Credit is given to El of LA from Stratics for pulling all this information from the threads. I hadn't the patience for it

~~~~~

Comment: . . . I had 3 legit questions waiting and the post "will we ever get to mount sheep"? was asked istead of my real questions.

I wanna know if the stable bug was identified and if the bugged pets will be fixed but i guess sheep mounting takes priority with the question takers .

Wilki: No, sheep mounting was a funny end question, as we were out of time.

I'm sorry you guys didn't find the chat very informative, but we try to be as specific as possible without "promising" things that may or may not happen. Unfortunately, even if we say "that may or may not happen", in a month, we're being screamed at "YOU PROMISED US! YOU SUCK!", so until we've got set plans, we generally don't talk specifics.

The general plan is PvP/Combat as the big focus, along with a couple of other cool projects that I'd be chained up and thrown in a closet if I said anything about coming along.

Factions are also on the radar, but that's not beyond the "what if?" point right now, and isn't penciled in anywhere yet.

Really, most of the things we're asked, we've talked about, and would like to do, but there is a limited amount of time, so we have to pick and choose among all of the good ideas.

Also, there are a lot of questions that we don't get to see, since there are 150-200ish of you, and just a few of us.

If you want, ask away in here, and I'll try and answer best as I can.

Comment: Did you guys track down what was causing the stable bug issue with pets loosing their Hp?

Wilki: Yes, that info is in the patch message. Basically, it's caused by stabling pets that are under stat changing spells.

Comment: also are there plans to unerf legacy pets to get them to ML standards as far as survivability?

Wilki: Not at the moment, no.

Comment: Not being too critical, but these are the sort of comments that really rouse ire. There are too many carrots being waved in front of us like talk of secret projects and "something the vets will love", etc. These statements actually are counterproductive because we already know that you guys are doing the best to deliver enjoyable content.

Wilki: Well, unlike some previous things *cough*, these are nearly certain to be seen soon.

Comment: Anyway, I asked a question about a year ago about the possibility of actually seeing fame, karma, and (not at the time) virtue points gained and lost. The "you have gained a lot of fame", "you have lost a lot of fame" is not as informative as it is like it is for someone to check their murder counts.

Wilki: Yes, the status bar is a bit... wasteful in screen real estate at the moment. Right now, ti'd be hard to add even more information to it, but if that ever changes, then adding more info would be a possibility.

Though, on a theoretical level, doesn't seeing all these stats and such as pure numbers kind of take away from the "atmosphere" of the game?

What's better, "vanquishing" or "37% damage increase"?

Or should it be hidden and uncovered with Item ID, perhaps?

Comment: I also asked if they were planning on unchaining the Grimm Omen and letting him fix alot of the bad art that has come to pass.

Wilki: Yes! It was too bad that he and MrTact aren't here today, as they'd have had some cool answers for you. Unfortunately, I really don't know much about art plans, so I can't tell you anything other than they are working on it right now.

Comment: But....since you asked for it.....some questions that I feel need answered:

1. What possible reason is there for party bars to disappear when you die. In 2d, why on EARTH do party bars jump all over the board when someone joins/quits the party? Why is THIS not a PRIORITY, as it adversely affects the gameplay of EVERY PERSON who plays in 2d?

2. Why on earth are pet health bars not sticky? Will they ever be sticky?

3. Why does a 3rd party program (UO Assist) for the most part have a BETTER interface than UO does? When is UO going to incorporate the BASIC macros and hot keys that UOA has into the game we pay for rather than essentially force players to purchase a 3rd party program, which may or may be supported downstream?

4. When will other crafters be able to enhance items in the same fashion fletchers can now enhance bows? When will OLD armor be able to be enhanced the same way the NEW clothing can be?

5. If ya'll actually have PLANS about what you intend to do in the future (and, I'm sure you do, as code doesn't magically appear in the game; it has to be written, and that takes TIME) why the secrecy as to what is planned? (If the answer is that "plans change," why is that? TIMETABLES may change, but "plans" generally SHOULDN'T, should they?) If the PLAN is to, say, fix party bars, then....tell us that it is planned to be done, what publish it is planned to be done in, but with the warning that the TIMETABLE may change.... I fail to see the difficulty with that. We hear "it's on the radar" for so many things that it utterly has no meaning (well, it does, really...to US, it means that you're not planning anything, but don't want to say that.)

