UO Producer’s Letter – June 2012, Story, Website
The Awakening, Act 5, Part 2 was posted to the UO Herald, but I’m not going to post it here – it’s a long read, and I’ve got some theories I want to discuss in a later article.
The UO.com Relaunch
Yesterday on Stratics, in a thread, The UO Website, 5 Years, 4 Producers, which I helped inspire (I’ll speak more about that in another article), Kai Schober, the Community Manager for Ultima Online, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes, and Dark Age of Camelot talked a little bit about the upcoming UO.com relaunch:
It hasn’t changed. We have started with the initial works – the Logo is already in place 😀 – and will continue to build and fill it.
Screenshots or videos (as well as a huge legacy of stories) will be part of it.
That’s good news, especially the party about the legacy of stories. I’m the person who said early last year that UOHerald.com was nothing but a glorified blog, and a bad one at that. I’m glad they are bringing UO history back, and I’m glad that after over 5 years, they are finally going to have screenshots and videos available for people to easily find.
I also want to talk about is the UO Producer’s Letter, from the new UO Producer, Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong:
Hello everyone,
First off I would like to thank everyone for their kind words to me regarding my promotion. I am writing this because some of you wanted an official Producer Letter so here goes. First I would like to address the Exodus Event reward. The +5 stat scroll will be put in the game as a permanent drop. This is something that was discussed as a team from the very beginning, so if you did not get one at Exodus or were not able to be at the event, you will be able to get it later.
The second part is the future of UO. After we finish the holidays, which does take up a lot of time for creation for Halloween, anniversary, vet rewards etc, we are going to step back and do a major bug fixing publish. Currently we have documented 1173 known bugs in our system, I want to cut that number in half. This bug sprint will not happen till the first of the year so that will give me plenty of time to go over all the bugs in the thread on stratics to make sure we have those documented in our system.
After the major bug sprint we will continue to put in updates to the dungeons, armor and monsters. Of course we will be throwing in other tidbits but it wouldn’t be any fun to tell you what they are now. =P
I hope everyone enjoyed Exodus and with that being said here is a fitting screenshot for the downfall of Exodus!
My Notes
1) I told you so! – I believed last night that the scroll was not a one-time thing, and according to the letter, from the beginning it was not planned to be. Sorry for the gloating.
2) There will be a publish, perhaps more, focused on nothing but bugs, sometime after the start of 2013. This is good, UO has a lot of bugs obviously. 2013 is understandable, because they have plenty of things going on for the 15th Anniversary, and then the following months are Halloween and Christmas, among other things. The story arc is taking up a lot of resources as well.
3) There was no discussion of the high resolution artwork update for the Enhanced Client. This really bothers me. Now it could be in those “tidbits” that Mesanna doesn’t want to spoil, but I can’t accept that. You don’t keep things secret that have already been announced, especially when those are things that will attract new players.
The scroll and the holiday/vet things and the bug fixes are for people playing UO right now. We really heard nothing that would do anything to attract a new player.
That’s disappointing.
The Enhanced Client high resolution artwork update was announced over a year ago, and while work continues on it, or was as of earlier this month, we hear very little other than occasional posts from UO’s Lead CG Supervisor.
At a time that UO is going to be getting a lot of attention from mainstream game websites, in addition to the normal coverage, for the upcoming 15th Anniversary, the UO Producer needs to be talking about things that will attract new players.
I share the concern of many people I know, veteran players, as well as people on Stratics and UO Forums and other websites who feel that the publicity that surrounds the 15th Anniversary should be used to bring in new players. Keeping in-game story arcs and events secret is very acceptable (although it can backfire).
Keeping things that have been announced and which can help UO live on for many more years creates a lot of concern.
