Ultima Online Vets Rollcall!

[Draccus]

I've seen three references to UO today after not hearing a peep about it for years. I shouldn't be surprised that there are so many UO vets playing DDO but it's refreshing to hear from them. UO, to me, remains the best MMO ever made. It's so different from the Everquest clones that have flooded the market that I'm surprised no one has succeeded in making a 3D version. Even though it's, what, 13 years old now, no game has yet to match it's gameplay. You could interact with EVERYTHING in that game. Where 99.999999% of the objects in today's games are static, most of UO had a purpose.

Use a knife on a tree to get some kindling. Use the kindling in the woods to make a campfire. Kill a bird or squirrel or deer to get some meat. Cook the meat on your fire to make some food. Eat some food to replenish your abilities. And this wasn't even the combat or adventuring system; this was just from a walk through the woods!

So what did you all play in UO and what do you play in DDO?

I played a stealth swordsman/poisoner in UO on the Atlantic server. I quit soon after Trammel was launched but moved to a player-run server that was Trammel-free and PVP focused. It was run by the infamous Adam Ant for those of you who may remember the web comics he did. On that server, I played a stealth archer/assassin because that server allowed you to Deadly Poison your arrows. He had 100s of people playing on his server for years. He just shut it down a few weeks ago but that's still impressive for such an old game. I also played a stealth lockpicker for farming for gold. I sure loved all those times avoiding reds with a pack full of gold I'd just looted from chests!

Today, I play a DDO version of that character in the form of a pure rogue. I've pretty much stuck with rogues through UO, EQ, DAOC, NWN, NWN2, and WoW so it's not surprising.

I miss me some UO! Your Poisoning skill has increased 0.1%! Woot!

Anyone else?

[ddaedelus]

Me.

While I respect UO for what it achieved, I loathed playing it.

[Slorgs]

Great Lakes: Dread Lord Sanction of the Undead
Dread Lord Oxyacetaline

Drachenfels: Dread Lady <I forget, but she was great>

[ezgoezit]

I remember pre-ordering UO and getting hooked to that game more than I have ever been hooked to a game. Maybe it was because it was my first MMO... Was it the first real MMO? I had my account from 97 until last year even though I quit actively playing in 07. One reason I kept paying for it even though i wasn't playing it was the same reason I think even now UO is better than most other MMOs out there; Player owned housing. I had a premo placed keep with all sorts of cool stuff in it. I had numerous maxxed out chars along the way, but the one I liked the most is my bard which I never managed to top out. Provoking and peacemaking at 110 plus let you wreak havok even in top end content.

Cheers,
Ez

[SableShadow]

Pacifica. I'd start and stop, never got particularly good at it. Was fun just running around and exploring, at least once I figured out how to stock a cheap rez kit. Relearning the current red flagging mechanics every time I came back to it was entertaining, lol.

[JPDefault]

I used to play on Europa. :D
Great concept, great content, great immersion, ugly game clients.

[Delt]

I've seen three references to UO today after not hearing a peep about it for years. I shouldn't be surprised that there are so many UO vets playing DDO but it's refreshing to hear from them. UO, to me, remains the best MMO ever made. It's so different from the Everquest clones that have flooded the market that I'm surprised no one has succeeded in making a 3D version. Even though it's, what, 13 years old now, no game has yet to match it's gameplay. You could interact with EVERYTHING in that game. Where 99.999999% of the objects in today's games are static, most of UO had a purpose.

Use a knife on a tree to get some kindling. Use the kindling in the woods to make a campfire. Kill a bird or squirrel or deer to get some meat. Cook the meat on your fire to make some food. Eat some food to replenish your abilities. And this wasn't even the combat or adventuring system; this was just from a walk through the woods!

So what did you all play in UO and what do you play in DDO?

I played a stealth swordsman/poisoner in UO on the Atlantic server. I quit soon after Trammel was launched but moved to a player-run server that was Trammel-free and PVP focused. It was run by the infamous Adam Ant for those of you who may remember the web comics he did. On that server, I played a stealth archer/assassin because that server allowed you to Deadly Poison your arrows. He had 100s of people playing on his server for years. He just shut it down a few weeks ago but that's still impressive for such an old game. I also played a stealth lockpicker for farming for gold. I sure loved all those times avoiding reds with a pack full of gold I'd just looted from chests!

Today, I play a DDO version of that character in the form of a pure rogue. I've pretty much stuck with rogues through UO, EQ, DAOC, NWN, NWN2, and WoW so it's not surprising.

I miss me some UO! Your Poisoning skill has increased 0.1%! Woot!

