Copied from UO Newsletter #25 for your enjoyment...

Lord_Nabin

Producer Notes Greetings everyone, The second part of Endless Journey is now on TC1.  Please check out the updated notes in the Wiki.  Special thanks to everyone who has helped test the restrictions, your feedback is really important!  Please join the conversation on our UO.com forums or send in your feedback!  We are looking at a world wide release of Publish 99 in the beginning of April  depending on how smoothly things go with our upcoming release to Origin and other early shards as well as feedback from players. I would like to address a few emails that I have received regarding Endless Journey restrictions, 1.  Due to feedback, we are going to allow EJ accounts on TC1 however you will not be able to character copy with an Endless Journey account. 2.  Currently Endless Journey accounts are not eligible for Power Scroll drops, this was done per feedback we received from players.  Remember though, this does not mean Endless Journey players cannot otherwise obtain power scrolls.  For example my player was in a guild that did a lot of Champ Spawns.  At the end of each spawn we dropped all the scrolls in a chest, and we used the Lucky Dealer NPC and rolled for the scrolls and items collected.  This could be great for guilds that enjoy doing Champ Spawns and are looking to grow their ranks with returning Endless Journey players.  Players on Endless Journey accounts can also steal power scrolls and loot them from the corpses of their victims! 3.  We will be allowing EJ accounts to log into Siege. 4.  We know there has been a lot of discussion related to the amount of storage that Endless Journey accounts will have access to.  We are still actively developing means of allowing Endless Journey accounts access to some level of secure storage.  These options will not be part of the initial release of Endless Journey and may come at a later time. On a different note I need to say something about Customer Service replacing house addon items that have been broken by raising them with the house decoration tool.  We are fully aware you guys like to be creative and reinvent the items into new and exciting designs.  But please understand these items will not be replaced by CS if you decide to break them. Please also remember when we release Endless Journey we will be taking actions against multiboxing users.  We will be posting once a month on UO.com the number of warnings/bannings actioned against violators so you are aware we are catching people.  We will need your assistance with this and we are asking that you page on the players you are witnessing using multiboxing.  Just know no one will be coming back to you with any type of response though as it is our policy to not discuss specific actions taken against offenders outside the information we will be releasing on UO.com. We are aware of some issues with Pre-Patched Dragons related to pet training, we are working on a fix for this issue.  Please be patient and keep an eye on UO.com for updates If all goes well we are hoping to gift Stygian Abyss to all our players by the end of the week.  If anything changes we will let you know. We do have a nice Springtime gift for everyone but it will not be available until sometime after Publish 99 goes world wide.  Keep an eye on UO.com for when the item is available. See you in Britannia,  Bonnie "Mesanna" Armstrong Producer

Publish 100 - Crushing Bugs As we've mentioned before, our goal after Endless Journey with Publish 100 will be a bug push where we concentrate on fixing as many bugs as possible.  If you have a bug that you would especially like to see fixed please send it to us here.  You can also post bugs in the UO.com Bug Forum.  Note that unless we need more information from your email we generally don't respond.  For forum posts you may not receive an immediate response but we do read them and will ramp up on this in Publish 100. Here are some current bugs and minor feature requests that are going through the process of getting resolved (note this list is subject to change) Addition of level 5 and 6 maps as rewards from the Hag quest Updates to the Seed Box that allow you to remove a quantity instead of just 1 or all Ability to dye Time of Legends items with natural dyes Fixing an issue with mannequins and talismans not equipping or becoming "owned by" properly

Question & Answer Corner 1.    Can we have UO Assist for the classic client? We will be looking into adding some of the features into the classic client in the future. 2.   Is dropping party before the boss dies going to give you more loot? When dealing with loot that was part of the Publish 86 global loot revamp, a bonus in the number of global loot items available is awarded for parties.  Non-global loot (Revamped dungeons like Shame & Wrong) as well as specialty artifact drops from bosses are not handled this way.  Each of those rolls are individual and party membership does not impact the results one way or another. 3.   Would it be possible to add an item like a tackle box to store bait and other fishing related items? This sounds like a great future veteran reward! 4.  There are some issues with the new goblin statue where it does not function like other goblin related items. This is something that will be addressed in the Publish 100 bug push. 5.  Can we get powerscrolls for Alchemy & Cartography? Before we can have these power scrolls we would have to introduce new things into the game to justify the levels of the scrolls.  Not that it would never happen but with the current Alchemy and Cartography there is not justification for this addition, but this is something we can consider for a future publish. 6.  When will we be getting Stygian Abyss? We are currently planning on upgrading all accounts to complementary Stygian Abyss access on Thursday March 29th.  Keep an eye on UO.com for details.

