Renaissance into 2019 and Beyond (Shard Update)

Happy 2019 Everyone! I hope everyone had a relaxing Christmas and a happy new year. I have finally caught up a bit with life/work commitments that have slowed me down for the last month and will be around a bunch more in the coming year.

The wife and I welcomed our first little one to the world in late December (little girl, future UOR gm in training). And of course due to the addition to the family I had to take on some extra IRL work to get better insurance to cover the family. In order to accomplish this I have accepted a software development role for one of my larger clients which included a generous salary and health insurance. (Developing a software solution to interface laboratory service companies with a large billing company in order to facilitate electronic processing of billable information) Exciting stuff right! As of today I have put the first version of the application I have developed into production.

So long story short things should calm down a great deal. There will still be some frantic deadlines, but nothing as drastic as the one I have completed now. (There were millions of $$ worth of transactions waiting on this software to be completed, much stress, little sleep).

So just to be clear, because if there were not 12 posts about the server failing, or other drama at any moment for the last 6 years it would not be UOR.

I am not going anywhere. I started this place with the expectation that caring for all of your work/creations/time investment here was not something to take on lightly. Like all other humans I have bad days, need a break, get frustrated, etc. But UOR will carry on as long as there are people who love classic UO.

I do not work for, help on, or contribute to any other UO projects/servers. I did mentor other shard owners for a while (Its nice to talk tech with other like minded individuals.) However after watching each of these relationships devolve into "How many players is it ok to fake to get donations rolling in" or "I'll just sell a few accounts to get some extra cash" After investing months and years of work mentoring these guys I stepped away from those situations.

I do not play on any other server, or even play here. I do a small amount of steam gaming, but lately I love some casual switch gaming. I do not play any other MMO's or games that cannot be paused. (A happy marriage is supported by only playing games I can pause, UO is great as well because you can recall + logout in 60 seconds to take care of a wife Honeydoo)

Working on UOR for the last 2500 or so days has been a fun ride and has taught me a great deal. I have implemented a great deal of what I have learned here in my day to day job that is providing for my family. And now that I get to develop as a job my skills working on UOR are improving steadily as well. (Most people who work on a free server come in with development skills. I started with only rough database experience)

So in short we are not going anywhere, and the server is doing quite well. Thanks to some hype in the free shard world our new player joins have picked up and we have tasked some additional helpers with making sure everyone gets a hello and their questions answered.

Going forward we have some exciting plans for 2019 which I will touch on briefly here, but by no means is this all we have planned.

Quick / Jimmy's Work on an Updated Razor
These guys have been doing amazing work on addressing some of the common complaints with razor and really taking it to the next level while avoiding all of the questionable features so common in the programs we do not allow here. We are very excited to roll this new version into our Windows/Mac Clients once it is finished. To help test it out check out the thread below.
http://uorforum.com/threads/razor-1-5-bug-issue-release-tracking.33405/

Clean UP Britannia
The CuB system gets closer and closer as we finish up the development on the rewards that the system needs to function. We have an ongoing discussion about the various rewards players would like to see in the system you can take part in below.
http://uorforum.com/threads/clean-up-britannia-official-reward-store-discussion.37751/

7th,8th,9th, 10th Anniversary Plans
During our planning for the Christmas rewards some of our volunteers and I spent a day working through all of the available hues that have been used/unused so far. Below is a picture of the tentative hues that are planned for years 7-10. Rather than sticking to the exact release plan we will probably open this to a bit of player debate to see which order they are released in.


Valentines Event - Easter Event
Cupid will return to wreck havok around the 8th of February for our much loved Valentines event. A Renaissance favorite this event creates a high traffic zone that always results in some PvP and PvM excitement. This will be quickly followed by our updated Easter/St Patricks combined event which was a huge hit last year. If you did not have a chance to collect some Rogue Boots last year you will have another chance coming up.



And much more! I don't want to ramble on to much as I am finishing up the much delayed 2018 Christmas reward store update. The patch is planned for Friday (1/18) with the extended Christmas event to close up soon after. Players can expect some sort of overworld event (or two) this weekend to close things out.



Also on a very happy note: My 24 year old ragdoll black cat has lived long enough to meet the new baby and pose for some adorable pictures with the new little one. She has been my desk/lap companion for many late nights working on the server. She's still healthy as a cat that old can be bitching at me for not paying attention to her as I typed this.