Anyone else?

Ultima Online was good right up until they added statloss for reds, which is why I quit.

As for Adam's server, they could never keep the population up, despite interesting game changes -- but at least I have fond memories of Ugi spamming me with hours of confusing broken engrish hate.

[Hendrik]

Played UO for SEVEN years!!!

Lived on Chessy and was a Councellor for the West Coast servers til that program was discontinued.

Played a Bard, Iolo (yea, original! for UO) in Hero's of Sosaria along with my Thief and Nox Mage. Had a dedicated Gardner and couple GM Crafters all living in a Tower - no room left for a Castle...

Orc Camps, PvP battles outside of Minoc, Order and Chaos shields, good times all on a 28.8 and 33.6 modem...

:cool:

[Magusrex777]

Pacifica, GM mage, spent most of my time hunting reds, loved having a boat and house. Cor por ftw. I quit and never went back after EQ, played that from day 1 on Bristlebane. Server crashes roll backs and massive XP losses, but I loved it...why?

[Louiey]

Holy cow, UO! I played for about a year back around 1999, I was a Sorc, Sauranimus. I had a weaponmaker too. I remember mining over and over, it sucked so bad. and a magic user was SO expensive to train. lol I started a clan war by killing a horse on accident! My clan leader took me and another guildy to the city where all the "red" people are(forgot the name of the city) to start a fight with some other clan, and the horse dies, i was red to everyone, so then the free-for-all started!
The clan leader literally made a RL living from the game, he would loot decaying houses, sell the goods for real$. Then I got tired of the rez-kills from the Pker's that lived in the woods, cause they can't come into town without dying. My poor miner was just trying to make a living!

[Slorgs]

Cor por ftw.

CorP por.

Too bad you didn't play on my servers. My red would have stolen your black pearls before you even knew I was there, and then you couldn't recall or cast any offensive spells. :)

Ah I miss UO and the spinning purple llamas of death.

[7-day_Trial_Monkey]

I started on Chesapeake. I don't even remember my char names from that server, it was so long ago.

When Origin opened I started fresh on that server and played it up until just before DDO started up. My main was Lord Mort, a crafter. I liked to run my store keeping it stocked with crafted items and stuff that my T-hunter dug up.

I also played on Siege throughout, with a crafter. I didn't PvP at all on any server.

[Magusrex777]

CorP por.

Too bad you didn't play on my servers. My red would have stolen your black pearls before you even knew I was there, and then you couldn't recall or cast any offensive spells. :)

Ah I miss UO and the spinning purple llamas of death.

Sorry for the typo...we used bait for our red hunting because of how much you guys liked ganging up on peeps. You would have thought you were slick until.....not saying we won most of the time. the reds were the better players by and large, back then it was extremely difficult to coordinate group play nothing like modern MMOs

[Letrii]

Got box set for $5, tried it out and was back to EQ before my free month was over.

[Horrorscope]

Ultima Online was good right up until they added statloss for reds, which is why I quit.

Not trying to be an ass but I do find this amusing. The game was great until the moment I say it was no longer great! I quit and thus the game is dead, mentality.

[Lorz]

Great Lakes - Had matching Towers in both lands :(

Miss the early days of it. When actions had real penalties.


Also miss fire walls inside the dungeon entrances :)
And my Treasure Hunter / Griefer "SPAM"...had GM detect..and could reveal the a whole screen worth of players camping a decaying home...then a friend on his GM tamer would release his pet dragons :) ah hours of enjoyment there....so hated. :)

7 years gave it up..for my new crack DDO (was recovered for a few years ya know!)

[ddaedelus]

I played the game from release and quit right around when Second Age came out, so I guess I played for about a year or so.

I recall lag like none you've ever seen these days. My friends and I all had our computers networked together in the same room. The lag was so bad that we would play cards while waiting for the lag to clear so that we could go to the bank. If one of our screens stuttered, we'd all get excited "Oh, the lag's clearing up!" and stare at the screen for ten minutes before going back to our card game. The longest we ever waited was 1 hour.

Player housing was an endless sea of househousehousehousehousehousehouse that tiled every centimeter of open space in the world. Ugly, and occasionally hard to find your own house... like losing your car in the mall parking lot where everyone else is driving the same Buick as you).

PvP was rife with network/packet hacks, some of which allowed you to target with ranged weapons (crossbow, natch) from three screens away, some of which simply disconnected your opponent from the game.

The economy was characterized by a server-border exploit that let you dup gold. Origin did finally stop the duping, but not until the economy had been seriously ruined and many of the more unscrupulous guilds had keeps o' plenty. (Lesson learned: cheat early, cheat often.)

