True Sosarian Stories, Part II
Welcome to the second installment of the continuation of my Old School UO Nostalgia series. Like the first follow-up post, this will contain a few fun stories about my adventures in Ultima Online, along with a song from the original and a screenshot of the upcoming Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn. Enjoy your trip down the old road to great memories.
Today’s musical piece is from the wonderful city of Britain, where many a memory had its origins. Enjoy the music while you explore these stories about old school UO.
Occasionally, we’d find a relatively unoccupied enemy tower, and we would create a staircase out of crafted items (chairs, tables, or something, I don’t quite remember) to the top of the tower, then assault it from within or simply steal everything and go. Or I’d tame a dragon and have it fetch the items I could see on the inside of a house. Or I’d find a house built on a slight hill, and find the spot that would let you teleport underneath it with your head above the floor, where you could steal to your heart’s content.
There were also quite a few acts of piracy that yours truly participated in. You could unlock someone’s plank with a spell, hop aboard, kill them, and steal their key (and boat). We took all of our stolen boats and surrounded every landing area that existed on Buccaneer’s Den, then locked them and left them to prevent many people from getting on land. We went back for a regular patrol which involved killing the NPC merchants that dropped good, sellable stuff, as well as any people who happened to venture to the isle while we were gone. Basically, we owned Buc’s Den.
If we were feeling particularly naughty, we had a number of runes named “Britain” or “Home” (or sometimes unnamed, ready to dupe people with a new rune name) that were actually marked for a tiny little island we found on a boat. We’d go to Britain, steal someone’s “Britain” or “Home” rune (and all their others), and wait. Or perhaps we’d just go ahead and open a gate by the Britain bank and see who walked into it. More often than not, we’d find a poor bugger standing on the tiny little island with no way to get off. Even after we killed them. In retrospect, I apologize to all the GMs who had to rescue them.
Remember how you didn’t have to have a unique name? Uh oh. “Look, it’s the GM Blacksmith Lloyd, giving out free repairs on equipment at the Britain forge. Cool, here you go Lloyd, you made my uber armor and can definitely repair it to full. Wait. Lloyd? Where’d you go?! OMG someone just jacked all my stuff! 
” Ah, profit.
And now for the screenshot of Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn:
lol at the little island trick. I remember standing their myself … once … I wonder if it was you
I notice you apologized to the GM’s and not the nooblets. 
True Sosarian Stories, Part II
Aye, indeed those were good times. I fondly recall similar boat-jacking hijinks on Atlantic…. and random death potions, and exploding chests in town, and the grey robed thieves that steal from me often, and running from many o’ PKs decked out in bright red clothing in the woods.. desperately hoping to make it back within guard-range.
That’s it.. I have to go pick up 9th anniversary and toy with the game again.. That Kingdom Reborn client is looking pretty sweet too actually, but I have no clue when it will be released. Either way, I’ve found myself growing very tired of the same ol’ same ol’ MMORPG.
Which makes me feel it necessary to remind you that I’m counting on you to develop a really good game that is very disruptive to the current MMO paradigms. That is what the world needs right now. Hell, that’s what I need right now. Remember, the landmass does not have to be gigantic to be epic, it just needs to change and evolve based on the impact of the players. Reason.. purpose.. We need it. Killing ten rats to keep a player questing for longer does not make the game more immersive nor fun. It’s tedium for the sake of keeping a player paying their monthly subscription fees. It’s much more fun to have a decent struggle in a single encounter than to have the shopping list of random common spawns. The shopping list quest task system must die!
Ok, this thread was about UO and the adventures there in. I will stop raving madly on and on about my hopes and dreams of the holy grail MMO in the interest of not straying any further off-topic.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.
I originally played on Atlantic and Chesapeake back in the day. I think Chesapeake launched after Atlantic and I switched at that time, can’t entirely remember.
Hmm… that explains a lot. =)
[...] True Sosarian Stories, Part II [...]
I can only imagine these memoirs as my husband played “back in the day”. As for me, I have my own memories of UO, which I adore, but I can only feel a loss and sadness that I will never know what it is to be “ganked” as I’m leaving town or mining or whatever. I can never really build my PK skills or get mad or get even. Unless, of course, I choose to venture over to the other side. As of yet, I have no plans to go there. I don’t want to go out and look for trouble…I just want to know what it feels like to have trouble come looking for me, completely off guard. I don’t wanna be “ganked” by 15 reds who are practicing their murder skills and I run through their energy field. That’s not the same feeling, I’m sure.
[...] of follow-up posts to my original entry on Old School UO Nostalgia. You can check out the first and second parts, then read on for stories of old school Ultima Online, along with a song from the original [...]