Old School UO Nostalgia
Most of us wax nostalgic about our first MMO love. For me, I truly enjoyed the Realm Online immensely, but my first true love in the genre was Ultima Online. It was Dan Rubenfield who reminded me of some of my wonderful times in Britannia. If you played UO in the olden days, and you’re ready to embark upon a journey into the past, continue ahead and be sure to equip your generic plate and viking sword in case we run into any l33t PKs.
I had this really nice trick planned for right after you clicked “more,” but it appears the embed and bgsound tags have taken a nosedive with recent versions of FF and IE. That said, you get to manually induce that sense of nostalgia by clicking here instead. Only read on if you clicked, or this next sentence will be ruined for you. Yes, that is the character selection music from Ultima Online. Music all of us who played are familiar with. That music elicits a yearning for the innocence of the past in the genre that has been gone for me for about 9 years.
“Innocence” in terms of being a genre-virgin still experiencing things for the first time, because UO was far from innocent as a game. It did something for me that no other game has since. None. I’ve played literally dozens of different massively multiplayer games, and none of them have done it for me like UO did.
It was, in part, because it was my first love. Nothing will ever be quite so magical. It’s also, likely, in part because I’ve been on the development side of things for a while now, and all the mystery is gone. But some of it, I believe, is because there were so many interesting things that players could do with (and to) each other in the game. It was pure, untainted by the successive refinements of other games and the establishment of standards and expectations for the genre’s games.
Ah, just thinking about it makes me happy.
I remember getting GM Tinkering, Alchemy, and Carpentry so I could make my own trapped boxes, place them in orc camps, and wait until someone opened my box instead of the treasure chest to meet their untimely doom. Or sneaking into a house and placing my own trapped boxes in spots where their boxes used to be (or simply trapping them on the spot), usually waiting to watch the person explode.
I remember wearing the death robes with platemail underneath to appear as if I’d recently died, only to unleash hell upon those who thought me easy prey. Going so far as to angrily mutter about how PKs totally suck and piss me off, how they are just stupid kids, etc.
I remember selling purple potions as “Permanent Strength” potions, only to laugh in glee as the person ticked down for 5 seconds, exploded (hitting me in the process), and stood in wide-eyed astonishment when I called the guards on them and looted their gullible corpse (thanks go to my buddy Ian, aka Sarymbo, for that trick).
So many stories. So many ways to screw other players, and so many ways to be screwed by other players. I can really go on for hours about my times in Ultima Online, so I’ll go ahead and cut myself off for your sake. More stories to come over the week.
Update: Read the full series of True Sosarian Stories for a taste of misadventure:
There are so many things I look back and remember fondly, and that even includes getting myself completely owned a number of times, especially when I mined. Is it possible to get this feeling back myself, or even to elicit such feelings in others who have played MMOs before? What about those who never have played them? Do we have to go back to the more pure system of letting players do whatever they damn well please–survival of the fittest–to make that happen? Will it even work anymore?
For more yearning about old school UO, check out these other articles:
- And now for something actually entertaining – Dan Rubenfield
- Some discussion at Raph’s – Raph Koster
- Rubenfield Talks UO – Zen of Design
- How I got back into the industry – SunSword
- Ultima Online, Sewing Kits, Fish Swearing – MMODump
- UO – Will Wallace
Also, thanks go out to Mysterious Sosaria for having all of the Ultima music ever. That’s pretty awesome. If you’re looking for UO, it’s called Shattered Legacy in the Bard’s Library.
Welcome to the first continuation of the post I made over the weekend about Old School UO Nostalgia. For those of you who played Ultima Online, you’ll probably get a little kick out of the stories within. For those who didn’t, you may or may not. Within you will find stories, a new musical selection from UO, and a screenshot of Ultima Online:
Old School UO Nostalgia
Some friends and I wanted to start a guild and go on a PK rampage, but we didn’t want to actually spend the time and effort to actually do things like earn money… so we created female alts and dressed them all the same, skull helmet, red cape and black knee-high boots… notice the lack of other clothing. In about a month we had more items and money than we knew what to do with. People gave us houses, even a castle, just to have a “girl” talk to them. We kept a list of the really pervy guys, and hunted them relentlessly for the next year.
Remember puting a bag in a bag in a bag in a bag in a bag… (I think there was even a bug once that if you put enough bags in bags eventually they became “bags of holding” where they and everything in them weighed nothing)… I used to walk around with several levels of bags, and deep in the bottom for the diligent thief to find was my collection of pick pocket heads.
