Glamdring - Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
Glamdring - Tonight's chat is considered General Discussion and as such we will accept questions of any topic relating to UO.
Glamdring - Glamdring will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Kazola, Fripp, Jerrith or Marduk.
Glamdring - Please /msg different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed this process up. Do not msg anyone from OSI or myself--these questions will be ignored.
Glamdring - Remember that OSI may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, some questions may not be answered if the Dev Team feel that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.
Glamdring - 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.
Glamdring - Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions.

Glamdring - *Ekir* Hi. As must must know, fisherman are unhappy with the latest patch. As far as I understood, the problem was with the maps. So why didn't you just remove them (they are useless for fishers), maybe be make bottles rarest (like 1 per hour at GM) with new percentages (50% of lvl1, 35 of Lvl2% and 15 of lvl3%, and maybe lvl4 and 5). Because now, fishing went back to the "fished cook sellers" community, or the macroers (just like it never chang
DD - We're aware that we may have overcompensated. We didn't want to let it run too long with the huge unbalancing amounts of money, though. It's easier to lighten up after going too strict than it is to keep making it stricter and stricter each time.
DD - I wouldn't say that it's gona back to macroers, though, now that serpents attack you and you can't stay hidden while fishing... kinda dangerous to be AFK while fishing now
DD - In any case, we're going to evaluate the situation and see what we can do without causing too much inflow of gold there. I must say, it IS gratifying that the changes were so popular, though. :)
DD - (Meaning, the original fishing, not the trimming back, of course)

Glamdring - *Mind* LB Prod is hiring a 3D programmer and a 3D artist for Ultima Online. It seems a totally new client is in work. Can you give us some details?
DD - No.

Glamdring - *Luc* What does OSI plan to do about the housing space problems?
DD - We plan to put in a robust house auction system that will allow you to put houses up for sale on the open market. Players will be able to bid for houses while at the house, and will be able to see a master list of houses for sale on a shard at a central location (probably a listing board in the architect's)
DD - We do not expect to magically create lots more space for houses... we plan to basically rely on market forces for it.

Glamdring - *ImaSupa_Ni* Will guild "alliances" ever be implemented? Currently, a guild has to declare war on another guild in order to be able to spar, save loot, heal, etc in battle to avoid penalties of the reputation system.
DD - No concrete plans for alliances as such, but we will be doing a big revamp of PvP combat over the next few updates. It is possible that a system for dueling without rep consequences will be part of that... it's one of Sunsword's pet projects.

Glamdring - *Xander* What is going on with the PvP changes? I heard the evil idea was scrapped? It seems that with the increased murder penalties and Order being unable to attack Order, that pvp is being phased out of the game? What are your plans and how soon can we expect to see results on the public shards?
DD - PvP changes will include a faction warfare system for sure, and possibly the evil/good thing (still undecided), plus some fixes for guilds. PvP by no means is being phased out of the game. You should start seeing stuff going into test over the next couple of weeks. In addition, the Abyss is coming along nicely, and we hope to have a near final version of the color wars up this weekend.

Glamdring - *Joshua_Rowan* "What changes & enhancements, if any, does the Dev Team plan to make to the Cooking skill?".
DD - Ah, I knew this was coming, since you warned everyone that you would ask it on the mailing list today. :)
DD - Unfortunately, I fear I have to report that right now, we don't have cooking scheduled for an update :(

Glamdring - *Abadaba* With the introduction of Abyss could you also introduce one pvpless board, so those that whine about PKs can go there instead?
DD - You mean, a peaceful, noPK shard? No, no plans for that. It is very very hard to do it well. :(

Glamdring - *Elric* I heard rumors about a new expansion way off about this summer or fall? Will the new races be in this new expansion and new weapons?
DD - Dunno where you heard the rumors... you should tell whoever told them to you that the rumors are wrong.

Glamdring - *Ekir* For the new server down schedule for European servers, are you aware that players in Europa pay less money when they play at night (22h/8h).
DD - Yes, we have gotten a LOT of feedback on the new server downtimes, and I am sure that those who are in charge of such things are reviewing all feedback (especially since some of it is very LOUD feedback. ;)

Glamdring - *Krunk* When is the patch adding Necro as a skill on the skill list expected?
DD - I imagine it will show up on your skills window in the next update. Whether it will be fully functional is another question. We want to make sure it goes in smoothly...

Glamdring - *Vascant* Tinkerers seem to be a very lacking profession unlike what is described in almost every document, any plans to make them more interesting?
DD - There's two things that I want to do for tinkers. One is to make the menu have subcategories. The other is to make it so that tinkers aren't the ones responsibel fopr trapped chests. Instead the person who sets down the chest will be.
DD - We do not at this time have plans for more complex revisions to tinkering.

Glamdring - *Tigger_GL* Will the drop and fetch command be fixed, as well as herding..Also what changes can tamers look forward to?
DD - I was trying to get with Runesabre about this today, but was too busy :( But basically, fixing up pets again is something that I consider a high priority. As far as what tamers can look forward to, the main thing which I want to do for them is to makepets have learning capability for skills and stats, so that keeping pets a long time is desirable.

