Glamdring - Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
Glamdring - Tonight's chat is considered General Discussion and the FYI section of www.owo.com and as such we will accept questions of any topic relating to UO.
Glamdring - I will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Fripp, Jerrith, Niobe or Xander.
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 - Tonight we will also be asking 5 of the questions that people submitted to the Stratics web site
Glamdring - they will be intermixed throught the live questions
Glamdring - Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions.

Glamdring - *Cynic* What is the timeline on implementing a patch that will provide a long term solution to the lag/cl problems people have been having since the last patch? (And yes, they still do exist)
SunSword - I'm not sure anyone questions whether they still existed.
SunSword - We've been working on this one none stop since we became aware of the issue
SunSword - We updated a solution to the servers today that should definitely take care of the c/l
SunSword - and Runesabre is actually not at UOHOC tonight because he's working on a final solution right now
SunSword - So expect it in the immediate future.

Glamdring - *Kieran* When will "a scroll" finally be removed?
toad - Once again, I get to say we're working on this one currently, to be fixed as soon as we've solved the problem with it.
toad - Which I think may have happened today.
toad - Should be available in the next major update.

Glamdring - *chaos66* Can't we please get Floor tiles added to the game?...it could be made so that Player Carpenters could make them, Miners could mine the different kind of stones needed by the Carpenter, this would add greatly to the player-industry (make it so NPC's don't sell them) and to the UO atmosphere in general. It shouldn't create any lag (it wouldn't be many item-counts for even a big house).
toad - Currently we are working on adding carpeting to the game, and this is something we may look at in the future. And no, NPC's won't sell carpeting. :)

Glamdring - *Ans* I heard that all "illegally" placed houses that aren't in accordance to the new housing patch will be deleted. I've had my house placed since before the housing patch and want to be sure my humble abode won't be deleted. It's over some grass patches and mushrooms, as well as near another house. What's going to happen to my house and my friend's house next to mine?
SunSword - The announcement did not say that all illegal houses may be subject to deletion, it didn't not say ALL illegal houses will be deleted
SunSword - The point of the post is to warn poeple that are illegally placing houses that there may be repurcussions

Glamdring - *website poll* About night, why is it so short (midnight to four in UO hour)? It should be longer with a dawn/dusk period as bright as now and a darker night
toad - Currently, night time doesn't mean much in the game, but we are looking at ways of making that different in the future. As it stands night and day aren't much different, so the length of night time hasn't been changed as their hasn't been much of a need for it.
toad - This as well will also change in the future as we find cooler and different things to do with the night time.

Glamdring - *Senric* any timeline on when quests expand beyond newbies and also if we can use it to make our own quests
toad - At the moment we don't really have a good mechanism for letting the players use the system we built for newbie quests to make their own quests. We'd like to see how the newbie quests fare before we start implementing more advanced quests
toad - At the moment we're just watching to make sure the newbie quests are functioning as we want them too.

Glamdring - *Dunno* Are GM placed houses legal? Mine was redeeded by a GM to fix a bugged door.
toad - If a GM placed a house for you, it's probably been notated so that action won't be taken against it. Not guaranteeing it, but I would guess that it's ok.

Glamdring - *Lemmy-boy* Currently rogues/thieves in Uo are an extremely down-trodden group of people simply because they can no longer operate successfully. Any chance that there will be some upcoming changes to ressurect the rogue profession?
toad - Well, we did just lock all the chests in the game for you locksmiths out there. :)
toad - The rogue profession is always characterized as being anti-social and causing problems for the community at large, but I think there's a place for the adventuring rogue in UO.
toad - At the moment we don't have anything in the immediate future, but it isn't something we're avoiding on purpose because we don't like rogues. :)

Glamdring - *Gorbak* When will Poisoning Be improved again?? I mean, I have a Grandmaster Assassan/Alchemist, and when I deadly poison someone, with only 30 magery they can cure on himself themself? Will there be a way for a Fighter/Assassan to make 5th level Poison?
toad - Well, allowing players to make a poison that pretty much instantly kills another player is probably something that isn't going to happen.
toad - In the future we may consider doing new and different types of poisons that have different effects.
Firedog - Yeah. We might.