Listening to that music brings back so many good memories of UO. And the stories! I did some of the crazy stuff you’re talking about and loved it.
Note for those who read this yesterday: I know I cut out exactly 995 words from this post. It’s now 750 words. I’ll be unleashing a series of posts over the course of the week with a few stories in each. If you already read them, good for you, but I’ll likely add a story or two for you to read (and maybe some music or other goodies).
I don’t think you can ever get it back. My first game was SWG. I hated games. I used to yell at my husband all the time for playing warcraft, and tell him to turn it off. He would tell me “I can’t these are real people! I can’t just leave them!” And I thought that was the craziest thing anyone would ever say… it was just a game. So I would say “There are real people in this house too!”
So then I heard about swg. I had never even heard of an mmo, and the concept was very intriguing to me. I love Star Wars, and this is a game where I didn’t have to kill anything? I could be a dancer, musician, ect… So I gave it a try and after 30 min was addicted. It got so bad that to get me to respond to him, my hubby would have to send me a tell in game, although he was sitting right next to me. In the end they really screwed SWG up, but I think they brought a whole to class of women to gameing with their non combat classes that never had to face a mob. Although after being tired of being escorted around by Wookiees everytime I wanted to see some landmark, I finally gave in and became a pistoleer and later a bounty hunter.
Even as much as I love EQ2, I don’t think it has ever given me that same feeling, and I doubt anything ever will again. Hearing the music from that game gets me all excited too.
I never played on EA servers minus the free trial, but I started playing on player run shards in 1999. Ran into a shard called TDS, which happend to be run by Jon Yantis, and some of his friends. Eventually when they be-friended me they told me about this game EQ, which I knew as evercrack, but beyond that I knew little about the game. Turns out they sold in game gold and items, which I thought was awesome and I wanted to do, seemed like a promising job to a poor college kid =P. Anyways, on TDS they based 90% of the content around the EQ world, and it is how I know about Mr. Shwayder today. Like him my first true MMO was UO, and like that first kiss, none will ever compare.
I played a bit of UO, but for some reason it never drew me in (perhaps because I’d played the regular Ultimas… and it just felt too much the same I guess).
What really did it for me was the original EverQuest. It was something new to me. I remember my first character, it was an Erudite Wizard. I remember fumbling around, blind, trying to make my way out of the city to the docks… and then the actual thrill when I saved up enough to buy a lamp… and then the trip through, the darkness dispelled.
I joined a guild that I’ve been a member of for the last… 6 years I think. I moved with some of them to EQ2. But EQL (I still call it EverQuest Live, hehe. Force of habit…) was something special. It was my first true MMORG experience.
Since you shared a story or two, I’ll share another… this one mostly on the opposite side of the coin. I remember finding a tribute to it a year or two back on some forums somewhere. All it was were some panning screenshots of EQL to a very slow, deep song. It was called something like the Memory of Trees (the song was called the same I think) and basically tried to show how trees watched as the lives of Norrathians went by — through thick and thin, success and failure, etc.
I have to say it was one of the most bittersweet moments I’ve ever felt. It struck a chord within me I didn’t even know I’d had. I think it’s an interesting comment about Humanity that we can laugh, cheer, cry, and fear right along with a chosen character… be it one from a book, a movie, or an MMOG.
Hiyas Barx an old TM see ya around in AB in EQII ever so often. Nice to see GETCo. is still around =D
My first was The Realm too it was fun. I was a white mage Wrath of God anyone? hehe
But my first love was EQ.. Remember making a ranger and trying to make my own arrows in Surefall Glade. Finding my first beetle eye to get around with. My first Mino Axe!!! Finding out about Shamans and thier wolf pet which would send me down a path of being the red headed step child healer of EQ and loving it (yeah yeah shamans got better later). First PoF and PoH breaks.
Hehe….
I don’t care how many bags in bags in bags you had… I still stole yer stuff… lol
I was on the Chessie server, hung out in Yew. Played a Thief named Dewey, who dressed in the most obnoxious green clothes. We had a guild named… Dewey, Cheatum, Anne Howe. Three thieves.
My friend Skip, who passed away last weekend, was a Tamer and he’d tame 50 sheep and put them in front of your house… you had to kill the sheep to get in, which would flag you and the guards would kill ya!
