Pet Dyes

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not good at blogging.

Quite out of the blue the developers wanted to survey people on pet dyes. This was apparently part of the Stygian Abyss expansion, yet did not come out during open beta even though it was implemented. We were also informed that closed beta testers had been polled on this potentially explosive content addition, yet not a single one posted about it once the NDA was lifted.

There was not any magic behind it, it was straight pet dying. Same as you could with a dye tub on test center except the number of colors were restricted. You were shown a Dragon, Giant Beetle and Llama to base your judgment on. Besides Trammel, the most repeated put down I think there is for UO is the bright colors. It is often mentioned in discussions I see in various forums.

I was opposed to this. Having a dozen different color Dragons is going to just look terrible. Then there are the ~80 other creatures in the game you will get to dye. I can imagine a Harrower with 9 different color Greater Dragons on it and it is just horrid.

Apparently I was not alone in this assessment. A seemingly crushing amount of people were opposed to this. Yet the developers claimed that only 40% were opposed. Do you really want to tick off 40% of your player base over something that is just pet dyes? I think the other 60% will get along just fine without pink Dragons.

I posted earlier today that the developers should consider shelving this addition. It was detracting focus from the expansion which is just over a week away. Do they really want to tie such a blemish to their first expansion in literally 3 years? A little while later it was announced that they were doing just that. They are also going to consider doing more than just adding dye tubs for pets.