Glamdring - Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
Glamdring - Tonight's chat topic is "In Testing and In Development"
Glamdring - I will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Jerrith, XenaDragon, Serephina or Fripp.
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 - *Web Question* Don't you think the proposed fishing changes are a little harsh?
SunSword - No.

Glamdring - *Saravok* On the poisoning corrosion will poison continue to wear off the weapon until it doesen't need to be "wiped" or will it just stay on no matter how many hits you have with the weapon. Also what about changing the poison skill to be like a resistance to poison
Sage - Actually, the poison will begin the corrosion proocess. An oil rag will stop that process, but until a weapon is wiped, it will continue to degrade.

Glamdring - *KevinNash* I've seen the faction proposal regarding the PvP enhanced areas. Look pretty cool. Any ideas brewing to create some zones that abolish short term counts?
SunSword - Not at the moment. It's important not to swing directly in the other direction too quickly.
SunSword - I'd like to see how popular the PvP enhanced area is after we make all the announcements and changes and then evaluate how well the reputation system is doing
SunSword - So no immediate changes, but I will be monitoring carefully.

Glamdring - *SonofVen* Concerning Reds in the "consent" lands. Is there a reason for this or is it due to a coding problem? otherwise I as well as many others feel that it is just another burden stacked upon Reds.
SunSword - Reds have no purpose in being in the consent areas
SunSword - If they wish to behave in a manner that turns them red, they should be willing to deal with the results
SunSword - There are lots things that reds could do that would be considered harrassment otherwise (murdering someone and then going to the consent lands and taunting them for example)

Glamdring - *Saravok* That's not exactly what I was asking..I was asking about the poison itself curently it wears off with each hit. Will it continue to wear off or will it stay on until wiped?
Sage - The poison will wear off in the same fashion as before. (i.e. It will have the same amount of uses, providing your weapon doesn't break. :))

Glamdring - *BlackNite* I was wondering, are there going to be any new creatures in the new new lands?
SunSword - I can't comment on that at the moment.

Glamdring - *Talisnor* Will Siege Perilous have the "consent" system as part of the land expansion?
Runesabre - Siege Perilous will not have a "consent" area.

Glamdring - *Faldus* with the changes to skills, will you be able to gain anatomy off the same target at different times or will it only give skill once?
Runesabre - Yes you can gain anatomy from the same target at different times. Just not repeatedly over and over.
Runesabre - To elaborate a little more, if you fail to learn skill from a target, you should try different targets until your skill changes then come back to your original targets.
Runesabre - So trying anatomy on a target for a while then coming back an hour later won
Runesabre - won't necessarily help you.
SunSword - If you find yourself "stuck", try gaining skill on another creature, and come back after your skill has changed.

Glamdring - *Banstyleandwhatnot* Will the UO:R package contain the T2A lands? If not, how will new users access T2A without buying it seperately?
Calandryll - Yes it will include the T2A lands.

Glamdring - *Kip* About the "Faction system." What do those of us who share an accout but would still like to use the faction system on our own character do? It seems somewhat unfair in that sense to limit the number of characters that way.
SunSword - Well, that's a bit of a predicament.
SunSword - The reason for the 1 account per shard limitation is to inhibit exploits and twinking
SunSword - it's a tough trade off, but I think it's better to err on the side of caution
SunSword - We're also looking at some internal governing systems for the factions to deal with exploits and cheating

Glamdring - *Quartz* Will Order and Chaos wars stay, or be removed when the faction system is implemented ?
Runesabre - The Order and Chaos wars will basically be integrated into the new Faction System.

Glamdring - *aGeNt-KGB* is New Lands gonna be an addon patch or a addon that we have to buy from a store
Runesabre - The addon will automatically be patched to all players. You will not have to buy anything though when you see the new retail box you might be tempted to buy it new anyways. :)

Glamdring - Follow up question: *Banstyleandwhatnot* Well, if we are all getting UO:R, whether we d/l it or buy it, without question, why not have all users autodownload T2A as well. It would make life alot easier. If we all had T2A, I'd imagine we would be able to ride ostards in the old lands, recall to and from, etc..
SunSword - Yes it would. The new lands rely on a different technology. The old style of map like t2a is too large to download.

Glamdring - *CrazyCro* Greetings, will there be a design in the guild system to allow for allies? If so, could this be implemented in the new faction system?
SunSword - Well, we've been trying to get the guildsystem stablized for UO:R, and I wanted to get an alliance system in at the same time.
SunSword - It didn't work out that way, so it looks like we'll get the faction system first.
SunSword - I do want to get the alliance system in, because it solves a lot of our player interaction questions a lot more smoothly, but it's not going to happen in the immediate future.

