I am just curious if anyone here played UO besides myself.
I played on the Sonoma shard from 97-present on and off, with stints on SP, GL, Catskills, Atlantic, Dranchenfels and Chessy.
If anyone played UO they know that the majority of online games now are crap in comparison.
Anyway, I ran across this gem that was dated from Feb 15th, it is EA actually talking about a Classic UO server. This is just a mention, but they say in the article that they will either YAY OR NAY this within the year.
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Next: is there ever going to be a classic shard? I will tell you … it’s a good idea … in theory. In practice it gets a LOT more complicated. We had a Saturday lunch recently (the same method we used when we were developing for Stygian Abyss), and discussed the benefits and costs (resource and impact to community) for developing a Classic shard. First we discussed what does a Classic Shard really mean? We came up with some core ideas and left it at that. There are several other things surrounding the implementation, and we almost have it nailed. Will we do it? I don’t know and cant’ say for certain, but at some point we will put the idea to rest one way or another, and we hope to make that decision this year.
So for those who played UO, would this be enough for you to come back and give it another shot?
For those that never played UO but heard about its greatness through their current games, or are interested, would you be willing to give it a shot?
__________________ "In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight / Let those who worship evil's might / Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"
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I played UO during that time. In fact it's where my username originated from. We were a guild called the Regulators, we'd hunt down player killers. We were quite large and had fun killing the bad guys.
I played UO from day one for for six years. I still have an original NIB copy of the game with the cloth map and everything. Still have my beta CD too.
UO will always be tops as far as my memories of my MMO adventures go, but to say that most games now are crap in comparison is pretty unfair.
A Classic server, like original UO classic, would be awesome. Everybody was equal and the only difference was your skills and your talent. Gear was cheap and plentiful. When (not if) you died and were looted, you just ran back to your tower or house or boat (or tent if you're really old school ) and grabbed another spear, hally, regs or armor.
I don't even understand the game anymore, with all the resistances and weird stats on the gear and stuff.
I originally started on GL/Atl/Pacific then moved to Sonoma a month after release when it came up.
Stayed there till about 2001ish then went to DAOC and I was back and forth between those two games for the next few years till AoS hit. I remember day one of AoS.. every patch leading up to that day I had been able to log in still and find that old feeling in UO. That just plain fun feeling, but when I first logged in to AoS the game was different. I remember saying this is one patch I don't think that us old timers will be able to adapt too.. and in most cases I was right.
What was left of old timers at that point anyway
Ahh Regulator I see your guild was on Atl. I remember fighting The Mercs and The Pluggers and that monster zerg LLTS gild, and then fighting them again on SP a few years later. I played GL/Atl with RL buddies and Pacific with old mud buddies before moving to Sonoma.
Edit again I also remember fighting Angry Elves on Merlin, and I remember The Regulators from Merlin as well and I believe they played Mordred too? Or was that Andred.. I spent most of my DAOC time on Andred/Mordred as soon as they went live and played there through the merge and then death of Mordred. I think Angry Elves is still active actually. Always cool to find an old guild name kicking around.
I have played with a lot of guilds over the years, but the one that I have been with the longest (since 96ish) would be SAS, Sinners Among Saints.
That is what we currently use as our website, but we haven't been a gaming guild for years. We get together on the odd UO player run server once every few years... but the last time we played a game as a guild would be WOW release. Now were just a group of friends that idle in IRC and talk about RL problems :P
But in UO we would have been one of those guilds you hunted.. "Ruining the gaming experience for others since 1996" is one of our mottos.
__________________ "In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight / Let those who worship evil's might / Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"
Last edited by GreenLantern; 03-25-2010 at 03:42 PM.
I started out on Pacific and eventually moved to Baja where I finished out my time with the Society of Gypsies (S^G). I had a master crafter for bank sitting and my Dreadlord for the fun stuff. After UO I went to DAoC too for a year or two before moving on again. Only player run server I ever tried was IPY run by the guys at WTFMan.com back in the day. It was pretty good while it lasted.
Pub 13 completely changed UO. Creating Trammel took the real PvP right out of the game and started the whole dueling concept where people would only venture to Felucca to have duels with all kinds of rules and restrictions. The game became more and more about crafting and PvE with the work orders and bulk orders to do, all the fancy rewards and house furnishings. Stuff that people rave for in MMOs now.
