FoF Nr. 104

PLEASE NOTE: The Five on Friday archives are not updated with each patch. Please take older documents with a grain of salt, as they may be inaccurate.

April 18, 2008

"What does the "You have too many pets guarding you" message mean, and how do I fix it?"

Each character is only allowed to have 6 pets guarding it - this has always been true, but the latest publish introduced a message that actually tells you when you try to exceed that limit, instead of just failing to set the pet to "guard" mode. Pets set to "guard" that are stabled still count towards this limit, so if you receive this message, the way to resolve it is to pull your pets out of the stable and tell them to "stop," which will take them out of guard mode and let you select a new guard dog, or cat, or pony, or... whatever.

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"When are you going to do something about all the trial accounts that monopolize the good housing spots?"

This is an extremely common complaint, and a valid one. The fix is not trivial, but we think it's worth it - as of the next publish, characters that are less than 15 days old will not be able to place or trade houses. This means that 14-day trial accounts will not be able to place or trade houses (as there's no way for the character to be older than the account,) and it should level the playing field a bit for our paying customers.

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"Why did my Paroxymus Swamp Dragon disappear?"

This is another one that we've been getting bug reports on, and we finally tracked down the source. While we can't replace swampies that have been lost, we are fixing the root cause of the disappearance and they should be much more reliable after the next publish.

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"What ever happened to the water barrel fix?"

Some of you remember that, about 18 months ago, a fix was put up on Test Center where water barrels and field spells would no longer block house placement. While this made some people very happy, the point was raised that placing water barrels and casting field spells was the only way to prevent people using illegal third-party programs from placing a house on the spot before anyone else could attempt it, or grab any IDOC loot. We pulled the fix in preperation for a more complete package of fixes that would address the underlying problem, and, now that we've got that all lined up, the water barrel fix will be introduced at the same time.

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Playguide Updates:

Just a few this week:

Compassion - removed the line about Haven escorts not raising Compassion. Material Properties - clarified the factors involved in enhancement success chance. Animal Taming - added the skill loss percentage when a creature is paralyzed while being tamed. Faction-Controlled Towns - corrected various of the timers involved in capturing a town.

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What's To Come:

The next publish, as hinted at above, is just about ready for its debut - look for it on TC early in the week, Origin later in the week, and, barring disaster, all shards after a nice uneventful weekend on Origin. The next publish also contains some awesome event stuff, which Origin will be the first to see later in the week, including some ways to for all you obsessive hoarders get your lockdown counts down :P

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Town Hall News:

The next Town Hall is in Rockville, Maryland - if you haven't RSVP'd, please do so! (A reminder - the RSVP isn't mandatory, and you won't get a confirmation or anything, but it's extremely helpful to us when trying to figure out how much food/swag/etc to order!)

Got a couple of new confirmed dates, too - the San Diego Town Hall will be Saturday, July 26 and the Chicago Town Hall will be Saturday, October 18th - for the full scoop, visit the Town Hall page. Can't wait!

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Fansite News

This one's a bit different - a real-life player meetup hosted by Whispering Rose!

"When? Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 7:00 PM

Where? Dave & Busters 940 Great Mall Dr. Milpitas , CA 95035 Milpitas , CA 95035 408-921-7010

(This is close to San Francisco and just North of San Jose) for directions click here.

Who should come? Anyone who plays, has played or is thinking of playing Ultima Online will have a blast meeting with others with this same interest and planning in game events and out of game events.

Why? A lot of people who play Ultima Online say they get bored. By joining the UOFC you will have the time of your online game life! Plus you will get to party in real life with your in game friends and enemies!!

How to find the organizer(s)? "Ask the Hostess where we are meeting." --Hal Hoge (DJ Sandman) Ultima Online/EA/Mythic

Details Meet other local Ultima Online players to trade hints tips, set up in game events and plan trips to UO Townhall Meetings.

Whispering Rose Radio (www.WRRad.com) will be supporting the first chapter of the UOFC/CCC (Ultima Online Fan Club/Central California Chapter) and will be meeting at Dave and Busters in Milpitas at 940 Great Mall Dr. Milpitas , CA 95035 408/957-9215 the 3rd Saturday of each month unless otherwise stated due to holidays.

Come and Meet DJ Sandman/Norman Bates and in person and help others to build chapters in their part of the country to meet on the same day and build a stronger Sosarian Community. "We are not just building a community....we are building a civilization"!!!!

The 1st order of business will be to decide the events in game that the UOFC will build and sponser. We are going to focus on all North American Shards but will start with one or two shards to start off with. All ideas will be thrown into the brain stroming session and discussions will go to a blog to be announced.

The 2nd order of business will be planning the trip to San Diego in July for the UO Townhall meeting. (date to be announced by EA) to sign up for free.

for more info go to Meetup.com and enter Ultima Online , than enter 95035 for the Zip "

Please remember to include "FOF" somewhere in the subject of your email when you send me news - I got a LOT of email, and putting that in (preferably at the front) makes it much easier to find it!

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Have a good weekend, everyone - and wish me luck, my cat needs a bath. *pulls on chain mail*

-- Jeremy