Fripp - Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
Fripp - Tonight's chat topic is the new shard "Siege Perilous," please try to keep questions along these lines.
Fripp - I will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Niobe, Narcissus, Marduk, or Jerrith.
Fripp - 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--these questions will be ignored.
Fripp - 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.
Fripp - 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.
Fripp - Also, for conversation during the chat, please feel free to join #ultima-online or #Siege-Perilous, however, java users should know that they can only be in one channel at a time.
Fripp - Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions.

Fripp - *Gremio-Pac* My first question, when will the shard be up?
Runesabre - I am assuming you are refering to Siege Perilous... several of the team is working on Siege as we speak.
SunSword - *sweat*
Runesabre - Its our goal to have this shard up before midnight if at all possible.
SunSword - *pant*

Fripp - *Seajei* Thank you for SP :) You've stated that SP will have its skills "initialized". Are you setting the skills at the same level across the board, or basing it on an exsisting shard (that has already been macroed to death)?
Runesabre - The skills are based on an existing shard initially.

Fripp - *Frag* How will factions work
Runesabre - Factions will not be on Siege Perilous initially. We want to add more fiction to them.
Runesabre - Perhaps having town Factions and evil factions rather than simply Red, Blue, Green.
SunSword - So the system is there, just not implemented quite yet
Pandemonium - Good/Evil will be on SP though

Fripp - *ShakhTrug* Will there be Seers on SP? if so how many?
SunSword - The server will be a normally supported shard, but with the one character limitation, we have some technical issues to iron out (so to be announced)

Fripp - *Ozgrak* Will all healers rez red players, or will they have to use Chaos? What about "Chaos campers?"
tOAD - There will be red healers on the shard, as well as the chaos shrine.
Runesabre - We are making sure there will be some "red" healers in Siege.

Fripp - *OGD|Blackheart* Have you considered making guards in some towns killable thereby letting a group of players controll a town and it's resources for a period of time?
SunSword - No
SunSword - :)
SunSword - Well we considered it, but it's not planned to be implemented.

Fripp - *Rager* Will there be GM support and what will the hours be?
tOAD - It will be GM supported from 3pm to 1am Central Standard Time

Fripp - *Rompy* one easy way to make gold is to recall into lower lvls of dungeons, will any measures be implemented to stop people from using the gate spell to do the same thing on SP, perhaps by not allowing gates into or out of dungeons as it once was?
Runesabre - We are disallowing the mark spell from working in dungeons.

Fripp - *Safko* since Abyss wasn't just a veteran shard and Siege definetly is are there any plans for a abyss with gates. A shard for people that don't have the hours needed to become good at the game? in other words a shard with skill gates.
SunSword - We have discussed the possibility of such a shard, and we are looking at ways of using our current resources to put up temporary "diversion" shards
SunSword - However, there are no plans at the moment for Abyss

Fripp - *Orion* Will mages become extinct when reagents will be 3x more expensive? Will you implement some alternative source of reagents? Eg. a bag of reagents in loot instead of a gem.
Runesabre - The lost art of gathering reagents will be hopefully found again. Otherwise don't have plans on increasing the reagents.

Fripp - *TrevorAtlantic* We have over 500 people in the chat :-) what will SPs limit be (per server or per shard)?
SunSword - It's a normal shard, so server limiations are the same
SunSword - limitations even

Fripp - *ImaSupa* The big question on many minds - will player-run vendors be allowed, and if so - will they be changed / limited in any way?
Runesabre - Player vendors will be allowed. The vendor charges will hoever be 3X that of normal vendors.

Fripp - *Eagawk* Since there is no way to get 8th level spells except from other players, how will we get them on a clean shard?
tOAD - Well, some monsters do in fact spawn with 8th circle spells. The other players had to get them from somewhere. :)

Fripp - *Night* What made you decide to only allow one character per account? To reduce the usage of mules and such?
SunSword - Well, that's part of it, but there's more
SunSword - We feel that players will attach more value and play in more committed style if they know that they only have one character
SunSword - Murders have to be more careful
SunSword - Skill selection means more to the player
SunSword - etc...
SunSword - It's a dynamic we've always wanted to see in UO.
SunSword - It'll be interesting to see how players feel about it.

Fripp - *T_Lords-TPG* On the red healers... Will they be flagged invulnerable so they are not hunted down and killed? If not, why bother?
Runesabre - Its not meant to be easy to be a murderer. I think people will find murdering not so attractive when they die and realize they don't have many options to res.
Runesabre - This shard is meant to be run by the players as much as possible.

