Luke

Thanks. I must have copied the wrong link. Larva said he would send it to me. I've updated the link.

Hey Everyone, Ultima is currently hosted on a dedicated server. The cost of this server is $60 per month. Larva is still paying for the VPS that used to host the game server until June because he is bound by a contract. Because donations currently pay for that, I have been paying for the dedicated server myself, at least until June. I've been paying it for a few months now. I have a problem with paying this month: I've been putting it on my credit card, and it is now maxed. It isn't maxed because of the server, but rather a rough time I had a while back which caused me to pay bills with it. I don't have anything else to spare. Last month I payed with my PayPal account. This month I only have $30 in my PayPal account, so I can't pay the full balance. What I need is someone to donate $30, or a few people to donate together to add up to $30. This will allow me to pay the bill this month and attempt to sort out thing for next month. I'm already a day late on the payment. I want to get this paid before they switch the network off. If you want to ensure I'm able to pay next month, feel free to donate more. But if you do please also donate some to Larva so it helps him with the VPS or other things. His donation link is on the forum index. I will keep those who donate to me in mind, and will reward them in the future . Thanks guys, Luke

ENGLISH I tried to have a soccer event today. Was something I did at the last minute. It did not end very well because there was some confusion as to what goal people were supposed to hit the ball in. I also had a hard time communicating because of my poor Spanish. I am willing to try this event again, but it has to be more organized. Players are going to have to register here on the forum with the character they want to play with and decide what side they want to be on. The prices will be decided before the event. Would like some opinions of what prizes to use. Please post if you are interested in participating. A date will be set later. ___________________________________________________________________________________ SPANISH Intente tener un evento de soccer hoy. Fue algo de ultimo minuto. No termino muy bien porque hubo confusion sobre que gol era de quien y quienes eran los equipos etc. Tambien tuve un tiempo dificil al no poder comunicarme tan bien por mi poco lenguaje en espanol. Estoy dispuesto a volver a intentar este evento otraves , pero ahora mas organizado. Los participantes van a tener que registrarse en el foro con el nombre de su personaje con el que quieran jugar y el lado que quieran. Los premios seran decididos despues del evento . Me gustaria tener opiniones sobre cuales premios dar. Porfavor postea si estas interesado en participar. El dia del evento sera dada a conocer despues.

Right now it's Exp x 5 (usually is x3). Might add some more to it later. Don't know yet. Enjoy! Se a aumentado el rate de la exp x5 (estaba en x3), se agregara algo mas pero despues, que aun no lo se Disfruten!

If someone is creating hacked items then they'll get banned. If you were given hacked items and didn't know it then it wasn't intentional. A lot of God/____ stuff is commonly dropped by Nar Lilly by different section ids in very hard mode. With items just use good judgment if someone offers to give you an item. There's nothing wrong with someone giving you something that is legitimately earned. Just try to be knowledgeable about items. Creating items are not very easy to do. So it's not something you should freak out about. It's not very common. The most useful and most common hack that is most unfair to our players is a hack that allows you to level up quicker than normal. I'm not going to go into detail of what these hacks are, but we have seen a couple used. With items you can't use them until you reach a certain level or experience. People that are hacking levels are the biggest banable offense because when they reach a certain level they can use higher level items. If they were to hack a high level item, they couldn't use it unless they hacked their levels as well.

Depende de la situación. El ordenador nos permite conocer y vamos a decidir si esa persona tiene que ser prohibido.

Well given that this is blue burst and a private server, I know no way of doing what you suggest in the current form. If I were to code one I could see a way to do it. But with what we use right now, I don't see a way to do this, unless Larva knows of a way. Either way, the forums are a great place to send messages. You can, at least now, send a message to all the GM's in private on the forum if you needed to. They're marked in a special group.

