Announcements List

Query: announcement found 437 results

15th Oct 2021 announcement

Test Center has been opened to the public for testing of Factions and Summoner content. To connect to test center, open your client and in the address bar at the bottom, connect to test.uo4.life:5002

For Factions: NOTE: All timers (capture, etc) have been set to 5 minutes temporarily to ease testing, except the sigil reset timer which is now set to 10 minutes to allow you to run between towns. Only Minoc and Brit are available, which is where you will find faction and town stones. This system is a direct copy of the old UO system, including stealing and IP restriction mechanics. https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/2000-2/2000-publish-08-5th-december/ We would love some robust testing of the general mechanics of combat and town capture in particular. As the fundamental mechanics of the system are a direct UO copy, these are unlikely to change too much. Wiki article: https://wiki.shardsofbritannia.com/en/factions

Summoning: This system, however, is NOT from old UO, it is our own special homebrew. Think of it sort of like a "Magical Tamer." We'd really love some feedback on how the balance of these mechanics feel in PVE and PVP, and any ideas you have for improvements that would make it better (keeping in mind that the Summoner's Tome full of a bunch of new summons is on the not too distant horizon) Wiki Article: https://wiki.shardsofbritannia.com/en/skills/spirit_speak

Vendors with full spellbooks and regs will be out at the banks shortly. Thanks for helping test!

Please report any bugs with /bug, feel free to ask questions.


15th Oct 2021 announcement

A cold wind blows from the East and as it breezes past your cheeks you hear the faint cries of an otherworldly being. Its tongue is both unintelligible but strangely familiar, beckoning you, filling your mind with patterns you struggle to fully understand. What felt like an eternity of thought passes as quickly as it arrived and you return to your senses, wondering whether you've gone mad or tapped into an energy pulsing beneath the surface of Britannia.

(These changes are in testing and are NOT live- see more below)

Spirit Speak has been completely overhauled to allow for benefits for players wishing to focus on summoning! Currently these changes apply to existing summons associated with Magery, but in the future a Summoner's Tome will allow players with the Spirit Speak ability to summon even more creatures from another plane! Details can be found here: https://wiki.shardsofbritannia.com/en/skills/spirit_speak

We need testers! Test Center will be publicly opened soon for testing of this new feature.


13th Oct 2021 announcement

Sorry for the short interruption! Service has been restored. The server will come back online at it's normally schedule time in about 10 minutes after the posting of this


11th Oct 2021 announcement

Factions have been completely overhauled from the ground up and include new content- including capturing towns and rewards! This content is currently in testing, but you can see what's coming soon (pending tweaks) at this article: https://wiki.shardsofbritannia.com/en/factions


9th Oct 2021 announcement

Dev Blog/State of the Game:

  • Staff Activity

    Some staff is on break right now for one reason or another, but not everyone is playing other games. Life always comes first and if things come up in life, it is always advised for staff to focus on real life, which may warrant some time away from the project. When staff members take breaks, that doesn't mean the separation is necessarily permanent or that they did anything wrong.

  • Player Feedback & Game Balancing

    We do our best to read all feedback submitted, but we do not have the time to acknowledge or reply to most submissions. If you submitted something a while ago and it hasn't been improved yet and you have something else to add to your submission, please feel free to re-submit it, but please avoid sending in repeat submissions just for the sake of trying to get it fixed quickly. There's always a possibility that we have trouble replicating a reported issue, so more details or a fresh account of the issue is always welcome.
    Additionally, it should be noted that not everything is final, and many features of the game are subject to change when we do balance passes and content expansions, but those things also take time to complete as we discuss, debate and use metrics to determine the best course of action.

  • LoA New Client/Citadel Studios Changes

    A lot of people have expressed concern over the changes announced by Citadel Studios in regards to the new experimental client and 3D camera. We can confirm that this will not affect our project and there are no plans to shut down Legends of Aria as it exists today, meaning our project is not in jeopardy of being shut down due to the new client changes, nor will we be forced to use the new client. Additionally, a lot of people ask what happens if CS goes under? In the past, we have stated that it is possible that we may be able to continue the project if that ever happens, but neither we nor CS expects anything like that to occur, and we would do everything in our power to make sure we can proceed.

  • The Map

    Most of the map terrain is complete but requires finishing touches. Right now progress is on hold while we work on other content.

