Friday, May 21, 2010

The Red & Purple Mini Mall – A Very-Very Special Non-Event!

So summer is finally here and the horrible winter weather is all cleared up… we still keep our fingers crossed. So many bank-sitters. Foo! How about a little mid-year fun, you say?

All of June… one of the oldest establishments on Atlantic shard, the Red & Purple Mini Mall will be celebrating… “A Very-Very Special Non-Event” and YOU are invited!

You’ll see the front garden of the R&PMM completely transformed to a special theme, “The Jungle Days of Summer”… to illustrate the fun of custom houses, rares, and sugar-fueled creativity. Why? In a world of pure imagination… why do so many seam to fail to just have some fun with their play? How many times have I seen new malls pop up using “Mini Mall” or a color and color for a name? Seems like every 3 months this happens. Well.. I got to talking about how easy it is to just invent a totally new theme and make it work. Hence the seeds of this whole adventure.

Besides the Mini Mall’s front garden being tricked out…

A special non-event event hosted by Hawk of Atlantic. More to come.

We want to share the fun! So… we will be sponsoring a special decorating contest. Player’s choice! 3 Player Vets will be the judges. And yes… we will have PRIZES you can keep!

Player Establishments are WELCOMED to take part in this contest! We all know our malls and rune libraries can not be torn apart for decorating contest or seasonal themes. Now is YOUR chance to really show off your skill in decoration and creativity. Do not go into construction mode! Do some shopping. :-) Or dig around in your storage containers and just make something up.

There is no set rules to your theme… you can pick anything you want to do.

Participants must provide:
1. The name of their house normally.
2. How this house normally functions. (Be it your residence or a mall, whatever.)
3. What the special theme is for this event decoration.
4. The theme’s name.
5. Location. (Tram, Malas, whatever).
6. Submit a picture!

It's that easy! Submissions must be in before June 18th, when the judging will begin.

So… June 1st. Visit the “unofficial” town of Red & Purple and check out the Jungle theme. Get inspired and enter the contest!

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Photos and Outline of the “Red & Purple Pixies of the Yew Wood” Town

Welcome to our little town of 5 houses, all open to the public and all designed to serve the community. If you want a real treat… just head on in and explore for yourself. Décor will change with the seasons and special events.

It's very easy to fine the town via any public moongate. Just go to Goodman’s Rune Library, on the 2nd floor, there is a book marked for Tram’s Malls. OR you can go to the Yew Tram gate, go North-East to the “Yew Gate Mall of the Red & Purple” and find a rune locked down on the step.


-*- The Red & Purple Mini Mall -*-



Primarily a vendor mall, first placed in the town clearing. The Mall also has all the dye tubs available, set for public use with dyes also locked down. There is also a small rune library including cities, tram treasure map locations, hunting spots, and other points of interest. There is a stack of GM Tinkered boxes for lock picking. And in the back of the 2nd level, is a teleporter to the rooftop garden. You would be hard pressed to find another garden as well planted.


-*- The Church of Candy of the Red & Purple -*-



The second town building placed in our clearing, in it's second position… the Church of Candy was designed long before we had candy in our world and was ready for the grave markers long before they arrived. Even Along with the bats that live in the belfry… this building seamed to be ahead of it's time in design. As it acts for not only “a piece of eye candy”, it is a meeting space along with being available for weddings.


-*- The Imperial Palace and Dungeon museum -*-



After a long negotiation, this custom house replaced the long standing full tower that sat in it's place. The 4th house placed in our little clearing in the forest. This is the primary home of key Empire officers along with being a public museum from the dungeon to the roof. You will want to take your time and explore, because there are surprises you may never see again in the modest collection.


-*- The R&P Savings & Loan -*-



This building in our town is designed to serve the younger players of our community with more common goods they may need. It features a banking lobby, vault, offices, and reading room. This building being the last building placed in our town.


-*- The Plant Shop of the Red & Purple -*-



Originally placed as park and cargo exchange hub… the 3rd placed house is the latest remodeled into a dedicated shop of plants and plant related goods. A true specialty shop.

History of the Red & Purple Mini Mall:

First vendor opened August 2001 selling arrows and bolts out of a castle mall called “Trade Federation Shop #5” that was near the road from Britain to the swamp by Cove, in Tram. Almost at the same time a 2nd vendor opened at a large marble house called “Green Grove” at the bend in the road right before the swamp and near the guard tower. With in a month, Green Grove was filling up with vendors under the leadership of Lady Frany Flame. Before 3 months passed, an entire turret at the castle was also full of Red & Purple clad vendors.