Fripp - *Evocare* Will anything be done about the fact that mages can gate people into dungeons once that mage is in the depths of the dungeon?
Runesabre - We will most likely disable marking and gating to/from dungeons.
Pandemonium - If you dont like it you can always dispel their gate :)
SunSword - Uh
SunSword - Nothing to dispel if you can't cast gate in the dungeon

Fripp - *Jagged* Have you decided on whether or not to unguard some of the island towns? The subject had been brought up on the dev board
tOAD - Currently things will stand as they are, but it may change later. So to start with only Buc's Den will be unguarded.

Fripp - *Bungu* Will there still be a 500 gold fee to join the thieves guild?
Runesabre - It will actually cost 1500 gold to join the Thieves Guild on Siege.

Fripp - *Omen* Do architects buy back house deeds? Is there a way to exchage one house deed for another?
SunSword - Yup, architects will buy back housedeeds

Fripp - *OGD|Ophidian* Will the Vesper/Minoc ---> Buc's Den gate still exist?
Runesabre - There will not be such a gate.

Fripp - *Eagawk* Will there be any influx of gold into the economy other than from monsters-chests and the origianl newbie gold?
SunSword - Yes... treasure hunts, lowered fishing, escorts, treasure chests, etc
SunSword - Adventure's will want to buy goods from merchants for adventuring, that's the idea anyway.

Fripp - *Eddie* Is SP going to be a testing ground for new ideas at this momment, with all the features that players have been asking for awhile, just is it going to be a "test" server, where changes will be made to it that could effect the main servers?
tOAD - We are testing features that players have asked for, and some of those features may migrate to other servers, but it is a permanent server.
tOAD - Though we will probably only be testing it for the first couple of weeks.
tOAD - Before it becomes permanent.

Fripp - *Trugagh* Will there be steps taken to encourage roleplaying in such a shard. Like giving Bloodrock Clan and Shadowclan privaliges for playing thier roles there?
Runesabre - Our idea for this shard is that is pretty much a player driven shard.
Runesabre - Clans will need to earn whatever it is they are seeking out.

Fripp - *descartes* Please ask, Will the x3 price increases be applied to housing and boats
SunSword - Yes

Fripp - *theDoh* How will the begging skill work? Will NPCs give gold? Will they give 3x gold? Will the skill be disabled?
SunSword - No changes planned for begging at the moment.
SunSword - (so no, no 3x for begging)

Fripp - *Mo* With the removal of Stat loss is it possible that we might see an increase stealing range or at least snooping range for theifs?
Runesabre - We won't be changing the stealing radius or snooping radius but we did make it so that snooping will not unhide you.

Fripp - *Frag* What did he mean lower fishing?
SunSword - A) Fishing poles going to have wear and tear, treasure maps will be removed, and SoS reduced drastically. To be specific. Magic fish are still in!
Pandemonium - Finding an SoS bottle will be something you can brag about and will be a rare occurence

Fripp - *Relvinian* What method(s) are you providing to remove excess items that us players aren't interested in? I know we can drop things on corpses. Are there any other options?
SunSword - Yes, we are going to work with the GM's to place trashcans around the world. But remember, some of the things you are making will have MORE value now than they ever did because of the vendor prices.
SunSword - "Keep Britannia Clean."

Fripp - *Thoth-Amon* What if anything will not be triple price? Training?
Runesabre - The following things will be triple costs. Buying skills, stabling animals...
Runesabre - joining NPC guilds, buying NPC items, hiring NPCs and running a player vendor.

Fripp - followup: 15x for a murderer running a vendor?
Runesabre - yes
tOAD - Yes.

Fripp - *Eddie* It seems your adding skill based provoke do SP without removing LOS check, giving fame, or fixing any of the delay bugs which haunt bards. Are you going to address these before making provoke impossible?
Faceless - Provoking was one of the largest gold faucets in the game. Keep in mind, it's not impossible, just harder.
Faceless - Good bards will still be able to use the skill. Newbie bards will not be able to go to the Terr. keep and make 1000s of gold

Fripp - *Dameon* When will server down times be
Runesabre - Server down times will be just like regular shards... around 5am.
Sage - CST

Fripp - *Evocare* new question... will chests that spawn in camps on the surface be trapped with lethal force?
tOAD - Yes. And locked too.

Fripp - *Myron|SSP* *Calamar|SSP* Does the tyrant, Lord British, exist on Si�ge Perilous?
SunSword - Log on and find out :)
SunSword - Summing up here hold on

Fripp - It sounds like the Dev Team is eager to get back to working on the new shard
Fripp - they have asked me to pass along that you keep an eye on owo.com for a full list of features
Fripp - and information on when the server will be available to use.
Fripp - Thank you all for coming to tonight's conference, feel free to swing into #ultima-online for further open discussion :)