The Ultima Online 9th Anniversary Collection game box is now available in the stores.
This new box includes the current Ultima Online clients (both 2D and 3D) and all the previous expansions.
This particular edition also includes two new housing sets, personal attendants, and for a limited time the possibility to choose nine in-game gifts from a selection of over 50 items in the Heritage Collection.

At the end of the last week the Ultima Online Client has been updated first to version 5.0.5c and then to version 5.0.6a. The reason for this second patch has not been explained. Patch 5.0.5c introduced the following changes.

During the last week Ultima Online has received a good number of updates, including Publish 43 and the Client Patch 5.0.5b. Check out the full change log.

From the UO.com website: "To celebrate our 9th year of adventure and fantasy in the longest continuously running MMORPG in history, we’ve put together a special edition boxed collection that will mark our anniversary in style. It ships October 31st and will be available at a software retailer near you on November 2nd for $19.99. We’ve crafted exotic new housing sets, have a quartet of personal attendants awaiting your command and are making available more than 50 items marking the different ages of Ultima Online."

If you are interested, check out the 9th Annyversary Collection website here .

The Ultima Online client has been patched to version 5.0.4d. The shards of Origin and Pacific are going to receive a new server patch soon that will be deployed later also on the remaining shards.

Ultima Online updated the list of available Veteran Rewards. Players are eligible to choose a reward after each 12 months of active subscriptions. The new rewards are for 1 year accounts and for year 6 up to year 9 veterans. All reward options are blessed.

Big news for Ultima Online fans. A new client for Ultima Online is currently in an advanced development stage and it will be released in 2007. Look at these wonderful screens.

From the Britannia News Network : Britannia is at war with the Ophidians. Skara Brae, Serpent’s Hold, Vesper, and Papua lay drenched in the dark blood washing across our land. We fight against the blackest sort of evil: an evil which does not discriminate between soldier and innocent.

UO decided to delete all the checks in the game with a value of more than one million gold because "these inflated checks have been used by exploiters to store extremely large amounts of gold. These checks have now been removed from the game.".
The official statement also adds that "This action has resulted in over 180 accounts being terminated and approximately 15 Trillion (15,000,000,000,000) gold pieces have been permanently removed from the game."

Many thanks to Jack'o'Lantern for reporting us that Publish 41 has been released on all the Ultima Online production shards. In the changes list there are also the new personal attendants NPCs.
Here is the full list.