Did you apply the patch here? http://phantasystaronline.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=1701

Also need to add this: Ingles If you are banned for hacking and we give you a second chance on appeal all your characters will be deleted. The consequences for hacking is permanent ban or deletion of characters. The GM's will decide if character deletion if available. But this can only happen once. Second offense is permanent ban, no exceptions. español (translate by holly) Si eres Banneado por hackear y te damos una segunda opurtunidad todos sus personajes seran eliminados, las consecuencias por hackear son Ban Permanente o Eliminacion de los personajes. Los GM decidiran si mereces una eliminacion de los personajes disponibles, pero solo pasara una sola vez, una segunda infraccion sera un Ban permanente, sin exepciones

English: We would like to remind everyone that we do not tolerate hacking on our server. We now have a web based tool that can help us easily look up characters and with the information determine if someone is hacking or not. With this tool neither the GM or the person hacking has to be online. There are certain parts of your account that are only controllable by the server. If these parts do not match up we know someone is hacking, no questions. If you have hacked any character on any account it is best that you delete that character by recreating it. If you have items that are hacked, or you think you have items that are hacked, it's best that you drop them. Anyone found hacking will be banned. Most likely a hardware ban, which means that you will not be able to play on our server regardless of what account you try to connect to. It would be a shame for you to legitimately work hard on a character and throw it all away because you have one or more hacked characters on your account, or on another account. We have already found several accounts that have legitimate characters on them, but the player decided to hack characters on one or more slots. This tool provides us a way to weed out people who are hacking verses people who play legitimately. Soon this tool will be expanded to periodically scan all characters and flag them from GM attention. There will no longer be a need for a GM to "think" you're hacking, but if you are you will be brought to their attention. Let me make this clear. If you're hacking it's not a matter of if you get caught. You will get caught, it's only a matter of time. So again, if you have hacked and don't wish to be banned, clean up your accounts before it's too late. If you hacked levels on one character but not another, you can simply recreate the character that is hacked. You can leave the legitimate character as it is. Each character is considered separate, but if you get banned the whole account will be banned. Espanol (Thanyou semsax for translation): Nos gustaría recordarles a todos que este server no tolera el Hack. Tenemos ahora una herramienta en la Web que nos ayuda a ver fácilmente la información sobre los personajes para determinar si alguien esta haciendo Hack o no. Con esta herramienta el GM o el hacker no necesita estar online para hacerla funcionar. Existe cierta información en las cuentas que solo son controladas por el servidor. Si esa información no encaja sabemos que alguien esta hackeando, sin preguntas. Si haz hackeado en tu cuenta lo mejor es que elimines a tu personaje haciéndole recreate. Si tienes ítems hackeados o piensas que son hackeados es mejor que los elimines. Cualquiera que se le encuentre hackeando será baneado, lo cual será por hardware Ban… eso significa que no podrás conectarte al Server con ninguna cuenta. Seria una pena que alguien que haya trabajado mucho en su personaje se le quitara todo por haber decidido hackear con otro personaje en la misma cuenta o en otra diferente. Ya hemos encontrado muchas cuentas que tienen personajes (legales) pero el usuario hackeo en otro/s slots de su cuenta. Esta herramienta nos ayuda a distinguir a la gente que juega honesto con los hacker. Pronto esta herramienta será mas especifica para escanear absolutamente todo y así los gms podrán verificar. Esto ara que los gms ya no se basen en suposiciones de aver si alguien esta hackeando , pero obvio si estas hackeando vas a atraer mas la atención. Déjenme dejarlo claro. Si estas hackeando que no te sorprenda. Te vamos a atrapar, es solo cuestión de tiempo. les repito si alguien ah hackeado les recomiendo limpiar sus personajes y accounts antes de que sea tarde. Si as hackeado para conseguir lvls en un personaje pero no en otros , recrea al personaje con el que hackeaste. Deja tu cuenta con tus personajes legales. Cada personaje se cuenta por separado, pero si te banneamos toda la cuenta también será baniado tu personaje legal.

