[SPOILERS] Origins of the Kobolds?

With great excitement I have been reading the new books introduced in the new release, but I came across something that I cannot reconcile:

In the book Obsidian Magic, the unnamed author says that "[The Obsidian Sorcerers] crafted new creatures, both beasts of burden and new sentient races now commonly called the formorians kobolds, fauns, satyrs, elves, trolls and the like."

However, in the Journals of Arabella posted in Update of the Avatar #159, Arabella states: "The kobolds of Novia are a unique race. Not a construct of the Obsidians like the elves or the trolls, the kobolds emerged after the Cataclysm from their underground cities."

Now, I am all for untrustworthy sources and unclear origins. If that is the case, great! Can the runic books have an author so we can refute their work?

Otherwise, was this an oversight of the RL author? Is placing kobolds in the list of formorians an oversight, and it should be removed?

 

In short, yes. Devs, and I believe I recall Richard himself saying specifically that the kobolds are not among the fomorian races. On that note, they seem to have misspelled fomorian as well. This is also evidenced by the existence of Kobold tech, as the fomorian races haven't existed long enough to develop any unique technology and the fact the Kobolds helped humans after the cataclysm proves they pre-date the cabalists by at least a few hundred years.

 

I still don't understand why there isn't a crowd-sourced form of editing for material like this that goes into the game. It's worked well for @DarkStarr with the release instructionss. For those who don't want to see writing before it goes in-game, they can use spoiler tags. There have always been many willing to volunteer to do editing like this. Having to write bug reports for every little spelling, grammar, and lore mistake (which have been legion over the years) is so terribly inefficient.

An editing process like the R54 instructions would help the game a ton. There could be a separate forum category for it - "Please Review" or "Drafts for Review" or some such. @Berek. This has always been a Shroud missed opportunity.

 

Well, there WAS an attempt to use community members to review written works that would go into the game. I think you probably remember how that went. Granted what you're getting at here is a bit different (though not by much in my opinion) as it doesn't involve quality checking work from the community becoming official content, but after all that went down I'd understand why Portalarium might be reluctant to go through that again.

 

I didn't play UO (well I did for about a week, but my modem was so slow and I could't get the hang of the game, which in retrospect is a great shame), but i am pretty interested in the Lore. It seems there is a lot of it and its deep and rich.
Is there a reference point online to start digging into this - the races, the wars, the world, the history etc?

 

Well if at all possible I'd recommend playing Ultima I-IX There's a few good references out there though..

The Editable Codex
Ultima Wiki

And one of my personal favorites..

The Noteable Ultima

I'm amazed it's still around but check out the Historical Ultima for a timeline

 

I agree Vyrin. However if there was a attempt to do this before, then I’m not sure if it is the best way to proceed. Honestly, I don’t know much about the processes before, so I leave that up to you experts.

I also found a spelling mistake in one of the other books as well.

So, I should be making big reports of these?

 

That wasn't exactly the same as what I'm suggesting. That attempt was for submitting player-created content. What I'm talking about is dev-created content that the players simply review for spelling, grammar, lore, etc. I am not a fan of going down the road of player-submitted content again. I don't think the issues that sunk the first would be present with what I'm suggesting and I would hope it could operate as simply as the review of the release instructions does. No otganization required at all. I can't think of a good argument against setting up some kind of draft review, especially when players have to bug test it anyway in-game. Why not do it earlier with a simpler and more efficient process?

 

I believe I eluded to that distinction. The commonality here is community quality checking to-be in-game content. While I agree the distinction is significant, my point is that Portalarium may still be weary of going that route. It was after all, a handful of community members going on about things that should not have been an issue that caused problems before. I admit I'm still a little jaded over that whole thing. I didn't want to pipe in at the time but I thought the whole stink was just stupid. But it is what it is. If Portalarium wasn't to open up content for community QC I'll be first in line.

 

The point is I really want to make a clear distinction with what happened before. Raising that specter really clouds the issue for those who don't know that what happened in the past was something fundamentally different: it was about player-created content and not at all about reviewing dev content. It tried to eatablish a player-controlled process vs. leaving things open to all and dev-controlled.

Certainly raising that history may have be enough to kill the idea for those who aren't able to make the distinction. Keep the focus on the success of the review of release instructions. However it may be a victim of a much larger issue about whether quality story/lore/questing is really a priority anyway.

 

That's fine but my point is that mess wasn't because the idea was flawed. It was because a handful of people chose to make an irrational stink. Rather than deal with it Portalarium simply chose not to solicit player written content. Process ultimately worked disguised as contests but the fiasco delayed things quite a bit and took a lot of wind out of the sails.

You wouldn't want review to "open to all" in the same way the release instructions aren't. They're Dev+ only which means only a limited number of people would see it.

 

Even if Dev+ was still active somehow in the forum for reviewing Release instructions (now that it's not a factor in QA), I think irrational fears lead to this need to control things. Crap feedback posts can be quickly and easily ignored as they are in the release instruction review. Dev+ doesn't limit bad suggestions or off-topic posts. That's the beauty of keeping it simple. This idea that things need to be "limited" and "controlled" by players is exactly what Port should fear the most. It's what rubbed a lot of people the wrong way with the original idea, which wasn't an irrational stink.

There's only one person who's made a stink so far with the idea....hmmm. If your intent was to sink the idea, you have probably succeeded by continually stirring up controversy with something unrelated to what I proposed.

 

We remember things very differently it seems. I remember people crying favoritism, copyright and suggesting they should get royalties despite submissions being owned by Portalarium as a thing that was supposed to be understood. It wasn't just that it was 'player controlled' which isn't a purely accurate description. Portalarium always had the final say as to what was accepted. It really amounted to little more than a quality check for player submitted writings. Which isn't all that different from what you're suggesting here except for the source of the content.

You're reading a little much into it. ALL I've been trying to say is that Portalarium MIGHT be a little weary about doing any kind of community QC on in-game content prior to it actually getting on the QA server. That's not trying to make a stink of your suggestion. Did I not acknowledge the major difference and say I'd be first in line if they did it?

 

No. I remember these things too, I didn't say it was the only thing. Besides, player control was tied to the comments about favoritism.

See, this again ties the suggestion to something fundamentally different that didn't work in the past. Can you not see how doing that places a taint on the idea? I guess I would expect if you were really interested in helping with the opportunity you'd be trying to emphasize positives. Like again, the fact that it would be NO DIFFERENT than what they are already doing, which is successful. Relistically, based on this convo, I don't think they are going to touch it. So no point in continuing here.

 

What they are doing is QCing an external forum post. The difference is in content, timing and location.

Never mind that I've said absolutely nothing about any negatives about the idea itself. Would it work? Sure it would. Would the community go for it? Probably.. most of it at least. Would Portalarium want and be willing to do it? That is really for them to decide. I only suggested they may be weary, which isn't even to say unwilling.

I think we'd be better served moving on here. So about those Kobolds??

Edit: In fact, tell you what. If you are really interested in getting it going, start a proper thread for it and I won't bring any of this stuff up or anything.

 

Agreed. However, the idea is still probably sunk as the connection has been made. I really don't understand the need to make the points you're trying to make if it is something you want to do. But this is my last post here.

Port will have to continue to rely on the clunky and inefficient volunteerism of bug reporters to surface these things. For myself, I don't have the time to search and travel in the game world just to review one piece of text, so I probably won't be doing it. I'm just trying to find time to go through the quests again to provide another round of feedback.

 

I wouldn't be that quick to give up on it if you think it's a good idea. I was going to suggest you start its own thread (see above edit), but I guess I'll leave it at that.

 

So... bug report?

 

yeah, should.