State of the Shard – Winter 2019

The Outlands team would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year, and we hope you’re looking forward to a wonderful 2019 full of health, prosperity, happiness and tons of game time! We were able to take some time away from the shard and spend time with our families which has left us rested, rejuvenated and ready to tackle the year ahead.

Outlands is now a little over 2 months old, and we’re very pleased with how things are going! Winter 2019 will see some exciting development for Outlands.

I hosted the first Dev Debrief of the year along with Expo and clx, which you can listen to here:

We “wrapped” up the holidays with our first “invasion” event which had over 150 players taking part. It was madness, but we now know we need to think and prepare for double the attendance we estimate. Thank you for your patience in that regard! Click here for more regarding the Gronch. 

Our streamer bot “a Comm Crystal” is working away in our Discord channel, and automatically assigns streamers a special rank when they promote the shard via Twitch. For more info on that, you can click here. Thank you to all of our streamers for bringing attention to Outlands via Twitch! We appreciate you all.

Since our last State of the Shard address, most/all of our targeted issues were addressed barring a few, which we will be rolling out shortly. Namely: 

• The lag is gone after multiple rounds of server optimization, which resulted in Jaedan rewriting the netcode framework of our emulator RunUO. Thank you for your patience during those multi-patch days. Outlands is now able to scale above and beyond our current population, which averages around 1600 online players, and move upwards with ease.
• We’ve brought on another developer, Vorspire, to aid in faster & more seamless development. Vorspire is one of the world’s most prominent UO freeshard developers and is a massive asset to our team.
• Our initial Factions PvP framework has been introduced via Faction Struggles & Flashpoints, which will continue to be expanded upon
• Our holiday event was a success, with over 950 trees decorated by nearly 500 players
• Murder system adjustments were implemented and the system is settling into a positive place
• Script thievery has been mitigated

(a dungeon flashpoint is active in Pulma dungeon – a call to arms!)

We have been listening to player feedback and assessing what we feel are “gaps” in our gameplay experience. With that feedback we are working on a major expansion in the coming months.

Here are some things we’re releasing in the near future: 

• Our automated Tournament system will be turned on shortly
• A new, massive Ice/snow themed dungeon called Cavernam will release mid-late January
• Mausoleum and Ossuary dungeon level expansions with high-end monster content

(a frozen botanicals room in Cavernam, one of many unique areas to explore in the upcoming dungeon)

And here are some things to look forward to:

• PvP content will continue to be expanded upon in the form of an improved Sigil-like system & base guarding, leaderboard, faction rewards & world integration
• Blood Feuds will be added to the Guild system, allowing guilds to wager & set conditions to guild warfare
• A new layer of boss content to challenge & contest with a very desirable loot reward
• A unique new system with character enhancements to work towards
• Multiple new aspects and aspect levels to continue to level your character, accommodating some templates which previously saw no bonus
• Enhancements to the summoner template
• A new, high end resource to harvest & craft
• Introduction of our Prevalia Casino games, starting with Monster Shuffle

(the Blood Feud system will allow you to set terms & conditions to your guild warfare, and profit on the results!)

Additionally, the ClassicUO client in development that supports Outlands has reached the Alpha development stage. ClassicUO is the spiritual successor to the now abandoned Orion project and features smooth movement and modern development. Once ClassicUO reaches a stable point, we will be introducing it onto our launcher and encourage all of our users to become familiar with it. ClassicUO will ultimately work natively on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Thanks everyone for your continued support. We have really enjoyed watching everyone settle into Outlands and begin to build your virtual homes here. As always, keep the feedback rolling. We are keen and receptive to player feedback and will keep doing our best to make Outlands the best (and largest) Ultima Online freeshard of all time!

See you ingame!

Owyn & the Outlands Team