Martok

Great storyline!!

A dark hooded messenger brought this to me at Olympus.  The messenger would not speak, but dropped off this parchment:

The Dark Monarchy, Kingdom of Demorium is opening their new tavern called the Queens Poison. The grand opening is Friday July 13th at 9 pm est time on the Catskills shard,Trammel. Runes to the tavern will be given

out at Lord Blackthorns castle from 6-7 pm est. Gates will be made available by request at icq number

12372364. The tavern is for all people good or evil. Private dining reservations will be taken in advance. The

Queen's Chef Otik will prepare fresh food daily. Wheter ye wish a fine dining experience,or to sit in our library

and quietly read ,browse the copies of books available for sell in our bookstore, or just relax with a jug of

wine in front of the fire with family and friends, The Queens Poison is the place to be.

Calandryll brings this to us from the uo.com boards.  Here is what he has to say:

Will they continue the weekly updates in the form of another ongoing 'quest' (I use the term loosley)?

--I wouldn't use the term "quest" at all actually. But yes, we're planning on doing another one after this one conclues.

If so, what type of 'quest' will it be?

--Different than this one based on the learning we have gotten from this one. Beyond that, no comment as I will not give anything away.

What would everyone like to see? What were the major problems with the current one (besides the obvious!)?

--Good questions. I actually think it might be better to wait until this one concludes though. I plan on writing a post about the current scenario after this one concludes and gathering feedback from that as well.

To answer your questions about dynamic changes to the world such as destroying a city. Doing something like that, while it may sound cool on paper, so may not be appropriate for UO. Let's forget about the programming issues with this (of which there are many) and discuss the design/community issues. If you have been reading the posts about this scenario since it's beginning, there have been more than a few posts of complaint towards the town attacks. They were (are) angry about not being able to bank/hang-out in their favorite town. Imgaine, if you will, if we not only attacked a town, but actually destroyed it! People have become very attached to the cities in UO. Another example, I had an idea a long time ago to make a scenario where reagents became scarce and players had to solve a scenario to solve the problem. Imagine the howls of anger from the mages should the players lose that scenario and regs remained harder to get than they already are?

While you may not agree with that mentality, as a developer, I am beholden to all players and must take it into account.

The problem with win/lose outcomes is that as a general rule, people don't like to lose. A lose scenario such as the ones you describe are not fun if the players' lose. Losing isn't fun. Rather than have a win/lose outcome, I'd prefer to have different outcomes, neither necessarily worse, just different, and all interesting and fun. But that sort of thing is far more difficult to design (again, not talking programming issues here) than a simple win/lose scenario. In truth, in my opinion, lose/win scenarios are rather uncreative as anyone can come up with "if the players lose, Minoc blows up, if they win it doesn't". It takes far more creativity to come up with two outcomes that are meaningful, but also equally fun.

Truth is we are not at that point yet. We need to move these along gradually. The biggest mistake developers make in my opinion with MMORPGs is we try to run before we learn to walk. We have so many cool ideas we just want to get them started right away. But, in the long-run (and with these games, the long-run must be considered) moving slowly, learning from the feedback, and expandind as we go along, is the far better course.

Oh and just a sidenote, you made an excellent post with some really well thought out ideas. Lose the profanity (and yes, even using "*"s can be considered a ToS violation on the boards) next time as I would hate to see a good post get locked (as this one would be justifably locked if it was) because of unneeded curse words that didn't add to your post anyway.

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna

Designer, Ongoing Content

Posted by Adrick on the UO.com boards

"The argument could be made back at the time precasting was removed that it could be used to pk and was a mystery to those who did not understand how to do it.

As it stands today given the tram fel ruleset and various other avenues for consensual pvp - precasting if restored to the game would effect pvpers - those who want no part of precasting and pvp have the means now to avoid it altogether. A vast majority of the posts, emails and general conversation in the pvp community is that restoring precasting to the game would make pvp more fun for them, more of a matter of player skill in who wins a fight.

The concern for us going into this is to ensure that characters with no magery can be competitive in pvp. The insta hit will not be returning which was one of the obvious unbalancing features of the old style.

The introduction of special moves, lumberjacking along with anatomy healing and med, swing timers with hit times based on dex have added more choices that will not be available the same to a mage/warrior as before when precasting was removed.

So we are looking at the feedback - and we are discussing what the end result will be when the combat changes listed in concept are finally published to all the shards"

Hurry up already!!!!

Goodbye old boards! Hello new boards!!!

Why thank ye!

I have tried hard to put some fat on me skinny old bones!

*orders another lamb chop*

*yells from the other side of the tavern*

Do ye nay recognize me!?  Eh?

Tis Martok!  

*a big smile crosses his face*

Aye...made one and used one!  Very time consuming to get the bola balls for that!  

HOWDY ALL!