Old News: December 1999

Our ISP has identified a problem with a piece of hardware that maybe responsible for a majority of the connection problems that players have been experiencing with the east coast shards. These problems include connection issues for many cable modem users. The piece of hardware has been replaced and appears to be working properly. We apologize for the inconvenience that this caused.
Origin Technical Support

Due to a house exploit we have had to revert the Pacific Shard to late in the evening Christmas Eve. The seriousness of this exploit has also required us to disable several of the house commands on all shards. The features we disabled that will be most obvious are the ability to demolish a house and re-deed it, and the ability to transfer ownership of a house. Once we are sure we have resolved this issue with houses we will turn these features back on. If you have any information about this exploit we encourage you to send a message to protect-uo at owo.com com . We are very sorry we have had to revert the server and the inconvenience this has caused

We are currently experiencing a connectivity problem with East Coast Shards and some of our players using cable modems. The current symptoms of this are– 1) Players are getting stuck at Entering Britannia with a gray screen 2) Players getting into the game but are unable to perform actions such as reading house signs or double clicking an object like a rune book or potion keg. 3) Players getting in and are unable to use the option menu to call for help. If you are having this problem right now, we’d like you to send us a Trace from the shard you are currently trying to connect to. To do this run UOTrace*, click ‘Options’ and make sure ‘Advanced’ is checked. Now, select the server you wish to trace to from the pull down menu, then click the ‘Trace route’ button. Once the trace is complete, click the ‘Poll’ button. This tells your computer to send data packets to the host server. Let it send around 100 or so packets then select ‘Stop Poll’. Now, click ‘Edit’ then ‘Copy’. Open Notepad, Start>Programs>Accessories, right-click and select ‘Paste’. Save the file and send it in to us at tech at owo.com, so we can narrow down the problem routers. Thanks for your patients and help in solving this problem * If you do not have UOTrace you can download it from the http://www.uo.com/downloads.html

"I'm getting reports that people who have been unable to play on the East Coast shards, specifically at home cable modem users, have been helped by using the iSpeed program, found here at download.com.

If you're having problems, this may be a solution for you. Use the settings the program determines as Optimal. This is for users of Windows 95 and 98.

Please note, this does involve changing registry settings, and changing such can have unwanted effects on your system if done incorrectly. Please read all documentation before using any program like this, and we here at Crossroads of Britannia make no guarantee of the safety or stability of the changes this program makes.

-Virgil - 7:16 AM MST"

Before you do this I would take a look at this Bandwidth test site before and after you change your MaxMTU.

If you edit it by hand do not set the MaxMTU above 1468.. else you will still get that freeze. Some systems may vary on this. Most likely your speed for downloading will slow down to a crawl. I hope this will not have to be a permanent fix but just a temporary one.

- Balandar

Alright, guys... thanks a lot for your help working on this. Here's the status as I see it:

We have numerous reports of users from at Home having trouble connecting to East coast shards. These users report problems both with and without cable modems (so speed is not necessarily the factor here).

We have one (I've only seen one) traceroute from one non- at Home user (AOL).

I've looked at my outgoing traceroutes to all of the sites you've given my traces for, and I can't see ANY packet loss or poor connectivity at ANY site within OSI or Global Center. Additionally, I am EXTREMELY confident that no network code has changed in the last two or three days (even the last week); if there had been, I'd probably be the guy who wrote it.

All of the shards run the same codebase, and you all have reported having the same troubles with both old and new (test) clients, and old and new characters.

I will pass this info on to our operations/networking gurus tomorrow, to see if they can't get some direct resolution from the providers in question. I'm not a network engineer, so it's difficult for me to troubleshoot this. Once again, I'm very confident it isn't related to the client or server networking code; if it were, we would be seeing FAR MORE reports of problems. It may be helpful for you each to attempt to pursue this issue with your provider, to see if you can't make any headway.

I will do my best to get this resolved from my end.

Thanks for your help, and happy holidays!
--Krelin

 

From the very beginning, Ultima Online players have asked the question, “Where is the evil in Ultima Online? Who is our nemesis?” As developers, we regularly receive messages asking for us to introduce evil on a par with the powerful antagonists from the classic Ultima.

Be careful what you wish for...

I warn you now, a great Evil has been plotting for some time to return to the world of Britannia. Be on guard. Prepare your guilds and mend your weapons, for this Evil is both a charismatic leader and a master of magic. So insidious is its intent that I must warn you to keep an eye on your fellow citizens, lest they be tempted to side with this new element of corruption.