At one point we had alts named Kamakazie and Banzai… Our friend would create GM Trapped chests… we’d walk into the bank and open them up… griefing at it’s best… It got so bad that the GM’s eventually ported us to a strange dungeon and told us that if we didn’t knock it off we’d get banned… Good times… Good times…
But to answer the question… will you ever feel that way again? Of course not. I’ve been playing D&D since the mid 70’s and I’m still searching for that first rush again. It is what it is… so I enjoy each of those moments, in these new games, that bring me back to those feelings that I had when I first started playing.
Rel Por!!!
Corp Por!
Kal Vas Flam!
Kal Des Flam Ylem!
I loved how there was a standard “language” used to cast spells, and how they actually made sense when you broke down the words and compared them against the effects. Very cool, and something I’d forgotten about.
I never thought about doing the tamed sheep trick. That’s definitely a good one to file away as completely awesome and something I should have done.
Let me put it this way… I have no feelings of nostalgia about WoW, while many of my coworkers who played UO still talk about it to this day.
I never got too far into UO, but I did love running around and tailoring shirts to sell to different cities, mining ore and making ingots, etc, and finally bought a boat one day (which was my greatest accomplishment in the game, since I didn’t have a guild or anything).
The most exciting part to me was the server downtime announcements…everybody would run to the cemetary and just go nuts since the last minutes would be rolled back anyways.
I just came across these posts…..a few days late but I’ll add my two cents to all the related articles…..even though this might open a can of worms…..
First, I get a laugh reading that many of the Devs of UO were the griefing twinks we all knew……too darn funny.
I had almost six years in Sosaria, have many fond memories. None of them have to do with PKing, thieving or ruining anyones day. I did participate in PvP but only initiated between warring guilds. This ran from random KOS fights to full blown battles done in RP. I guess part of it had to do with the shard you played and the amount of GM support there. We had great GMs, on Catskills, and they really helped support our efforts.
Possibly the most fun I’ve had in a MMO was the first month of the Siege Perilous shard. It was an incredible challenge and a very tight community. Unfortunately, they nerfed the rules….to make it easier….or I might still be there today.
I do agree that UO had more of a community than either Galaxies or EQ2 that I’ve played since. I liked Galaxies, and still enjoy EQ2, but I think many of the finer game features have been passed over for improved graphics and the other “wow” content.
I think sometimes you can capture the magic again, although it is hard. Back when AOL was just blowing up (late 96) they had a at-the-time exclusive MUD called Terris that addicted me for the better part of a year. I bought EQ on release day and played for about 4 months, but it never really grabbed me and I thought I would never match Terris. However, DAoC to me was every bit as magical as Terris was, and I still miss what it was pre-ToA. WoW is the most solid MMO I have ever played, but I don’t have the magical memories of it that I have of Terris and DAoC.
Man I remember the day. Me and a friend who worked at what is now EB Games. He got me into the game about a year after it came out. I remember when T2A opened up. Pks would wait along the road just outside of town. Nev Campbell will always be a stand out. There were boxes always around to watch someone open and die. I would always LOL. After playing and learning the game I decided it was time to become one of those “Grief Players”. I have to admit I was never the greatist PVP Player but when they gave thieves disguise kits and allowed them to steal from players I found my nitch. I created The Jackell and me and and that same friend that got me started macroed our thieves up to 100 in two days. Maybe you saw one of us. We played Catskills. The greatist thing we did was one night we were in moonglow at T2A entrance. Some guy walked up on the teleporter and I snatched his HOUSE key. (remember when you used to have to lock your door). I called my bud on the phone cause vent wasnt heard of. I quickly logged on my tinker and made copies for him and another friend of ours who we talked into becoming an expert of larceny as well. I stood in the middle of our house opening a gate while they robbed this guy blind. We took everything. The house was right outside of the Trinsic Gate and we robbed it in broad daylight. By this time i was laughing pretty hard, but what happened later was even more funny. This guy had a key with a rune inside a bag that we found in the contients of his “well secured home”. You guessed it We hit him twice in the same night. We got power swords, vanq swords, silver, ect. It was the motha load. That had to be the best time Ive ever had playing the great game of what was once UO. Now thieves are pretty much glorified artifact vendors. Good no Great Times.
