EXCELSIOR DAILY

[+Colibri]

There is a staff position open!

If you think you got what it takes to staff on the best UO freeshard there is then here's the info We are looking only for honest, unbiased, responsible people.. Although we value every little bit of time that you could spare, each staff member requires some administrator's time, so we aim at keeping the team small, and effective, so we will only shortlist those who can be online the most.

If you have been an active player for at least 2 months, and are interested in joining, please send an email to the address listed on the front page. In the subject, type APPLICATION in capitalized letters. Include your shard username, any past experience as staff on other shards or games, and your motivation for applying. The fact that you are applying is a secret, so if you do apply, do not tell anyone.

By joining you will be able to experience staffing on a friendly shard, we believe you will also learn many new interesting things.
No day is same as the previous.

[+Colibri]

The time for sending in staff applications is now over. Thank you all who have applied

[+Colibri]

Just in case anyone hasn't seen the towncrier announcement, there will be a mini auction at the Town Center auditorium today (sunday) at 10PM shard time, that's 4PM EST. See you there

[+Colibri]

IMPORTANT: If anyone still has a rune to the felucca Ice Dungeon, or knows of a way to enter it, please PM me and let me know. The dungeon is bugged and should not be accessed until we fix it.

Any kind of exploiting from now on will be taken much more serious than so far. This is serious!

Added to the codex:
Exploiting the game, usually to gain wealth, is a serious offense. Severe action will be taken against those who exploit, or in any way use the game's features in a way they weren't intended, risk having their accounts, and possibly the accounts of other players in the household, banned for a few weeks, months, or even permanently.

A good way to know whether you're exploiting is to ask your self: Are you gaining a great amount of wealth, skill, or experience on pets/weapons? Do you wish the staff not to know about this secret, because you fear we would alter it so it wouldn't be as good anymore? If the answer is yes, then you are most probably exploiting.

If you report a possible exploit to the staff, we may reward you (the reward depends on the nature of the exploit).


Also in the news today: I've completed the advanced frontpage.
To see it, go to our frontpage, then on the bottom right look for a link "Advanced homepage" and click it.

[+Osiris]

Shard Auction Sunday 5th April!

10pm Shard Time, 4PM EST and 1PM PST.

Type [time in game for shards time!

[+Colibri]

There's just been a server restart, unfortunately it didn't save properly so there was a 1 hour revert.
Changes: http://www.uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=616

I've posted the info on last 3 server patches, i havent done that at the time of previous restarts:
Server version 36.14 - 09-04-07
Server version 36.13 - 09-03-03
Server version 36.12 - 09-02-23

[+Colibri]

Important message about the Cadbury bunny quest. When you get an egg, DO NOT lock it down in your house in plain sight. It has to be in a container, such as a secured bag in your house, your pack, or your bank box.

If you lock it down in your house, the spawner system will think it hasn't been taken yet, so it won't respawn. And as I then manually fix the issue, your egg will be deleted.

[+Colibri]

NICE EVENTS THIS WEEKEND!

EASTER EGG HUNT
First of all, there will be an easter egg hunt through the weekend, we hope to have the eggs placed by tomorrow. They will contain all sorts of goodies, most will be placed in quite accessible areas and will have lesser rewards, but some will be placed in very hard to find spots and will have very nice rewards. It will be announced when the eggs are out there to be found.

AUCTIONS
There will be a grand auction, scheduled at two times, both of these will have identical things sold on them. Standard rule applies that if you've bought something on the first auction, you cannot bid for it on the 2nd auction.

FIRST AUCTION: Sunday, 3AM shard time (9PM EST, 6PM PST)
SECOND AUCTION: Sunday 9PM shard time (3PM EST, noon PST)

HOUSE DROP
The 2nd auction will be followed by a house drop (wipe of inactive accounts). I would like to hint that this drop will be an above average one, so I suggest you come if possible
After the 2nd auction there will be an approx 30 minute pause, and then the houses will be dropped. It will all of course be announced in chat in due time so you'll be able to get into position. Since auctions usually take about 1.5 hours, we can expect that this drop will occur around 11PM shard time.

SPECIAL DONATION BONUS
Starting this weekend, there will be a special donation bonus: double the unitubs on any donation, and there will be a special rare item as an extra reward for donations of $30 or more. At the moment this isn't active yet, but it will be announced soon.

[+Colibri]

The first auction went through nicely, you're all invited for tomorrow's second auction as well! The items will be the same, but other people will get a chance to buy them.

The auction will begin at 9PM shard time, which is 3PM EST and noon PST.

