25th Anniversary Gifts

What do you all think?

I love the art in the Tome.  Incredible work.

I wish I could tell you. Every character on my account is bugged. The options for the rewards all say "Missing String ID".. I clicked on one on one of my characters and got an empty grey bag.

Eekamouse - you need to patch update

The tome is wicked cool!  

The tomb is fantastic!! the artwork incredible!! the different pictures !!!

The game is 25 years old, to thank the players they bring this insult out. Disgusting.  Sad, tired, boring, no imagination,  thought, or reward or thanks at all. Not useful to enhance gameplay, just more CRAP that will go into the bin. I am embarrassed for the Dev's and the state of this game if this is all they can come up with. No respect for the players. SHOCKING

 😂 yikes - so much anger... There aren't going to be anymore devs hired and probably haven't been for a decade. If your expectations haven't been reset by now this might not be the game for you.

Imma go admire that tome and remember all the good times I have had with this game. Thanks UO team!

I'm looking my gift horse in the mouth and being 100% honest here.

I like the pages within the tomb a great deal. I think the artwork is very lovely. Would have been nice if a silver 25 medallion in the middle of the book stayed silver but the rest of the book could be dyed to your color of choice. It would set the 25-year emblem apart from the rest of the cover, showing it off better. 

I like the skull bottle ok. I thought it was a new type of skull candle at first. I kinda wish it were. I'd rather have a new light source than something that gets my character drunk. Not sure why, if it's a bottle, I can't hold it in my hand. Not sure if it drops in different colors. The one I cashed in looks kind of goldish. Wish I could dye it.

I loathe what's called the anniversary shield. I'm dumbfounded by it. I don't understand why it's not an equip-able shield with fantastic artwork that you can transmog for the shield slot. It looks like an interstate highway sign. An undyeable one at that. This plaque should have been pretty spectacular imo.

The gift box, tomb and shield / not really a shield, are all monochromatic in an unfortunate, not particularly silvery, way.

I'm not angry but I am pretty underwhelmed. Small dev team or no, I did think UO's year 25 would offer more of a bang! And with the only vet reward being added on our 25th year, being the Hildebrandt Shield, usable only by a player that never took a break, the prizes for being around for UO's 25th Anniversary feel like a bit of a short shrift. 

Not a deal breaker for me. Still love the game. Still gonna have fun playing it. Still looking forward to what's next.

If you play with sound on. When you open the tome it plays that music, it over ridesthe game music so if you are like me and get tired of war mode music all the time, this is an item I will carry on each toon.

Silver Anniversary Shield

The shield, when double clicked, will display a stylized version of the Ultima Online Charter Edition Box art with an anniversary inscription along with a musical accompaniment of Stones. The shield also bears the inscription, September 24, 1997 – the date Ultima Online launched. Silver Intoxicating Liquor The skull shaped bottle, when double clicked will inebriate the imbiber. The bottle is available in 11 common and 1 rare hue. Silver Anniversary Tome The tome, when double clicked will display a randomized scene of Britannian landscape as well as play a musical accompaniment appropriate to the scene. The tome also bears an inscription displaying the shard name the tome was redeemed as well as the date that shard went live.

And for the tome:

LilyGrace said:

I'm looking my gift horse in the mouth and being 100% honest here.

I like the pages within the tomb a great deal. I think the artwork is very lovely. Would have been nice if a silver 25 medallion in the middle of the book stayed silver but the rest of the book could be dyed to your color of choice. It would set the 25-year emblem apart from the rest of the cover, showing it off better. 

I like the skull bottle ok. I thought it was a new type of skull candle at first. I kinda wish it were. I'd rather have a new light source than something that gets my character drunk. Not sure why, if it's a bottle, I can't hold it in my hand. Not sure if it drops in different colors. The one I cashed in looks kind of goldish. Wish I could dye it.

I loathe what's called the anniversary shield. I'm dumbfounded by it. I don't understand why it's not an equip-able shield with fantastic artwork that you can transmog for the shield slot. It looks like an interstate highway sign. An undyeable one at that. This plaque should have been pretty spectacular imo.

The gift box, tomb and shield / not really a shield, are all monochromatic in an unfortunate, not particularly silvery, way.

