The first snow in Northern Virginia falls and we look forward to making plans for the holidays and the New Year.

So what are the plans for Ultima Online?

What we’ve learned since the Town Hall this summer is that as the game matures so do the ways in which we can communicate with you the community of Ultima Online. That is one reason we did a streaming video dev chat (and will continue to do them). 

We are also putting together a video developer’s diary where you will meet different members of the team who will share our plans for the coming calendar year. Expect this at beginning of the year.

In the short term I’d like to share some quick updates about server status and Publish 69.

Right now we are doing our best to solve some of the lag and downtimes for our more remote servers. (Remote means those not handled from the West or East Coast). Specifically for Wakoku and Oceania we have had some consistently dedicated net engineers working to solve the problems with lag and downtime.  We will keep you updated through the holidays, as we want you to enjoy all the work we put into the most recent publish.

The scope, content, and depth of publish 69 was planned weeks before High Seas was finished. We took many items from dev questions and House of Commons as well as some well-founded features from the boards. In short, we listened and did our best to answer as much as we could in the weeks we had to commit to the publish.

We also knew we needed to respond to veteran rewards, holidays, and deliver on more content for Stygian Abyss.

The goal for publish 69 was to end the calendar year with something we do best: “focus on the game and only the game.”  We know historically during expansion years the live game gets neglected. This year we tried a bit more balance with more publishes geared toward the nuts and bolts of the game rather than constantly expanding. Publish 69 is the result of that kind of focus.

In short, we’ve been going full throttle into a headwind for six months and are pooped.

We will be working from the warmth and security of our homes for the next couple of weeks. Event Moderators and Mesanna will continue “eventing.” And we will continue to monitor the forums and the shards, but we’re taking a much-needed break.

However … before that …

I wanted to extend a huge thank you to the players in Japan who came out in waves while Mesanna and I were there for shard events. Why were we there?? Firstly, because Japan is a significant part of our Ultima Online community. And secondly … to work on improving our hardware and infrastructure there.  There will be more info on that in our video dev diary.

I want to thank the player who sent the wonderful “fish” reference books and High Seas black long-sleeve custom shirts while we were there. They are amazing!

Too bad I can’t read kanji!

Finally, I want to thank everyone who has sent notes of encouragement to the team and myself over the last few months.  I’ve gotten to know a few of you as we’ve worked together to solve everything from account age, game store, locked boats … you get the idea. I like helping to solve problems, and I appreciate you, the community, granting us, the team,  the grace and privilege of working on the game with the most depth and promise of any other MMO before or since.

An offering of best wishes to you and yours into the New Year …

- C