Patch 73 - Feburary 13th, Valentines Event, Combat Changes & More!

Reading these notes, and be prepared to test these changes item by item once we open them up for public testing.

As for the pet spawn, I was already committed to fixing that in this patch, to cut down on pages to eject creatures, and rare situations where they spawn inside a house.

More changes added, with a major change to wands updated

Wands

* Wands have been converted to the proper era accurate naming conventions.
Magic Wand, Greater Heal:4 will become "a greater healing wand with 4 charges"
* A wands magical charges can now be transferred to other wands.
While holding a wand in your backpack, but not equipped, if the wand is identified you can double click it and target a wand of the same type.
* Charges will be transferred to the target wand up to the maximum amount of charges that wand can naturally occur with.
Example: Greater Heal Max:5, Fireball Wand Max:15, Lightning Wand Max: 20, Identification Wand Max:175, Most others:30
* If there are no charges left in the original wand, it will be destroyed.
* If there is not enough room for all the charges in the original wand, as many charges as can be transferred will be moved from wand to wand.
This change will serve two purposes.
It will encourage people to manage the global item count by consolidating wands into more functional wands.
This will also negate various tactics players are utilizing with non approved 3rd party applications that are providing an advantage in pvp situations with wand use.
Note: Non Approved 3rd party applications are still not allowed, and will result in the possible loss of access your accounts. This change simply makes sure that if someone manages to avoid detection for a brief period of time they do not receive and unfair advantage in combat situations.
​

That is the plan, it is a long overdue change, but any adjustment to combat mechanics requires extensive research, testing, and review. After a year of looking into this we believe we have the correct mechanic for overages of strength and tactics that fit into our balanced combat system.

New Account Restrictions

* Explosion potions can no longer be used by new accounts in guarded regions.
* The Poison/Poison Wall spells can no longer be used by new accounts in guarded regions.
* Firebombs can no longer be used by new accounts in guarded regions.
* Firecrackers can no longer be used by new accounts in guarded regions.
Note: I have avoided this change for years, but lately there have been a rash of new accounts created for the express purpose of murdering players in town. While our official stance is that town killing is part of Ultima Online. We do not believe that creating accounts for the express purpose of murdering players is. In 90% of the cases in which we investigate this activity we find some other rule being broken (General Conduct, Account Limitations, 3rd Party application abuse)
Our veteran players will not notice this chance at all. It will function much like the requirements to join a NPC guild like the thieves guild. A certain baseline amount of gametime and account history will be checked before allowing these actions in a guarded region. ​

To put this change into perspective I spent 4 hours this weekend dealing with players initially brought to my attention because of their efforts to kill everyone they found in town.

This is the story of one such player.
- Has a friend that plays here.
- Uses friends accounts as needed.
- Created one account two weeks ago, character is already many counts into being a murder.
- Character spend his first two weeks here following around new players in efforts to intimidate them.
- Friday night player decides to kill everyone he can find in town.
- Friends accounts have open character slots, his account has open character slots.
- Player instead makes a 7th account. Creates a character with "bomb" in the name.
- Player proceeds to kill a multitude of players in town using explosion potions made from his friends accounts.
- This behavior is reported to me.
- I investigate said behavior, notice account limitation violations.
- Jail accounts involved.
- 90 minute discussion with Player 1/2.
- Situation is 2 players, using 6-7 accounts.
- Player 1 goes immediately into character claiming he is playing a "chaotic evil role" and it is his job to kill all "dirty macro'ers" who "should not be allowed to macro AFK.
- Player 2 sticks to standard verbal abuse "Fuck you" "You're a Tyrant" "This server sucks"
- Players are aware of the rules, yet claim to have never read them.
- Player 2's accounts are 3 years old, still claims to have never read the rules.
- Players are given the option of respecting the server, our rules and our players.
- Players demand to be able to continue their behavior.
- Staff decides to leave players in jail as there are no assurances they will cease abusing the accounting rules or conduct rules.
- Player 1 makes additional account, pages, wastes another 90 minutes of the staff time trying to explain how he should be able to role play an evil character.
- Uses D&D terminology, seems to know little about Ultima Online.
- Staff is still unable to get an assurance out of him that he can respect other playstyles and the servers rules.
- Player 1 admits that Player1/2 were involved in harassing players in IRC two days earlier. (as Richard Garriot, EA Games. They received an IRC timeout for this)
- Player 1 applies to be a counselor (while in jail)
- Player 1 is denied a position as a counselor.
- Staff determines Player 1 will remain in jail for the time being.

To be clear this situation is not about town killing, it is simply about players who have no respect for the server or its other players. They are simply here to "get off" in their own special way and see no value in anything else we offer. To them UOR is simply a source of victims/interactions. By removing the ability for new accounts to harass our players in this manner we can cut down on situations like above.

When you poison someone in town, the guards kill you immediately. But the player targeted is still poisoned and with enough applications will eventually die. None of these methods allow you to avoid a murder count and most of the time once players realize they cannot easily delete murderers they stop.

I wish I was kidding. I hate denying anyone the chance to play here. But in this case there was clearly something wrong. It seemed he simply wanted players to terrorize in his own special way.

Long ago I realized I can do the server way more good by directing these players to other free servers so their style of gameplay and the fact we do not allow them here will act as a recruiting tool for Renaissance. In the 4 years I have had this policy it has been very effective. Many many new players mention finding this server in order to get away from this type of unhinged behavior on other servers.

As for the mechanic change, yes we hope it has no effect on our veteran players.

This is something I was looking into as well, if my example is not the correct format that OSI used I will look into adjusting it. We were a bit unsure of the exact format when making the change.

Nail + Head.

Runebook fonts are still on my todo list.