Glamdring - *Airc* Will the final version of Abyss still have the advancement gates? Some people are for, while others are against them.
DD - I believe there will be some form of gates.

Glamdring - *Kelmar* Could you please explain why Nightmares were dramatically weakened in the update this week? Before one could destroy a dragon in seconds, now one will more than likely die.
DD - Sure. Basically: they were being used like crazy by PKers, and they were responsible for house breakins. When we checked the stats, we found that they were MUCH more powerful than tameable pets of the same difficulty rating--and the difficulty rating can't go any higher! So we had to make a choice:
DD - Either we made nightmares be of comparable capability to other max difficulty pets, or we yanked them from pets altogether and removed everyone's nightmares.
DD - We chose the former.

Glamdring - *Galen[LS]* Purely cosmetic suggestion: Any chance for player hooded robes, and the ability to add a symbol to clothing (virtue symbols, order, chaos, etc)..as to the hooded robes, I know many other people that would like them, and Im sure theres something else for GMs/Counselors (perhaps making them transparent, etc)
DD - I suppose that hooded robes are *possible* but I wouldn't call it a priority. Adding symbols would be very difficult. It would be very nice to see somethign liek that... unfortunately that would require a art update and right now we dont have the resources to have that done. But it something we can consider.

Glamdring - *Ibn_Shaun* How about an enhancement to the taste ID skill that allows you to place a label on potions you identify if your skill is high enough?
DD - We want to avoid taste id mules when the new alchemy goes in.

Glamdring - *Shard* While you guys are looking at ships, could you look at making it easier to get escort NPCs and pets to follow us on/off ships?
DD - Sure, we can try anyway :) FYI, the things that we want to tackle with ships include overcrowding on coasts, their use as hoarding spaces, and the difficulty of traveling with them... we're still working on the final plan for it, though. Expect more info on this soon.

Glamdring - *Tug* Please ask (if it hasn't been already) when the crashing problem with moving chest is expected to be fixed
DD - We're continuing to work on client stability stuff. hard as we can. We've fixed many separate issues, and all client development is frozen (including 800x600) until we feel conformtable with the client stability.

Glamdring - *Arawn* In a HoC chat not so long ago there was mention bowcraft/fletching updates to come. Any more information on this as it would be nice to see the ever so slowed archery skill with some new advantages.
DD - There's no details on the bowcraft stuff because there's no design for it yet. It was brought up as "something we'd like to do." But right now, our priorities are boats, house auction, and factions.

Glamdring - *Airc* What is going on with the alchemy update on the Test Center/Abyss shards? Flasks no longer work...
DD - We're doing a revamp of what we had. Remember, we didn't feel comfortable with it as a good foundation for further expansion. So we kinda took it back to the drawing board, and are developing a more robust tiered system. (It'll still work the same, as far as the player is concerned, though)
DD - So in the process, we kinda broke stuff as we messed with it

Glamdring - *Froggy_LS* here's my question "Why are murderers being phased out of the Ultima Game? People wouldnt have problems with PvP if they could go after and hunt down murderers. That would create a control buffer against murderers without such harsh things as stat loss. Staying red permanently is a good start
DD - We've had a system like that before, and it didn't work. We're not phasing out murderers, we're making them rarer. The vast majority of players agree with this goal.

Glamdring - *S_Kestrel* DD, and Faceless have both shown a desire to make bards more interesting.. any plans to assign the dev hours for it?
DD - No immediate plans, unfrtunately :( I'd really like to get to this soon, but stuff like the housing crunch keep staking precedence.

Glamdring - *Grommen-GL* Archery is very "nerfed" right now, and I've heard of nothing planned to change it. 15 seconds to set a heavy xbow means you can get ebolted 2x, unequip to heal, re-equip, and have to wait 15 seconds again - and you still haven't fired. Are there any plans to balance archery a bit better?
DD - We find archery to work quite well in group situations. We don't have any immediate plans to tweak combat just now.

Glamdring - *MonkeyLaser7* With these new house rules its almost impossible to place houses nowadays. How about making it possible to place houses again? why can't we place on mushrooms or tall grass?
DD - We don't want to have the countryside filled with houses again. Everyone seems to want all houses gone except theirs. :( So we're going to leave the overall quantity fixed at where it for now, and add instead means for players to sell houses back and forth much more easily.
DD - As to why we want the number low: because it slows down the server which has to back up the house & everything in it.

Glamdring - *Moose* RE: treasure maps. In the past we could successfully defend against people looting our treasure chests with minimal concequences. Now with the new system in place re: blue pk's, attacking someone that loots (who remains blue) constitutes extreme penalties for the loot we get. anything going to be done to help treasure hunters protect their loot?
DD - Huh, new situation on me. I can see that it's an issue. maybe we need to make the dug up chest belong to the person who dug it up, and crim flag those who loot it who aren't the digger.
DD - I'll bring it up to the programmers.

