1997-08-12: Letter From Lord Blackthorn

Letter From Lord Blackthorn

Greetings Fellow Britannians!

Let me extend my most sincerest of gratitudes to all of you who attended the speeches that Lord British and I did give this previous Friday. Despite the obvious instability of our fair land you persevered to hear our words. It was an exhilarating time and both Lord British and I (as well as Chuckles and Heckles) look forward to more of these events. We have learned much from this experience but we have much more to learn. I implore you again to please visit Britannia each evening at 9:00 PM Central Standard Earth Time. We need as many of you as we can possibly get to thoroughly explore every aspect of the land.

Now on to other business:

Firstly, we will be conducting a stress test on the registration process next week, as we continue to work on upgrading its capability and speed. To this end, we will be wiping the account registration database clean on Monday, August 18th, and asking all testers to recreate their accounts. In addition, we will be shutting down the registration process on Wednesday August 13th, at 9pm Central time in order to prepare for this test. The process will remain closed until after the wipe on Monday. We will notify testers once the registration servers are available again. The game servers will be available as normal during this period.

Secondly, we have received news that there are pirates who have been illegally duplicating and distributing portals to our fair realm in the form of compact discs. This will not be tolerated and we are going to eliminate their accounts. If you are an innocent bystander and your account gets eliminated in this process you may contact Origin customer service and they will provide you a new account.

Third, in addition to pirates we have caught wind of most heinous criminals who have been abusing the instabilities of Britannia for their own benefit. Not only that, but they have also purposely hidden information about these issues from the hard working team at Origin. This activity prevents us from making Ultima Online the game it is supposed to be. We are banning players who are found doing this. That is the reason we are going to ban Lord British's assassin, not for the assassination itself (which merely provided us with his identity). The Quality Assurance team has just made a recent proclamation about this very issue and I suggest you read it either via your e-mail or on the website at the Beta Test Center. I also suggest you read a recent article on the Online Gaming Review that discusses what it means to test our game at: OGR

Fourth, we have recently changed our minimum requirement for installation to the hard drive. We now require 261 megs free on the hard drive. We have done this because we felt that the minimum install of 55 megs did not produce acceptably fast gameplay. The main reason for the slowdown is the ability for everyone to fully customize their characters. Every time someone walks onto your screen the game has to go and find that art before it can draw it on your screen. If that art is on the CD then it can cause a large pause while it finds the art (especially if you have a 4 spin CD drive and they are wearing many things). However if that art is on your hard drive then there is no noticeable pause. This is the reason for the larger install, so that we can place the character art on your hard drive.

Finally please visit our website at http://www.ultimaonline.com for the latest information. Many of you do not receive these mails in a timely fashion due to the vagaries of internet mail and by regularly visiting the website (particularly the Beta Test Center and Development Journal therein) you will remain current with the latest happenings in Britannia.

"Remember, your path is yours to choose so choose it wisely."

Honorably, Lord Blackthorn

Tuesday, August 12