The emptiness. Pointless Rant. Or My UO Died.

[Deadrat]

So, i started playing this game back in earyl/mid 1999. My first stumbling stepps were taken in Britain and for a few days i spent my time inside the mountain range making bows to sell to vendors and punching the training dummies. However i soon came into contact with the RP community and from then on i spent allmost all my time in UO roleplaying various chars.

I have long since stopped playhing now and i have tried to come back but the rp community is no where to be found, even GRD is gone now as far as im aware. I did a return for allmost a year when the severed headz orcs were resurected a few years ago but it died out again sadly because of varrious resons. I still have one of my accounts active in this game though.

Anyway, a few days ago i decided im going to take screenshots of locations that has ment allot to me through the years. Mostley because the screens from the "old" days are gone and the few that still exist are.. well few. (the ones with me in them that still exist can probably be counted on 1 hand). Now i was expecting to see allot of downfall and many of the houses etc gone. I allready knew all ORC houses were gone so no suprices there, and i sort of knew that most of the other community locations would be deserted to but.. despite this it hit me realy hard. Im a guy of 35 years now who actualy started to feel realy sad when i was teleporting around to some of the varrious locations (thanks Minerva for pointing me to the rune library ). Deepwater, Spirritwood, Stonkeep etc, all dead. Some of the places has a building or 2 left but no where close to what it used to be. Spirritwood (trammel) has something like 1 house even hinting about there having been a thriwing town there.

I had to stop for today with my screenshooting due to other things but i intend to continue soon, but today was realy a wakeupp call for me. I have known for a long long time that the UO i used to love does not exist anymore and i have known for a long long time that all the people (bar like 1 or 2) have long since left, but today was the day when i finally realiced.. My Ultima Online has died.

Long Live Ultima Online!

 

[Kazzak]

Hi Deadrat. I too have returned after not playing for a few years for various reasons. I have to agree that Europa is deserted now It is nothing like the Europa I once knew and it makes me feel sad too. Atlantic seems to be thriving, but what keeps me from transferring is that if everyone who returned did that then the shard will stay dead. If people stay then maybe there is glimmer of hope that it may get more active again one day if people return........

 

[Alex"Drake Iron Heart"CS]

Hello and Welcome back....

First of all id like to say, I am also a returning player which played back close to the year 2000, when this game was booming and just recently came back over half a year ago. The initial impact is to think the server is deserted but its really not, the players are just more spaced out about.... Not as many as they used to be for sure but I think its better than having 200 people in BRIT Bank, and have to enter what I used to call LAGLANDIA and have the common lag issues all throughout the game as the servers for UO where never designed to hold a lot of people before crashing or creating massive lag spikes..... Not a lot has changed, but there's less weight on the servers now for sure so they hold better. At least now you can do a lot more things with more peace of mind as you wont get attacked as much if you enter Fel for some reason, and there is also more space for housing, in case you wanted to rebuild a mansion again. In my opinion, the lack of population is weighed out with the amount of things you can do now, there is more freedom of such, and more things for you to do, try soloing some bosses for a change or something challenging.
On your point the point that ATL has more population, well thats easy, even by adding all the population of the European countries we dont reach the 340Million+(approx) people that the US habits, so its just common sense or norm that US servers would have more people.....
Stay in Europa, much better people and much closer knit together community, we kinda know each other all of us.... Plus if everyone did go to ATL, obviously Europa would have even less players, so a sure bet is to stay in Europa and live like a king, than go to ATL and live like a tramp..... LOL (My little joke)
You can always re-populate Europa with your Chars, which Indeed attract other people to join when they see you....

If you are looking for a bit of RP, well Vesper still holds a few people that like to RP , the Vesper Bar (Forgot its name...sorry Anna and comp), which is run by Anna Goodward and many of her fellow friends and guildies, is a great place to have a little banter and laugh while spending the time.

On the other hand, I created HLP to help new and returning players back into the game, so if you see anyone of us, Flag us down and ask for Kali, and Il gladly help you, chat with you in terms/things you want to know. I highly recommend you, to assist if you can to the BRIT BANK MEETINGS, which are held everyday from 6-7 Pm UK TIME, where you can find lots of Veteran players like Lien, Sarn, Ms Foxglove and many others. Probably the best place for information about he game and changes that might of happend since you last played. UOGUIDE.com and Stractics also another 2 great places for info, so be sure to check them out.


And dont worry about ranting about on the forums, I am probably one of the ones that most does it, when I get angry at this game, If you look back a couple of months, you can see I nearly lost it one day with the game, but its all natural, we have feelings and expectations, and when a damn monster kills us, we get upset.....


Hope to see you around and enjoy the game.

 

[Alex"Drake Iron Heart"CS]

Hello and Welcome back....

