The latest Ultima Online newsletter from Broadsword Online Games announces another birthday for the grandfather of MMORPGs:

I would like to start off by thanking each of you for supporting Ultima Online as we celebrate 19 years this September 24th!  As a special thanks to our long time subscribers we are going to deposit 500 Sovereigns in every master account with an active subscription account at least 10 years old as a token for our appreciation of your continued support! You will notice this by the end of September so make sure you visit the Ultima Store to claim this gift!

We are working hard on getting Publish 95 out the door by mid-November.  In the next publish we have a nice Holiday crafting event that I am sure everyone will enjoy.  We’ve added new creatures to the Huntmaster’s Challenge and have some nice Holiday gifts and of course new Veteran Rewards.  We are adding a new mount so we hope you like creepy crawly things *evil grin*.  Publish 95 will be coming to TC1 soon so we hope to see everyone there to help check out and test the new content!

We had an issue with the Origin store where players were not able to purchase game time codes for a few days which caused us to turn off housing decay until the issue was resolved.  To give a grace period to allow people enough time to buy and apply the codes we are waiting until Tuesday, September 27th to turn the Housing Warehouse back on.  At that time you will be able to place, resize and trade houses again.

While we are in the process of finishing up the publishes of 2016, we have already started with the planning of the first publish of 2017.  We are going to have a Pet Revamp (I promise no neon pets).  So stay tuned for more information on this system and what you can expect in a future newsletter.

As well, the team are getting the game ready for the events that will inevitably attend Halloween:

Don’t forget that during the month of October you can visit any of Britannia’s pumpkin patches in hopes of encountering the deadly Grimms for a chance to claim a carveable pumpkin.  If you are brave enough, you can wrangle a carving kit from one of the Butchers in any of Britannia’s graveyards.  When used on the carveable pumpkin, the carving kit will reward one of several different jack o’ lantern designs – including designs that are new for this year!

Beggars across Britannia will also once again take their luck to the citizens of the realm at hopes for a few tricks and even more treats.  Don’t forget this year we’ve got many new treats including spiced apple trays, a tabletop gypsy wagon lamp, and more!

Finally, there is still time for you to venture into the Kotl City and claim the many rewards held within!  The Kotl City will be available until Publish 95 goes World Wide in November.  Any crafting items related to Automaton crafting will be available through the new BOD system being released in Publish 95.  If there are non-automaton crafting items associated with the Kotl City you still wish to get your hands on act now – next year’s Treasures of Halloween dungeon could be completely new with different rewards!

Also included in the newsletter is a sneak peek at some new artwork that will be making its way into the game in the Publish 94 or 95:

Finally, Broadsword have begun drawing up plans for Ultima Online’s 20th anniversary. But as this is still a year out, they don’t have anything substantive to share about it just yet.