Glamdring - *website poll* The use of macroing has hopelessly ruined some skills such as smithing and anatomy for honest players, due to the fact that skill curves are based on how many players USE those skills. Why not make the skill curves just static, dictated by you?
SunSword - The answer is essentially that it would be almost impossible to balance it properly
SunSword - There are a couple of reasons for this
SunSword - First, as skills change and get updated, the frequency of their use varies
SunSword - This means every patch we'd have to tinker with the table
SunSword - Hand editing that table for balance would be a nightmare for anyone
SunSword - IMHO the better solution is to address the nature of the usage based system and perhaps look at the algorithm for gain overall, not in any particular case
SunSword - But to hand specify that table is pretty much out of the question

Glamdring - *Hurin* What is the priority of the house sale/auction system.
toad - High. Very high.
toad - We're working on it right now

Glamdring - *Kieran* Atlantic just crashed for the third time today...any explanations?
SunSword - It appears that several of our servers are having problems at the moment. A large portion of the team is working on it right now. Expect to see more info on the website in a little while

Glamdring - *Ravensha* I am having the most difficult time keeping wrestling from accidentally raising. I am sure many players have problems with other skills. When will OSI start serious work on skill lock? How about a smarter skill atrophy system?
SunSword - We are currently working on a Skill Management system that will allow you to control whether you want your skills to stay where they are, rise, or atrophy. More details forthcoming on the Update Center, hopefully next week.
SunSword - (You'll like it)

Glamdring - *Jael* What is the possibility of introducing a karma=off toggle for the uo.cfg so that those of us who WANT low karma dont have to constantly fight for it? It's annoying to have someone "I honor thee" ruin a dread's day.
SunSword - one second, Toad got disconnected
toad - You're right, there needs to be a way for players to keep negative karma, at the moment I'm not sure what the mechanism would be for that, though .cfg options, in-game methods, or options menu items are all possibilites
toad - er possibilities

Glamdring - *website poll* There are sound effects for sheathing a weapon, footsteps on different soil types, ambient sounds for forest during day and night, even horse shoes on the pavement. Is an implementation on the client side for this in the making?
SunSword - Well, "client side implementation" isn't really what you're asking...I suppose you are wondering if we are going to use those sounds in the game(their already on the client)
SunSword - The answer is that we would like to make small changes like that in each of the small updates, just as we used to add items to the crafting skills, etc..

Glamdring - *Jono_CA* When will the Hero/Evil system be released to all servers?
SunSword - The Hero/Evil system is not currently slated for release to the public servers
SunSword - I don't believe it is serving the purpose that we wanted, and so we are using it as a test bed for the underlying systems, but I think we can all agree that a more robust faction system (overhaul of the guild war and chaos/order systems) would be preferable

Glamdring - *Bloodmonger* I think the question on everyone's mind is- "What's happening with Necromancy?"
toad - Sometime soon I'm going to write up a document detailing where necromancy is and hopefully get it posted to our webpage. I'd like to keep everyone informed of where necromancy is, as well as why it's there and not yet in the game. Look for it soon.

Glamdring - *Iolo* Will polearms and the sort ever be able to reach further than one tile in combat? I believe they were two tiles at one time.. want to come back to that?
SunSword - No plans for this at the moment.

Glamdring - *website poll* When is resmelting weapons and armor back into ingots going to be put in?
SunSword - In the next major update. Again, expect more details on when the update will occur and what will be in it on the update center in the next week.

Glamdring - *Senric* I think this always gets asked, but...when are menus like the new tinkering menus going to be implemented for more or all craft based skills?
toad - I haven't had time to work on all the new menus for the other crafting skills yet, but watch for it on the update center. It is something I'd like to see get done for all the skills

Glamdring - *WhereIsAbyss* are there any plans to change the current way declaring war works? Right now it is extremely clumsy and frustrating...Perhaps some sort of search engine for guilds on the stone?
SunSword - We doing several overhauls about guildstones and guilds right now, starting simple and getting more detailed
SunSword - First, we're adding a delay to changing guildtypes so that you cannot change from chaos to order or vice versa in the middle of combat
SunSword - Second, we're going to address the blue healer issue
SunSword - Finally, we're going to overhaul the guildstone code to speed it up and tweak the interface to help out with declaring war.

Glamdring - *website poll* Houses are a major issue in UO right now. We all know the arguments. I'd like to expand on a previous question. A basement and a 2nd and/or a 3rd story addition to a house is a logical, obvious move. Building up(and down) is heavily practiced in RL, and it should be acticed in UO. There are people with tons of money to spend, a 2nd story is just the thing they need. So, are you entertaining the idea of allowing citizens to spend their money on additional floors?
SunSword - So as we all know (because we've talked about it many times) the current limitation on houses is the sheer number of them and the number of items stored in them
SunSword - Before there is ANY expansion to houses, we must first reduce the load on the servers and improve their performance
SunSword - Everyone is aware of the lengthy backup times and performance concerns that we have, and before houses are expanded in anyway, these things must be address
SunSword - Therefore, we are committing a variety of resources to improving the backup, reducing item counts, and finding other solutions
SunSword - Expect to see actions take on this in the immediate future
SunSword - Other than that, it's an interesting idea

Glamdring - Well...that wraps it up for tonight boys and girls...I would like to thank everyone for coming and thanks to Calandryll, Firedog, Sunsword and toad for coming
Glamdring - *toads are waterproof btw*
Xander - please join #ultima-online for chat relating to this conference