Glamdring - *Costanza_* Why do you have it so that cooking a stack of fish only uses up one fishsteak, but smelting a pile of ore uses half the pile of ore? Any plans to make dough stackable?
DD - Because they are two completely different pieces of code written by different people around a year apart. :) However, I agree that cooking fish steaks is a pain.
DD - No plans on stackable dough just now...

Glamdring - *Dawn* Greets... if I'm not mistaken there's the name of the tailor shown in the item's name when the tailor is GM. What about other advantages like getting leather from more dangerous animals like dragons and being able to craft a drago-leathervest?
DD - This has come up often, and next time we go through upgrading tailoring, it would make a nice addition. Who knows when we'll get back to tailoring though? After all, Joshua Rowan is clamoring for cooking first, and cooking hasn't bene revisited in a LOOOONG time. :)

Glamdring - *Primis* how about giving ships some of the capabilities as houses sutch as insta log if you have a key and you are docked,banning/ejecting people from your boat,lock down/secure objects??
DD - We're still evaluating whether we're gonna do a full ownership system for boats or not.

Glamdring - *Ritchian* Recently, it has seemed, except for new skills and some odd events, that the game has gotten boring, story line wise. Is there any plan to maybe make UO have some more links in the story line to it's namesake series. Perhaps a more intricate plot besides a spawned pirate attack on Moonglow. Perhaps something that would make a true player run government possible?
DD - To be honest, I see player governments as in many ways philosophically different from an ongoing story. In the one case, we're talking about OSI imposing a narrative n you, and in the other, we're talking about OSI staying hands off and letting the citizens of Britannia generate their own stories...
DD - As you know, we've always felt that giving players freedom to develop their own social structures was really important... so that has been the majority of our emphasis. However, you may have noticed that we're getting another plotline going now. So I imagine that you will see stuff along these lines.

Glamdring - *Beans* A lot of player-run quests with PvP run into the problem of murder counts accidently being ascribed to players. Any plans on implementing quests stones?
DD - No plans for that sort of thing just now, though I can see the need.

Glamdring - *C-Laser-CATs* A lont time ago you said the five spaces in front of our house would be used for gardens or stables, can you tell us more about this idea and when this might be implanted?
DD - That's a real "when we get the chance" sort of thing.

Glamdring - *Sniktch* I am VERY much in favor of housing maintenance, are there any plans to put this in? *please* :)
DD - We're going to have to see how it goes with the housing auction system before we make a decision on that. Maintenance may be necessary to make that a real market.

Glamdring - *MonkeyLaser7* Followup: But DD, what about people new to the game? we can esentially never enjoy getting a house as long as the old players aren't selling. aren't you hoping for an expanded player base?
DD - Ah, your question illustrates exactly WHY maintenance may be necessary to make it a market. Older players who do not want to pay the maintenance fees would be putting houses on the market, you see. If there's no maintenance, there may not be sufficient reason to ever sell real estate.

Glamdring - *Hythlodaeus* It seems the two major housing booms that have occurred were direct results of vendors and guildstones. If there was a way to have these without houses...
DD - I personally think that every player int he game would have a house for every character if he could. I don't know that either of those two things matters in the face of that desire :)

Glamdring - *[AC]Men|studying* What ever happened to allowing NON fighting Craftsmen to show thier title...LOOONG time ago you said youd look into a way for us to accomplish this...I mean REAL paperdoll titles not madeup profile ones...ALOT of us have worked VERY hard to make GM in Crafting skills and we just want the same privalage every Warrior that EVs Lich Lords gets of showing off our title without having to fight to do it
DD - I personally am shooting for July for that. (i know, sounds a long way away :(

Glamdring - *dwilde* Are you ever going to allow houses to be placed in t2a? this could alleviate some of the problem.
DD - Someday, and in a limited fashion. But I don't think there will be enough space to truly make a serious dent in the issue.

Glamdring - *ChaosDF* After the alchemy and necromancy patch goes in, what seems to be in store for us in the near future?
DD - Actually, alchemy and necromany are likely to take a couple of updates to phase in fully. So after initial implementation, there will be, well, more of it. :) And as I said, house auctions, factions, boat stuff... we actually have a pretty full plate for the next few updates.

Glamdring - *Stone* Will OSI give detectives other abilities (perhaps they could determine the identities of disguised thieves)? Does the development team intend to add other law-enforcement-related skills?
DD - We'd like to continue to develop the detective profession, yes. And that does seem like a logical candidate expansion for it. :)

Glamdring - Well folks, time to wrap up for the night. I would like to thank everyone for coming tonight
Glamdring - And thanks to DD, Ironwill and Fiasco too
DD - Night all!
DD - I'm running off to eat dinner now... Take care!

Glamdring - and on a side note :)
Glamdring - *Lord_of_Chickens* Any chance of making the Abyss the jedi server? It would be cool if you could start as a regular or dark jedi with coresponding "lightsabers" and have these giant Jedi wars?