Answer: This was the third of a three-part plan to improve the housing situation within Ultima Online. The Phase 3 system will essentially focus on removing houses belonging to inactive accounts and freeing up housing space.

Phase 3 had been delayed in order to implement some improvements, but it looks like that implementation may be coming soon.

Answer: As Phase 3 begins, a manually-activated "first sweep" audit of inactive account-houses will occur. More than one such audit may happen over the course of about a month. Housing updates will fall into a more regular, automated routine once all manual auditing is completed. (The automated portion will begin several weeks after Phase 3 starts.)

Also at the time Phase 3 begins, the universal automatic refreshing of all houses on all accounts will stop. Primary Houses will continue to automatically refresh, but houses that are of "Grandfathered" status will need to be manually refreshed. Houses that become condemned due to placing a new house, being traded a new house, or setting another house to "Primary House" status cannot be refreshed.

First Sweep(s): All houses on accounts that have been inactive for 60 days or more at the time of an audit will become condemned and begin decaying.

EDIT: I initially made an incorrect statement here, and you will not be able to “reactivate houses” during Phase 3’s “first sweeps” audit period. In truth, all houses on accounts that have been inactive for 60 days or longer at the time of these first sweep audits will not be able to become uncondemned, even if their owning account is reactivated during this period. Anyone who wishes to keep a house on an inactive account can do so by reactivating that account before Phase 3 begins. You will, however, still be able to trade such houses during this time. You will also still be able to reactivate/uncondemn houses once we enter the regular routine as originally stated. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this misinformation may have caused.

Such condemned houses will disappear in about 5 days except under the following conditions:

• If the account owned one house and is reactivated before the house disappears, you must manually re-set the house to “Primary House” status from the house sign to keep it from disappearing. Once the house’s status is switched to “Primary House” it will begin automatically refreshing at the start of each day.
• If the account owned multiple “grandfathered” houses and is reactivated before the houses disappear, you must manually re-set one of those houses to “Primary House” status in order to keep it from disappearing — you will be able to set only one as a Primary House, and all other houses on that account will remain condemned and continue to decay. Once the desired house’s status is switched to “Primary House” it will begin automatically refreshing at the start of each day.

Regular Routine: After the initial "First Sweeps" audits, all houses on accounts that have been inactive for more than 10-days will become condemned and begin decaying. (Grandfathered houses may continue to be refreshed during this 10-day grace period by co-owners and friends of that house.) Houses condemned through inactivity will disappear within about 5 days except under the following conditions:

• If the account owned one house and is reactivated before the house disappears, the house will un-condemn and continue being the player's Primary House.
• If the account owned multiple grandfathered houses and is reactivated before the houses disappear, only the most recently placed/collected house will un-condemn and become the Primary House -- all other houses on that account will remain condemned and continue to decay.

Answer: Universal auto-refreshing of houses will be turned off as of Phase 3. This has minimal impact on accounts that own only one house, but is a critical bit of information for accounts with houses of "Grandfathered" status.

If you only own one house on your account, its status is "Primary House." A Primary House will auto-magically refresh itself at the start of each day. As long as your account remains active, you will never have to do anything special to ensure it auto-refreshes each day.

Some older accounts own more than one house. Houses on these grandfathered accounts will not automatically refresh. The owners, co-owners, or friends of these houses will need to access the signs of each grandfathered house in order to refresh them. Grandfathered houses that are not refreshed will decay over time -- even if the account remains active -- and will disappear approximately 10 days after the last time they were refreshed.

Answer: No. If you own a house (or houses) and either place or are traded a new house, your old house(s) will become condemned and can never be un-condemned (unless traded to a character on another account, of course). Simply giving away that newest house will not uncondemn the older, now-condemned ones.

Answer: Phase 2 of the housing changes temporarily allowed co-owners & friends of houses on inactive accounts to attempt to claim it for their own. Although we had once planned to continue this feature through Phase 3 and beyond, we decided to not implement it as a permanent part of the housing rules. For the most up-to-date information on how housing currently works, please visit the official Playguide and Support sections of UO.com.

Answer: In general, whenever you place a house, receive a house in trade, or change the status of a Grandfathered house to Primary House, a 7-day placement timer is activated. However, here are some additional points of note:

• You cannot place a house, receive a house in trade, or set an alternate Grandfathered house to Primary House until that 7-day timer finishes.
• If you recently placed a house and are still within the 7-day timer, you can demolish that house and place a new one right away! As long as our housing database knows you have zero houses existing on any shard, you can pick up and place houses again and again and again without any concern over the timer.
• If you demolish your only house but are still within the 7-day house placement timer, although house placement can occur right away you cannot be traded a house until the 7-day timer finishes.

• Spotlights: This has to be one of my favorite things to be involved with. I love reading. I love fiction. I love hearing about other people's experiences, whether in-game or in real life. So it's only natural that I would enjoy this part of my job as well. There are times that we'll solicit stories by posting a spotlight topic to FYI -- the last one was 'Quest Adventures,' I believe. I have the delightful task of reading the submissions that are sent to the uo-profiles@uo.com mailbox, and then choosing and editing the ones we ultimately post on UO.com. One thing I've discovered from reading all those submissions is that there are a lot creative writers in our community!
• Interviews and Chats: Another one of my big responsibilities is the scheduling of interviews and chats with fansites. This usually involves juggling a lot of dates as I try to match up the times that Dev Team members are available, with the requests from the fansites. Sometimes, depending on what we have going on at the time, it can be quite the task. Ideally, we try to stick to doing around two interviews and two chats per month, so as not to overwhelm the Developers.
• Fansite Link Program: This program is still fairly new, and it's one that we're very happy to be able to support. It took a while for it to come together, as it had to go through an approval process, but it’s certainly something we hope to be able to continue with in the years to come. Whenever a site is submitted, I perform the initial review. If the site meets the basic requirements listed at http://town.uo.com/fanreqs.html, I write up a quick review and pass it on to Cynthe for final approval. And if the site doesn’t quite meet the requirements, I’ll communicate our concerns to the website’s owner.
• Team Comments: Posting team comments is something we try to do once a week, but it really depends on people’s schedules. To help the process along, I sometimes take on the role of interviewer and pose questions based on topics discussed in the player community, or things that I just think would be interesting to know about the members of the Dev Team. After a quick edit, to catch any pesky little typos, the Team Comments is posted for the world to see.
• Pics of the Week and Establishment screenshots: Pics of the Week and Establishment screenshots are posted to the front page of UO.com on a weekly basis. I get to sort through the screenshots that are sent in and determine which ones we can use on the website. Sometimes we receive screenshots with a lot of desktop clutter that tends to draw the focus away from the subject of the picture. These often don't make the cut. So, when you're submitting your screenshots, make sure you try to remove things like excessive spell icons and open menu gumps. Having said that, if you have a screenshot that you'd like to see posted to UO.com, click here for information on how to submit it.
• Miscellaneous Tasks: Things tend to be pretty hectic here on the UO OCR team, and like everyone here I pitch in to help wherever else I may be needed. Oftentimes I'm called on to edit miscellaneous text for my department, or for our Marketing team. I sometimes compose and post entries to FYI and even update UO's login patch message on occasion. I also assist with the board help requests that are submitted through the Game Wizard, and even help Marketing compile survey results. There’s always something for me to do. :)