Added three new stories from Lord Cool, La Nina and Pak. This will probably be my last update of the day, but I have a few screenshots to post, so keep an eye out for them.

Have a safe New Years Eve...

Title pretty much says it all. Three new links have been posted.

I get all kinds of email every week, but I thought these two quotes were worthy of posting. First, Hercules of Tricks of the Trade posted a link from their main page to the JoV. I wrote him saying thanks to which he replied

"I only post sites that are good... Yours however is exceptional."

Wow. Thanks. The second was from Rachmaninoff G.M., JoV (Sonoma). He gave the quote of the week with

"Your stories have inspired me to new levels of cruelty."

Outstanding. Thanks for the mail guys.

Well, I finally got my FTP access back. So, not that I can post again, I fixed the Forum. I appreciate ALL the people the emailed me about the issue (and there were a lot of you). Glad to see so many of you participating. Anyhow, it's up so go post something.

Anyhow, I'm only at work here for a couple of hours today (and not back until after the weekend), so I'll try to post a few things to keep you entertained before I jet.

Just had a few words for the holidays for you evil folx from an evil mofo. I hope that all of you go out and rage on people during the holidays just like you do normally. Steal, kill, loot... the whole bit. With one exception...

Newbies. A lot of kids (and I mean children) are probably going to be getting Ultima Online for Christmas and frankly, there is no reason to fuck with them. I'm all for getting absolutely raw and nasty on anyone, but killing/stealing from a person who doesn't know shit about the game is normally kinda taboo. During the holiday season I would consider it just bad style. I've often said that I'm not here to make friends, but I'm not out to fuck up people's game either. If a little kid is trying to figure out the game, the last thing he needs is one of us hitting him full force. Plus, they won't have anything worth killing them over, so it's truly pointless.

Anyhow, aside from that, I hope all of you have a good holiday weekend both in game and out.

Merry Christmas (link only works for JAVA broswers)

Nighthawk
The Nice Murderer

The Pic of the Week is from my most recent story, so if you read that - it's a repeat. But, it is a quality pic.

I'm sitting here bored at work with nothing to update except a few new links. So, I was looking back through the screenshots sections. The second to last picture in the last section (Misc) struck my memory - Moogle's placing of the house on the Baja Mage tower. Moogle was the guy who I just recently mentioned where I stole his deed and gave it back (only to have it re-stolen).

What's ironic is that it was probably the same deed that he was given by the GM from the Mage Tower hell raising. :)

I can't believe that people are carrying deeds around with them still. The day the housing patch came out I was really busy in RL and only got to steal one deed. It turns out that I supposedly know the guy (more like he knows me, but my memory sucks so it's possible), so being the nice guy that I am I give it back to him. A couple of minutes later he has it stolen by someone else.

I was out screwing around yesterday with my infrequently played thief, Crum. I discovered that some people STILL think that searching for a place for a house with the deed on them is a good idea. Well, a deed weighs 1 stone and they're big and easy to click on, so it's a no brainer to steal them.

Moral of the story is that if you have a deed stolen from you, you should have :

• Searched without the deed
• Marked a run to that spot and come back with it
• Always keep your deed in a locked chest

If you don't do these things, then your deed should be stolen because you're a moron. (NOTE : to any of my friends that might have had their deed stolen, YES - you are a moron too because you know the tricks since I probably showed them to you myself)

Thanks for the free house...

Four new stories from Cyle of EiG, Lord Skull/Matthew, Xepher, and Kobe Dasfardly. Thanks for all the submissions guys.

I figured I'd check people's opinion of the new housing patch and how they like T2A now that we've had some time to play around with it.

Ronald and I have been out and about a lot recently and that normally leads to some seriously awesome fun. Sunday night was no exception. We raged on Avalon's Contest of Champions very badly. There is an entire story about it in the Stories section.

Well, since I don't do much website work on the weekends, that story I didn't get to on Friday wasn't written until today. The upside is that it is done and is posted in the stories section. I'm working on another story of my and Ron's antics over the weekend (we make a great team). I'll try to have the one up tomorrow since I'll probably be concentrating on the house patch today.

