980419 - Today I will tell you a little secret, Sosaria is not a sphere, but it is a torus. How do I know that? Well if you look at the cloth map that came with the game, you see that it's graded 360 degrees in both directions. A sphere is 360 is one and 180 in the other (this is advanced math - figure out why if you can). But Sosaria is 360 degrees in both directions; those are the properties of a torus. To actually prove this you would need to know some advanced differential geometry, so you better take my word for it, or start reading up on those post-grad classes in math. Anyway, this results in a situation where you get lag when you cross from boundary to another, what else is new in UO? I tell you this since I finally went out on a long trip with my ship "The Fashion Plate" and after killing a dozen water elementals, a score of harpies and countless stupid mongbats finally decided to dock the ship outside my main office. That proved quite difficult. Not the docking as such, but maneuvering the ship into the narrow channel that leads there, since the delta ends to the north with a - yes - server boundary. I had to write a lot of scrolls today too; my time was very limited indeed. I also need to mark up more runes, there's been a sudden craze in escorting, and people can be seen herding huge hordes of escorts, spamming and lagging everybody as they go along. So maybe I do equally well out on the big open waters? I enclose a small picture of my large dragon ship my utterly brain-dead tiller-man and me. Ah by the way, let's edit the tiller-man away. Enjoy.

980418 - I really did very little today. Reading the chat log from the open meeting made me slap my forehead. Off-topic and irrelevant questions got a lot of attention, while the pertinent questions got more or less ignored. Ah well, that was expected really. Now, I'm glad that Samwise have gotten some positive feedback on his strike, you can use the link I included in yesterdays entry to read an update on the situation. In the game I picked up a few escorts, replenished my vendors, but mostly I stood in Vesper town square chatting with people. I notice that there are a lot of hot tempers flowing, just listening to players cursing each other for minutes and minutes. Now this is a clear sign that something has gone dead wrong with UO, I've seen some heated controversies in other MUDs. But never have a seen a game where the majority of the players seems to feel so frustrated that they are willing to take out their aggressions on anybody passing by for any odd reason. As I said, this is not working out at all, it's simply not an enjoyable game anymore on the whole, despite the fact that I do meet some really interesting people from time to time. Oh, by the way, despite all manners of shoddy patching and false promises it would be fixed, my guild stone is still not working correctly... One more thing, and the last time I say it in a friendly manner. I'm not dead yet; premature requests for my "estate of the deceased" will only serve get me in a bad mood and result in getting nothing at all.

Now this is not a random decision of course, as in all things I do I carefully analyze the situation. As a small guide to the clueless out there, I will list the arguments on how I did choose this, it might come as some enlightenment after all to some of you.

• Concept. Order and stability is good for business. Chaos makes you business more interesting and lucrative. Winner : *none*
• Order Master. Lord British is a dork, both in appearance and in concept, but his controller (Richard Garriot) doesn't look so bad. Lord Blackthorn is very sharp looking and neat in every way but his controller... 'Nuff said. Winner : *none*
• Shield Performance. A Chaos Shield gives you a slightly better armor rating. Against this I say "Like I care..." Winner : *none* (This one is a good lesson for all you power-gamers out there)
• Followers or "The guilt by association factor". All Order guards are idiots. All Chaos guards are idiots. Winner: *none* (And, hey, now I'm one myself...)
• Shield Appearance. The Chaos shield matches the colors of my outfit better. Winner: Chaos.

980416 - After restocking my shop today, I did a little escorting. There are two ways of picking up escorts, the smart way and brute force. The smart way is to go to the local billboard at an inn or tavern and read just who wants to be escorted where, and where he is, and then go and pick him up nice and easy. The brute force way is using a yell macro "I will take thee" and run through town picking up everything like a huge vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately most lamers use the latter method, but there are a few places and cities where the former method works better. No I will not tell you where, I like those spots for myself, thank you very much. Even when you are careful, you sometimes pick up someone unwanted. Today I got an evil mage who wanted to go to Buccaneer's Den. After thinking about it for a while I took him outside town instead and killed him. An NPC mage can fight back, be warned about it, but of course he's no match for a Grandmaster mage like me. After that I wore his robe and sandals for a while, it's hilariously confusing when I go into a mage shop dressed like that. I even have a few macros prepared for the unwary and clueless, and am apt to respond their "Vendor buy" with "Thou art giving me a headache. I am not interested in this". I also met my old friend Balata in Skara Brae, it was nice seeing him again. When I visited Vesper to drop off some escort, a clever person had found a way of dying things pitch black. It looked really neat, but he was asking for tremendous prices for the items. I got a nice screen shot of some people in black however, I'm the "mage" in the blue robe of course. Look at those black clothes, the woman to the left of me is Magenta, by the way. The fellow on the horse is putting a real good question to the audience, but I didn't bet any money on it however....

