2008-10-29: The Devs Must Be Crazy

The Devs Must Be Crazy

Cal Crowner

29 Oct 2008 11:30:21 EST

Here I am after months away from the fabulous and frenzied friend cruise that is the Ultima Online Community.

No doubt by the time that you read this, you’ll be taking a look at a whopper of a publish. Yes it’s been a long time, but we did manage to deliver a lot of content.

This publish, and the number of patches, content, art updates, in addition to our work and announcement surrounding Stygian Abyss … it’s been quite a ride these last few months.

Several things I’d like to bring up with this letter:

First, thanks to everyone who came to PAX for the Seattle Town Hall. It was mostly painless. I say mostly because I lost my wallet, and was starving, and all they had in the room was cookies and Pepsi. Being a Coca Cola guy, it made for a rough trip. And whoever picked up my wallet, and spent $234.55 on some place called the "Tini Room," I hope you had a good time, and did you REALLY need to buy six extra-small T-Shirts??

A lot of good inputs came in about Stygian Abyss. There should be monthly updates to the website, and a few "behind the scenes" changes have been noted to enhance design and general gameplay. We are having an internal test of the first quests and epic dungeon this next Thursday. It’s gorgeous, but still not ready for Prime Time. We will keep you updated as we go. We’re targeting our internal playtesters for mid-November. However, please note: with new systems, new race, and a massive land, we still have a looong way to go. We have a few hoops to go through, and we are discussing the best “delivery method” to get the content and client to the customer. More than a few things need to be hashed out, but we are getting there.

So … seen the dragons?

It’s been a bear of a time getting these things to you. The idea sprung in ohhh March, but from concept to delivery, we learned a lot about our art pipeline. We’ve gone through a lot of testing with the animations and effects, and think we’ve introduced a great new Epic creature to the Live arsenal. Also, we thought we’d throw in some stacking and hundred or so bug fixes, Draconi attacked factions with a machete, and Sak has realized her long lost fantasy of terrorizing Britannia for Halloween.

Finally, I made mention during the Town Hall that we have been working on bringing back the big Ultima to Ultima Online. So, we finally have approval to re-implement Event Moderators. Mesanna will be the point of contact for anyone interested. Also, this go around we’ll be identifying the roles and responsibilities. So what’s the hook? This cycle of moderators will be assisting with the Stygian Abyss and Live story arcs. Draconi and Leurocian have been concocting the grand scheme for several weeks now, and we’ll allow all those who meet specific criteria (will be publishing this info soon) access to the arcs and the opportunity to help direct the long-running narrative of Britannia.

I was talking to Draconi this morning about the size of the ship that is UO. We are not as nimble as we’d like to be sometimes… but eventually we’ll get UO back on the course that is reminiscent of "The Golden Days."

Hope this announcement meets with your approval. Be well and we’ll be in touch with how and when to apply to become the new crew of Event Moderators.