BTW, I highly suggest that all you thieves go out and find yourself some nice open areas. I plan to pull the ole paralyse and steal routine several time tonight on several deed holders when they scurry to a prime location with a deed in pack.

Have fun tonight. I will.

Ok... the story isn't done yet because I'm calling around trying to finalize my car purchase (title, insurance, etc). I told a couple of people that my co-worker had a digital camera so I promised I would take some pics of the new terror on the Atlanta roads. Pic 1 Pic 2

And yes - it's fast. Supercharged, leather, power everything, heads-up-display, and all that fun stuff.

I'll still try to get to the story, I promise. I don't leave for another 2 hours, so it'll be close, but I'm working on it...

I wanted to write a story about the events that took place last night, but my RL took over. I had a 3 hour long meeting for the early part of the afternoon and now I'm about to go and pick up my new car. So, no real time for an update. Don't mean to leave ya hangin', but I will say that last night was the most fun I've had in UO in weeks. Thanks to Ron, Zander and Brutus.

I'll post something about it tomorrow. Wish me luck on getting my car. Cya.

Apparently Ronald McDonald of McDonaldland and Zander of The Warcouncil have collectively stirred the pot of the role-players on Baja. Apparently after both my boys killed some gimp after he went gray, he whinned to his seer friend and his AOV buddies. Apparently this guy is part of the roleplaying thing that is going on around the Baja Meteor.

They sent Zander an email says that they were going to kill Ron tonight at the event. SO, I'm going to haul ass out to the Meteor around 9pm EST (6pm PST) and beat all available ass when they attack Ronald. If you have a character on Baja and wanna come along, then get to the meteor (near Britain somewhere) tonight at the above mentioned time.

All the really evil shit I do has been fucked up. Pking has given me TONS of fun over the past 8 months, but they've fucked that up with stat loss. Lose connection with a red character in the middle of a dungeon and see how fast your heart starts beating (godhelp you if you have to do a full reboot). Thieving has been crippled little by little - the biggest blow being unable to steal from hidden people (using UO's last object - not UOE) a couple of months ago.

Now that housing is almost in, there won't be anymore house looting. Granted, I've been looted three times (twice before I even started my career), so it's nice to know that'll never happen again, but there wasn't any feeling quite like rushing someone's house and seeing how bad they freak out. Soon it'll be "I ban thee" and I'll be standing outside without even being able to go on/past the steps.

DD said all along that there should be a chance for a good thief to get the keys and have access to the house until the locks were changed. Bah. Fucker. This insta-ban/ejection idea is solid bullshit. With lockdowns, secure chests, friend lists, being able to block off areas with locked-down items and Texas law you would think that these people would be happy. No! They want their HOUSE to obey them when they tell it to boot someone and keep them from entering. Gotta be the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

They want realism when it comes down to people having to plant themselves before shooting a bow, but they want all houses to be like Fort Knox. Fuckin stupid people... they're everywhere and they make me sick.

This game is becoming less and less like an RPG and more and more like a graphic Carebear chat room.

Finally posted several screenshots that I've been sent over the past couple of weeks. There is a new picture in just about every section of the Screenshots area, so just look around and you'll see 'em.

I was reading The Warcouncil and Zander was talking about the fuckin tools in Vesper looting blue corpses and getting guard killed.

I was in Britain yesterday and I saw similar stupidity. I guy attacked a summoned demon to get his magic resistence up (I suppose). Well, he was an idiot because he took one step too many toward the demon - he died quickly. Being the intelligent guy that I am, I didn't even think about looting. Well, some people from the shallow end of the gene pool decided that this was an easy opportunity for loot. Well, they were right, but they were the ones getting looted.

There was WAY more loot than I could carry and I was only taking the good stuff (plate, regs and magic/gm weapons). I was stunned to find that my fellow looters would loot the gray corpse dry and then go for the one blue corpse still lying there. From that one moron dying, I found myself surrounded by 8 corpses of likewise stupid people.

