the "to-do" list?
DesignerD - No, just a lot lower priority than lots of other stuff. Right now, our top priority is handling antisocial behavior such as PvP thievery and blue PKs. We intend to work very hard to solve these problems before the end of February.

Glamdring - *Faramir* Do you plan on doing anything to help skills that can only be productively played by a macroer, such as mining?
DesignerD - We do have plans to "dampen" the effect of macroing on skill advancement, but the plans are not immediate. Right now, most people seem to actually be pretty happy with overall game balance.

Glamdring - *Killashandra* Whatever happened to the chests that were supposed to start spawning again with NPC belongings?
DesignerD - That will happen as part of our thievery updates. In redirecting thieves to be adventuring rogues rather than PvP-oriented, we'll be adding lots of stuff for thieves to do (necessary stuff too, btw, you can probably expect traps to spawn on dungeon floors that require det hidden and trap disarming or lockpicking abilities to even see)

Glamdring - *AdriaOfPacific* Do you know that any strong pets that cross server lines are _substantially_ weakened? Are there any plans to fix this?
Faceless - We are aware of the problem. Runesabre started investigating it today. We hope to have it by Feb2

Glamdring - *Nova* Regarding parrying, it seems attacks are either blocked or they go straight through to the armour rather than having part of the blow obsorbed by the shield. This tends to mean parrying is an all or nothing skill. This is evident during repairs as shields have very little battle damage even if my armour is in tatters. Can you investigate this further? Also, can deflection sounds be added so others can differentiate what is a miss
Faceless - Parrying will be addressed on Test Center after next week's update for balance testing. This will include making sure it is doing what is was designed for
Faceless - As well as making it patially effective against magical projectiles
Faceless - partially even :)

Glamdring - *FatherTime* The current economic system is in shambles with prices not making sense for many items and also promoting the making of only certain items deemed "gold makers". Most devastating are weapons which before the patch were bad enough, but now are even worse with the skill increase requirements. What if anything is going to be done with this and would you be willing to look at a proposal done for this?
DesignerD - Adjusting prices will be an ongoing thing, basically. But our real goal is to move most itms out of NPC shops altogether, so that the player economy can drive prices.

Glamdring - *Slide* Are there any new shards coming up and if so when will they be coming up.
RVogel - At this time we have no plans of opening any new shards in the US.
RVogel - however as our player base grows, we will open new shards

Glamdring - *Marn* Are there any plans for the large pentagrams found on level 3 hythloth becoming craftable? Say at Grandmaster carpentry and 95 magery? Also fireplaces would be a very nice addition. Perhaps the ones that are in jhelom farm, the ones that when you double click on them, a fire actually lights.
DesignerD - As I said before, there are plans for most everything to be craftable :)

Glamdring - *axus* Any chance on having recall reset agression flags to prevent suicides?
DesignerD - We will be looking at that as part of addressing blue PKs. Also looking at the "run into a firefield" kinds of tricks.

Glamdring - *Sav_GL* Hail, I was wondering if maybe Alchemy could be changed instead of Random points being healed with a Gheal or instead of random damage with a greater explosion it could be scaled to the skill of an alchemist. This way you could mark gheals crafted by gms and it would matter. Please add makers marks and these changes to alchemy. Thanks :)
DesignerD - Well, we weren't actually looking at alchemy revisions just yet, but that's a nice idea.

Glamdring - *Ryan* Two short questions: 1) Are murderer's bank boxes supposed to be cleared when a bounty is claimed on their head? 2) Are there any plans to change muderer stat/skill loss upon ressurecting while red?
DesignerD - As originally designed, yes, bank boxes were supposed to be confiscated when you went red. As far as when stat loss is applied, as we evaluate fixes to the blue PK problem, we will also evaluate stat loss and where and when it will be applied.

Glamdring - *Rena* When will races be implemented? Are they still an idea, or are they a concept waiting to be implemented in UO later?
DesignerD - Not a clue. :) We've got a lot of priorities to juggle, and we're still sorting out what will come first in terms of large projects

Glamdring - *Juni* Is there a chance a permenent shard for chaos would be implemented?..the seasonal shards were a great sucess to let out aggerssions and the like...i believe a chaos shard would be a great sucess to curb massmurderers on reg shards

Glamdring - *aa-Dolgan* Is there any possibility of the addition of hoods and such or covers for the face? That's what I need for my pink collection.
Faceless - I've learned never to say never :). At this time we'd rather not maintain a seperate code base for an evil shard, but instead continue to use
Faceless - That server set for seasonal and novelty shards.

Glamdring - *Aena* Would it be possible to put to rest all the discussions on food? Does food have any impact on skill gain, and sucess rates for smithing, etc?
DesignerD - Being full makes your regen rates for hps and stamina faster. I am not sure it affects mana regen rate. It does NOT affect skill gain or success rates.
DesignerD - Yes, in fact ToAD is doing a revision to creature treasures for th enext update that should beef up treasures on many monsters

Glamdring - *PaYbAcK* What is going to happen with monster loot? Are there any plans BESIDES treasure maps to bring it up to par?
DesignerD - Yes, in fact ToAD is doing a revision to creature treasures for th enext update that should beef up treasures on many monsters
DesignerD - I have to go now, but the chat will go on for a while longer. But first, apparently the moderators are getting many questions as to how my daughter is doing.
DesignerD - She is doing quite well, though she is having trouble adjusting to the twice-daily insulin shots and the blood sugar testing she has to have several times a day.
DesignerD - All in all, though, she seems back to normal, and is even losing her fear of needles :)
DesignerD - Many thanks to everyone for the kind wishes...
DesignerD - I have to head out now... good night!

Glamdring - *Eldoran* DD, is it possible to make polearms to be able to strike a space away (giving them a 2 space range), and then have all ranged weapons do half damage if melee'd at close range?
Faceless - I don't want to go overboard on making additions to combat yet, so polearms probably won't happen for a while
Faceless - I would like to see archery less effective at one tile, interrupts, breaking bows, etc...but probaly not too soon

Glamdring - *Crazy_Stu* any chance that books in a shelf may be locked done and made so they may not be written over I have had many bad comments put into books that took awhile to make. Most of which are on how much the person states their thoughts on RPing?
Faceless - That's a good idea actually. In some quests on some of the shards they used locked books. (You can copy a locked book btw)
Faceless - That provides a read only book. It would be nicer to provide a better way
Faceless - BTW for those who don't know me, I'm the lead engineer on the UO team. I have been a player since the days of Beta.
Faceless - My love for the game got me to apply for the job here when it was vacated by the old programming staff.

Glamdring - Thank you everyone for coming tonight.