From Sept 8th to Sept 12th,
<a href="http://www.llts.org">The Syndicate</a> held its 4th annual guild conference. This year it took
place in Myrtle Beach, SC (barely escaping town before Hurricane Ophelia
passed close by on that Tuesday) and was attended by more than 130
members. In addition, Wilki and Mr. Tact were present representing EA
and specifically, UO.

Since more than 225 of The Syndicate's 550+ guildmembers are active in
UO, it remains a major focus of the guild's. Mondains Legacy, in our
view, is a hugely successful and much needed expansion for the game and
we feel it has reviatalized and grown the UO community. We have seen
our member participation in game skyrocket and the affects are clearly
seen at banks around our home shard of Atlantic. We were extremely
pleased to be able to welcome Wilki and Mr. Tact to our event both to
celebrate the success of the launch and hopefully have a positive
affect, for the whole community, on the future of UO.

The centerpiece of our conference was our large guild meeting where,
besides internal guild business for the past and coming year, Mr Tact
was coerced into speaking. He is an excellent speaker who has the
skill to be able to say "I cant answer that" without upsetting the
speaker. We presented him with a 3 page list of ideas and suggestions
(and a few bugs) for the betterment of UO that were assembled from our
members and from talking to active people in the overall community. Mr.
Tact spoke to many of those concerns and to the future of UO.

Among the things he covered with us were:
<ul>
<li>In his view, EA remains very committed to UO perhaps even stronger
these days than not too long ago given some recent very strong
indicators that the MMO market is alive, well and growing to new heights.
<li>He feels that UO is going to be around for some years to come and
that EA has a good grasp on the direction they are taking it.
<li>He was very open and honest about the loss of some recent personnel
and how that did have an impact but it was that honesty that also led us
to believe him when he commented on the outstanding new people being
brought on board. His confidence in UO and EA seemed genuine to us and
we really got a warm feeling about UO's future.
<li>He did address a question on the next expansion and how plans had
shifted some lately. He made the observation that UO is very good at
attracting new players but its harder to retain them given UO is
somewhat challenging for new people to learn. He expressed EAs
commitment, in the near term, to breaking down those barriers and
increasing retention of new players. That is good news, in our view,
since fresh blood in the community, that stays in the community, can
only benefit us all.
<li>One of the specific things that seems likely to be done to help new
players was going to be to use the quest engine to walk them through the
basics of the game that we veteran players take for granted. The quest
engine is the perfect tool to build game knowledge through a series of
easy quests that add to each other. It might begin by getting the tool
to harvest resources and then lead them to the resource area and then
have them harvest and ultimately end in creation of an item.
<li>I didnt know begging (lots and lots of begging) was supposed to have
a chance to get you higher end recipes from elves.
</ul>

Mr Tact and Wilki took hours of questions, feedback, ideas and even
complaints throughout the weekend. They were great sports about it and
commented that the weekend was really useful for them because it allowed
conversations to go on over hours or days and really get to the root of
players ideas or concerns which is something that cant happen at a
luncheon. Tact carries around one of those old black and white covered
notebooks that kids use in grade school and takes copious notes. He
draws pictures, scribbles half sentences or full paragraphs to document
things he feels are important. He takes emails to check out bugs and
clearly takes his role as a developer seriously. Wilki is what you
would expect of "the" community guy. Everyone likes Wilki. Everyone
feels comfortable telling him the good, bad and ugly. He listens to
everyone and is able to recount the details of what you talked about the
next day or 3 days later or in emails after the fact. And he seems to
know everything about everything. He is definitely the right man to be
in the role he is in.

The weekend, however, wasn't all round tables and meetings and feedback
sessions. There was certainly fun and games to be had in between those
formal events. We have a huge paintball event (where Tact and I raided
the local Walmart for cammo doing a mutual really bad impersonation of a
weekend warrior).. we raided the local Nascar raceway (where im positive
the dev's tried to kill me more than once).. had a big cookout on the
beach.. and raided the hottub until they closed us down each night.
Yes, we really did feed them.. I know, I know, they say dont feed the
developers after midnight but... http://www.llts.org/MrTandWilki.jpg

It was an amazing time and UO (and specifically Mondain's Legacy and
where UO will go from here) featured heavily in the weekend. Everyone
had a pet idea or feature they felt would help keep UO strong for years.
Tact and Wilki are masters are pulling ideas out of people and getting
them to think through ideas in the context of what can/cannot work in
UO. Although we never did get a clear answer to this why: When exactly
will you let mages res pets?

Thank you again to Mr Tact and Wilki for attending. Thank you to Binky
and EA for approving them to come. We are looking forward to our 10th
annivesary as a guild and our 5th World Conference in 2006. Hopefully
we will all be talking about the next big expansion in UO and what is in
store for years to come!