[theJuice]

Yea, it was my first and easily favorite MMO that I ever played.

It was funny, I bought UO just when the the expansion was released, UO: The Second Age, in 1998. Played on Lake Superior. I still remember it till this day, I was around 13, begged my parents to take me to London Drugs to buy it, and the salesman tried to convince me to buy this other hot new MMO, that was so much better, dude, it had 3D graphics! Hah, that game obviously being EQ. Godamn, thinking back, it was amazing how I managed to convince my parents to actually fork over their credit card and allow me to pay the monthly fee. That game easily was the most addicted I've ever been to a game. I read so many 'guild' pages and sites about that game weeks before my parents bought me for me, read over all the skills and areas in the game.

Back in the day when fantasy names were so common, as everyone had a character nammed Drizzt, tanis, raistlin, pug, legolas, whatever. Any variation of Dragonlance/forgotten realms whatever.

I'm still ashamed to admit it, but its the first time I ever actually cried over a video game. I had been playing for a few days or so, and I had finally saved enough funds to buy some 'lol' crappy store bought chainmail, my guy looked so gay, but at the time, I thought he looked awesome. I think I even had a katana or something. I was so proud, and was preening around Brit Bank (How I loved that place), and being the idiot newbie that I was, I think I tried looting some guys corpse in town, of course, a quick "Guards! Buy Sell the Bank" later, and I was dead. I was literally in tears as I saw everyone laughing and picking up the remains from my corpse. Godamn, those were the days.

Everything was so fresh and cool at the time. Was constantly just amazed that people were on at all hours at the night, that the servers never shut-down. I remember actually making friends in that game, and people genuinely seeming nice, I mean, its obviously rose tinted glasses, but at the time, it truly seemed different than the normal cesspool of crap and that is online gaming. Back then I wasn't so obsessed with min-maxing, or the right skills or whatever, just did for fun, and it was great.

Getting pk'ed for the first time was so exhilarating, and of course, killing another player for the first time was even sweeter. I remember at the time, pretty much everyone had 56k, and a couple cool guys were blazing around with their high speed cable or dsl modems, and they ran around so fast, I laugh as I think about how many times I got killed at the stupid cemetery right infront of town, literally steps away from safety. So much frustration when I used to do harvesting type skills like logging or mining and thinking oh crap, I'm getting alot of stuff, better head to town soon or I'm gonna get pk'ed, and of course, 30 seconds later, getting Cor Por'ed to hell and back.

Their was so much hilarious stuff back then. People were so innocent, so the scams were even more funny. I recall people always begging for gate's to other cities and stuff, and one time, some dude tricking me into taking a gate to something like Yew or something, I hop into the gate and of course its in the middle of nowhere, only problem is that the dudes 2 friends were waiting, eager to rape my ass and laugh at me. Hilarious.

I always feel sorta bad looking back, but at the time I was a 15 year old kid and I thought I was a genious. Their was these books going around, and they were quite rare. Anyway, I remember changing the title of the book to [blessed] or something like that, and seeling them for like 5k or something. It was such a dick move, but still, gotta love the things you could think of at the time.

I have such love/hate memories of that little newbie sewer/dungeon in town, near the inn, where you fight the giant rats. I used to try and block/get people stuck on the small bridge as they were fighting rats, so they couldn't back up and then would die due to getting swarmed by the monsters. I would then of course laugh and loot them, and hope no-one came down to the sewers to kill me.

Man...such good memories, I loved UO. I'm a MMO addict, played Anarchy online, Shadowbane, Star wars, lord of the rings, WoW, Warhammer, but nothing will ever compare. I still get so nostalgic when I hear alot of the music to this day.