"There's a couple of other happenings going on in the world of Ultima Online worth noting. The first is news that at 10:30 am CST a new 2D/3D client update will go live. The new patch offers a lot of fixes and changes to both clients (see this page for a list of changes.) The UO Live team also announced that all north American shards can expect to have access to this year's X-MAS item giveaway after today's regularly scheduled maintenance. Of course, expect there to be a few bumps along the way as everyone and their uncle logs on to collect their shiny little trinkets."

Origin Systems Announces Development of Ultima Online: Age of Shadows For the First Time, UO Players Will Be Able to Design and Build Their Own Houses.

AUSTIN, Texas--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--July 16, 2002--Origin Systems(TM), an Electronic Arts (Nasdaq:ERTS - News) development studio, today announced the development of Ultima Online(TM): Age of Shadows/a, the most ambitious expansion in the award-winning Ultima Online(TM) (UO) series. In Age of Shadows, fans will be introduced to two new professions and an exciting new realm to explore and settle. In addition to the expanded availability of housing, a `House Design Tool' will also be included in this latest version.

"Housing has been one of the key features of UO since its launch in 1997," said Ben Noel, vice president and chief operating officer of Origin Systems. "We are continuously looking for ways to improve and expand the fun factor of owning a home in Britannia. Not only will Age of Shadows create more housing availability, but the new custom-design feature will allow all our players much more creativity when building a house."

The immersive nature of Ultima Online's world continues to expand through the introduction of the House Design Tool. This tool, accessible to anyone who owns a house within the game, will allow players to build new houses from scratch or modify existing ones with compelling new structures, spatial elements and textures.

In addition to building homes, players will have two new professions to master: a Paladin and a Necromancer. The chivalrous Paladin is a courageous warrior fortified with awesome new powers and the cunning Necromancer is a wielder of the darkest magic and forbidden secrets. As players role-play either of these two opposing forces they will discover a large new landmass to conquer and settle.

As players explore this new area within the game, they will be able to utilize an enhanced magic system featuring new spells and powerful items. Additionally, new combat techniques and weapons add more depth and challenge to the fighting experience, and will be useful when facing the dozens of new monsters roaming the dark realm.

Age of Shadows will debut in early 2003 and will offer continuing new intrigue through ongoing fictional scenarios in which players often determine the outcome.

"Maybe you never thought your crafter mule would become one of your favorite characters, but now his embarrassing name is being plastered all over Britannia thanks to your Maker’s Mark. Perhaps you’ve inherited your characters from your mother, and in your humble opinion she made up some of the worst names ever in the history of RPGs. But you like these characters a lot — if only there was some way to give them a little dignity, some opportunity for respect....

And now for $29.99, you can do just that! The new Character Name Change service is here!

That’s right, by using this service we will now change your character’s name for you! A warrior named “Girlface” no longer need worry about the taunts of his peers as he takes on a heroic new name like “Uther Daemonbane,” “lAmEdAmE” can raise her head as a dignified member of society as she becomes “Mordela the Wise,” ...."

Launched in 1997, Ultima Online stands as the longest-running, most successful online subscription-based game in the history of the interactive entertainment industry—and we’re still growing!

Today, as we approach the 5th birthday of UO, Origin is proud to announce the opening of Lake Austin, our newest North American shard. The Lake Austin shard opens today, Wednesday, September 18th (CDT). It is the 12th North American Ultima Online shard, and is our 25th shard worldwide.

In honor of UO’s 5th birthday, the new shard is being named after the twenty-two mile long body of water in Central Texas that runs right past the place where UO was born in 1997. The home office of Origin Systems, the central location for the creative vision of Ultima Online, overlooks the waters of beautiful Lake Austin from the high cliffs along its banks.

