UO NEWS AND WHIRLED REPORT - SPECIAL SELF-PROMOTIONAL ISSUE [Author: Arcadian Del Sol]

Page One: Morganstern and Rosencrantz are archers

Which basically means, they are dead. Why? Because archery sucks, duh. They are not mages and they are not fighters. What they are, are “meat shields” whose sole purpose is to soak up swordplay and spellduggery while the rest of your guild goes in for the actual kill. By battle’s end, you usually have one or two victorious fighters and mages, and a herd of archer-ghosts OOoOoOoing for a ressurection. The Irony is that during the beta for Ultima Online, archery was considered THE UBER combat skill and it indeed dominated the landscape. News Flash: Archers kicked a lot of ass all over Northern and Southern Europe, too. Just ask the Moors. Archery is SUPPOSED to kick a lot of ass. Yet in Ultima Online they are about as effective as taking a dachshund to a dog race. And archers are getting tired of all the disrespect.

Several “Archer Protest Threads” have cropped up on uo.com over the past few months, and one by one, faded away. Not because people didn’t care or stopped posting, but because the ability to continue posting had been denied. So they would start a new one. I’d link you to the latest one right now, but then that would only serve to have it locked down sooner rather than later. Head on over to the boards at UO.com and take a peek.

My advice to archers? Obviously you are wasting breath if your threads are being locked and your questions go unanswered. Look at it this way: Things could be alot worse. You could be blacksmiths.

Note: At presstime, the thread I had been following was mysteriously gone, or I just cannot see it anymore(goddammed solar eclipse). If anybody finds one and posts it, I’ll add it here. For now, you’ll just have to assume I’m making all of this up.

Page Two: Orcs protest – RolePlayers need better AI

I recently was fortunate enough to interview one of the leaders of the newly organized Orc Faction in Sosaria. Some interesting tidbits were learned during my stay, and with the help of a translator, I offer a few quotes:

On class imbalance…

“Well for the longest time OSI just ignored us. It was pretty boring being continually killed by two Young players as soon as you spawn. I mean, imagine how frustrating it is to watch your “Entering Britannia…” prompt and then have about four seconds before you are killed by some kid who bought the game two hours ago. Even our mages were complaining. I mean come on, two nightshade and a spidersilk? What kind of spellcasting is THAT? Give me a F*cking break.”

On lack of support…

“Did you know that no orcs can use the in-game help system? That’s right. I mean hell, our language is practically Hindi. If anybody should be able to communicate with a Counselor, it would be us orcs. But no, we get camped by RolePKayers (thats what we call roleplayers) all hours of the day, rez killing us and taking our loot. But can we get any help from Support? PUH-LEEZ.”

On RolePlayer AI…

“When Calandryll started talking about adding new items and skills for us Orcs to use, naturally we were pretty damned happy – about f*cking time, y’know? So what happens? As soon as our new skills go “live”, we try to use them against the RolePKayers and *bam* we get dropped by two spells from a journeyman mage on an invisible horse. WE DONT EVEN HAVE TIME TO USE OUR NEW MASKS, YO! We even know where the RolePKayer spawn points are: at all the orc forts. So we go to the orc forts to wait for the RolePKayer respawn, and every single time it is the same tactics and the same “FireFootie Attack!” and *ROAR* three dragons wipe out our whole party. We complained to OSI about how idiotic and retarded the RolePKayer AI was, and they said, “Sorry I cannot be helping thee beddy beddy muchly.” So I called a GM and you know what that GM said? He said, “Go spawn somewhere else.” I mean, it’s like, the only place we can actually login and PLAY anymore is inside town – so I guess that is where we have to play now.”

And that appears to be what the orcs have done. Reports on all shards are that orcs are now “playing” in towns and have been laying waste to bank thieves who dont even steal from them, and the guards seem like they dont even care. If you ask me, the Guards AI is about as broken as the “rolePKayer” AI.

Page Three: Four years is TOO LONG to wait for a cool hat.

In the Super Deluxe Double Turbo Rowan Enhanced Ultima Online E-Mail Distribution Joy Luck Club, we were treated to a peek at the proposed 4th year Vet Rewards. They are quite the cool and include “theme sets” for home decorations such as halloween, gardener’s delight, and barkeep’s uhm….barkeeping stuffs.

However all of that pales in comparison to the following:

My hat has a big-ass feather. Top that, OSI.

Page Four: I dunno – I usually have four pages but really this time I only have three, so I’ll probably post a picture of kittens just to fill space.

Wtf! My rune is bl0xx0rred!