Glamdring - *Phoenix* Will Factions have a Charter as Guilds do, if so what would they be?
SunSword - Not to start with. Once the system is in and working, we may look at ways to enhance the internal governing system for each faction, as I mentioned before.

Glamdring - *Phoenix* how will faction Ranks be displayed on a character?
Lord_Pall - Currently I am hoping for a system similiar to guild titles, but this is TBD

Glamdring - *Aurin* Hello Developers! I would like to know, how the captured towns in the faction system will affect those who are not part of the fighting.
Lord_Pall - People not involved with the faction system can visit towns as per normal play.
Lord_Pall - However they will experience altered shopkeeper prices
Lord_Pall - and availability of raw materials, depending on how the faction has chosen to run the town.
Lord_Pall - Oh yeah.. TBD = to be determined

Glamdring - *JP* Can you expand on any of the new monster AI?
Firedog - I'll give out a few tidbits.
Firedog - Some creatures will heal and cure themselves.
Firedog - Some monsters will understand hiding and invisibility.
Firedog - There will certainly be some slightly better tactics.
Firedog - The rest is a mystery for now.
Firedog - Oh.. and pathfinding that will make you live in terror for the rest of your lives...

Glamdring - *Web Question* Will the new lands be able to accommodate those who saved for a tower or castle? or will they fit only small housing?
SunSword - Yes, the new lands will accomodate larger structures. Definitely.

Glamdring - *Plaxti* The faction's design list doesn't exclude murderers from joining. Will they [murderers] still be subject to stat-loss in the "enhanced PVP area"?
SunSword - Currently, murderers will be subject to stat loss. They will not recieve murder counts for attacking enemy faction members. Some factions may treat murderers differently. More to come on that.

Glamdring - *Ghosty* Will the new lands look like green acres? or will there actually be things like tree's and water and mountains.
SunSword - It will be fully developed terrain.

Glamdring - *Phoenix* How would one decide which Faction to join, other than choosing the largest and most powerful?
SunSword - The factions will have different characteristics. Many will be tempted to flock to the "strongest one". Others will wish to join the smaller "rebel" factions. We're working on some other ideas for the faction system, but I'm not sure we want to comment on them until we're satisfied that they're a real possiblity.

Glamdring - *Twithead* Hullo, me not sure if this be asked yet: Be there any special attack planned for the other remaining weapon skill, archery?
Runesabre - Archery already has a special attack in the fact that it is the only ranged, non-magic attack a warrior has. ( aside from purple potions )

Glamdring - *Saravok* Is there going to be any bonus for being the top faction or a high ranking member of your faction?
Lord_Pall - Having a very high ranking is important. Only the top 2 ranks will be elegibile for the commander position.
Lord_Pall - A commander will elect all of the available leaders for their controlled towns.

Glamdring - *Web Question* Will the consent areas finally allow us non pvp hunters to enjoy hunting in some dungeons without the intrusions of pks?
SunSword - EXACTLY.

Glamdring - *KevinNash* What's your bias against Spears? Every weapon type seems to benefit from the upcoming PvP changes except them. Instead of the stun hit, why not just let us poison them?
Runesabre - I won't let fencing take a back seat to the other weapons, trust me. :)

Glamdring - *CrazyCro* In UO:R any possibility of new house designs?
Lord_Pall - We are looking into a number of new concepts for houses. The specifics on this are TBA.

Glamdring - *Phoenix* If a Faction has control of x number of towns, and the Commander loses his/her position, will the current elcted town leaders lose their position or be knocked out when the new commander chooses new leaders?
Lord_Pall - The commander can hire/fire elected officials at his discretion.
Lord_Pall - So make sure you campaign for your commander when elections roll around. :)
Lord_Pall - Oh yeah.. and TBA is To be announced.
SunSword - k

Glamdring - *Mike_* So, a top ranking status will be only reached through fighting or not? In this latter case, which other situations do you envision in order to get to the top?(particular deeds, points earned through succesful quests)
Lord_Pall - You will only be able to reach the highest ranks by being active within the factional system.
Lord_Pall - This includes combat and town capturing.

Glamdring - *Kip* Will this be one wicked huge patch?
* SunSword smiles. *
SunSword - The party system will be client side
SunSword - So there will be some art to download, but it won't be particularly earth shattering :)

Glamdring - Well folks...that wraps up another Ultima Online House of Commons chat. I would like to thank everyone for coming
Glamdring - and thanks to Sunsword, Runesabre, Firedog, Lord Pall, Sage and the ever quiet tOAD for coming as well
Glamdring - for unmoderated chat please join #ultima-online
Glamdring - The log will be posted on uo.stratics.com shortly