Broadsword Online Games have published a pair of new updates to the Ultima Online website. The first concerns the selection of focus testers for the upcoming Time of Legends expansion:

We have gotten a great response and appreciate all the players that have sent us emails. The first batch of testers has been picked and will be receiving an email with directions in the next few days. After you have filled out the NDA and survey it will take a few days to get everyone added to the internal forum where further instructions will be available. We will be adding a second batch to the focus group at a later date.

One thing I need to point out to everyone, this focus group is for active players only, if your account was inactive for any reason you were not included.

The second update, meanwhile, clarifies a point about the Japanese game codes that will expire next month. The main body of the post is in Japanese, but an English translation has also been provided:

In the article of 2015/5/28 ” [Important Notice] End of Support of Ultima Online codes sold in Japan, there was a wrong communication that *Please note the codes sold from Amazon or Origin will not be affected.

The codes subject to this are certain types of codes sold in Japan (please refer to http://help.ea.com/jp/article/uo-jp-support-codes in detail). Origin is not Japan-operating store, but US store hence the codes sold in Origin is not subject to this.

We apologize any inconvenience with an incorrect information .
The correction has been made already in the original article .

Now we know.