I'm not angry but I am pretty underwhelmed. Small dev team or no, I did think UO's year 25 would offer more of a bang! And with the only vet reward being added on our 25th year, being the Hildebrandt Shield, usable only by a player that never took a break, the prizes for being around for UO's 25th Anniversary feel like a bit of a short shrift. 

Not a deal breaker for me. Still love the game. Still gonna have fun playing it. Still looking forward to what's next.

Lilly has a little Mcdougle in her after all 

Thanks, Mariah, I'd not read this info before. Thanks to Pawain too. I do play with sound and music but I had sound down when I was in the game earlier and didn't know it had music as well. That's a nice touch.

Still want to dye it.  😂

Valeria said:

 😂 yikes - so much anger... There aren't going to be anymore devs hired and probably haven't been for a decade. If your expectations haven't been reset by now this might not be the game for you.

Imma go admire that tome and remember all the good times I have had with this game. Thanks UO team!

I have been playing 10 years so I think I am entitled to have a voice. I certainly don’t need to be patronised by someone like you. So you can take your 29 posts and do one, thanks  

JackFlashUk said:

Valeria said:

 😂 yikes - so much anger... There aren't going to be anymore devs hired and probably haven't been for a decade. If your expectations haven't been reset by now this might not be the game for you.

Imma go admire that tome and remember all the good times I have had with this game. Thanks UO team!

I have been playing 10 years so I think I am entitled to have a voice. I certainly don’t need to be patronised by someone like you. So you can take your 29 posts and do one, thanks  

I have lots of posts can I patronise (sic) you?

Nah, it's just me in me. Gramma doesn't approve but she said it's better than having a little McDougle in me.  

I like the idealized pics of the towns. Those are nice.

@Mariah from your pic, is this the order you put the towns in? Left to right, top to bottom:

Britain                   Buccaneer's Den          Jhelom         Minoc
Moonglow            New Magincia              Occlo           Skara Brae
Serpent's Hold     Trinsic                            Vesper         Yew

No Nujel'm or Cove eh?

LOL oh my...

Anyway..I love the gifts. The artwork is awesome, the shield, while it does look like an interstate sign is still really cool, especially when double-clicked. 

It takes time to come up with something new, new artwork we've not had before, new ideas for a 25 year old game....TWENTY FIVE YEAR OLD!!!!! Oh my! That's pretty incredible! 

And why would you be able to hold the skull bottle? We can't hold any other liquor bottle, why would you think we'd be able to hold this one?

I like the comments when you drink out of it.

Pawain said:

JackFlashUk said:

Valeria said:

 😂 yikes - so much anger... There aren't going to be anymore devs hired and probably haven't been for a decade. If your expectations haven't been reset by now this might not be the game for you.

Imma go admire that tome and remember all the good times I have had with this game. Thanks UO team!

I have been playing 10 years so I think I am entitled to have a voice. I certainly don’t need to be patronised by someone like you. So you can take your 29 posts and do one, thanks  

I have lots of posts can I patronise (sic) you?

you cant, I am immune to you. 🙂

I thought you could hold that Captain whatchamacallit's rum bottle. No? Am I dreaming? I could easily have that wrong.

I'm not saying I don't find anything to appreciate about the gifts. And I did profess to looking a gift horse in the mouth. There's no way I can warm up to that shield. Maybe I could if I could dye it. That's probably my biggest complaint. I want color.

I got nothin' but love for the Dev Team. I know theirs is a thankless job 99% of the time. There's a lot more right than there is wrong in my UO world.

Ok, now on to my next complaint! I'm with Arroth_Thaiel. I love Cove. I wish it would be included more often in the scheme of things.

But it's the SILVER anniversary....why would you want to dye it? It's supposed to be silver!

I like color. And I think it could have shown more depth with a bit of color to set it off. It would depend on how it was shaded I suppose. 

Love the gifts. But the date for the opening of the Siege Perilous Shard is wrong. It was July 1999 not September 1997. 

