Broadsword Online Games recently released yet another Ultima Online newsletter, in which they give some details on the upcoming party to celebrate the game’s 20th anniversary:

We are still planning the 20th anniversary party, finding the right bakery is not as easy as it sounds *grins*, and yes we will have gluten free cupcakes for you guys that desire those.

We had a great taste testing of the food for the BBQ the other day, you guys are going to love this!  It will consist of beef brisket, beef ribs, pulled pork, and chicken.  We will also have vegetarian options available.

We currently have 200 people signed up to attend with over 50 people on the waiting list.  If you are unable to come and need to cancel please email me so I can notify someone on the waiting list.  It would be greatly appreciated.

For those that cannot attend the party, I do not want to leave you out of everything, so we are going to put a raffle stone on TC1 that lets you sign up for a chance to win a Castle!  Yes that is correct! For the anniversary I will be giving out 6 castles!  Three in game via the TC1 raffle stone and three at the Party!  You will be notified via email so you can tell me what shard you would like the castle placed.  We will update in a future newsletter when the raffel stone is available on TC1.  Good luck to everyone!

Finally, we’ve received some great submissions of new castle designs!  There is so much interest in this promotion that we are going to be putting together a tool that allows players to mock-up larger house designs on TC1.  Keep an eye on future newsletters as we release this feature in a future publish.

Additionally, work on Publish 98 is well underway:

Publish 98 brings us into the busiest development cycle of the year as we focus on UO’s anniversary, as well as our Halloween & Fall content.

Beginning later this Summer and into the early Fall, we will be starting a 20th Anniversary event arc. We are still in the early stages of planning the details, but have taken note of all the event-related suggestions that have come up from our Meet & Greets. You can definitely expect to see Britannia’s cities once again assaulted by the forces of darkness and epic battles as Britannian’s are once again called upon to valiantly defend their homeland. Our goal with the arc is to keep the experience fresh without lengthy lulls in the action. We’ll also be targeting a variety of mechanics to include both solo and group activities.

Almost immediately following the conclusion of the event arc, Fall will be upon us which means 20th Anniversary Rewards to thank everyone for achieving this major milestone in gaming history! Looking to Halloween we are reactivating old favorites like bone-collecting, complete with new styles of bones as well as new Trick or Treating loot, the next iteration of the Treasures of Halloween, new trophies for the Huntmaster’s Challenge, and new Horn of Plenty items.

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