  • Population

    The population is always in flux and changing depending on many factors like new games coming out, limited time off for people, and season changes. The game is still being played by plenty of people and we are doing everything within our ability to release updates and content as we're able to, to keep people busy having fun.

  • Actions Against Player Accounts

    Sometimes players break the rules or behave in a manner that is harmful to the game or our community and we have to take actions against their Discord privileges or in-game accounts. Players that have action taken against them are almost always verbal about it and claim they did nothing wrong when in fact they did. Please make sure you're aware of the rules and are abiding by them. We will never discuss actions taken against individuals specifically in public, but if you have had action taken against you, or you suspect so and would like to inquire about it, please use the Contact Us page on our website to do so. We understand that everyone is human and makes mistakes sometimes, and are willing to give second chances when people show remorse and willingness to do better, so you may dispute the actions and explain to us why you think they should be reversed, and we will consider. Reminder: Real Money Transactions are strictly prohibited and harmful to our economy, anyone suspected or caught buying and selling may be subject to have action taken against them pending review.

  • Goals & What's Being Worked On

    We're always working on bug fixes and polishing existing features. Here are some of the goals on our list:

    • short term goals:

    • medium/longer-term goals:

      • faction content
      • more PVE content & encounters
      • bulk order deeds
      • house customization options (changing the style of walls/roof/floor)
      • gardening (potted plants, does not include growing reagents or other resources)
      • map expansion


26th Sep 2021 announcement

The upcoming Fishing SOS changes are delayed slightly while we continue work on it, however, the container organization changes will go out tonight during the daily restart.


25th Sep 2021 announcement

Go play!


25th Sep 2021 announcement

Apologies folks, we'll need a little longer to finish our tasks. This could be up to an hour, but should be sooner. Thanks as always for your patience.


25th Sep 2021 announcement

We'll be offline for up to an hour during this evening's maintenance window @ 9am UTC. Thanks for your patience.


25th Sep 2021 announcement

The Wiki Bot is temporarily offline, it'll return to service after it's had a pina colada or two on the beach.


16th Sep 2021 announcement

We're back online. Go play!


16th Sep 2021 announcement

During the next restart period (9am UTC 16th September) we will remain offline for up to 2 hours to perform extended maintenance.

Thank you for your patience.


13th Sep 2021 announcement

We are aware of ongoing lag issues that some users are experiencing. At this stage, we are waiting for a core issue to be rectified at our host, at which time we will most likely move back to our original datacentre.

The latest advice is that they are working with their network equipment vendor to patch and resolve the issue. Unfortunately this seems to be taking an extended amount of time, however as soon as we are advised that this issue is resolved, we will in turn advise you all.

Apologies for this, it is out of our hands at this time. We know a few of you have suggested moving to an alternative host, however please understand that is not a realistic avenue for us at this time due to both the cost and time involved. We are not a simple 'single server' solution like a RunUO/ServUO shard.


10th Sep 2021 announcement

We are looking for ideas for the new Discord logo. Are you handy with Photoshop? We'd love to see what you can come up with. If you are interested in helping out and want to submit an image to be considered for the rebranding, please do so on our forums: https://forums.shardsofbritannia.com/topic/30/discord-logo-submissions Thanks in advance


7th Sep 2021 announcement

This is a reminder to all that placement of objects outside the boundaries of your house foundation is not intended. Objects placed in this fashion are subject to removal, with a priority given to those that block access to land masses in any way.

Thank you for your understanding.


5th Sep 2021 announcement

We're back online. Thanks again for your patience.


5th Sep 2021 announcement

Apologies for the delay, we are running a little overtime with the maintenance work. We will aim to be back online by 11am UTC (ideally before that!).


5th Sep 2021 announcement

Hail citizens. We have some important news to share with you!

As you may be aware, this project started out as an experiment. It was unimaginable that it would grow into what it is today. To see where we've come today, let's take a quick look back at the history of the game and our project for a moment.

Starting out the game Legends of Aria was known as Shards Online, as some of you remember. Later it was re-branded to Legends of Aria, and more recently the platform is known as the Shards Engine, which makes this project possible.

After the game was re-branded to Legends of Aria, our project was just getting our test-server online and it was decided to use the name Legends of Ultima for the time being while we experiment with things and find our place as a project. This name wasn't originally intended to be used permanently, and admittedly it stayed around for longer than expected.