Then I decided to go out and hunt for a while. My normal hunting ground is always totally empty nowadays, all the monsters are locked in houses. But the plain west of Covetous was nice. I found a grizzly bear and a headless. I also got attacked by a snake who poisoned me from half a screen away???!!! It wasn't even close by when it happened, there's another bug I suppose. Needless to say I cured myself instantly and all was well, but anyway. I then prowled the nearby swamp for a while, when I suddenly got assaulted by a huge war party of lizard men, 6 or 7 of them, all attacking me. My first chain lightning ripped through them, hurting me a little too, but I was confident to take them out since I can heal myself opposed to the lizard men. But then two rather newbie warriors stopped by, going "wow" and "can we help". Since I couldn't use any nifty area attacks when they were nearby anyway, I graciously invited them to help in the slaughter. I managed to run around, equipping bow and arrow, separating out 4 of lizard men leaving a few for the warriors to fight. After my mana was regenerated I energy bolted the lizard men to death, and then came back to help the warriors. That's rather tough of them, taking on several lizard men with a rather new character, and, yes, they got hurt. But of course Aunt Sandralene's healing spells kept them alive, and they could score a few nice kills on the reptiles. I left them the loot, thanked them for their assistance (even though they actually got in my way), and recalled back home content. Naturally, being a fashion queen and everything I must keep up with fashion myself...

980415 - I spent some time today looking at the new death animations that had been put in. Nice, but not vital to the game I'd say. I'm sure glad they managed to fix that guild stone spamming and that stupid non-existent discount on prices. The first one was annoying and the second one was confusing, but the problems with that seem to be solved, knock on wood. I also spent some time today running around with escorts. I really didn't intend to do it on a large scale but one "I will take thee", yelled in the wrong spot accidentally attracted half a dozen NPCs. And then when I delivered them one by one to their destinations and tried to get the rest to continue following me I accidentally managed to attract more of them at two occasions. It was quite a menagerie of people I guided around, I tried to make it as little painful to others as I could, I really hate it myself when people are running around with huge crowds of escorts, blocking and hindering and lagging everybody else. I managed to deliver them all eventually, making a tidy profit in the process, except one evil healer. I had no idea where he wanted to go; my notes were incomplete, so I led him just outside Magincia and killed him. Maybe I could write a macro where I say "I will take thee" and "outside town and kill thee" on the next line for all those evil NPCs? I think I could make them follow me to their deaths anyway, the intelligence level of the NPCs is not too great. It's not AI; rather it's AS (Artificial Stupidity). Anyway, that's another authentic evil healer outfit for my collection. Speaking of collections, a kind player donated another crystal ball to me, I have quite a number of them now on display in my tower. I also had to write a lot of scrolls. This patch-induced vendor craze actually helped my business a lot. I sold many, many items thanks to the fact that everybody was running around trying to buy someone's house key. My bank account is now large enough to buy a second tower if I should feel like doing so, but the house-limit that will be forced upon us makes me refrain from any more real estate purchases right now. Another effect of this bug-ridden patch seems to be that magic weapons might become much scarcer in the future, maybe it's time to mark up my prices?

