Gilthas - Good evening and welcome to our 34th Ultima Online Celebrity Chat. The UOCC is a forum wherein we bring to you celebrity guests from the UO community ranging from OSI personnel to famous players from your very own shard. Guests drop by to answer your questions about UO, their experiences in it, and their contribution to the community. Our guests tonight are Augur, Gromm, and Ignatz from OSI's Scenario Team. While we are waiting for questions, let's give our guests a chance to introduce themselves.
Gilthas - Question takers will be annouced in a moment.
Gromm - Hi, I'm Gromm. Scenario team member, fiction dork and mongoose fan. :)
Ignatz - Hiya... I'm Augur... er, no... I'm Ignatz
Augur -'Lo there. My name, obviously, is Augur. I work on the Scenario Team n' stuff!
Ignatz - yeah yeah... me too
Augur - Working on everything and anything - maps n' dungeons n' creatures n' systems n' quests.

Gilthas - Tonight's question takers are [QT]Magellan, and [QT]Lord-Xanthor. All you need to do is /msg or /query a designated question taker with your question. Please do not ask the other operators, or the guest your questions; they will be ignored!
Gilthas - *Barrackas* Are there any plans for player races to be introduced to UO in the coming year or so? (namely the Meer and
Ignatz - The Scenario Team has no plans to introduce player Juka or Meer in the coming year.

Gilthas - *JackTheMad* Question: With the upcoming changes is the development staff focusing more on attracting old players or appealing to a new generation of players who haven't become acustomed to how the game used to be? Both are being given pretty much equal weight... we want to attract and keep new players, but we also want to add things for long time UO players to enjoy as well.
Ignatz - We want is all!
Ignatz - er... it all

Gilthas - *CyberfisH* what and when is the next secnario going to be?
Gromm - When : The delay between this last scenario and the next one should be about normal, we're not expecting a big wait this time. As for what : It's a surprise. (there was an itty bitty clue in the last bit of scenario fiction)
Gilthas - *SmokeSerpent* Have y'all any ideas coming to fruition to keep players interested in playing Scenarios more intensively instead of popping in once a week to grab a couple of the new items?
Gilthas - Please do not /MSG anyone but the question takers. If you do, the questions will be IGNORED. Thanks!
Gromm - Yes, although introducing such ideas takes some time as we only have a chance to usually try one thing at a time with the amount of content we can squeeze into one scenario
Gromm - We do have new ideas for long term play though that we hope to have associated with scenario 5. :)
Ignatz - we were also paying attention to the last scenario and ways that it could have been more immersive
Ignatz - (last question)

Gilthas - *Mowbray* How has the success of the plant system influenced the introduction of new, similar systems and possible revamping of older systems (crafts, skills, etc.)?
Augur - We definitely want to add more "metagame" type systems to the game - both because they allow all sorts of players to join into them, as well as adding large immersion from relatively simple concepts.
Augur - Another good example of doing the same sort of thing across already built systems would be Bulk Order Rewards
Augur - While on the Scenario side we'll probably look to adding systems that are completely external to already established skills/game systems I think you'll see more metagames (both that are completely outside of regular game play, and ones that work back into normal gameplay on the back end (with rewards, for example) from both the Scenario and main Development teams in the future.
Augur - They take time to test though, so I wouldn't expect to see them all the time, at least in the same form.
Augur - metagames=minigames

Gilthas - *Nax* Have you found the reasons for decorative plant death and is there anything we can do to prevent it.
Augur - From the 8 or so PMs I've gotten with coordinates and details that I've gone and checked out, every one of the plants had variables still on the plant that are removed when you set it to Decorative mode.
Augur - What this means is, at the time the plant died, it was not in Decorative Mode.
Augur - I've worked with some people to get a description of what they did, and while some have been either a mistake about which plant they were checking (or not sure), others have been possible time warps.
Augur - The situation I'm at right now is that either a) the player set the plant into decorative mode, and it got time warped back by regular server maintenance, or an unexpected downtime, or b) somehow the plant code is getting put *back* on the plant in another way.
Augur - But in every case, the plant object is showing me that when it died, it was not in decorative mode.
Augur - Decorative mode really just means that the plant variables and code are removed from the plant, so it's just like another object. Since you no longer have the plant code on the plant, you can't open the menu, etc. - but it also can't turn into twigs (because that's handled by the code).
Augur - So it's very confusing. People are reporting not being able to open the menu (which means the plant is in decorative mode), but the plant is dying (which means it's not in decorative mode)
Gromm - A wizard did it.
Augur - I'm still working with people to try to pin down if they're absolutely sure about their checking the plants after several days, because the descriptions of what they're saying are conflicting with themselves. Annnywho. Short answer : still looking into it - the plants were not successfully in decorative mode when they died.
Augur - If you set one into Decorative Mode, the best bet is to keep checking on it (trying to open its menu) for several days after setting to Decorative, to make sure it didn't get reverted.

Gilthas - *Dvorak* So far which scenario do you think is the best? why?
Gromm - For me it was 2. All in one scenario we got to bring back Exodus and the Gargoyles from old school Ultima. That and I think that finale was my favorite. :)
Augur - I have favorite "best" things from each of them. #1 had some monsters I really liked, and I've always liked orc related stuff, #2 I really enjoyed doing the puzzles and the Finale which had several different play styles incorporated, #3 had some fun effects for some of the creatures that were fun to think on, #4 of course I liked that we got to have a minigame put in Scenario 5, then 6, then 7... 'cause the best is yet ahead of us.
*grins* *
* Gilthas smacks his forehead *

Gilthas - *Aiello* I noticed that in the previous scenario there was a major change in a 'stable' element of the game (i.e. Yew map). Are there any plans to continue with such world-modifying scenarios?
Augur - We'll definitely be continuing with some world-modifying stuff throughout the future. It's always fun to add new content both to old and new places. It won't always be on the same scale - but I think we'll definitely see that scale again sometime in the future.