For me ultima was a way of life. I had a really nice addiction going for about four years. I will always remember logging into Northside Inn for the first time, meeting some really great people who came and went over the years. The best thing in uo was meeting my wife and we have been together now for three years as man and wife and a lot longer if you added all the uo time into it. EA killed my Sosaria, Long live Lord British where ever you are.
When the king quits you know life in the land must suck.
[…] Female Posts: 793Remember Old School UO?« Thread Started on Jan 21, 2007, 8:26am » http://www.nerfbat.com/?p=190So does nerfbat. I read it with bittersweet memories. What do you think? Link to Post – Back to […]
[…] of UO posts was started by Dan Rubenfield, when he briefly described a few of his adventures. Then Ryan Shwayder of Nerfbat took it a few steps further, and wrote a multi-part series of UO memoirs that brought […]
Hehe. This brings back old memories. I remember running around on a new mage char picking up the regs from them reg fields before Tram, then ultimately getting chased off the reg field by a dire wolf, a ogre, a ettin or a troll. I remember people bidding at the forge for the armor/weps i made because i was one of the most famous Smiths in Napa at that time. I remember when every so often a bunch of lizardmen, ratmen and a gazer would spawn in Brit. Every now and then a clever PK Mage/Warrior would polymorph into a lizman and walk into town during that, waiting for some person to attack them, lmao. I used to pick up the backpacks off the corpses of them and sell them for 3 gold per to the tanners, being a packrat back then was the only way to get by. I remember when no Mage in their right mind would attack a GM LJ Warrior (Most warriors hated fighting them too), and no Warrior in their right mind would attack a Macer. LJ Warriors and Macers were the dreaded juggernauts of their day. A single hit from a GM LJ Warrior’s axe could cause a Concussion Blow, halving your INT for about 45 secs. Thus making a Mage with 100 INT (Max INT back then) go down to 50, and at 50 it was nearly impossible to kill someone with decent Resist skill, was no such thing as LRC/LMC/MR. Plus GM LJ Warriors did 50% more damage with axes, making them quite devastating to a warrior as well. Macer’s were the kings of melee battles. Macers were slow with most weps, but back then, that didn’t matter. The raw damage they dealt was devastating enough, let alone that they could deliver a Crushing Blow with a Warhammer, dealing an extra 50% damage. Plus, Macer’s had a knack for destroying their opponent’s armor/shield, a feature i think they should bring back to the now very nerfed Macers of today. Also, when a Macer used a Q-Staff, he would knock the crap out of his opponent’s stamina. Most swordsman used either a Halberd or a Katana. Most Macers used either a Warhammer, a War Axe, or a Quarter Staff. Most Fencers used either a Long Spear or a Kryss. Most Archers used a Bow back then, was only about 3 types of bows back then, plus Archers were rare . Archers were practically never seen in PvP because they were nearly worthless in it, only good for disrupting the spells of mages. Archers were slow, and didn’t have near the power of a Macer to compensate for it, they had to keep stocked on arrows, and they had no special ability that could go off on their opponent. Two Handed Swords Weps (Mainly Axes, Halberds and Bardiches fit under Axes as well) were capable of doing Concussion Blow. Warhammers were capable of Crushing Blow. Long Spears were capable of Paralyzing Blow. Wrestlers with 80 Arms Lore were capable of Disarm, and if they had 80 Anatomy they were capable of Stun Punch. The chance for a special move to go off each hit was based off of the wielder’s Anatomy, basically 1/5 of their Anatomy skill equalled the chance for a special move to go off each strike with that weapon type. At GM Anatomy, there was a 20% chance of it. Disarm and Stun Punch were the only special moves that you could activate willingly with just a hit of a button. When i made 12 Mill off of placing tons and tons and tons of houses and selling them, i was considered one of the richest people in Napa, 12 Mill sure isn’t worth alot at all nowadays. Tamers running around with 7 Dragons in tow were avoided by everyone. Mind Blast used to be one of the most devastating spells there was if you knew what to do with it. Originally Mind Blast compared the INT of the caster to the target, whoever had less INT took damage based off of the difference. Then they changed Mind Blast to do damage to the target based on the difference between their Highest Stat and there Lowest Stat, which is what prompted most warrior to raise their INT if they PvPed. Against a Warrior, the mage would cast Strengthen on the warrior, then Feeblemind, making the gap between their stats even larger, thus dealing more damage. Against another mage, the caster would cast Cunning, then Clumsy. It was possible to kill a person with 2 Mind Blasts this way, basically one of the only ways to kill someone if you got hit by a GM LJ Warriors Concussion Blow.