Initially, Lake Austin will be available only to players on new accounts (those created as of Sunday, September 15th, CDT) for a period of one month. This will ensure that players new to UO are given a period to learn the game and establish a solid foundation on the shard before it is opened to all players worldwide. For players interested in opening a new account and joining this shard, we are also featuring a special anniversary promotion, with 50% off the purchase of UO from participating games retailers Electronics Boutique, GameStop and Amazon.com during the period of September 20th – 30th, 2002! After 30 days, Lake Austin will be opened to all Ultima Online players, allowing the shard to develop the diversity and strong camaraderie found on other UO shards.

Please note that the Lake Austin shard will only be visible in the shard list to new accounts for the first 30 days.

Are you a long-time Ultima Online player and have long-hoped for a means to fast-track your character through the development process? Or are you starting on a new shard, and looking for a quick way to catch up to your friends? Are your daily obligations getting in the way of you achieving the stats you want and exploring the far reaches of Britannia? Well, now you’re in luck!

Ultima Online players can now purchase advanced characters through our new Advanced Character Service. This is a great way to move quickly ahead in specific areas of the game without needing to go through the building-up process for each character you play. Advanced characters can be purchased on your existing or new accounts. Get your advanced character NOW for $29.95!

We have a selection of popular character types to choose from: Mage, Warrior, Blacksmith, Tamer, or Alchemist. All of these templates are designed to leave room for you to add and learn additional skills; your new character may start ahead of the curve, but you can continue its development and help it grow into the character you’ve always wanted. See our Advanced Character Services page to learn how the system works, and for more information as to what skills and stats you can achieve right away.

The Advanced Character Service is available NOW! To purchase your advanced character, call 866-543-5435 (choose option 2, then press #2), toll-free, Monday through Friday, from 9:00am to 7:00pm CT & Saturday and Sunday, from 10:00am to 4:00pm. This is only available on the North American, European, and Australian shards. This program is not offered on the Siege Perilous shard.

We have released a client patch today, on Wednesday, September 25th CDT, that contains the following changes:

3D clients only: Art revisions for new vet rewards ridables.

Both 2D and 3D clients: Various localization files.

The current version should remain 3.0.8q for both the 2D and 3D clients.

If you’ve been waiting with bated breath to know what will be in the next incarnation of Ultima Online, the wait is over—the official Ultima Online: Age of Shadows mini-site is now live!

We’re calling Ultima Online: Age of Shadows the most aggressive expansion ever, and that’s no exaggeration. With a fantastic new Custom House Design Tool, an all-new dungeon, a mysterious new realm called Malas, twenty brand new monsters for both UO’s 2D and 3D game client, two new professions, and the introduction of thirteen new combat attack moves, this will be the expansion that truly changes the landscape of Britannia!

Come to http://www.uo.com/ageofshadows/ now to read up on the new features and check out our downloadable screenshots, character renders, wallpapers, and AIM icons. Be sure to bookmark it and come back every week as we focus on another of UO:AoS’s exciting features (this week we’ll be spilling our guts on the Custom House Design Tool), as well as riveting Age of Shadows fiction and promotional specials. Stay tuned for more.

Origin Systems announced that it has inked a deal with legendary fantasy artist Brom to create box and print ad artwork for Ultima Online: Age of Shadows, the latest expansion pack for Origin's long running online role-playing game for the PC. Brom is known for the fantasy art he has created for a variety of products and publications including books, film, games and comics.

In addition to the box and print ad work for Age of Shadows, Origin will also team up with Brom to create a limited quantity of signed Brom lithographs of the print ad. These will only be available through online stores such as Electronics Boutique, Amazon.com and Gamestop as part of special several pre-order promotions. The first 100 people to pre-order Ultima Online: Age of Shadows through these online retailers will receive a signed lithograph. Origin is also planning to auction one signed lithograph off for charity on Amazon.com's auction site, donating proceeds to an undisclosed charity.