Keep in mind, this Evil plots to destroy Lord British and control all of Britannia. Your lands and your way of life are at risk. I encourage you to seek out this evil and crush it before it has a chance to gain a foothold within your world, for if it is left to grow and fester, it will one day become unstoppable.

The world of Ultima Online may never be the same again.

You have been warned...

SunSword
sunsword at uo.com

Dec 8 1999 7:41PM
In order to activate the latest changes to the publish, we plan on bringing the Pacific Shard down later this evening. Once the publish is updated to the shard, the Pacific shard will go down following its next backup in order to keep any time warp to a minimum. Once Pacific returns, we will continue to monitor the publish throughout the night and into tomorrow. We will update Shard Issues later this evening with more information about Pacific.

The other shards will not have the publish when they return from their Thursday maintenance. We will release more information on the publish update to the remaining shards as soon as it is available.

 

We are targeting tomorrow, December 8th (CST) to publish the shards with an update. The update will be active on the Pacific Shard first after it comes back from its morning maintenance. We will then monitor the shard for any issues. Provided all goes well, the other shards will be published and will have the update after they return from their next scheduled maintenance. We will update you here tomorrow as the publish procedure progresses.

The publish will contain the following:

• The “someone is already using this” message with potion kegs will be addressed.
• Issues with Potions Keg weight will be fixed.
• You will no longer be able to make a Potion Keg "secure".
• Using a Potion Keg will now check line-of-site.
• Potion kegs will stack.
• Locked down stackable items (such as ingots and fish steaks) can only be used or “cut” by the owner, friends, and co-owners of a house. This applies to both private and public houses.
• An adjustment to veterinary skill gain will be made to allow players to reach grandmaster in the skill.
• Co-owners will be able to “detect hidden” in houses.
• Houses reporting incorrect number of lockdowns will be addressed.
• When a co-owner is removed, the strong box associated with them will be deleted. All items will fall to the floor.
• Issues related to co-owners when a house is deleted or the co-owner is removed while the player is offline will be addressed.
• Locking down a container will now check to make sure you have enough lock downs available. If you do not, the container and the items in it will not be locked down.
• Lockdown will ignore items inside of spellbooks, rune books, keyrings, and checkerboards. These items will only count as one lock down.
• You will no longer need to remove co-owners in the order they were added.
• A fix for a problem where exceptionally crafted tailored armor has the same AR as normal tailored armor.
• When a container is unsecured, it will have a weight limit.
• Sextant coordinates associated with Rune Books will be corrected.
• UO-chat has been fixed. You can now name the rooms using any letters.
• A fix for a problem with reported age of houses.
• Rune books will no longer consume scrolls out of spellbooks.
• A problem with stealing and locked down items will be addressed.
• A bug with the trade window will be fixed.
• Christmas Tress will be activated.
• Fixes to guildstones to prevent loss of data.
• Issues with locked down items decaying will be addressed.
• The [exceptional] tag will be removed and replaced with a new system of marking exceptional items. As an example, an exceptional katana made by a non-Grandmaster smith or made by a Grandmaster smith who chooses not to put his makers mark, will now say, "a katana of exceptional quality". An exceptional katana made by a Grandmaster smith who chooses to place his maker’s mark on it will say, "a katana crafted with exceptional quality by..." This will be true for all exceptional items.

Dec 3 1999 4:02PM
The next publish will include fixes for issues related to the November 23rd publish. The contents of the publish are listed below.
A bug with the trade window will be fixed.
Problems associated with losing connection while using a potion keg will be addressed.
You will no longer be able to “secure” a potion keg.
An adjustment to veterinary skill gain will be made to allow players to reach grandmaster in the skill.
Co-owners will be able to use detect hidden correctly in their houses.
Houses reporting incorrect number of lockdowns will be addressed.
Issues related to co-owners when a house is deleted or the co-owner is removed while the player is offline will be addressed.
Lockdown will ignore items inside of spellbooks, rune books, keyrings, and checkerboards.
A fix for a problem where tailored armor [exceptional] has the same AR as normal tailored armor.
The [exceptional] flag will not be added for GM made items provided the player adds their mark to the item.
A fix for a bug that creates unlimited weight containers.
A fix for a problem with reported age of houses.
A problem with stealing and locked down items will be addressed.
Rune books will no longer consume scrolls out of spellbooks.
Potion kegs will stack.
We are currently targeting next week for this publish. We will update you again once a specific date is determined.

 

Dec 3 1999 4:06PM
We have released a new client patch designed to resolve the “container crash bug”.