Today, the project has grown to a point where it is prudent to find its own identity, and as such we are excited to announce, the project will now be known as Shards of Britannia

This represents a new path forward as we progress into the future as a project on the Shards Engine with our new home in Britannia. What's next? We will be steadily working to replace branding across all platforms over time but will do our best to make the transition as seamless as possible. We hope that you are as excited as we are about the future and appreciate your support through these changing times.


5th Sep 2021 announcement

Tonight's maintenance window @ 9am UTC (approx 1h 10 mins from the time of this notice) will be extended by up to an hour while we work on the 'lag' issues that are currently being seen.

Thank you as always for your patience.


4th Sep 2021 announcement

We're going to need to do an additional restart in about 20 minutes so that we can try to help some players who are unable to login. No downtime expected. Thank you for your patience as we try to get everyone in game again!


4th Sep 2021 announcement

All town vendors have been made invulnerable for the time being while we work on updating their AI to be in line with Britannia-era combat mechanics and as such, they will be unavailable for snooping or thievery while invulnerable. Thanks for your patience while we continue to work on things


4th Sep 2021 announcement

Due to another troublesome bug and an even larger player count (which we're not complaining about!), we will temporarily go to a 12 hour restart schedule to avoid a possible stability issue. We'll advise when we've squashed this one and change back to daily restarts.


4th Sep 2021 announcement

The servers will be going offline for updates in 15 minutes. Please make sure you have the latest version of the client installed. We will post again when the update is complete and the server is coming back online. Thanks for your patience


4th Sep 2021 announcement

In addition to our website and forums being updated in preparation for our big day on June 20th, our wiki has also been migrated and revitalised. Head on over to:

https://wiki.legendsofultima.online

to check it out. Don't forget you can search it directly from Discord - just type "!wiki searchterm". If you're interested in contributing to the wiki, please sign up using your Discord account, then hit up the #wiki-contributors channel in Discord and message the bot with "!wikicontributor"

Huge thanks to community member Beekel, who helped with forklifting a lot of the content over, in addition to creating new content AND writing the new bot for us. Much appreciated!


4th Sep 2021 announcement

To all,

We sincerely apologise for the (very brief) housing launch today. The server will be coming back online in the next few minutes, however there is some additional impact.

Unfortunately we are unable to return to the world save from just prior to the housing launch. Instead, we have had to roll back a further 45 minutes. This was unavoidable and had to be done to ensure the integrity of our data and the game.

We don't expect the issue we experienced to return, and please go ahead and place your housing. Thank you, as always, for your patience.


4th Sep 2021 announcement

The servers are offline for the time being while we prepare for the transition process. As you know our team is global and therefore we are scheduling plenty of time in advance to allow for all teammates to complete any duties. Thanks for your patience through the downtime and please check back here periodically for further updates. See you on the other side!


4th Sep 2021 announcement

We are beginning to restore services and will be back online shortly. Thank you for bearing with us. We have extra elements in play now to mitigate any further attacks.

We expect a small rollback as we come back online. These are inevitable in these types of scenarios due to the state of world saves and must be done to ensure integrity of our data.

As always, we appreciate your patience.


4th Sep 2021 announcement

The Auto Stack or Stack All option(s) was removed before the Britannia launch, but some people still had it enabled after the transition, even though the option was removed.

This feature has caused several client\graphical glitches in the past for people as items are moved around or consumed very quickly. The feature has been disabled in favor of preventing multiple stacks from accumulating in the first place.

Please let us know if you run into a scenario where multiple stacks of similar items are being added to your backpack when you wouldn't expect them to, and we will work to optimize any remaining cases.


4th Sep 2021 announcement

  • After the next scheduled restart, the game will remain offline until the housing launch time of 10AM US Eastern/2pm UTC
  • Further information on housing is available on our wiki here: https://wiki.legendsofultima.online/en/housing
  • Cost, plot size, lockdowns etc will be available to you once you purchase a housing tool
  • The final list of available launch houses may not 100% reflect what is shown on the wiki. We'll advise further with the launch announcement
  • The area north of the town of Minoc is now available to players. This will also be one of the regions where you'll be able to place a house, as per the wiki article


4th Sep 2021 announcement

We're investigating an issue with guards and will be down for a little bit longer.