First of all id like to say, I am also a returning player which played back close to the year 2000, when this game was booming and just recently came back over half a year ago. The initial impact is to think the server is deserted but its really not, the players are just more spaced out about.... Not as many as they used to be for sure but I think its better than having 200 people in BRIT Bank, and have to enter what I used to call LAGLANDIA and have the common lag issues all throughout the game as the servers for UO where never designed to hold a lot of people before crashing or creating massive lag spikes..... Not a lot has changed, but there's less weight on the servers now for sure so they hold better. At least now you can do a lot more things with more peace of mind as you wont get attacked as much if you enter Fel for some reason, and there is also more space for housing, in case you wanted to rebuild a mansion again. In my opinion, the lack of population is weighed out with the amount of things you can do now, there is more freedom of such, and more things for you to do, try soloing some bosses for a change or something challenging.
On your point the point that ATL has more population, well thats easy, even by adding all the population of the European countries we dont reach the 340Million+(approx) people that the US habits, so its just common sense or norm that US servers would have more people.....
Stay in Europa, much better people and much closer knit together community, we kinda know each other all of us.... Plus if everyone did go to ATL, obviously Europa would have even less players, so a sure bet is to stay in Europa and live like a king, than go to ATL and live like a tramp..... LOL (My little joke)
You can always re-populate Europa with your Chars, which Indeed attract other people to join when they see you....

If you are looking for a bit of RP, well Vesper still holds a few people that like to RP , the Vesper Bar (Forgot its name...sorry Anna and comp), which is run by Anna Goodward and many of her fellow friends and guildies, is a great place to have a little banter and laugh while spending the time.

On the other hand, I created HLP to help new and returning players back into the game, so if you see anyone of us, Flag us down and ask for Kali, and Il gladly help you, chat with you in terms/things you want to know. I highly recommend you, to assist if you can to the BRIT BANK MEETINGS, which are held everyday from 6-7 Pm UK TIME, where you can find lots of Veteran players like Lien, Sarn, Ms Foxglove and many others. Probably the best place for information about he game and changes that might of happend since you last played. UOGUIDE.com and Stractics also another 2 great places for info, so be sure to check them out.


And dont worry about ranting about on the forums, I am probably one of the ones that most does it, when I get angry at this game, If you look back a couple of months, you can see I nearly lost it one day with the game, but its all natural, we have feelings and expectations, and when a damn monster kills us, we get upset.....


Hope to see you around and enjoy the game.

 

[callum_fitzhugh]

The Vesper Bar is called The Swaggers Inn.

Rp wise Europa is dead as dead can be unless you know players still here.

-V- is active and via them possibly other guilds.

I think DOT has finally bitten the dust - although Aryala was running for Mayor of Trinsic.

GRD left Europa more or less a few years ago en masse [can't say that surprised me]

UO didn't move with the times and make a 3d engine. The RP community ripped itself into pieces over pointless arguments and bickering squabbles and those guilds and players who were close friends fell out over minutiae and trivia. Not to mention the fact that too many egos got in the way of having fun. And even the sensible players eventually got dragged into the arguments.

What we were left with in about 2004/5 wasn't really worth having and with the launch of World of Warcraft many many players emigrated there to rp, have fun and enjoy a game again.

You are right. Its a sad sad Sosaria that now exists on Europa.

 

[Deadrat]

Problem with other games in my opinion is that they dont support RP nearly as well as UO do. And when it comes to the community arguing, well they alwways did that as far as i can remember. RP people can never get along since many thinks that their way to RP is the only way. But in the glory days of UO that wasnt much of an issue since there was allways replacements for those who left. Even such a niche guild like ORC who never got that big (think we had about 20 members active or something at most.) Could survive because there were enough people around interested in playing an orc. And i know about -V- just dont think 1 orc (which is the major thing i rp) in a town full of humans and other orc foods, would be such a good idea

In going to keep looking for that RP game though.. maybe SotA actually turn out to be a good RP game or maybe something ellse. For now ill just do what i do and well.. take pictures

 

[callum_fitzhugh]

I loved ORC and used to speak to Saktoth quite a bit on ICQ back in the day. He had some very strong opinions and was a great GM. He contacted me when he was coming over to Europe on a trip for a month or so [2002?] and funnily enough got in touch out of the blue a couple of years later. Not heard of him since.

An interesting link: http://cid.nada.kth.se/pdf/CID-167.pdf

 

[callum_fitzhugh]

And especially for Deadrat http://saktoth.deviantart.com/art/Saktoth-28921017

 

[Deadrat]

Yeah Saktoth was ace! Havnt heard from him in many many years though, he wasnt with uss when ORC resurected a few years back, noone had heard from him then. I do hang out with the old Warbozz in rl from time to time though But today i think there would be no point to try resurect the clan again sadly. Not enough oposition and orcs need outsiders to kill so they dont kill echother in plain boredom