Various interesting things surfaced across on Stratics - I'll hide the spoilers WAY down the post, since I know they upset people and I want to make sure they have every chance to avoid them if they don't want to see them - but from a couple of posts in U Hall, including some from Draconi, this Halloween's events are going to be much more important than usual, and I'm fairly sure some of us want to be ready - so, plenty of space first to keep the information reasonably difficult to 'stumble' on.
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OK, think that's enough space... to summarise, Ultima 'history' is coming back with a vengance, in a way UO lore fans may find excellent news (I certainly do!) - Demons are going to destroy Magincia. The really interesting bit - Draconi's dropping pretty clear hints that the destruction will be PERMANENT...


The post on the testing starts :

Halloween 2007 Events Testing !
Jeremy Dalberg 12 Oct 2007 21:03:35 EST
Hello everyone, and welcome to our annual testing cycle for our Halloween events! Over the years we’ve had many an opportunity to capture your sweet tooths with tantalizing treats and shiver your spines with terrifying tricks, but this year, ah this year – we have something special indeed.

There will be an invasion, of course, and tricks and treats and all things between. There will be a Shard of the Dead, and live events on your own home shards. But beyond that, we’ve prepared something that will shake the foundations of Britannia to the very core. Hyperbole aside, we will place in your hands a task of momentous importance: one to lose at your shard’s peril.

But enough with words. Let the testing commence! Allow me to describe our initial slate of activities:

“TC1” will be immediately renamed to “Halloween 2007” and published with our initial testing materials
Daemon Invasion of Magincia
Travel to Magincia by Moongate and other magical means will be disabled
Players logging back into Magincia for the first time since the publish will be teleported to safety in Trinsic
Travel to Magincia will only be available by ship, or by “sailing” with the military at the Trinsic docks to aid in the advancing invasion
New monsters, new rewards
There will not be a client publish until next week, please do not report “Cliloc” errors when text is missing
There may be higher than usual lag in Magincia for the duration of our tests.
Count Draconula will be making appearances throughout the testing period, and also providing more information as testing advances.

“Velcome!” – Count Draconula

Following that, amongst other things, in the 'Leave Magincia destroyed' thread, Skrag asked

"As I'm sure Draconi is aware, the destruction of Magincia by demons for it's prideful ways is part of the old-school Ultima lore. When Magincia first appeared in Ultima IV (1985), it was as a wrecked city full of lost souls and undead.

Having Magincia permanently destroyed in UO would be a nice way of bringing some Ultima continuity into the game. It would let us "be there" for an event we first heard about twenty-odd years ago.

Plus, I mean, come on. If anything, we have too many cities. We can afford to lose one. After the event is over, make Magincia look all wrecked and put some spawn in there. A few liches, a few daemons, a smattering of lesser junk. Maybe a balron somewhere in the middle.

Draconi's answer? "OK"





For the full info on what we 'know' now, read these two threads on U Hall -I've linked to show all the posts in the threads, so these may be long pages, as you'll appreciate, there's a LOT of comment on this! :

News : Halloween 2007 Events Testing

http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/u...what2=postlist

Devs: Leave Magincia destroyed forever.

http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/u...5&o=31&fpart=1

Thanks for sharing!

Glad to hear they're shaking things up, hope stuff like this continues.

Does destroying Magincia also remove our chance to get the cloak of Humility from Gareth the Emissary quest?

*slaps forehead*

ooooooh scary

Destroying magnicia? Wouldn't that kinda hurt the RP guild of magnicia on europe? Would kinda suck to have to move town because yours got sacked by daemons?

Would make for some good RP though.

Luckily we dont actually have a guild that is based in Magincia presently.

Its a close call though as there have been one or two 'claims' in this past 12 mths.

Reading about the people having an impact on their shard. Perhaps the destruction depends on player involvement?