Lord-Xanthor - Good evening everyone, thank you for coming to tonight's Ultima Online open house. This Stratics House of Commons chat is a direct connection between you the players and the designers and programmers of Ultima Online.
Lord-Xanthor - This chat will be in a moderated format. To ask a question of the developers, please /msg or /query the question takers that will be listed in the topic of the channel and have [QT] in front of their names. These question takers will then present the questions to the Ultima Online development team here with us this evening.
Lord-Xanthor - I will be the moderator tonight...I will post your question into the House of Commons chat channel and the Developers will answer those that they can. Please /msg or /query different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed the process up.
Lord-Xanthor - Please do not send the same question to multiple question takers, those that do will be ignored. Thank you =)
Lord-Xanthor - Please remember that your question may have been asked previously or may not be able to be answered in a public forum. Please do not message or query myself or anyone from OSI, these questions will be ignored. We encourage you to read the logs of the previous Open Houses, which are available at http://uohoc.stratics.com
Lord-Xanthor - Enjoy tonight's chat...
Lord-Xanthor - Tonights Topic is General Discussion
Lord-Xanthor - Please /msg /query [QT]Elfiwolfe, [QT]Jorah_Ramsai, [QT]PenDragon .

Lord-Xanthor - *TheFellowship* if i placed my house yesterday to save the spot but i can enlarge it greatly, do i have to wait my 7 days to demolish the house and replace?
MrTact - No.
MrTact - When you remove your last house, it removes the 7-day timer limitation

Lord-Xanthor - [Aedilwulf] What is the current status with addressing critical guildstone bugs for guilds over 150 members? (Inability to Kick/Title members)? Can we expect to see these addressed in an upcoming publish? And what is the timing?
Evocare - We're making a legitimate attempt at scheduling it for pub24, although there are no guarantees until QA has signed off on it

Lord-Xanthor - <Thomas> Can we have an update on the status of the remaining Virtues? How far along in development are they and which one(s) are we likely to see first?
Evocare - Some have gotten pretty far into development only to get postponed due to their heavy testing and long-term implications
Evocare - that being said, we're evaluating what the "right" scope for the remaining virtues are, and how they'll best fit into defining UO, especially in light of UXO, which is very heavily virtue oriented

Lord-Xanthor - *buster* There have been hints of a possible cap to a player's 'faster casting' - as it is, fc4 is ridiculously overpowered, and generally unobtainable for most, especially in PvP. Do you intend to change this system, and if so when?
Evocare - yes, after having listened to many different views on the subject, i've pretty much decided to go with caps on some of the key pvp-related magic properties
Evocare - i believe we can ensure that magic items/artifacts are still desireable, but don't have the dominant effect on outcome that they have today

Lord-Xanthor - [Adamantyr] Are there plans to introduce bulk order deeds for other craft skills, such as cooking? On that note, are there any plans to make food a more vital component of the game, such as the necessity of eating to survive, creating exceptional food items, adding glass mugs and other paraphernalia to the tinkering lists, etc.?
Evocare - as we've stated in the past, there definitely is a desire on the dev team to add bods for other craft skills
Evocare - although cooking is probably less likely to get them as soon as carpentry/bowcraft/tinker for example
Evocare - we are interested in having cooking become more useful in UO
Evocare - however, we're not likely to force players to eat to keep their characters from dying
Evocare - no wait, we're not just "not likely" to do that, we're just flat out not gonna do that
Evocare - we'd much prefer to see eating be something you'd like to do, then something you have to do
Evocare - we get the "have to" part already from reality ;]
* MrTact runs back to rip out some code changes . . . *

Lord-Xanthor - *drewniu* In one of the previous chats it was stated that not being able to steal containers is a confirmed bug. In the next one it was said that it's a designed feature. What caused the change and can we expect any change in that matter? Thank you.
MrTact - It is *not* a bug
MrTact - It is, in fact, a solution to the problem of blessed or insured items in containers.
MrTact - We have contemplated other solutions to the problem but we don't plan to pursue them right at this moment.
MrTact - Final answer.