Here's something I've done before : a truly bored (blue) person drinks poison in town and dies with some stuff on him - right next to the main Britain bank. He goes and gets ressed. More than likely, people haven't touched his body even though it has some goodies on it. I walk up, hide and start moving the clothes on and off the body. Even people who don't have the corpse container open can see that someone is looting because you can see clothes on the body changing. But they since they don't think "the owner is allowed to loot his own body and might be hidden", they take/open something too. *WHACK* I come out of hiding, puts the stuff I don't want on my corpse (so people will think I have stuff worth looting) and repeats. I've killed around 5-6 people each time I died.

If people are stupid, you might as well profit from it somehow.

All the links in the New Links area are new. I moved all the formerly new links to their appropriate sections. If you're looking for new UO sites to hit, look there for ideas.

I read a parody of the update.owo.com's "past updates" page recently on Dundee's Ultima Online Site. I laughed out loud. So, I wrote him and asked if I could re-post it here. Since, he said, "go for it" - here it is.

I posted new character building tips for those of you having trouble getting those stats in line. Nothing new for skill building, but they've made raising stats more difficult and I thought I'd share how to manipulate the system in your favor.

The GM Character Building Part 2 is in the Newbie section. BTW, these suggestions are NOT for established characters because you have to get possibly unwanted skills to a pretty high level. Take a look if you're having problems getting your stats the way you like them on a new character.

I've decided that I want to start an evil player run town. The problem is that the town already exists - Buccaneer's Den. I remember a while back when UOEvil was still around, Greybeard had kicked around the idea of trying to get OSI support for such a project. Obviously, it didn't go well because it didn't happen.

I don't know if you can place houses on Buc's Den island (never tried it personally, but I've heard ya can). I figure that if you can place there, that I would start something on Baja for us red/evil players. I understand that it's a long shot to get support for an evil city, but Buc's Den is supposed to be a gathering point for the bad-boys anyhow. I dunno about other shards, but on Baja it's a ghost town. No bank, no regs shop and no people makes it a pretty pointless place to visit.

I wanna change that. I have some ideas in my head, but some are far fetched like :

• Guards that don't kill perma-flagged, gray or red, but DO kill innocents
• A bank for reds
• Vendors that will transact with -5 Tier Karma players (PKs wanna sell those unwanted goods or buy new supplies without a mule?)

I dunno if it's a downside or not, but it would require some role-playing. I personally don't have a problem with that because I know that role-playing isn't just talking with Britannian speech. It has nothing to do with how you talk - it has to do with how you act. But, I digress. Any ideas you have I would love to see either in the Forum or in email.

Tomorrow is supposedly 2nd phase of the house patches. From the Dev Board :

From: Runesabre
Date: December 07, 1998 at 10:34 am (CST)

Subject: Slight change in plans on a Test Shard today: Chesapeake

Today I will mirror Chesapeake onto one of the Test shards for house claim testing.

Don't forget, tomorrow is when the real house claiming is supposed to begin so look for problems now so they can be fixed today rather than delaying things further!

That means that if you've been holding that master key you stole off that guy a long time ago, it's almost time. Just remember that the PLACER gets the house if he claims it... so just because you have the master doesn't necessarily mean you get the house if you didn't also place it. But, ya never know. Maybe the placer has another house to claim (you can only claim 1 per character) so you might luck out.

Ok guys, here's what we've been discussing. The Forum has been ablaze with discussion about UOE having Back Orifice and about the upcoming changes to skills. I'll see if I can be more clear about what I was trying to say so that everyone can argue about something else...

Back Orifice in UOE v6.07d? I have no idea. I didn't download it. I don't use UOE - I use UOA. BUT, I got enough reports of it to concern me. I think that Jarret has done some good and bad things for UO, but I couldn't quite bring myself to think that he would release a virus/backdoor in one of his programs. The point I was trying to make was be aware and check everything. I supplied the links so that you can make yourself as safe as possible and alerted you to a danger that was brought to my attention. I think UOE has become a more legit program throughout it's history and I think it's a shame that it won't ever be able to shake the "cheater's tool" reputation (even though it still allow you do to one very unbalancing thing which they should get rid of).

