UO Second Age

The discussion is from 3 months prior to the patch note: " It will no longer be possible to gate monsters. Only escorts, hirelings, pets, and summoned creatures." (9/16/98)

Nobody is arguing that gating monsters wasn't possible before this patch note. In fact, we all acknowledge that it was as late as 9/15/98. Showing that it was possible in 7/98 does not materially strengthen your case.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 9b1cc72075

Try that one instead, its from Nov. 1999.. A few quotes:

I for one would like to be able to go to a "newbie area" and not fight the most
difficult mosters. I will take the risk of PKs now that the Rep patch is in
(that makes every area at least somewhat unpredictable).

But if you want stronger mosters go find them. The people gating them know
where they are if you want more interesting game play then go out and find it!
Does everything have to come to you?

> I am alone in NOT wanting to see this practice abolished ???

No. I as well as many other people who are NOT abusing it do
not wish to see it go.

and it continues for many posts

These conversations went on over days and the patch wasnt in yet It was aorund the time of the cut off point where people said OSI ruined UO so late Nov early Dec of 99 is when this patch went in...which is up for debate since Novemeber 99 is the cut off point for accuracy. We are talking like a week here.

From my limited understanding of the debate I believe people are saying a patch in September 1999 changed monster gating. If this is the case, then there is no case for my post being too late to count, as it was *still* possible at the time and thus had not been patched out in September. I would like to note that none of these posts mention enticement, which means it is possible that monsters were able to be gated without the skill, however unlikely.

Trellor wrote:From my limited understanding of the debate I believe people are saying a patch in September 1999 changed monster gating. If this is the case, then there is no case for my post being too late to count, as it was *still* possible at the time and thus had not been patched out in September. I would like to note that none of these posts mention enticement, which means it is possible that monsters were able to be gated without the skill, however unlikely.

People changed the facts that the date was in september in here because they realized the patch hadnt come in even mid November 1999 as proved in your post from the Abyss shard which has been noted by other posters as a testing ground and pre-cursor to UO:R.
If you noticed one player asks about a few things he wants to do before it goes in.
here is his quote:

Lifegiver View profile El Lèmur wrote: > Lifegiver wrote: > > Before they make monsters ungatable, here's a little trick that I would > > like to do. It's ingredients are: a rune to Coveteous' Harpy Room, the > > spells (or scrolls) Gate and Polymorph (into a demon), and a pair of > > linked Comm Crystals. Just let the Polymorphee through the gate first > > with a activated Commstone, and listen to the people PANIC!! Also, you > > might get the dungeon to yurself. > Great idea! May I suggest one other thing? Have the polymorphed > quaff a healing potion--it turns him from a poly'd daemon into > a daemon with a sword (in appearances only). Ooooooh, never thought of that. >:> Too bad you can't make a polymorphed form black (as in regular black, not true, which is BO-RING!). Now THAT would REALLY get people going. >:> DarkMatrix 'gonna try Despise again' CorpseTearer, Yew, Pacific Marrukah, Minoc, Catskills --- NewsGate v1.0 gamma 2 * Origin: Runeworks (1:129/150.99)
More options Nov 11 1999, 4:00 am

Newsgroups: rec.games.computer.ultima.online
From: [email protected] (Lifegiver)
Date: 1999/11/11
Subject: Re: The gating of monsters
Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author

El Lèmur wrote:

> Lifegiver wrote:


> > Before they make monsters ungatable, here's a little trick that I would
> > like to do. It's ingredients are: a rune to Coveteous' Harpy Room, the
> > spells (or scrolls) Gate and Polymorph (into a demon), and a pair of
> > linked Comm Crystals. Just let the Polymorphee through the gate first
> > with a activated Commstone, and listen to the people PANIC!! Also, you
> > might get the dungeon to yurself.


> Great idea! May I suggest one other thing? Have the polymorphed
> quaff a healing potion--it turns him from a poly'd daemon into
> a daemon with a sword (in appearances only).



Ooooooh, never thought of that. >:>

Too bad you can't make a polymorphed form black (as in regular black,
not true, which is BO-RING!). Now THAT would REALLY get people going.

From a logical standpoint it doesn't make sense to be able to gate/entice monsters in this ERA. Imagine if someone decided to gate every single major spawn inside their castle and hold the monsters there for an extended amount of time? People are already gating the monsters to islands like roadkills and mare island. The whole ice dungeon spawn of ice fiends and mage lords was completely empty. It's a little out of control at this point IMO.

Mirage wrote:From a logical standpoint it doesn't make sense to be able to gate/entice monsters in this ERA. Imagine if someone decided to gate every single major spawn inside their castle and hold the monsters there for an extended amount of time? People are already gating the monsters to islands like roadkills and mare island. The whole ice dungeon spawn of ice fiends and mage lords was completely empty. It's a little out of control at this point IMO.

Spawns were controlled by their individual server in OSI, the shard being made up of a number (not sure how many) servers, dividing each piece of the land with "server lines". I'm almost 100% positive that if a monster were not within it's server boundaries, it would be eligible to spawn again on that server.

Trellor wrote:http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 9b1cc72075

Try that one instead, its from Nov. 1999.. A few quotes:

I for one would like to be able to go to a "newbie area" and not fight the most
difficult mosters. I will take the risk of PKs now that the Rep patch is in
(that makes every area at least somewhat unpredictable).

But if you want stronger mosters go find them. The people gating them know
where they are if you want more interesting game play then go out and find it!
Does everything have to come to you?

> I am alone in NOT wanting to see this practice abolished ???

No. I as well as many other people who are NOT abusing it do
not wish to see it go.

and it continues for many posts

Are the dates of the comments in your link accurate? They all say "November 11, 1999 1:00AM". That Rep patch the poster is refering to seems like the one from June 1998 (I don't know of any other patch that is refered to as the "Rep patch").

Edit: Whoops, they all say 1:00AM actually, not 3:00AM

There is certainly some timeline disconnect here, the Rep Patch came in over a year prior to Nov 1999.

My initial thought was that the dates were reset, but there are more preciece dates inside the posts. I don't get it.

Clearly, due to the rep patch reference, and the description of gating monsters these are referencing pre-T2A mechanics, in regard to major shards in any case. We know when "monster gating" was closed by OSI, in a specific seriaized and dated patch note on their website.

The question of a seperate thread, enticing monsters though gates does not seem to be addressed here.

I believe that there is a very simple explanation as to why all the times are listed as 4:00 AM.

If we look at a different post, we'll notice....

07:36:53 -0400

This is the time, and I believe, the timezone indicator for Atlantic Standard Time

http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbr ... a/ast.html
Email time zone indicator: -0400

An email sent from someone in the AST time zone will have the time zone listed as "-0400" in the headers of the email.

It could be possible that the computer script that compiled this information for google interpreted 0400 as 4:00 AM (24 hour clock) instead of AST -0400.

Just an idea.