At that time, malls were very closed to new vendor placement. Many malls required private membership or joining their guild. Newer players didn’t get all that many opportunities. Vendor management was difficult; it took an entire afternoon to page a GM to remove an unwanted vendor. Also at this time, OSI had frozen house decay after the 9/11 attacks and housing was becoming extremely rare and costly. A castle mall could hold 95 vendors and would crash shoppers’ systems. The Green Grove house wasn’t self-owned, so it was hard to get the owner’s time to assist with placement issues. It was clear we needed our own building.

Then along came a happy little Small Marble Shop in the quiet hills north of the Desert of Compassion, Tram. For 6.5 million gold, it was purchased in March 2002 and soon opened for business. The only requirement demanded was the willingness of new vendor owners to keep their vendor stocked and looking good. Soon 28 vendors worked out of this small marble shop and the public went wild.

Along came AOS and all was well... until a total redesign of the vendor system ruined our mall. Where we had a few dozen vendors set up in neatly on all 3 levels, the old mall could NOW
hold only 10 vendors max. We had no choice but to close down and move with a record number of visitors on the house sign for a mall standing alone. At the point of Publish 16 (7/2002), many malls vanished and many people quit the game. We stayed open as long as we could and then we found and moved to the modern building you will find open N/E the Yew cemetery today. With the introduction of Malas and an entire town just for vendor malls, this laggy-land of high prices will never include the R&PMM. We will serve Yew Tram Atlantic as long as UO is on-line.



The old Small Marble Shop at the time of being closed.


The origional design of the R&PMM at its current location.

http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/slideshow/13810151
Here is the before and after the facelift from the orgional design to the new.
Please forgive the mess…

Starting a new website or message boards is always so much fun! Isn't it? At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Not to mention I never even saw a “blog” until a friend shared this system with me just today.

For those of you that don’t know what Ultima Online is… please go to
www.uo.com and check it out.

For those of you that that know UO and don’t know me… I am Lady Frany Flame, owner of the Red & Purple Mini Mall, established Fall of 2001… on the Atlantic Shard, Tram. I will go into the history of the Mall very soon. I’m a veteran of UO for over 9 years at the point of this post and after years of operations… we have a small player town, that’s been in place for many years. I specialize in being a merchant, explorer, and all around wondering pixie. Not big into fighting… but that’s UO for you. There’s something for everyone and you sure don’t have to be the best in combat to make a virtual life for yourself in UO.

I have always been all about the Atlantic community. In days long past… when I was just new myself… I was exploring every way possible to gain gold and resources to fund my adventuring. Way back then… gold was hard to come by for a newbie. I ran around by myself and with another new player, who is long gone now… and we supported each other and learned our world together. At first I had a miner simple crafter named “Kitten Gillian” that started off as a mage… however the demands on fighting were soon replaced with skills like bow crafting to make and sell arrows. Selling those arrows on a vendor was quickly discovered to be very profitable. At that time, I didn’t even have a house of my own. Hard to imagine.

Arrows proved to be a booming success, that’s why you will currently find every house in the Red & Purple Empire’s house signs… are that of the Arrow.

My first vendor was in a very large castle mall half-way between Cove and the Main city of Brit. Lag was a big issue for most travelers then. Never the less… 1 vendor turned into 2… and then 3… and on and on until the entire lower North-East room was mine. Even in that day… new houses were hard to find and the prices climbed faster then you could earn money. Money you also needed to fund your mages and fighters. The lag of the big castle was also a big issue… as it was for anyone to even find basic vendor space. It was clear that we needed our own space… with out the lag. Shoppers could come and go with out crashing… and I could offer space to anyone willing to keep stocked.

This whole line of the building of the first Red & Purple Mini Mall is how I got started and why I’m still here. The mall was designed to be all about the community… then… as well as now. This being a far cry from Ultima of the past… in a stand alone world, I’ve been playing Ultima since Ultima 4 was long out. My favorite was actually Ultima 7. I waited for Tram to come around before I tried the Online version… and the on-line Community side was new and still interests me today. The stand alone Ultima may be gone forever… but I hope to keep my place in the Atlantic community as long as the sun shines on our lands.


Best wishes to all! :-) Lady Frany Flame