There was collision with other players, so one person could stand in the door of a building and prevent anyone else from entering (until we logged in our red).

I was so disgusted by the time I left UO that I didn't play another MMO until AC2 came out three years later.

I understand the game improved dramatically later. I wasn't inclined to give it a second shot.

[Pittminion]

Just closed a 149month account over Christmas. I had been paying but not playing for the last 4 years. I started in Nov of 97 on Catskills. Moved to Siege in roughly 2003 or 4. Then DDO came out and the rest shall we say, is history.

Long live shadowclan.

Urks id da bestist. oomies nub wurf nuffin sept dey hab tribut ub cukees und sidur.

[Delt]

Not trying to be an ass but I do find this amusing. The game was great until the moment I say it was no longer great! I quit and thus the game is dead, mentality.

Ass? Probably not. Incapable of making a sensible and coherent point? Probably...

Statloss for reds was the beginning of a trend that catered to the whiners (and led to Trammel). That direction never suited me, nor did it suit a lot of people. Considering the game has gone on for years after statloss (and for all I know, still active), obviously other people liked it...only an idiot would interpret my statement as anything other than what it was...an opinion, not fact.

Don't like my opinion? You can disagree; but save the hyperbole & interpretations, kiddo. :rolleyes:

[GrayMouser]

Lake Superior for a couple of years, then moved to Siege Perilous. Went back to Lake Superior at the end, but it just wasn't the same. Played a stealth extortionist/loot grabber on Siege (hassled miners a lot, charging them for using "my mountain" and such, and stealthed around the dungeons grabbing folks' loot before they could). Did some roll-play and such in an evil guild, which was a blast. Siege declined, though, leaving only a few hard-core players too full of themselves to bother with anything but "me-me-me" and forum-fights. It's funny... the same attitude and aggressiveness that made UO what it was in it's heyday destroyed the only true UO shard in the end. Self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose...

[Kistilan]

Great Lakes Server, The House of Stormrune Township -- First and Only officially sanctioned Township in game.

Good times back then. I wouldn't ever do it again -- too much potential given away by playing games.

[PyLethius]

I played UO for about 11 years, wow 11..

Some old players might recall Py Lethius and the Knights of the Silver Serpent, from Siege Perilous.

[ragwa1]

Napa 97-2000. IPY 2000-2001. Angel island 2001-2005. Some other free shards then 2008-current is uogamers: divinity. Then hopefully IPY2.0 comes out.

[jarlaxle_dourden]

Played on Great Lakes for about 6 years.

Used my fighter to get Maps and such but my favorite characters by far was my Treasure Hunter Huey GO BOOM.

Good times.

[MoisleyMassacre]

Kal Vas Flam!!

UO swallowed 6 years of my life.. if only DDO had llamas...

[Musashiclaw]

CLAW was on Chessy from the start. We used to fight the banana boyz and the other pk guilds. Members where Turtleguy, Richard Cypher, Excalibur, Musashi, Random, Dig Dug, Sasquatch among others
There was a quest to win a unique bow and I won it.. the name was some Rhyahananana or something.. man that was a long time ago.

[Sendoo]

on the official servers i played on Napa valley between 2001-2004 mostly i raided spawns and killed people rarely i actually did spawns.

i still play but only on the Alexandria freeshard hosted by the EasyUO staff. were i make macros and kill people to this very day i killed a brazilian a few times just yesterday in the Chaos/Order battle.

[Therilith]

I spent hours stalking wisps just to write a book about the sounds they made.

Moongate compassion runs FTW!

Yeah, I loved that game.

[Windell]

Atlantic- Windell, Whisper, Pennywize others since launch till 2008

[sigtrent]

I played when it first came out. I thought the idea was neat but I also found the gameplay pretty dull to start out with. Fighting squirrels... and loosing to them. lol

I also discovered that if I made a girl character I got everything for free... ah the innocent days of yore..

The lag and technical problems were also pretty off putting. That was before we learned that almost every MMO comes out with lag and technical problems. Also the graphics didn't do much for me. Even at the time they weren't too hot looking. And the PVP parts didn't appeal to me. I've never much enjoyed getting griefed by people even if in concept it was kind of cool. Mostly it just felt like a big hassle.