Mariah said:

Yes @ Arroth_Thaiel then you have desert, dungeon, ice island, jungle, mountain, forest, swamp. Much appreciation to the artist 🙂

Waiting to see a full list of the bottle hues.

from TC

Larisa said:

And why would you be able to hold the skull bottle? We can't hold any other liquor bottle, why would you think we'd be able to hold this one?

i believe this was the reward from Treasures of the Seas

I was also wishing we could equip the silver anniversary gift.
It would have been a good equippable during halloween time.
but I'm sure that i will have other good uses for them.

some mentioned on Stratics that it would be good to use
for when doing the hags quest, for when you need to get drunk

Cinderella said:

Larisa said:

And why would you be able to hold the skull bottle? We can't hold any other liquor bottle, why would you think we'd be able to hold this one?

i believe this was the reward from Treasures of the Seas

I was also wishing we could equip the silver anniversary gift.
It would have been a good equippable during halloween time.
but I'm sure that i will have other good uses for them.

some mentioned on Stratics that it would be good to use
for when doing the hags quest, for when you need to get drunk

Was a reward you could buy from the Fellowship. The Fellowship is Good! 
There is also a Rum you can equip.

Sad you could not use them as transmog target for a shield.

UniversalBlue said:

Love the gifts. But the date for the opening of the Siege Perilous Shard is wrong. It was July 1999 not September 1997. 

Is that the date on the shield or the tome? The shield is dated for the launch of UO, the tome is the one dated for the start of the shard.

I wasn't around for the whole fellowship thing so I missed that!

I think the Skull Mug is too big to hold though.

So I broke my rule and logged in to make this comment. How hard would it have been to have the book show the date/shard that You or I created that account on ? It's already stored on the server because the character profile shows it. Instead yay, we can all run around with books that all say the same thing, what a celebration.

If you log into each shard and claim the tome/book it will have that shard on it. You’ll just need to transfer each shards book to your home shard. 

Skett said:

If you log into each shard and claim the tome/book it will have that shard on it. You’ll just need to transfer each shards book to your home shard. 

It's too bad not everyone can do that with ease. Not only could we more easily get an entire collection of (not shard bound but shard named) 25th Anniversary Tomes, we could have more fun easily getting together with other players at times when your home shard is dullsville.  

Mariah said:

UniversalBlue said:

Love the gifts. But the date for the opening of the Siege Perilous Shard is wrong. It was July 1999 not September 1997. 

Is that the date on the shield or the tome? The shield is dated for the launch of UO, the tome is the one dated for the start of the shard.

The tome.

I like to be positive, but I was also not a fan.

The art in the book is nice, but much of it is repeat... if not all, but I don't keep up to well.

25 years is a super milestone.  Some gameplay stuff would have been nice.

I also only run one account at a time.  I don't like having "rare" anything in a collection I can't at least farm.  And I don't like to farm for multiple days of time either, for the record.

But it is nice to do something.

I'm bringing back 2 tomes from each shard I'm transferring tokens from - one for my collection, one to trade/sell later...

Unfortunately these gifts are just par for the course for the Dev team. This post isn't meant to be a shot at the Devs but just my observation.

There was an entire thread on these gifts when they dropped on TC a month or 2 ago (note only chars already created for 30 days on TC could get them) with feedback on the items. There were several small tweaks they could have made to make these gifts better but as usual once the Devs draw up the idea they aren't going to change it regardless of feedback. 

I retained my opinion of these gifts from TC1. For a 25th (big important anniversary right?) gift these all (maybe the liquor bottle being the exception) are stale and fall flat; including the gift box they come in.

• Someone made suggestions of switching the box (currently looks like a regular wooden box dyed 1 shade lighter than grey) to a silver strongbox. Small tweak that would make the gift box much more appealing but ignored. 
• Someone suggested the adjust the shield so that it didn't look like an I-25 sign you see while driving down the highway. Again ignored.
• As stated above, the Tome is really just recycled artwork (from all the books of lore) with a different description. 
• As I originally stated (and as I saw someone else recently post) there shoulda/coulda been a SILVER steed mount for the SILVER anniversary. It would have just been a reskinned 16th anniversary mount but said "silver steed". Again ignored.
• Intoxicating liquor bottle is probably the freshest item but it really doesn't have much to do with 25 years...but still the Devs go back to the same well with having X hues. 

It just seems like the creativity for much of the game is lacking the past few years and honestly has the feeling that they are just mailing it in. I get it that maybe they are tired of doing stuff for UO (ie their job) so their interest in creating fresh ideas might not be there but the sad part is that it seems like the Devs also have zero interest in taking suggestions from the player base (who are still interested in the game).