How would this even happen though? Is there functionality in the game to do this already? I do like the idea, there just isn't much you can do with the server code at the moment.

We periodically change the song. Changing it elsewhere would detract from the game. Not sure if we want to do that.

Hmmmmm... Wrong forum... Not sure how that would work. If it's based on account and not character it can happen when the account is created, but if it's based on character I don't see how that would happen. Could always PM on forum?

Well the patch server is the first connection that is made before the login details are authenticated. I would suspect it's a problem with a firewall on your computer that's not allowing the game client to connect normally.

OK it's done. Rolled back to Feb 22 2010 at around 8:00 PM. Best I can do.

Something I noticed: When I started my Mag I screwed up initially where I went from: Mag -> Vitria -> Namuci -> Ila .. And I realized that I only had two photon blasts and if I continued from there to Sato I would still only have two blasts... So I had to bring my DX > M to make Illa -> Bhirava so I would get the photon blast I wanted (transformation potential is every 5 levels). After I got the photon blast, I needed M > DX to get Sato. When my DX = 30 and M = 30 it went from Bhirava -> Illa, which I wasn't expecting until M had reached 31. I think what's happening is the game client is using M >= DX (in the case of the formula for my Pinkal), whereas the server is using M > DX (which is what all the guides say it is). When I logged out and logged back in with DX = 30 and M = 30 it was Bhirava, but as soon as I fed it an item (without leveling) it went back to Illa. It didn't stay as Illa until I had M at 31. (M = Mind, DX = Dexterity) For my mag I ended up going: Mag -> Vitria -> Namuci -> Ila -> Bhirava -> Ila -> Sato When I should have went: Mag -> Vitria -> Ashvinau -> Ila -> Sato Only difference in the end, for me, was the photon blasts are in different spots. So if you keep feeding your mag it should stay the way you want it to. (Force Mag progression: http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1238)

I don't mind people sharing ideas. I'll listen to them, as long as it doesn't involve starting trouble / advertising on another site. I've done Google Adwords before on communities I've run in the past. I've spent too much money doing this, and believe me it's quite easy to blow $500 without getting too many results. There is a lot of potential in maximizing SEO and word of mouth. If you know someone who may be interested in the game, you can always share it with them. I just don't think it's a good idea to go over to someone else's community and start advertising.

That's just the forum layout. I'm leaving the shout box where it is.

I'm going to say that doing this is a bad idea and ask that no one starts a topic over there. I really don't want to cause any trouble with anyone over there. I've administered communities in the past and tactics like these are usually frowned upon by administrators, and is a sure way to get yourself banned, at least on the forum. If you want to bring people here and know someone well enough, invite them to join here. But if what you're doing can be considered as blatant advertising, don't do it. People have the ability to find us through Google, and our search engine rank will go up with some effort. Besides bringing people here you know is a better way to get members we want to keep. I know people on the other side are more prone to trash talk, and we don't really want to bring that over here.

One of the things I've found about running a forum is that too many sections on the index page can cause confusion, so they're less likely to post. While branching out to other languages would be nice, adding a whole new section on the index page would add to the problem we already have. I've been looking at the way the sections are now, and I see that many of the secondary forums under each language rarely get used. So what I'm thinking about doing is having 1 area per language, then with the lesser used sections have 1 for all sections (at least for now). This is how I'm thinking about laying things out: |-[ultima] |- News and Announcements |- Game Events |- Bugs and Feedback |-[Phantasy Star Online] |- [General] (Category) |--- English |--- Espanol |--- Brazilian |- Guides |- Teams |-[Off-topic] |- General It's much slimmer, and I believe that it draws the focus where it needs to be. Also thinking about making "Guides" a category and having different sections for different things, like "Controllers", "Quests", etc... Hopefully some adjustments like this will encourage more people to post, and attract more new players. Would also be nice to use something like MediaWiki for guides, but we can worry about that later. What do you think?