Brom began his career at the age of twenty as a commercial illustrator. A year later he was doing work for such high-profile clients as Coke, IBM, Columbia Pictures and CNN. A mere four years into career saw Brom working for TSR, the publisher of Dungeons and Dragons. Brom spent the next three years creating the look and feel that helped popularize the best-selling Dark Sun world. Brom returned to the freelance market in 1993 and has since created hundreds of paintings for every facet of the genre, including novels by authors like Micheal Moorcock and Terry Brooks; role-playing board games such as TSR and White Wolf; comics including DC, Chaos and Dark Horse; video games like Doom 2 and Diablo 2; and films such as Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and Scooby Doo.

Ultima Online: Age of Shadows is scheduled for release in February 2003. It will introduce a housing design tool, two new classes and a new realm to explore. Details can be found at the official site. Check out this exclusive box art designed by Brom - and be sure to check out the real thing in February at a retailer near you.

2D clients only:

• Macro creation combo boxes will no longer display “clumsy” when no value has yet been selected.

3D clients only:

• A crash related to resizing the chat interface was repaired.
• An improvement to chat scrolling was implemented.
• Targeting pets’ status bars will execute the target function instead of going into edit mode in the text area.
• The scrollbar in the skill list should behave better when opening/closing skill groups.

Both 2D and 3D clients:

• Item property requests are now sent in smaller batches, which will help resolve some perceived “lag” when entering areas with lots of objects. This also means, however, that some objects may not immediately have visible item properties—although this should not generally be noticeable.
• Networking fixes/buffer improvements to prevent blackholing*, unintended behavior, and crashes.
• The game client should no longer close when encountering errors while playing intro movies.
• Updated localization files.
• The current version should now be 4.0.0e for both the 2D and 3D clients.

According to Ultima Online Stratics, the new issue of GMR Magazine (as found in EB stores) has a column leaking details about "Ultima-X", which is apparently Origin/EA's new MMORPG. A quote from the article goes as follows: "It’s going to surprise you. I can't say anything just yet except maybe three quick words: Unreal Warfare engine." The writer of the column has since turned up on online forums indicating that he was told to hold the news, but the magazine had already gone to press. This is a fascinating rumor that initially seems to pass the smell test - stay tuned for more details.

Ultima Online Service Rate Change Information:

The Ultima Online monthly service rate will change from $9.95 per month to $12.99 per month on June 25, 2003. At the same time we’re also introducing the following two multi-month discount packages, which will be available on June 25th:

• 3 Month Prepaid Discount Package — $34.99
• 6 Month Prepaid Discount Package — $59.99

By choosing our new 6-month discount package, you can keep your monthly rate at $9.99 per month — maintaining your rate where it is right now!

Andy Hollis, the veteran designer responsible for many MicroProse and Jane's flight sims, is recruited to head EA's Austin studio and oversee the Ultima franchise's next steps.

When we recently heard that Andy Hollis had joined EA's Origin studio in Austin, Texas, as chief operating officer and executive producer, we had to wonder if the Austin studio would turn back the clock to the heady days of the Wing Commander series, Privateer, and Strike Commander and do a new combat flight sim. That's because Hollis has a long résumé that includes design and programming credits on MicroProse's F-19 Stealth Fighter and F-15 Strike Fighter games. And more recently, he was executive producer on the Electronic Arts' own Jane's combat sims. But no, after a two-year retirement that let him devote time to race driving, Hollis is returning to EA not to get directly involved with new game development, but rather to guide the Origin development staff working on the long-running Ultima series.

We haven't heard much about Origin's plans since the release of the most recent Ultima Online expansion, Age of Shadows, earlier this year, so we jumped at the chance to talk to Andy Hollis and Anthony Castoro, a producer for Ultima Online who himself returned to EA late last year after serving as the lead systems designer on Star Wars Galaxies. The news is that Age of Shadows has been quite successful and has helped propel Ultima Online to having its best year and its highest number of subscribers (more than 250,000) ever. Origin attributes this success to the expansion's extended character customization options and to the general stability and far-reaching community support that the game enjoys as a result of its five-year history.

The 3rd party program discussed in FYI with respect to the recent bannings was detected entirely on the server side. Which makes sense, since we started monitoring that program over 2 weeks ago and we just patched out the client with the updated data collection feature yesterday.