After the auction there will be a wipe of inactive accounts. An above average number of houses will drop. Since the auction will probably take about 1.5 hours, and will be followed by a short break, we can expect that the house drop will be around 10:30 - 11:30 PM shard time. The items will be up for grabs for a whole 1 hour, after that all that's left will decay. (technically, it can take up to 2 hours for the items to decay, since they get deleted when the world saves).

To see the current shard time, type [time in the game.

[+Colibri]

I've mentioned this on the first auction this Saturday, and I've finally come around to officially announcing it. This was intended to begin a week earlier but well, what a week!

For the next 12 days there is an extra donation bonus.
- Every donation will receive double the amount of universal dyetubs.
- Also, if your donation is 30$ or more, you will get an Enchanted runebook. This runebook can hold 32 runes, which is double the amount a regular runebook can carry. Another nice thing is that it never runs out of charges, meaning you can recall directly from the index, instead of having to flip through pages. We will probably sell some on future auctions, but it's not planned that this would be a regular donation reward.

This donation bonus will be available all until Saturday, April 25th 2009, till 23:59:59 shard time.

Thank you all for playing and enjoying Excelsior, have fun!

[+Colibri]

There was just a brief disconnect and I decided to remind you all again: Insure your items, bond your pets. If you don't want to insure too much stuff, leave them in your bank if you go to a dangerous place.

You never know when your ISP might go down, or the shard's ISP might go down, or when the power goes out...

[+Colibri]

AUCTION Sunday, May 3rd at 9PM shard time (3PM EST, Noon PST).
Type [time to see what the current shard time is.

You're all invited to come by and check out the items we'll be selling, including these:
- A house on water (which takes no house slots)
- A cannon addon
- A bank stone
- A dock for your house
And of course some other nice things

Come one, come all, but most importantly, bring your gold

[+Colibri]

Some news:

1. The 8 candle system is now active. http://www.uoex.net/wiki/The_8_Candle_Rule
There may be bugs, if they are let's hope they're small ones so we can play through the pain, but if it turns out that this new system has incapacitated the champ spawns, then please open a new thread for discussion, also +Rayne knows how to disable the system if it really goes wrong.

2. House gates are being upgraded. As stated on the town crier, don't panic, all of the gates will be returned to their original state, but you will find that you can from now on move the gate by yourself, rename it, or rehue it. This will is a nice addon since it will give staff more time to do other things, also no waiting for a staff member when you need a gate.

3. I am going on vacation for a few days, from Monday morning till Wednesday evening, meaning that i'll probably get around to full capacity on Thursday evening. The shard should be pretty much stable like always, i've just checked all the backuping capacity and it looks good. Should anyone decide to donate in these couple of days, please note that you will have to wait till Thursday for your rewards.

All the recent changes made on the server can be seen here:
http://www.uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=616

Enjoy!

[+Colibri]

UOGateway
We are now listed on UOGateway, please take your time to vote

Housegates:
All of them have now been upgraded, if you are an owner of a housegate you can single-click the one at your house to see a list of options what you can do with it. If you buy a house teleporter dyetub you can even dye your gate (go to the decoration display room to buy one, a gate leads there form the TC, the tub is listed on the vendorstone right by the table with the tub on it).

I've also just upgraded the house-to-house teleporters, although existing teleporters are still as they were. You can go to Trinsic and find the "house to house gate deed" on the gold stone, it costs 100k gold.
Soon I will also add that you will be able to move the gate by targeting a location, rather than standing where you want the gate to be, meaning that you will be able to place them on the castle roof by yourself.

Codex updates:
2.b.: No racial/religious/national/ethnical slurs are tolerated. No promotion of drug abuse is tolerated.
5.a.: No Player Killing. PvP/Dueling is allowed only in the PvP dungeon or in a private house owned by one of the participants, but only if all of the participants are explicitly informed of the attacker's intentions.
6.b.: (Champion spawn 8 candle rule is now enforced by the server automatically).

Explanaton to rule 5.a.: If you kill someone, and the player reports they have been killed, then we will go check the logs for a conversation that looks like this:
Player A: I will attack you.
Player B: Ok, I am informed of your intention to kill me and allow you to proceed.
If we cannot find that a similar conversation took place, then your actions can be considered as non-agreed player-harmful, as described in codex rule 5.d.

[+Colibri]

P.S.: I've just right now added the house-house deed to the gold stone, thank you fingers. (Was half asleep when i remembered i didnt actually put it up there, but decided to leave it for next day).