A while back we had gathered some questions from staff and users, and put together an interview to send to Wilki. Take a look!

1) Did you ever think when you were little you’d be doing this?

While I can’t really pinpoint an exact time when I first thought, “When I grow up, I want to make games,” I do remember “designing” my first game when I was 6 or 7 years old and my Dad had an interview with Atari. I used crayons to draw up some level that had something to do with tigers stalking you and you having to figure out a maze in the jungle to get away from them, and he took it to the interview with him. I’m guessing that he didn’t really pitch the idea for me, but I’ve been eagerly waiting every since.

A couple of months after that, my father went to work for a new company called “Apple Computer”, and by that time, we had an Apple ][+ sitting on the dining room table. I spent many hours playing text adventures, games like Aztec and of course the Ultima series. My Dad bought me a “Programming for Kids” book around that time, and I remember writing some short programs that drew simple squares on the screen, and I thought it was cool that I could make them go where I wanted.

In the years between then and graduating high school, I just sort of assumed that I’d be a software engineer someday. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m slowly getting there

2) What keeps you coming back to UO at the end of the day?

UO was the first MMO that I ever played, and even though I’ve tried 4 or 5 others, it has something special that I have a hard time describing succinctly. I think the closest I can come is that it’s not so much a game, as it is a world. Maybe it’s the sheer depth of game play, or the true sense of ownership that you get from placing your own house and then customizing it however you see fit, but there is that special “something” that I really haven’t found in any other MMO.

Maybe the best way to say it is that while I can play other MMO’s, I *live* in UO.

3) How much does the public's rudeness and ignorance really impact the team’s productivity? Or do you guys just ignore those types?

I would classify it as “mildly annoying” at worst, so it really doesn’t impact the team’s productivity much. Sometimes I have to deal with things that pop up, which does take me away from other tasks, but generally that’s not the case. The biggest problem with bad behavior is that it can get out of control and hamper communication when we’re trying to research an idea or gather feedback on an issue. We can’t read every single post, so there is always that chance that the time spent reading something that turns out to be non-constructive could mean we don’t get to a post that has a useful bit of information.

On the other hand, a lot of the negativity stems from passion for UO, and that’s certainly something I can relate to. Having to deal with a few flame throwing passionate players is far preferable to having players who don’t care!

4) If you had 1 wish, personally, for the future of UO (something to be implemented, a new class or skill, new monsters, etc), what would it be?

Only 1 wish? Let’s see… to make sure that combat/crafting/loot is balanced, useful and fun, while injecting some of the old school UO “feel” back into the game.

5) How many developers are, at present, working on UO?

Well, it’s right after lunch on a Friday, so how many are actually working at *present*? Probably not too many… kidding! I’m not sure I’m supposed to release that sort of information, plus I’d have to get up and count everyone on the floor, so let me just say that the team is bigger than it was 6 months ago.

6) If you do play UO, what characters do you have?

A better question would be what type of characters I don’t have! I have 3 full accounts with 6 characters to each account, and not a whole lot of duplication among templates. I think the only thing I’ve never tried is fishing. When we add beer and catfish, I might be lured into doing some night fishing. Bad pun intended.

7) If you do PvP, how often or how regularly do you PvP?

You can’t live in Fel and not PvP J To be quite frank, I don’t go looking for PvP much at all these days because I’ve always refused to make gathering items my main goal in UO, and I don’t enjoy being killed in 1 or 2 shots. I’m really looking forward to returning to the PvP scene after we’re done with the combat/crafting changes coming up.

8) How often do you meet with developers and other UO "staff"? (Meetings?)

Daily. I almost always have at least one formal meeting to attend (sometimes most of my day is taken up by them), and we have impromptu meetings in each other’s cubes many times a day. I’m in MrTact’s cube so much that I think he’s about to relocate to an undisclosed location.

9) Has your view of the game changed since you started working at EA?

Yes, and no. What “Ultima Online” means to me personally hasn’t changed, i.e. what I think the core of the game is about and where it should go in the future is pretty much the same. What did radically change is the “why” aspect. There are so many things that you are unaware of and really wouldn’t understand without being here and seeing them for yourself. For example, I see a lot of “Change it! It’s a simple fix…”, which for many things, just is not the case. When you’ve got code that is 10 years old (I actually saw a comment in the code the other day that was dated 1995!), and has been changed continuously since then, sometimes you have to tear something completely apart and rebuild it to add functionality.

The good part of that is that we’ve already done that with a lot of things, so it’s improving as we go along.

10) How did you get the job as community rep?

Back in 2003/04 I was a volunteer for Stratics. Since I live right across the bay from EA, Stratics asked me if I could cover the unveiling of Samurai Empire. I had already met some of the UO Team from having attended some of the monthly local Meetups, so when I came to EA that day, I ended up talking to Binky, Lady Lu and a few others. Binky told me about a community position that would be opening up shortly, and told me to keep my eye out for it. When it was announced, I applied, was asked to come in for two days of interviews with 11 different people, and a month later, I was offered the job. Here I am!

11) In your own words or thoughts, what do you think of the current PvP environment in UO today and if any, what changes would you like to see made to it?