This recent patch didn't have anything to do with these bannings - most of it was simply preparing your systems for the fixes in Publish 19. The logging for these bans was added in a recent mini-publish that also included a fix to prevent that particular third-party program from working on our servers. Needless to say, we didn't announce it, because we wanted to get a good look at who was using that program!

Please keep in mind that using illegal third party programs is not only a violation of UO rules, but these programs may also be used to place Trojans on your PC that may cause your computer harm or pass your private personal information to others. In some cases, people that claim to have the newest "cheat" program may actually be trying to claim your personal information for malicious reasons. In other cases, those that distribute these programs may simply be trying to get your account status in trouble. You should never download anything from individuals over the Internet if you don't know them personally!

Thanks to PlayMoney for its weblog post revealing a recent Ultima Online patch designed to shore up the economy may have introduced new problems, as "the very same game patch... also [seems] to have introduced a gold-gusher of a bug, allowing some people to conjure themselves up a few hundred million gold pieces in the space of a week." The author references a thread on UO Stratics which includes allegations about "one guy that claimed to have made over 700mil to date on [a particular game server] with this bug", a total of $9947 under current dollar exchange rates if successfully auctioned. Although the other new economic rules "seem otherwise to be working out fine", and this exploit was "fixed last Friday [5th]", the author is concerned that "by the time the new money gets fully circulated, gold will be selling for $7 per million", half of the current $14-per-million auction price.

As many of you have read on UO.com or heard from a game store, or even from a friend that still plays UO - Electronic Arts has an incredible deal currently going on that allows previous players to return to Ultima Online and play FREE for 15 days! If you are a former player of UO, but don't currently play, then you are eligible to get these fifteen free days to play again. As you've probably noticed by reading our news over the last few months, there are several advantages to playing UO now, such as new professions (Paladins & Necromancers), new lands & dungeons (Malas and Doom), customized quests, and most important of all - A customized house design tool that allows you to create your own unique home at a time when hundreds of no-longer-used homes are now falling and opening up real estate that hasn't been available for years!

So take advantage of this offer now! Just find one of the promotional ads on our site and click on it for more detailed information!

• Both the 2D and 3D Game Client
• Character Transfer system support
• Control+V will now “paste” copied text into the game client by default (including UNICODE text under some operating systems.)
• Updated copyright date displayed by client to “2004”
• Localization updates

I started looking at game play with a new passion I never seemed to have in the years of play prior to this. I quickly realized that one player on his own really could not be a producer. Later I did find that a single player could make a decent profit, but the work involved was definitely labor intensive. You can read more about that on Julian's web site. Anyway, UO is just a client/server computer program. Programs like these require user input, but that can be scripted or programmatically controlled. And, this is something I knew a thing or two about.

What about the EULA and ROC? Well, the EULA stats that no 3rd party applications are allowed, but we all know and use many different utilities out there. So, since I agreed to the EULA, I am the first party, being the paying member for UO and EA is the second party, being the provider. So, if *I* make/author a utility, it is a 1st party utility, and in my opinion, anything you make doesn’t apply. Over simplification maybe, but I can sleep at night on those terms. Now, the rules of conduct are a different story. The ROC say something like, thou shall not macro unattended. The litmus test for this rule is a GM asking you to respond, and if the GM is satisfied, you are golden. I concentrated on resolving this first problem and I believe it was a pretty creative solution.

Instant messaging has been a great blessing and is used by millions of people everyday for instant communication. When a GM talks to you in the game, or anyone for that matter, UO becomes one massive IM application. So, why not wire UO up to something akin to Trillian and pipe any in-game text to an IM application of your choice? This is exactly what I did. Since I was able to get game text from the game client, I piped it to MSN messenger and was able to converse with GMs or anyone else in the game from my smart phone that was MSN messenger aware. So, as long as you are able to respond right? I felt that I had satisfied the ROC. Game on!