View source for UO:2000-07-10: North American Shards - Housing Update

=North American Shards - Housing Update=
''Posted: Jul 10 2000 8:48PM CST (GMT -06:00)''

We are currently planning to move forward with a staggered house placement schedule, opening housing phases on a no more than “one per night, per region” schedule to ensure that no two shards in a single UO shard region will open housing phases on the same night. We are confident in the server load-balancing mechanisms and wish to extend our thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in one or all of the staged house placement tests. 

We will be completing the North American staged house placement over the next two weeks beginning on Wednesday, July 12th. The following schedule includes staged house placement dates and times through Sunday, July 16th. We will be releasing additional schedule dates in the near future. Please note that all start times for this schedule are at 8:00PM local server time.
: '''Wednesday, July 12'''
:: Atlantic Phase One (castles only on Trammel): 8:00PM EDT
:: Sonoma Phase Three (all house types, both facets): 8:00PM PDT

: '''Thursday, July 13'''
:: Lake Superior Phase One (castles only on Trammel): 8:00PM CDT
:: Baja Phase Three (all house types, both facets): 8:00PM PDT

: '''Friday, July 14''' Chesapeake Phase One (castles only on Trammel): 8:00PM EDT
:: Great Lakes Phase Three (all house types, both facets): 8:00PM CDT
:: Pacific Phase Two (castles and large houses only on Trammel): 8:00PM PDT

: '''Saturday, July 15'''
:: There will be no placement phases on this date.

: '''Sunday, July 16'''
:: Catskills Phase One (castles only on Trammel): 8:00PM EDT
:: Napa Valley Phase Two (castles and large houses only on Trammel): 8:00PM PDT

If you plan on placing a house during any of these phases, we recommend that you log in several hours prior to the opening of the phase, retrieve your deed, and either log out from the location in which you plan to place, or set a recall rune for the location. Participation during a house placement phase will be subject to the following load-balancing mechanisms:
* Limited Spawn: We will be limiting the shard to only essential NPC spawns (such as stablemasters) and will delete all others prior to opening house placement
* Relocation: If a subserver becomes too crowded, we will ask players to relocate based on certain criteria. In the event that we are required to move players, we will be automatically relocating them to cities on Felucca and we will look at the following factors to determine which players may be moved:
:* If the player currently co-owns a house
:* If the player has no house deed
:* If the player has a house deed, but it is not appropriate to the current phase (for example, a small house deed during Phase 1 Castle placement)
:* If the player currently owns a house
:* If all of the above players have been removed from Trammel subservers and the situation continues to remain critical, we will begin randomly selecting players for relocation to Felucca.
: Depending on the server load, it is possible that a subserver may progress through these stages extremely quickly. When this process relocates a character, the character will be unable to recall or gate for a period of 10 minutes.
* Backpack Check. If a character logs in and does not have a deed appropriate to the current phase, they will have 10 minutes to acquire the deed, or they will be logged out of the game for a period of two hours. If you are disconnected from the game in this manner, you will be unable to return to the game until the two-hour period is ended. Additionally, attempting to re-enter the game before the two-hour period has ended will cause your timer to be reset to two hours.
* Logout: Once a player has successfully placed a house, they will have 10 minutes to conclude house business before they will be automatically moved to a safe location in Felucca and logged out of the shard for a period of two hours.

Any player transferred to the Felucca shard will receive a moonstone allowing them to travel back to Trammel once they are able to return to the shard.



References:
* http://web.archive.org/web/20010517153822/http://www.moongates.com/uj.exe?arch9