Lord-Xanthor - [Garaba] Any Fixes to the Golem bugs on the short term radar?
Evocare - not that I know of offhand, sorry =[
Evocare - there may be some that will be scheduled soon, but i honestly don't know for sure off the top of my head

Lord-Xanthor - *fect|afk* Alot of us that have been playing for a long time, would like to see a shard that is based off of Pre-Ren. Do you see OSI ever pubslishing a shard with that sort of a rule-set?
MrTact - Right now there are no plans to do a pre-uor shard.
MrTact - What we are doing is looking at gameplay from back in the day (especially pvp) and seeing what about it makes players yearn for that ruleset.
MrTact - Then we want to take what we learn and use it to improve the game as it stands today.

Lord-Xanthor - *Ktorr* Are there any plans to adjust certain perceived imbalances with Skills. ie. Poisoning is one of the most difficult and expensive skills to gain, but can be countered with 0 skill by using a single potion, and 20.1 in tracking seems a bit low to allow someone to find a player with GM stealth ?
Evocare - There are a lot of plans to balance all sorts of things with different skills. Those plans are very far-reaching and include scrutinizing every skill in the game (poisoning included obviously)
Evocare - However, I wouldn't expect to see any changes to that in the next publish or two, it's longer term then that

Lord-Xanthor - [Derek_] There has been some discussion recently about sightings of counselors and rumors with a possible connection to the E.M. Program, is there any truth to this and/or is any thought being given to bring back the volunteer program?
Sannio - I don't know yet why a Counselor was supposedly sighted, but I do know that there are no plans to recreate the volunteer program, and Counselors will not be a part of any future Event Moderator team.

Lord-Xanthor - <UOnuts> Question: Is there anything, such as Auto Loot Distribution, planned to stop script looting, especially at Doom Gauntlet?
MrTact - I believe we are to the point where we have decided that we *are* going to do auto loot distribution, but we haven't even started design on it atm.
MrTact - As such, I couldn't say when to expect that.

Lord-Xanthor - <UOnuts> Please ask this question: any chance to make any change to archery in near future?
Evocare - i'll be looking at basic damage over time values for archery in pub24, although I can't say for sure yet if and how much it would change

Lord-Xanthor - <Thomas> At present, what's the planned focus for each of the next three publishes?
MrTact - Well, since I've already been skewered for this on the boards . . .
MrTact - Pub 23 is going to be almost entirely character transfer
MrTact - Pub 24 is in the planning stages atm . . . we have already mentioned a couple of things we are looking at for that pub
MrTact - Pub 25 isn't even a gleam in anyone's eye yet.
MrTact - Most likely, by the time we get to pub 25, some very interesting things will have happened, so it would be hard to even guess right now.

Lord-Xanthor - Just a reminder to please not message the dev team or myself. Only message the q-takers with [QT] in their names. all others will be ignored. thanks =)
Lord-Xanthor - [Ghostface] Why is a system as enormous as luck not a priority to put effort into when it's been admitted that its nowhere near up to par. People dont expect good items all the time but we do expect not to get junk all the time. Also can you fix it so people with Vamp Embrace on can mount steeds you have to get on then recast it :<
Evocare - I believe MrTact has been planning on going over luck to resolve whether there are bugs that cause the percieved problems
Evocare - or whether its the case of the design needing changes to make sure it works the way players feel it should
Evocare - When exactly that might happen I don't know with any degree of certainty
MrTact - I posted extensively in this thread the other day: http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/uo/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=uouhall&Number=4709734
MrTact - That is everything I know about the current situation with loot and luck

Lord-Xanthor - <xcelsior> Can we have soulstones somewhere around pub 35?
Evocare - i hope so... I had originally hoped they would go in with AoS
Evocare - so, I'm still a big fan of doing soulstones, it's just a question of fidning a time to do them

Lord-Xanthor - M.C.: Items decay extremely fast now (both weapons and armor), and repairing a barely damaged weapon even at 120+ skill results in a max.durability penalty very often. Are there any plans to tone down the rate of item decay?
MrTact - Not right now.
MrTact - I would say now we are at the "wait and see" stage.

