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April 4, 2001
News on Vet Rewards
The following was posted by Connor Caple to the Ultima e-mail list at Yahoogroups:[NEWS] Vet Rewards
Sage just posted this to the UO Boards:==============
Why are vet rewards not in at this time?
Vet Rewards is the first system in UO to tie items to an account, rather than a character. This was something that was very new for us, and while seemingly simple, was actually a very complex task. UO, while incredibly flexible, was not originally designed to support this kind of addition. It was clear after release that the Vet Rewards system was in a state we did not feel comfortable with keeping active. (i.e. Some people could get more rewards than their accounts merited.) The system had issues and we felt it was best to hold the system back to try to remove the known issues, rather than keeping it active and trying to fix it on the fly.
Why has it been so long?
While we could have held off on many aspects of development for Vet Rewards, it was believed that UO:Third Dawn took precedence over Vet Rewards. Third Dawn potentially reached more people, and was better for the ability of the game to maintain a longer life cycle. (In other words, Third Dawn would give us the ability to hold the interest of the players for longer.) While simultaneous evelopment occurs all the time, the danger of working on Vet Rewards and Third Dawn together would have hurt both projects. Therfore, we gave Third Dawn priority.
Are Vet Rewards going to be implemented?
The current team is committed to having Vet Rewards come out and be stable. This may still take some time. The Vet Rewards system has been largely put on the back burner until Third Dawn could be published. This does not mean we will be putting Third Dawn fixes or enhancements to the side in order to do Vet Rewards, as we should be able to work on both simultaneously from this point on. Vet Rewards is currently back under development and we should have more information on when they will be back on TC soon.
Posted by Keith at April 4, 2001 12:40 AM