Difference between revisions of "UO:1997-08-12: Letter From Richard Garriott"

(Created page with "=Letter From Lord British= Greetings and salutations, As of the writing of this message we have released for shipment all 25 thousand of the Beta test CD's. I know only abou...")
 
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=Letter From Lord British=
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=Letter From Richard Garriott=
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Greetings friends,
  
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Greetings and salutations,
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Progress on stabilizing the world is slow but steady. We can now get about 1500 people into the game simultaneously before we start to see the lag issues rear their ugly head. Today or tomorrow we will try a new modification which we hope will allow us to double that number. We have seen as many as 1850 people in the game, but are now going to be limiting the number of people in to be just more than it handles well, so that we can see the lag issues, but the game keeps running. Right now that number will be about 1500. So, you may get messages saying world is full try back later. When we cross the 2500 people online mark, Lord Blackthorn and I will announce a debate and hopefully even more of you will join us in Britannia for this event.
  
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As of the writing of this message we have released for shipment all 25 thousand of the Beta test CD's. I know only about 1/2 of you have them now, but the rest should arrive within the next week or two. We staggered the release of the CDs so that we could slowly add load to the various parts of the game and fix them as they broke, rather than having way more than we could handle from the start. As some of you might have experienced, each time we double the number of people we've ever had online before, it takes us a day or two to fix the basic stability problem, much less address all the gameplay issues. Please bear with us as we ramp up to being able to support all of you simultaneously. No game in the world has even attempted the levels of massive multi-player interaction we hope to see here in a few days. We are excited and grateful to have you as a part of it, and we do appreciate your continued patience and support.
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Over the last couple of days I as Lord British and Starr Long as Lord Blackthorn along with other team members in their roles such as the jester Chuckles, his nemesis Heckles and others have begun to join you all in the world in our proper personas. I must say, that I suspect I will be having as much fun as any of you as we play together in Britannia. What we are creating here really is the first ever completely virtual world. I again thank you for being a part of this very grand event in gaming history.
  
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Of course we continue to fix hundreds of bugs every day, and though that will make the game much better, it also means that you beta testers can experience very long patch times as we fix certain kinds of problems. We will try to make the large ones, (over eight megs), happen no more than once a week, when they're necessary at all.
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I know that the game still has many issues yet to be ironed out. As you may have guessed, the reason we could not find all these issues before you were all here to help us, is that many of these problems only show up when there are thousands of people online, and before you were here we could only reach about a hundred with our team and others from Origin. We hope to have the scaleability issues done soon, and move on to game balance. We'll try to keep you informed of what were up to as we go. Please look to the development web page at http://www.owo.com/pd for daily details. Though I know Blackthorn feels he is doing the right thing by supporting Chaos as the path to the future of Britannia, know that his suggestion, though attractive, will not lead our people to a stable future.
  
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I know many of you who have yet to start the beta test have been worried about early players having an advantage over later ones by having more time to build up wealth and power. Well, to fix certain bugs we will have to restart the world. We hope to do this no more than once a week (again, when it's necessary at all). When we do, this will put everyone on the same level. We'll even try to warn you a day or two ahead, when possible, so that you can "go for broke" with your soon-to-be-doomed characters.
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Until we meet online,  
  
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Additionally, we're going to try to mail you regularly like this, to keep you up to date with where we are, what we are up to, and what we'd like you to do. Our first order of business is to get the servers running smoothly with a large number of players. Next we will improve play balance and fix a lot of the fun factor stuff like quests, skills, usable items and magic. Finally, we will try to move into a mode where (we hope) the game will be virtually identical to the shipping product, with little incursion by the development team needed.
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Richard Garriott
  
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Please check our Beta Test Center on the web site (www.owo.com) daily for known bugs, and our plans to eradicate them, as well as information on special events, notice on character wipes or extended downtimes, and our new, daily Development Journal, where our designers let you know their most important tasks of the day.
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Lord British
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Finally, think on this ... the deep ills of Britannia will be solved only when all the shards of reality are reunited.
 
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Your obedient servant, - Lord British
 
  
 
Tuesday, August 12
 
Tuesday, August 12

Latest revision as of 18:09, 7 March 2017

Letter From Richard Garriott

Greetings friends,

Progress on stabilizing the world is slow but steady. We can now get about 1500 people into the game simultaneously before we start to see the lag issues rear their ugly head. Today or tomorrow we will try a new modification which we hope will allow us to double that number. We have seen as many as 1850 people in the game, but are now going to be limiting the number of people in to be just more than it handles well, so that we can see the lag issues, but the game keeps running. Right now that number will be about 1500. So, you may get messages saying world is full try back later. When we cross the 2500 people online mark, Lord Blackthorn and I will announce a debate and hopefully even more of you will join us in Britannia for this event.

Over the last couple of days I as Lord British and Starr Long as Lord Blackthorn along with other team members in their roles such as the jester Chuckles, his nemesis Heckles and others have begun to join you all in the world in our proper personas. I must say, that I suspect I will be having as much fun as any of you as we play together in Britannia. What we are creating here really is the first ever completely virtual world. I again thank you for being a part of this very grand event in gaming history.

I know that the game still has many issues yet to be ironed out. As you may have guessed, the reason we could not find all these issues before you were all here to help us, is that many of these problems only show up when there are thousands of people online, and before you were here we could only reach about a hundred with our team and others from Origin. We hope to have the scaleability issues done soon, and move on to game balance. We'll try to keep you informed of what were up to as we go. Please look to the development web page at http://www.owo.com/pd for daily details. Though I know Blackthorn feels he is doing the right thing by supporting Chaos as the path to the future of Britannia, know that his suggestion, though attractive, will not lead our people to a stable future.

Until we meet online,

Richard Garriott

Lord British

Tuesday, August 12

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