Lord-Xanthor - [Red_Falcon] I was just wondering if the dev team will fix the lamp room in doom so people cannot logout in there and stop them from exploiting to get the lamps and gloves.
MrTact - Now that the team has grown somewhat, we are going to be dividing up into groups to focus on live and . . . other stuff
MrTact - Hopefully, this will mean that the live team will be able to attack more of these types of issues going forward, since they won't be as distracted as they have been of late.

Lord-Xanthor - [unified] Is it at all possible for there to be a mechanism to allow players to see the autual numerical value of fame, karma, and virtue they have acheived. It's confusing getting "you have gained a little fame" or "you have lost a lot of fame" when there is no way to actually know where you are.
MrTact - Yeah we feel that the status gump is too small, so we're going to be making it a lot bigger so we can add that stuff
MrTact - JK
MrTact - There are UI enhancements planned for the future, and it's possible that we may elect to make those stats less obscure.
Evocare - what? you want real information about your character?

Lord-Xanthor - <Adamantyr> At the moment, a locked down item can't be used or picked up. This is well, but if you lock down a container, such as a mug, you can't drink from it. This means you can't really operate a tavern unless you have cutletry you don't mind losing to thieves. Can a new level of lockdown be made so items can be usable but not takable?
MrTact - Actually, it is possible to make a class of locked down items usable.
MrTact - We had a real problem with this after AoS where a lot of item types that had to be used when locked down couldn't be . . .
MrTact - (Can you say "plants"? Sure you can."
MrTact - The fix we did for that stuff can be done for other item types as well. When you come across stuff like this, please forward it to the bug box.
MrTact - We want to get bugs like this on the schedule because they are relatively easy to fix.

Lord-Xanthor - *Dryzzid* Also, do mages gain the bonus FC1 effects from an equipped weapon? I see some people using programs to rearm between each spell? If so, is there any way to fix that?
Evocare - yep, planning on fixing that
Evocare - cheaters!
Evocare - hopefully with the next round of balance changes mages won't feel compelled to cheat
Evocare - ;]

Lord-Xanthor - <uocoriantum> I'm wondering if UO plans on introducing more rare items into the game? Maybe some "mid-level" rares would be nice--especially mage rares!
Evocare - sure, adding stuff for people to find is definitely something we plan on doing =]

Lord-Xanthor - [Garaba] Whats with all of Mr. Tact's jokes these days. Is he like this at the office.
Evocare - as a matter of fact, he's *exactly* like that at the office...
* MrTact tries desperately to maintain his sense of humor after getting hammered on the boards . . . *
Evocare - i think his wife must be deaf hoho

Lord-Xanthor - Did the Dev Team attend any good IDOCs? What did you loot?
Evocare - I got all of Adrick's stuff
Evocare - that newblar...
Sannio - I picked up a few things here and there. As I mentioned on the UO Stratics boards, I mostly picked up plants, but some statues, ingots, boards, and miscellaneous wearables. It took a long while and a bit of luck, but I was also able to place a small marble tower.
MrTact - I was crunching.
MrTact - Plus I thought it was <ahem> a little unethical for a dev team member
* Sannio pokes MrTact *

Lord-Xanthor - *wilki24* Are their any plans for a new client to be released in the near future? If so, can you shed some details about it?
MrTact - New client?
MrTact - Whatever gave you that idea?

Lord-Xanthor - I would like to thank everyone for coming tonight!
Lord-Xanthor - And thanks to all of the OSI folks for spending their personal time talking to us
Lord-Xanthor - Please join #ultima-online for continued, unmoderated chat
Lord-Xanthor - the log will be posted shortly at http://uohoc.stratics.com
Lord-Xanthor - THANKS
Lord-Xanthor - *Waves to everyone*