Bilbo

LOL  Stratics already has the News Letter Posted.  You would think that the Official Forum for UO would have been the first.  @Mesanna

Pawain

Since EJ accounts can not post here.  The newsletter about EJ should be posted on The Official Forums of Endless Journey first.

DJAd

"We are still actively developing means of allowing Endless Journey accounts access to some level of secure storage.  These options will not be part of the initial release of Endless Journey and may come at a later time."

Wait until it is ready then release EJ. How many people will return and then not bother as they don't have a bank? A feature that has been part of the game for how long!? Just give a limited size bank and be done with it.

JollyJade

I saw how no Broadsword official had a word to say in the 60-70 multiboxer thread that got deleted..

I don't see them "catch" any of the people that have been given free hand since years. Maybe they really know magic..

But good luck fooling your actual players. I believe when I see them gone in-game..

JollyJade

DJAd said:

"We are still actively developing means of allowing Endless Journey accounts access to some level of secure storage.  These options will not be part of the initial release of Endless Journey and may come at a later time."

Wait until it is ready then release EJ. How many people will return and then not bother as they don't have a bank? A feature that has been part of the game for how long!? Just give a limited size bank and be done with it.

They are so busy protecting the status quo.. storage is really too much to ask.. make sure they can't do that, can't do this, no drops, no shinies, no powerscrolls, yadi yada!

The fun is for a later publish.. around early 2020 maybe ....

Captain_Lucky

DJAd said:

"We are still actively developing means of allowing Endless Journey accounts access to some level of secure storage.  These options will not be part of the initial release of Endless Journey and may come at a later time."

Wait until it is ready then release EJ. How many people will return and then not bother as they don't have a bank? A feature that has been part of the game for how long!? Just give a limited size bank and be done with it.

Totally agree, if they launch EJ without any storage they just wasted a lot of effort. I can't even imagine bothering with this game with zero storage. That's just completely nuts. No one is going to stick around once they realize they have zip storage. Is there going to be a huge pop up window with "Storage is coming *soon*"?

Captain_Lucky

I suggest we keep EJ under out hat till they get it all worked out.

Captain_Lucky

Just give them normal bank storage. Save them the trouble of making 10 EJ accounts for storage lol

Feigr

EJ on Siege effectively removes the character limit a lot more.  It's not perfect, but I can see the abuse potential.

Lavender

Why does it say; "Can we have UO Assist for the classic client?  We will be looking into adding some of the features into the classic client in the future." ...... I already have UO Assist and I use the Classic Client. Does that mean EJ is going to make UOAssist not operate any longer on CC?

Petra_Fyde

Lavender said:

Why does it say; "Can we have UO Assist for the classic client?  We will be looking into adding some of the features into the classic client in the future." ...... I already have UO Assist and I use the Classic Client. Does that mean EJ is going to make UOAssist not operate any longer on CC?

There have been a couple of times lately when Assist didn't work for a while, it's possible Tugsoft may be tired of supporting it? Who could blame him really, he stopped playing the game years ago and everyone has for sure had their money's worth out of it.
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the team are hoping to integrate some, or hopefully many, of assist's features into the client, making assist no longer necessary and allowing Tug to finally retire it and move on.

Margrette

I wonder if EA ever gave the go-ahead to allow UO on Steam, or decided to integrate UO into the Origin platform, if you would have to run just UO and couldn't also run UO Assist.  Maybe that is another reason for giving more features to the classic client.

Syncros

I doubt EA will ever allow UO on steam, it may help get some subs but EA has Origin and want players to use that.  

The EC client is what the Devs would be focused on with graphics looking more like the CC has.  Going full EC will help end current script kiddies at least since theres no real anti cheat system involved with UO.

DM_Wyvern

Feigr said:

EJ on Siege effectively removes the character limit a lot more.  It's not perfect, but I can see the abuse potential.

This ^