Well, as I mentioned above, I pretty much don’t like it as it currently exists. I have many fond memories of going to PvP tourneys and watching very skilled PvPers go at it on the roof of a tower, battling the reds that I’d run across in my adventures through the lands (I never really adventured in Trammel), playing in factions during their heyday and then the huge spike in PvP that followed Pub16.

Luckily for me (and you!), we’re going to be making some serious changes to combat soon.

12) What changes would you, personally, like to see made in UO and what things would you like to see stay as is?

This could be a very long answer, as I have way too many ideas rattling around between my ears. To make it short, I want UO to be more about having fun and player skill, and less about collecting “stuff” so you can pwn everything in sight with no risk. While finding, creating and otherwise obtaining items is part of the game, and shouldn’t go away completely, I think we need to shift the focus away from that a bit, and train that focus on some of the things that make UO so unique.

13) Has there been any further thought towards adding the possibility of tokuno dyes to the Serado champ spawn?

Not to my knowledge. That sounds like one of those things that’s considered “nice to do”, but hasn’t quite percolated to the top of the list yet.

14) If you could fix/add one thing in the game, what would it be?

Besides balanced, less-item based combat? Hmm… how about brewing and winemaking as a mixture between cooking and alchemy? I can think of some fun stuff we could do with a system like that. Grow your own grapes, barley, figure out the right fermentation time, etc.

15) If the counselors are brought back, will there be open applications?

I don’t think anyone has thought that far ahead, but I don’t see how we could do it any other way.

16) Any word if our EM's are returning? If so, is there a tentative date?

Yes, they are returning! Soon, I promise

Interesting...


I was happy to hear a few things, like that he isnt happy with PvP and that he does infact Pvp and does notice the unbalance it has right now. But as for the counselors, I was hoping it wouldnt be too long till they were brought back into the picture, but seeing his reply, I am guessing they wont be returning anytime soon. I am happy that those questions were answered, alot of them I had in my head, wondering all the time, but some of them are cleared up. I have no doubt in the Team itself, but In my opinion:

UO is expanding drastically, which is a good thing. Its a very good thing. But the fact is, that with the expansions, the main priority and balancing has been those new additions in each expansion. Making the older base of the game, being pushed back and put to the side to be attended later. Its hard to explain, but in the end I think that pushing balancing off in whole,(worying about the expansions and new additions first), and and starting from the front to the back and not the back to the front, things got put aside and messed up. Its a difficult feeling to put into words, and I have nothing but confidence in the UO team as ive said above..... But perhaps there shouldnt be any more expansions or additions until everything is all balanced and "comfortable" again.

Thats my personal opinion.

Great Interview, really good.

Thankyou wilki for taking the time to answer the questions!

Nice interview, I know the answer to the Event Moderator question and the answer to that is in April

As for the winemaking and brewing, I like that idea but we need to give our gardners the abilities to grow things such as grapes, barley and etc. for the ingredients to brew this stuff and make. Just need to get him on now so we can have an audio interview to go along with that

It's good to know wilki and other EA staff are active in our community. That was a good interview.

I enjoyed the stright answer's myself. I had always wanted to know if the flams at stratics got in the way or not. As to making beer and ale, I love that idea and hope they will.

Thank you for taking the time to visit with us Wilki.

It's great to get feedback from someone, thanks Wilki, even though I know you are the one that controls ______ after I've killed it too many times as I sit back with my EV's doing the work or out of range with arrows or with high parry/weapon skill so I won't be touched, and you decide enough's enough so you throw the RNG out the door and it will hit me everytime with multiple attacks including bleed/poison and cause my spells to fizzle/bandies to slip at the precise moment to cause me to meet my demise, bittersweet justice, I don't blame you.

Hi, Thradia, Wilki, and hosts at uoforums.

First, thanks for doing and presenting the well done interview.

To Wilki, I have a question:

You mentioned that you chose not to adapt to skill scroll, stat scroll and item changes over the last half decade. In my opinion that makes you unqualified to take what we have away because you didn't invest the time into adapting. So I put forth the following.

You mentioned that you do not currently like pvp because it has near-instant death and is so item based and what you consider to be lack of skill based model.

I would submit to you that this is not necessarily this but rather that the difference between GM or medium gear and GM or max-scrolled skills and stats is so great.

Put me in an all-40 resist suit, and my best character can't survive pvp against a decked out, scrolled out player. Put me in a decent suit and matching powerscrolls, and now it becomes a match of skills.

Rather than focusing so much on bringing down existing items, you should consider bringing up crafted gear and making at least +10 power scrolls a thing of the past and increase non-PS caps to 110 and non-PS stats to 240.

Then just convert +5 skill scrolls to 2k checks and +10 skill scrolls to 10k checks and convert the higher level ones to the new equivalent.

Let smiths craft 65/59/59/59/59 suits with a few mods without needing special ingredients.

Let tailors craft 60/55/55/55/55 suits with a different mods and no special ingredients.

Leave carpenters like they are since they currently have the best armor they can craft.

I put a 90.1 skill swordsman in a nice suit a few weeks ago and was able to fight a 120 skill warrior without a problem. Then I took the suit off and had no chance because I started taking 60 to 70 damage a hit (talon bite concussions with spell effect if I remember correctly).

The suit made it viable, so just let us all make good suits and skill caps easily.