6. Why are SIGNIFICANT combat changes, whether to critters or players, made without ANY significant testing? For example: FC/FC recovery to necromancers. The stealth changes (revealing/damaging--Wither STILL doesn't affect stealthers). Fire and Forget. The changes to high end critters (such as the blood oathing necro critters.... These changes almost ALWAYS require that there be tweaking later, and almost ALWAYS cause complaints until they ARE fixed.

7. Edited.....and WHY can't anything be done about people using SpeederXP and/or the use of 3rd party programs?

8. Edited....and WHY can't we do anything about the scripters that mass enormous fortunes while AFK while those who play by the rules have to sweat out each swing of the pick axe?

Just my questions....

Wilki: 1. When you die, your character undergoes a very quick change. To the client, it's as if you disappeared, and were instantly replaced with something else (your ghost). Same thing when you cross servers lines, etc. That's why the bar goes away. Not sure about the jumping bars.

2. See the answer for #1. FWIW, fixing all types of bars is my pet peeve client issue, so I promise to keep nagging about them :-)

3. Because it was created after the client, quite honestly. A better question would be, "Why haven't you added those features to the client?", to that I don't know why not over all of these years. I'd love to see it happen though.

4. I don't know.

5. I used to think the same way, but having been here a year, I see why things are done this way. Things are a lot more fluid behind the scenes than you might think, with last minute decisions being made all the time, and resources getting shifted around as needed. Sometimes something we really want to do turns out, after a bunch of planning, to be a much larger resource black hole than we thought it would be, so we either have to scale down in scope, or pick something else to do. Things change, and it's been decided that we generally won't give specifics about something until we're nearly sure it's going to happen that way.

6. Good point, which is why we have a PvP test shard up now, and put the Siege PBD fixes up early as well, before we're actually done implementing pub38. In other words, we're trying to change that bad habit.

7 and 8. When we catch people, we take action. And there are a fair number of accounts that are closed each week, so "nothing" isn't the correct term. Can we catch everyone? Unfortunately not, but on the other hand, a lot of perceived cheating that is reported is actually not what it appears to be to other players.

I'll answer more questions tomorrow.

Comment: Whats happening (or isnt) about additional vet rewards by the end of the year?

Wilki:Nothing by the end of the year.

Comment: Can anything be done to "un-nerf" the new crafting quest just a little bit.

Wilki: I've brought this concern up with the design team, but as of right now, they have no plans to adjust it.

That said, crafting is one of the things we're going to focus on next year, so I'd suspect we'll take a hard look at all of the various systems and try to balance them a bit better as far as the usefulness of the rewards.

Comment: Why did y'all revert the hunger scale?

Wilki: Cause it was the quick way to solve the problem. We're going to adjust that so it works as intended.

Comment: Are you ever going to put wooden bowls on NPC vendors? (used to craft the new Fruit Bowl)

Wilki: I have no clue. But I'll pass that on to a designer.

Comment: Are we going to see any new quests or quest improvements before the next expansion? Are there any plans to impliment further quests anywhere? Especially in places other than the elf city.

Wilki: Yes. :-)

Comment: Are the devs at least aware of the issues surrounding STEALTH?

Wilki: Yes, and they'll be looked at in the combat/PvP changes.

Feel free to email me with your thoughts on what you think we should do: wilki@uo.com.

Comment: wilky posts on average one post a day

Wilki: I've worked at EA for 457 days, and I have 1861 posts. That's just a hair over 4 posts per day, including days I'm not working.

To the UOA issue: Its a fantastic program at a very low cost-to-benefit ratio. with the upgrade isues that arose with ML (users should know to the wierdness Im referring) addition to the client now seems like a good idea, but when it was workin champion styl, let Tugs make their cash and enjoy the prog...

To the "Wooden Bowl" thing: Dont you just buy a "bowl of *insert food here*" and you get the bowl after consumption?

Go buy a few "bowls of *insert food here*"... see how many you can eat before you're too full