Upcoming skill changes. Meditation and the new Anatomy and Evaluating Intelligence uses are coming. When and what effect they will have on gameplay is still being debated. However, they are coming and you should know that they could end up being major changes. Hell, I'd wager that they're going to be major changes. We're not quite at the class system yet, but specializing is definitely coming. Tank Mages will be more nearly impossible to keep around with all the skills that can be effective in combat. From the pure mage, to the pure fighter and every variation in between - you're going to see a lot of new tactics and I wanted you to be aware so you can whip people's asses.

I want every evil motherfucker that comes to this site to be as informed as possible so you can terrorize on people's weaknesses and ignorance. To do that, you have to know what's coming and what to be aware of. Simple.

Hahahah... you've gotta hit this site. I was just sent this in ICQ and I laughed my balls off. Ok, maybe not that funny, but still worth seeing. WARNING : Don't go here without a sense of humor.

NUKIEE'S Game Hint : Use your enter key (you'll see).

Moved links out of the New Links section to their appropriate areas and added some new ones in.

I added a new Pic of the Week. Also new is a couple of pictures from when someone placed a house on top of the Baja Mage Tower. Needless to say, the NT people weren't amused. I was - the pics are in the Misc Stuff area of the Screenshots section.

Ok, things are getting out of hand. I'm adding new links to the Non-UO Links area for you guys so you can check for and get rid of Back Orifice. Why?

I was ICQ'd that UOE 6.07d is infected. The person who discovered that downloaded it directly from the UOE site. He ran a BoDetect randomly and discovered that he had BO. He said the only thing he ran was the newest UOE since he'd last checked. He cleaned his system, ran UOE and checked for BO again - again, there it was. I don't know what the makers of UOE are doing. Maybe they just put up an infected version for an hour or so after releasing a new program. *shrug*

I know a lot of you use it and that's why I'm giving you this information. Personally I suggest you check everything you download that is executable. Again, here are the two links to BoDetect and a good Back Orifice information site that includes downloads for BoDetect and Anti-Gen.

Man, I needed that weekend. Anyhow, to the business at hand.

I've been building some new characters here recently. When I was speaking to people about building Anatomy for my fighters and Eval Int to compliment my Magery, I was surprised how few people know about the upcoming patches. Some people aren't even aware of the new skill that's going to be coming out - Chanelling (Meditation).

Let me give a small bit of advice. If ya read update.owo.com and occassionally The Dev Board, you will be prepared to rage on people with the upcoming patches. Here's a quick rundown of what these three things are going to do :

• Channelling (Meditation) - New skill. Increases mana regeneration based on skill and armor worn (the less armor, the faster you regen). Currently the regeneration rate is around 1 mana per 5 or 7 seconds. 100 Channelling and no armor will regenerate 1 mana per second. Let me thank OSI for my mage pk - less mana naps = more kills.
• Anatomy - The higher your Anatomy skill, the more damage you do with melee attacks. 100 Anatomy = 50% more damage. That's a lot of extra punch.
• Evaluate Intelligence - The anti-magic resistence. 100 Eval Int is -50% off your opponents Magic Resist to your magical attacks. GM resist? Don't feel too safe...

Anyhow, the point is that I'm not a news board, but this stuff will effect your game in a big way so I don't want anyone to get wailed on. More importantly, I want you guys to be able to wail on people that weren't informed when suddenly their magic resist doesn't mean shit or when a GM Bowyer heavy does 50 HP damage to them.

Granted, no one knows when they're going to implement these changes, but they're already on the Test Center. If you wanna know more, hit the two links above. (Note: When I wrote this, the CoB Dev Board was not responding. If you get that, just check it later - the link is correct.)