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 - 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 - I will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Jerrith, Niobe, Xander or Fripp
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.
Sage - Hi all. I don't know if many of you know me, but I am Designer Sage. I recently joined the Dev team on UO.
Sage - I will be fielding most of tonight's questions along with Cal.

Glamdring - *Ibn_Shaun* Now that you can tie resource recovery to skill, will you undo the effects of the cloth price patch by tying the number of bandages obtained from cloth to healing skill?
Sage - I think the cloth price patch has been offset a little with unraveling. I don't know that we need to revisit this right now, but it is food for thought.

Glamdring - *Arsin* You've gone out of your way to say that what is in the works for PVP is NOT a PVP switch. Why not a PVP switch? Personal feelings, or player feedback?
Sage - I think that a PVP switch is not the right answer for UO. I think it works in other systems, but would remove some of the "feel" of UO. The current plan is to encourage both play styles in such a way that they do not
Sage - interfere with each other.
Sage - I think it opens up a ton of possibilities for role-playing whether you are PvPing or you chose not to be involved in PvP.
Sage - For UO geography seems to be the right solution. In a way, that is what you have now with guard zones. We are expanding upon that, and I think the enhancements we have in mind will work much better with the geographic solution.

Glamdring - *Banstyle* What will be the focus of the upcoming patch now that this last patch is in?
Sage - As with all patches, we will be working on typical service enhancements such as reducing back-up time, improving client stability (pesky CLs) and other bug fixes.
Sage - We also have skill management planned, but as with any new system, this will require testing. If it does not look right, we are simply not going to introduce the system until it does.

Glamdring - *Thanatos* Skill control was supposed to be in the "next patch" as was stated after the previous patch. What is the current status on this?
Sage - Good follow-up. This most recent update was actually a smaller cut-off from a future update. We added this into the schedule because it had some good features.
Sage - It is also easier to manage a smaller update, so breaking the next patch up into two smaller ones seemed like the right thing to do.
Sage - So skill management is planned for the next update, but like anythings else, will have to meet muster.

Glamdring - *web* Are you investigating the rumor that certain 3rd party programs can facilitate house break ins when a book shelf or armoire is present?
Sage - Yes we are. You would be amazed at the flurry of activity even a rumor can inspire. :)
Sage - So far, we have not been able to reproduce this.

Glamdring - *Tyria* When or Will the team address the the overspawning of scrolls and the downfall of the scribing profession especially on SP?
Sage - I know Firedog has been looking into treasure spawns, specifically scrolls.
Sage - Right now I don't know the status on overspawn, but I do know that some other issues have been addressed and should be in for test soon. I know that does not exactly answer your question, but unfortunately I don't have more information.
Sage - :)

Glamdring - *C_Shadowhand* Given the Press Release announcement of new housing areas, are there any plans to curb the land rush which seems inevitable?
Sage - Absolutely. In one of our team meetings this came up as a large concern.
Sage - The design plan is to take this into account.

Glamdring - *web* Why can't a Tailor unravel Female leather armor or shoes/boots?
Sage - Female armor will be added to the unravel, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. Sandals and footwear were left out for a couple of reasons:
Sage - Most importantly, you can fish up some, and this just set up red flags for me.
Sage - Secondly, they just did not yield enough leather to add them

Glamdring - *Minilek* What does OSI plan on doing about the blue healing problem during guild wars?
Sage - We intend to fix it so that it will have reprecussions for the healer to do so. :)

Glamdring - *Imbolc* One of the features promised for a couple of patches ago was not being revealed when snooping. Can you give us any insight (excuses ;) ) as to why it hasn't been implemented, or when we can expect it to be?
Sage - So. I don't really have a clear answer, but the wording of this does bring up a very good topic.
Sage - Snooping is being looked at, but I am not sure if we are going to change it or not.
Sage - However, that was the plan to the best of my recollection, and if we decide the change is effective, we will probably do so in the near future.
Sage - I would not look for it in the next patch though.

Glamdring - *Thanatos* For Way too long we have suffered with Spell icon loss, is this an issue being addressed?
Sage - Yes. This is currently one of our goals.

Glamdring - *web* The healing skill has been plagued by a bug that causes your hands to slip twice when hit by a spell or affected by poison. This bug makes the healing skill nearly useless against creatures that use magic, when is this ever going to be fixed?
Sage - We are aware of this, and we are evaluating when it can be fixed and tested. I don't have a concrete date.

Glamdring - *Drockarius* In light of the question just asked about healing I would also like to know if there are any plans to make it so that the time it takes to finish healing decreases with the healers skill?
Sage - I feel that the time it takes for a healer to heal someone is at a pretty good rate right now. So there are no plans to do something like this.

Glamdring - *web* Why are you ignoring the housing problem?
Calandryll - Well, I would not say we are ignoring it, but housing is a very complex issue
Calandryll - we are planning on addressing it though, as stated in the latest 6 month plan update
Calandryll - that was posted on What's New on the uo.com site
Calandryll - http://www.uo.com/news.html

Glamdring - *Sion_Maguson* What's the status of the house auction system? Currently on the pre-house-patch shards there's basically no room to place even a small house...
Sage - Excellent question. Right now house auctioning is being revisited. Given our plans as laid out by yesterday's announcement, there may not be as much of a need for the auction system. This does not mean it will not be implemented, but there is a possibility that some of the *crunch* for needing it will dwindle
Sage - as other systems balance out.

Glamdring - *Kiri-Jolith* Are gems ever going to become part of the UO economy? Would it be possible to incorporate Gems into smithy, as in perhaps adding 1 gem to every few ingots. It would be nice if they were more than just decorations or just another form of 60-150 gps
Sage - I don't foresee gems becoming a gem per so many gps impact on the economy. However, I do feel that gems may affect the economy in other ways. Right now there are no plans to change them, but... you never know where they will pop up.

Glamdring - *Fripp* This is for Calandryll, is it true you are really a Seahawks fan deep down? And don't you know that it is unhealthy to supress such urges?
Calandryll - lol
Glamdring - well? :)
Calandryll - The only thing I will say to that is...Steelers: 34, Seahawks: 13 :P
Glamdring - lol

Glamdring - That wraps it up for tonight all
Glamdring - Thanks to Sage and Cal for coming tonight
Glamdring - And thanks to everyone who came and also those that voted on the web site
Glamdring - Please stop by #ultima-online
Glamdring - The chat will be posted on the website
Sage - I wanted to say one last thing tonight.
Glamdring - sure Sage, go ahead
Sage - Just a thanks to all of our volunteers.
Glamdring - I'm sure I speak for the volunteers when I say Thanks Sage
Sage - That was it. Thanks for letting me answer questions and not throwing stones. Good night!