Gilthas - *Devil_Woman* How long before we might get to see the new plant menu?
Augur - Definitely looks like Scenario 5. How long that is exactly, not sure. Suffice it to say that we've got a large portion of the code done for it, and QA will be heavily ramping up on it as soon as they can.
Gilthas - *Xain-SWG-[Z]* Are there any plans for GM controlled "scenario commanders"? (I.E. A monster commander in a battle)
Gromm - Right now the human controlled element is something we see a lot of requests for in the scenarios, however getting human controlled content to the entire audience is practically impossible do to with the scenarios Which defeats the purpose of what the scenarios were created for in the first place, reach as many people as possible with as much impact as possible (within certain guidelines of course)
Gromm - So although a lot of you have been seeing mini-quests run in game by humans, such as small monster invasions, the likelihood of seeing these tied in with the scenarios anytime soon is small

Gilthas - *Rayaru* What's the deal behind Vasul and the other GM-Controlled events?
Gromm - The live events you've been seeing are not scenario related, as I mentioned above. You'll just have to wait and see what they have in store for you. I'm a little curious myself actually. :)

Gilthas - *dewinter* will player versus player combat take part in one of the scenerios, for instance, many chaos guards would have joined and fought for blackthorn if given the chance
Augur - At least for now, there probably won't be any direct tie-ins for PvP combat - it will always be just a result of open-ended allowances by what's going on.
Augur - What I mean by that, for example, is like PvP'ers guarding some of the Energy Puzzle Towers in Scenario 2
Augur - they worked to delay the shard from succeeding by killing anyone that approached certain towers.
Augur - That's probably as far as we'll go for the time being - allowing the possibility where players can work against each other to another solution - but we won't have a fail case directly tied to an easily blockable solution.

Gilthas - *n00b* Question: Can we see some scenario characters ever?
Gromm -This kinda relates back to the question about the controlled events, it's all a matter of having humans to put behind the screens and play the part The problem is if we want that to be a part of the scenario we have to make it have enough of an effect on everyone to be worth it, and we simply don;t have the time and people to do that right now
Gromm - In the last scenario we threw Dawn into the mix on one day for a matter of a few minutes only. Over the next week we had a lot of people upset that they didn't get to see her and suddenly we had people wanting her to show up at all hours of the day and night and on every shard
Gromm - So we don;t want the human-controlled element to be something people expect from a scenario as it's not something we can ever easily deliver for everyone to enjoy.

Gilthas - *Rayaru* For augur: What are the plans for the 5th generation of plants?
Augur - I have the 5th gen laid out on my private server. Includes a couple types that got lost during a code-switch that I wanted in the first group, as well as basically all the remaining "good" ones.
Augur - There are no two-part "plants/trees" in there - so if you see a tree that has a trunk piece and a foliage piece, that won't be in the plant system Beyond that, there will be no reagent plants for now, and pretty much no "resource" producers (like wheat)
Augur - As a small preview : the juniper bush and the big lily pads are both in there

Gilthas - *Thez* Will we see any of the old "structures" used in future scenarios - such as e.g. wind
Ignatz - I would expect any strucutre in the game to potentially be used in future scenarios.
Ignatz - We get as tired of attacking the same locations just as you guys get tired of defending them *grins*
Gromm - Turning Yew into a big stinky swamp pit was so much fun we're dying to blow something up now. :)

Gilthas - Hahahaha..
Gilthas - *CyberfisH* will we ever be able to drain yew or at least put it on stilts and get the guard zone back?
Ignatz - Anything can and will happen. But whether or not that were to happen would be part of a scenario and you guys would decide Yew's fate. Plus we can't wait to blow something else up.

Gilthas - Last few questions, folks.
Gilthas - *Sarlock* if there were one question is there any future plans to make golems more powerful depending on the skills or resources of the tinker? Like Valorite golems?
Ignatz - That's not something we have any plans for at this time.
Augur -We'd like to revisit old additions and work them up a bit - but as the Scenario team we're often more expected to only focus on totally new content. So it's a very fine balance for us.

Gilthas - *CyberfisH* will you blow up brit west bank? ( please )
Gromm -Who knows, anything is possible. Problem is we may have to try a few times before we blow up the right thing and who knows what we'd hit in the meantime. >:D
Ignatz - We tried, but brit bank east kept resurrecting it. Something about not wanting the extra traffic
Augur - I'm pretty sure that Brit Bank is on the list right after this house we found in the woods. I can't remember the owner's name. Something like TechnoOtter or MechanoPike.
Augur - ^_^

Gilthas - This concludes tonight's Ultima Online Celebrity Chat. Thanks to all of you for attending tonight, and special thanks to our guest(s) for coming and answering questions, and our question takers for their work. Please send an e-mail to [email protected] if you have any suggestions regarding future topics or guests. Tonight's log will be posted at http://uohoc.stratics.com shortly. Have a wonderful night everyone!
Augur - Thanks for coming folks!
Ignatz -Thanks for being here. We appreciate your questions and your time!
Gromm - And as always, please make sure you spay or neuter your dragon! Thanks!
Ignatz -Please tip your waitress or waiter