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Nice to read old UO players. I used to be a GM tinker too, loved to trap new adventurers or even older warriors. So my technic was the following , first I placed my trapped box with deadly poison – my favourite – into my backpack and many other stuff, sometime rares, and so. Actually a real mess into the bag was to help the confusion of my future remains looter and make him open the trap. I dressed myself as a newbie can do, many different clothes, no special armor. In fact many stuff we can loot around when you are a newbie. Then I stand near the moonglow gates, turned out grey by attacking a NPC and then walked slowly to the Bank. I used to walk arounds warriors waiting for my future victim to chase me – mages could kill me too fast by spells. When the attack started, I ran as fast as I could out of the moonglow gates, healing myself and running straight forward into the wood until my attacker just terminate my poor life. At this stage the warrior thought he had a real fun killing just a poor newb, me appearing as a ghost near my remains, and he started to enjoy looting… you know how good and fun it is to loot, and discover your victim bag until… until…. pshhhh… the deadly message appears like a death gong, “xxx is suffocating and need emergency help”. GOT HIM ! DEATH IS COMING TO YOU ! The proud warrior was shocked, surprised… What is going ON ? His healthbar is just dropping fast, too fast… the panic is real as my fun is starting. My favourite time, you could notice him trying to go into different direction, like a real surprised person. And of course, most of time they just tried to return to Moonglow as fast as they could. The funny thing is that death came usually a fews steps before the gate, enough for citizen to watch this ridiculous death, and looters to come out and start having fun with the dead victim goods. Was a real NICE time. Some of this runs were very good. Of course I had a workmate on that trick. Sometime we used to sell back the victim backpack for a couple of Kgp. 😎
Interaction between players was a real fun. When I explain this kind of stories to a new MMO player, he just doesnt understand. Candy Land won the battle. Another story, more classic, was to find an iceland, a small and desert on then bring a dragon there. Afterwards you could gate newbies to the iceland and close the gate. Wait for some time for the dragon to eat the fresh food and ask him to drop the loot, that was so fun. I loved to think about the dragon looting his victim, eh eh, and my friend tamer asking gently his pet to realease it. 😆 Good times.
By the way, if you are looking for free intercations into a MMO, you could try EVE ONLINE. There is one world for everyone and unguarded zone are around the main roads. It means you can become a real PK and a real pirate too, like the old great UO. It happen a lot of time, sometime a pirate just appears, stop your ship and ask for a transfer on his bank account or death.
You can imagine all kind of traps with that game, because the world is like the old free UO. But for me, i didnt like the combat style, so you should try anyway…
It’s been about 3(?!) years since I last played, and I still miss UO. Started about 6 months after it came out. The community couldn’t be beat. At times it was harsh (especially on those just learning) but for every bad experience, there were 10 good ones to offset that.
I stuck to Lake Superior for the most part, spending most of my time serving in the ‘Lootless Army’ (SBR – Skara Brae Rangers). That’s where the majority of my fun came from; acting as fodder (Jimmy was an archer/bard) and loving every minute of it. Training sessions, mass battles, and social gatherings all occurred at the hall just north of the Skara Brae dock on the mainland-side. Countless expeditions to various dungeons, the X-roads, and to stake out PK homes all started from there. There was always guaranteed to be someone in that hall to hang out with.
In later years, after many changes (addition of trammel, and every part thereafter), I still enjoyed the vast world of Sosaria and all it had to offer. New people to meet. New quests & lands to explore. The absolute frustration of trying to place a house *just*one*square*larger* in a spot… Well, there’s just so much to do. Add in a friend or two playing with you, and it was just that much more entertaining.
Anyways, thanks for posting everyone…I love reading the stories and seeing the tricks people had up their sleeves 😉
Jimmy of SBR, LS
I remember when uo was first released when you could eat people… lol leg jerky.
[…] go into detail here. Instead, I will simply provide you with links to my nostalgic ramblings: Old School UO Nostalgia, True Sosarian Stories Part I, True Sosarian Stories Part II, True Sosarian Stories Part III. Happy […]
Nice read.
check out http://www.uodivinity.com
New pre-cast shard with a badass ruleset. Just needs some more players, and WTFMAN.com is about to sponsor the shard. Sounds like another IPY to me.
THey’re putting in alot of nice changes too in the upcoming weeks