980414 - Now that was one large patch, that #32, around 650 k. Surely there must be many positive things with such a fine piece of work from OSI? Nah, that was all sarcasm. To be fair, although I'm not sure you should be fair to OSI anymore, they don't deserve it and life isn't fair anyway, there is one thing that looks better, and that's the spell book that can be equipped. It looks like this on your paper doll, and even looks rather cute and fashionable on your avatar

But that was the only positive effect I've seen so far, now for the negative things with the patch. First of all, the guild stones are even more messed up than before. I got repeat messages about persons resigning from my guild who had never been in my guild in the first place. Every such message froze me for about 5-10 seconds, sometimes longer. Now after the 50th such meaningless and potential harmful message I do get a bit annoyed. Secondly, the discount for Great Lords / Ladies seem to be in effect, and also very bugged. It's completely incomprehensible. The shopkeepers say I get a certain percentage discount on their inventory, and the discounted prices show up on their sales list. But when the deal is closed they charge me just as much as normal. It's tremendously difficult to find out just how much you are shopping for before actual sale. Bugs, bugs, bugs. Despite this I had plenty to do with my shop. Yes I had remembered to arrange items so none was "not for sale", but I suppose a lot of persons lost their house keys in this manner. It's not very nice to institute this kind of change during a major holiday.

When I came back from marking in Serpent's Hold (yes I marked all over creation today) to my shop I was greeted by a nasty sight. A fire field lit up my rose garden and front lawn; a dead mage's corpse on the ground, and nearby a guard paced back and forth. I quickly picked up the person's items and stuffed them all in a single bag. Indeed, a few minutes later the person, a novice mage, came back very worried wearing nothing but an unfashionable death robe, sighing heavily when he saw his looted body. But the same person was overjoyed when he got everything back from me. Of course he got a little lecture about fire fielding my garden, and some other good advice about casting spells in town, but I think YpsY (the person's name) seemed very, very happy and surprised about getting all his things back. Is generosity and compassion really that rare in UO? It has become a sad game if it is. I have to admit though, his bag of reagents was very tempting, but I resisted that feeling, it's not becoming of a Great Lady to loot others.

980411 - Before going on my vacation I made sure that my vendors were filled up. In the process of replenishing the stock, I manufactured two more of my Island Hopping kits. While doing so, I visited Moonglow, and came to pass The Church of the Black Sun just before Tarrant was to make one of his appearances. Naturally, I became a bit curios on his teachings and decide to attend the meeting. After a few minutes Tarrant arrived with his famous staff of Draining which is said to be able to obliterate magical objects out of existence. After a short lecture on the creed of the Church of the Black Sun, the meeting led to a philosophical discussion on magic and it's advantages, shortcomings and the best method of teaching magic to others. The discussion was mainly on the topic of ethics. Now why are bards so loudmouthed, I'm only asking? Anyway, eventually I completed the kits, and went out to hunt a bit. The terrain was barren, not until I got down to the swamp west of the plains to the west of Covetous did I find anything. Rat men and lizard men spawned like crazy down there. One brave but foolhardy warrior tried to take on multiple applications of those at the same time he was fighting a giant snake. It proved too much on him, despite my best efforts to heal him. I got to resurrect him afterwards though, and he got all his belongings back. I also met a Dread Lady Elf, Boromir, down there, and for once I had a pleasant conversation with a Dread. It's nice when you have more to say to each other than Corp Por ad nauseam. She turned out to be one of the elves living in the hedge maze, I've met some of them before when I visited there. My title went up to Grand Master while refilling my vendors, but dropped again while out hunting. That Grand Master Mage title is sure difficult to hang on to, if it's due to inscribing. Today's little picture is from the meeting in Moonglow with Tarrant lecturing. That blue staff sure is fashionable...

980410 - On Good Friday, there's little business to be done. My vendors are open as always of course, but sales were rather slow. If it were possible I'd give them the holiday off, since I will be taking a few days off myself. There were a lot of players in Wind today, all of them using blade spirits. You really have to mind your steps when there are rotating mixers everywhere. Due do the number of players, I didn't do very much, except got chased by a drake for a while. Well, I did help to kill a couple of liches, and I returned home with two new nice crystal balls for my collection, that other Lords and Ladies generously donated to me. I enclose a picture today with part of my collection, it's so large I can't fit them all into one place anymore. One detail though, I also spent a while inscribing, not the usual scrolls, but rather a hundred times "I will not go to Wind carrying my entire set of house keys". That could have been very dangerous situation indeed, I was so lucky nothing serious happened. With today's picture I wish you all a happy Easter, somehow I've foreseen that it's going to be a nice one...

I'll be back with more news at the situation warrants. Until next time - stay safe from PK:ers

Even a tailor can walk around semi-nude in UO

/Sincerely