I'd say I played for about 3-6 weeks and then gave up on it. Then I played EQ for a little bit, never got really into that either although I hooked many others on it. Moved on to AC and didn't like the graphics. Played Anarchy Online, liked it, but not enough to play for more than three or four months or to grind very hard at it. I got really hooked on SWG for a good couple of years, played EQ2 but got bored quickly, and then DDO which I'm going on 4 years in, although I took about a years break from active play. I tasted a lot of other MMO games but didn't like them pretty quickly.

UO was a revolutionary game but didn't really set the MMO trend. I've lots of respect for it even if it didn't quite work for me.

[GhoulsTouch]

I just came from the secondage a freeshard now. It was ruined by monopolist vets and complainers. I spent alot of time there in the last year, good staff though I give it that. Alot of players though did take the game to levels never before imagined.

Just got my tower then I realized...I kept doing the same dungeons over and over and trying to kill the same people over and over. The world got too small too quick.

[IronClan]

love hate for 7 years, hate PvP in MMO's... most people (based on popularity of non-consensual PvP in MMO's since UO) play a MMO RPG to escape, have fun and play a heroic, powerful character... Not be a virtual victim to someone who knows all the tricks and has min/maxed his character to perfection and then power leveled it up higher than 99% of his PK targets. To me PvP in games were you can be dramatically weaker or more powerful based on items and levels, and how much min/maxing you're willing to do, makes no sense. Of course I was bad at PvP, had a laggy dialup connection and constantly found myself PK'ed when I didn't even know I was under attack... "ganked" and rez killed... and rarely ever by the mythical "honarable" PvP'er who at least left me a few spell components, nope never anything but dry looted... I think you had to be a good PvP'er or in a popular guild to get any of this "PvP'er honor")

When they allowed me and well... apparently about 95% of the rest of the player base to not be subjected constantly to unwanted PvP, the game became instantly amazingly fun and addictive, for many years. I still miss it, or certain aspects anyway... In DDO when you are tired of quests for a bit the only thing there is to do is bank or auction house... In UO: make weapons, craft armor, gather resources, metal ore, chop down trees, train your pets, train your characters with "practice" (train parry with sheep in the pens of Yew), you could literally manipulate any object in the world that you might logically be able to in real life... except the decorations that Origin got tired of people taking from public places etc. You could even decorate your house, sew garments, make furniture to put in your house, FISH, which could be more fun than it sounds, with boats, seas monsters and treasure maps and messages in a bottle etc. My favorite character was a blacksmith on Chesapeake named "an Ancient Dwarf" when he crafted a weapon it would appear as: "A Katana crafted by an Ancient Dwarf" when they added artifact crafting hammers blacksmithing became a lot of fun. Dwarf was the only character I got "elder" (highest skill possible).

Still had it's problems, PvM was ever so sucky, loot sucked so hard that new players could throw away things that dragons dropped if you gave it to them (not exaggerating)! Economy was perma-ruined by the gold dupers. Which ruined housing (the whole playable area looked like tract housing. PvM had so many issues foisted upon it by the fact that spells and weapon traits were purely balanced for PvP, which meant they sucked hard against monsters with 6 times more hit points... A GM swordsmans did not feel remotely "heroic and powerfull" and the highest level mage spells were hit with a nerf nuke early on, so as to be almost totally useless. in PvM... "Earth Quake" the big area of of effect 9th level spell did roughly 20% damage to a screen full of skelletons!, and this took something like half your mana pool...

In the end I found myself irritated that the only things I ended up doing when I logged in were all grinds to make resources, money or skill gains, so that I could meet some nebulous goal of actually having a powerfull fun to play PvM character... only to always be disapointed... Even when artifacts came out and champ spawns, the PvM still sucked hard, especially when they put uber stat scrolls (would be like + 5 tomes in DDO) in the control of large PvP guilds, by having these PvM quests in PvP areas. Basically UO spent the entire history of the game catering to PvP's and PvP guilds, that were the same ones responsible for 99% of the exploits and PvP centric nerfs that ruined the game..

I doubt that there will ever be an MMO as fully fleshed out as UO again.... it was just too organic... bugs and exploits were rampant because the world was so totally interactive, the games richness was it's downfall.

BTW UO is still alive and running... under it's second facelift... still 2d isometric but looks better then that 3d abomination they tried.

[Moustique]

I was on "real" server to start, but I switched to GreyShard (as they called themself at that time if I remember well) and I stayed on free shards for many years! ZyX was the most known (french one).

I miss doing breads and filling glass of water :)

[Modinator0]

played it religiously for several years until they decided to give it a full loot system in age of shadows. It just wasn't UO after that. I still log on to private shards now and then, though. I usually end up playing either a full mage or a thief, but animal handlers are also fun :D Can't say no to having pet white wyrms XD