Do you remember a guild called Lords of the Obsidian Empire (LoE) from Pacific?
__________________ "In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight / Let those who worship evil's might / Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"
I played UO for a bit, but the guide in the manual about what to do to start made me chop so many trees to make bows to sell to the vendor that I wanted to tear my eyes out. I ended up playing EQ for a long time though.
__________________
"Wake up, Luigi! The only time plumbers sleep on the job is when we're working by the hour."
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.
Last edited by theJuice; 03-26-2010 at 06:16 PM.
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I still get so nostalgic when I hear alot of the music to this day.
I was a victim much more than a victimizer in UO, and I always remember fondly how good it sounded to hear the Brit theme music when I safely made it back to town with my haul of fish or lumber or whatever.
Was this the game that a guy hacked into and killed the creator's king character?
Yes. It was during beta if I remember right? The guy was banned shortly after.
When Game Masters sometimes had their invuln flag dropped, there was a reason behind doing it for events I can't remember what though, they were also killed pretty fast.
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Yup.
Such a crazy, wild west atmosphere back then.
I played with a few of the older members of LoE on Sonoma for a few years, and fought them heavy on Pacific with my original Sonoma guild. Funny how after even 14 or whatever it is years now those names and guilds still stick in my head, even the battles.
__________________ "In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight / Let those who worship evil's might / Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"
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.
My newbie days in UO didn't last long, I hit it off really well with a Dread Lord after ressing with pens to desperately try and loot my halberd off my corpse, begging him to let me keep it. I remember in the early days, I am talking like my first few weeks of UO here early so... October, I would keep my entire bank on me.. dye tubs, kindling, cooking tools etc.. Anyway that DL would take me under his wing and teach me the ways of being a "k00l d3wd" in UO. He had played the beta and alpha so he had the inside scoop.
After that it was like a montage blur or scamming, duping, house looting, exploiting and everything in between. If I started UO again tomorrow at age 27 instead of 14 I probably wouldn't do half the stupid crap I did. But when you are a kid it is definitely a lot more fun to grief than be griefed.
UO wasn't like the MMO's you see today because people didn't have "guilds" yet. It was just muds before then, Diablo 1, Warcraft games. Some people knew each other online from there and came as a group (my buddy I mentioned came with two others from those games I just listed) but most were coming alone or in my case with RL buddies. So it was really cool in the early goings to see relationships form and eventually have those form into guilds. Guilds that still exist today as Regulator has shown and turned into empires, moving from game to game to create new memories.
Before guild stones were created you could identify guilds based on their colours. To me that was one of the coolest parts of UO, being able to recognize someone without even having to hit all names. I remember moving through the swamps looking for newbs to PK all dyed up in our guild colours with shields, kilts, robes, capes, bandanas, bone armour, plate armour, not two people looked the same but you could still identify us as a group. Also putting of SAS or of FoH in your name was common as well before guild stones came around.
There was also more accountability for actions in UO than any other game I have seen. People watched what they said, you were careful about who you pissed off. Everyone had friends, everyone could find where you lived and camp your house. They knew your favourite town and would come find you once the war was started. I remember not attacking people because we had a mutual friend, or because I knew their guild was allied with mine, or because I knew their guild had a lot of other big guilds with them I would see at fight night Sunday and I didn't want to get ganked... things like that you don't see in any games anymore and you might not ever see again.
Until this server goes live, I can't wait
Just know that you aren't alone in your feelings about the game, everyone I have ever talked to that played UO pre AoS says the exact same thing. It really is amazing. I wonder if Richard Garriot understands the effect his little atari graphics game has had on people. Lots of people like my friend I started with back in 97 have gone into the gaming industry because of the love they developed over games like UO.
Haha that forest music brings it all back. UO is the only game I never shut the music off for.
__________________ "In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight / Let those who worship evil's might / Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"
I hope the classic shard, if it comes to be, has true dark nights (maybe its an option in the current client, I don't know). Does anyone remember when it was basically essential to have a torch or other light source when going out at night? Reds hiding in the trees waiting to kill your pack llama in the middle of a midnight mining run...Then they decided night was too dark, which it really wasn't..
Did anyone here play Ultima Online?
) and grabbed another spear, hally, regs or armor.
