I introduced myself in my last letter, so now I'd like to talk a little bit about what I do. I have many responsibilities, but a big hunk of it is maintaining good relations with our fansites and providing information to the fans.

In my lofty goal to make everyone happy and to distribute lots of great information, I'd say I have three big hurdles. First, there's the simple issue of priorities. Needless to say, distributing screenshots and information about the game is a lower priority than, oh say... finishing the game. :) A fansite operator suggested recently, "Why don't you just give out two screenshots per week?" Actually, that's not as easy as it sounds. Since we're still in the phase of game creation rather than straight testing, we don't actually spend all that much time in the game, with clothed characters, arranging to meet up with other characters, and taking screenshots. So most of the shots are taken by me, or taken by our artists when we put together videos or special showings. This means I have only a set selection of shots at any given time, and I try to do my best not to run out! Interviews are the same way, since every interview takes at least a little time from a dev team member, and I have to balance those time requirements, along with the amount of time spent by them answering my incessant game-related questions for the boards and the FAQ.

Another difficulty is the desire to never give out inaccurate information. Sounds easy, doesn't it? When I first started, my thought on that was, "Well, duh." What I didn't fully understand at that time was that with a game (and a game industry) that changes as much as this one does, it's almost impossible to know from one minute to the next whether the feature you're looking at right now will still be there in 6 months, or if something better will be discovered later. To truly be sure to give out no inaccurate information, we'd be resigned to, "Well, we're making a game... and you'll be able to play with other people... and you can use weapons and wear clothes... and it'll be really fun." This approach, of course, is about as exciting as mud, so for the most part, we just say as much as we feel is safe, and try our best to keep our information as current as possible.

My third hurdle is the fact that there are simply so many sites! The amount of support we receive from the community is truly amazing, but that also makes it almost impossible to give everyone the attention they deserve. Currently, we post a Question of the Week that alternates between two sites, a screenshot rotation that gives a screenshot each week to one of five sites, a FAQ board where I get suggestions for new FAQ additions, IRC chats once a month that alternate between three sites, and a weekly (or sometimes bi-weekly) Q&A with Ahriman. In addition, we do interviews about every 2 weeks with sites all over the community (and I'm not counting other promotions and interviews done by our PR and marketing department). Of course, there's also our own boards here, and the UWOO eGroup discussion forum, both of which enable us to touch even more people.

I'm always on the lookout for the magical way to make everyone happy... who knows, maybe I'll find it! Until then, I would just like to take a quick moment to say thank you to all of our fansite operators and the fans who visit those sites and ours. This week, we have something great to offer you, which is the trailer we showed at the UO World Faire. I wish we could release something like this every week! Of course, the game would never be finished if we tried thatc

Happy Holidays to everyone, and enjoy the video!