Many of you should know by now that Larva has retired and I have taken over as admin. If you haven't seen his topic please read it here. This is a big responsibility for me to take on, so it may take some time for me to adjust to these responsibilities. Rest assured I will do everything I can to keep Ultima running smoothly, and improve upon it where possible. First I want to let you guys know that I don't speak Spanish very well. My wife speaks fluently and she will help me with some things. I am learning, but I will have some difficulty. I have administrated forum communities before. The last one I administered has over 1,000,000 posts and 15,000 members. I started it from nothing and worked it into a thriving community, which is now being run by trusted friends. My former experience should benefit me here, but there will be challenges. The first is that this is an actually game community, not a fan-site. The second is that there is more than one language, so I will have trouble communicating. But as I have learned in the past, relying on feedback from the members and help from the staff helps make a great community. The biggest thing I want to improve upon is the language barrier we have here. One of the things that makes Ultima a great place is having so many people from different places that speak different languages working together. I don't want to "split" the community at all, but I'm sure there's some things we can do to make communication easier, whether it be in-game or here on the forum. Please share your ideas below of what we can do to make communication easier, keeping in mind that what we do has to keep the community whole. Thanks, Luke --- Muchos de ustedes ya saben que Larva se ha retirado y yo soy el nuevo "admin". Si no han visto el mensaje de Larva, leer lo por favor. leer lo aqui. Este es una responsabilidad grande para mi, entonces voy a necesitar un poco tiempo para acostumbrarme a estas responsabilidades. Voy a hacer todo lo que pueda para asegurar que Ultima sirva bien, y mejorarlo cuando sea necesario. Primeramente, quiero dejarles saber que no hablo Español muy bien, pero mi esposa puede comunicarse bien y ella me va a ayudar con algunas cosas. Estoy aprendiendo, pero es un poco dificil para mi. He administrado comunidades y foros en el pasado. El ultimo que administre tiene mas que 1,000,000 mensajes y 15,000 miembros. En el principio aquel foro era muy pequeño y ahora es una comunidad grande, la cual es administrada ahora por algunos amigos intimos. En otras palabras, mis experiencias con este sitio me van a beneficiar aqui, pero habran algunas dificultades. El primero es que este sitio es una comunidad de un juego y no un sitio de fans. El segundo es que hay mas que un lenguaje, entonces voy a tener dificultades con comunicarme con todos ustedes. Pero, como he aprendido en el pasado, escuchando a las opiniones de todos los miembros y ayuda del staff puede contribuir a una comunidad grande. La cosa mas grande que me gustaria mejorar aqui es la barrera linguística que tenemos aqui. Una de las mejores cosas acerca de Ultima es que tenemos personas de culturas y lenguajes diferentes trabajando juntos. Yo no quiero dividir la comunidad, pero estoy seguro que hay cambios que podemos hacer para que la comunicacion sea mas facil, sea en el juego o aqui en el foro. Por favor, compartir sus ideas abajo. Gracias, Lucas *para todos que hablan Español, perdonenme por favor por mi traduccion horrible. gracias por su paciencia- La esposa de Luke

You should be able to login like you normally do and the game client should patch itself.

Going over to schthack and trying to persuade people to play over here is not the answer. I came here because Larva doesn't tolerate abusive players, and the Spanish community here. I say that we have plenty of people here already, and if more come it will be because of a better service provided. There is absolutely no need to start any trouble over there. I've run my share of communities, and to be honest not only would it be bad, but it never really works anyway. I'm working on some stuff that will help Larva keep the server running. There's no need to start any flame wars.

Is there any reason why it's taking forever to load? It was fine last night, but tonight it pretty much hangs on the blue background thing. After waiting what seemed to be a half hour I finally got the selection screen and waited a while longer and got to the ship selection screen which said "No Ships". My wife is trying to play as well on her computer and she's having the same problem, although she actually got to select a Ship. It shows the lobby background but it's just hanging there. Is it just the server being busy? The front page says there are only 10 people on.