What was your first day(s) in UO like?

[Faramir]

After seeing so many of you post about your past experiences in UO, I thought it might be fun to get a better idea of when you started UO and what it was like.


I started the game in December of 1997 on Sonoma. The account was actually my roommates, as I didn't have a computer of my own. He gave me one slot to make a character with and to "pay" for my time I would run ingame errands for him.

My very first day I found a sword sitting on the ground in Vesper. I grabbed it, and took off for a dungeon. lol

There were about 20+ people in the Harpy Room in Covetous. Back then, there was a room further down the hall that could hold 30 or more Harpies at a time!!
Anyway, I tried to play alongside them, but I was quickly told that I would need Magery to heal if I wanted to survive. No one used Healing back then, and NO ONE used Parrying. Tank Mages, Mages with a Weapon skill (usually Swords and a Halberd) were the main character. I also recall someone yelling "Murderer outside!!" and the dungeon emptying as everyone tried to kill him/her. The term PK wasn't around and I don't think people flagged "red" back then either.

I spent alot of time Tailoring and Lumberjacking to make bows for gold. In the first few months of 1998 we placed a tent right outside of Trinsic. It was pretty cool because as some of you may or may not recall, bank accounts held 125 items and 425 stones MAXIMUM.

With the addition of the Lost Lands, a new and much more terrifying errand was added to my responsabilities. You see, it was often hard to come by reagents because they carried odd numbers in the shops in the main lands, and were often empty. But in Delucia, the newest city, people seemed to leave the vendors alone. For some reason my roommate needed alot of Black Pearl and so I spent my time with my very weak character running from the Vesper Cemetary enterance to the Lost Lands to Delucia. Needless to say, my best skill was hiding as highwaymen and other evil player killers roamed the lands there.

In late 1998 I received my own computer and an account of my own. I had been befriended by a player who played primarily on an east coast shard, and so I started to play there, leaving Sonoma behind. I didn't return to Sonoma until the time when Trammel had long been in existance and the first Orc Quest had begun. I quit the old shard and I have been here ever since. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/biggrin.gif

So, when and where did you start? Did you have any pre-conceived notions about the game? What was it like?

 

[Nakita_Draco]

A friend of mine from DiabloII had gotten me into UO and told me about it. He kept telling me of how he took care of plants and all the other things that Diablo couldn't offer. I was getting bored with Diablo a little plus I was curious about the plants and everything else he kept talking about, especially after he sent me screenshots of some of the monsters. So I decided to take a chance and buy UO. I figured the first month was free to try it out and if I didn't like it I'd return it. That's when I had first gotten ICQ too. So I icq'd him to let him know I was in some city and tried describing it to him so he could find me, I didn't know all new players when to Haven or that it was even named Haven While he was on his way to meet me someone gave me a little object with an ankh symbol on it, I was totally amazed that someone gave me something and at that little object. I swear I was smiling ear to ear all happy. The person told me to use it to go to the location. So while the person had left I kept clickin on the thing to try and make it take me to where it said. Well in the meantime my friend showed up and I showed him what the person gave me but I told him it's not working and he laughed and said it was a rune He explained I needed magery to use it.

My friend showed me around Haven and Moonglow. I stayed around Moonglow the rest of the time training my magery casting spells on anything I saw so I could use that rune. When I was able to recall I went to the vendor house on the rune and they had great prices, I was able to buy a full set of armor for under my 1k of starting gold. I was also training fencing but I only did that when my friend was around to help me with it and heal me if i needed it, then all of a sudden he said I needed to learn about death! He let me die /php-bin/shared/images/icons/frown.gif I was so mad at him and panicked cuz I didn't know where the healers were and I thought I had lost all my stuff. After a few minutes he rez'd me and explained about the time limit to get to my body etc. He's a weird teacher but it taught me about dying lol. That's all I remember about my first week, which was a little over a year ago. I swear when you're new every single thing is amazing to you. Heck even now I still get amazed at some stuff I seen in game. UO's the only game I've ever dished out money for every month, never in a million years before I came to UO did I think I'd do that lol.

 

[HawkML]

*step step step lag lag lag, step step step lag lag lag*

Hehe started Oct '97, the weekend after release. I was such a newbie then, but I came from Diablo with my guild. We played on Pacific at first, but from what I heard that's where most of the beta players started. We moved to Baja by the end of the month, and by the next month we had placed the first castle on Baja (most of the guild mined and the GM sold tons of ingots). By December many of us had once again moved to Sonoma (I started here a week after the server came up). Before then the most I'd ever had in my bank was 12k, usually I was under 8k.

I placed my first house on Sonoma in December '97, paid 10k for it. I made the money by tailoring hides into female plate, back when you could do that, and I didn't touch that character again for years (now GM+ smith and headed for legendary tailor). I used to hunt in the rat valley and at one point lost a key to my house to a group of DoM PKs so I didn't really use my house much until they added some security to houses.

 

[Storm O'Neal]

First char I made was a tamer, of sorts. I wanted to have horses, back then you rarely saw a nightmare or dragon, so it was the horse that made me want to be a tamer. I didnt see magery as needed so I didnt have that. I also gave that char 11 str.*Giggles* Who needs to be strong anyway.

I didnt understand the 700 skill points so I had every skill, I would work healing, taming, swords, camping and anything else that caught my eye. So silly, plus just moving was an adventure, the lag, the poor connection I played on.

I would get on in the mornings and go to Papua bank cause people threw away tons of magic weapons and armor, I would then cart that to the armor or provs. shop and sell it for gold.

I died so many times, and self resed so much my char had very little skills at the end of everyday. Fun times for sure.

Stormy

 

[Treason]

Well, it was UO's first day, also my Birthday, it was going to be the best present ever (heheh)

I started off thinking in my mind it was exactly like Ultima 7 (one of my alltime favorite games) and I really got into it. My first experience was trying to generate income, which I did from constantly killing stuff in East Britian forest along with the hoards of other players and selling meat at the butcher shop.

The situation was awful to say the least, the servers kept going down, there was almost no protection from anything, I had tons of unnecessary skills, and there was always someone around to loot your corpse. However, I managed to pull ahead of the pack quite nicely despite the lack of monsters and such.

No trade window, no bank box, no stat lock, no house protection, no vendors, no trammel, no stealing limits or protection, no criminal acts, no secure storage, no item insurance, massive game imbalance, one-hit quit weapons, virtually no monsters, no guildstones, and so many players that there wasn't much choice except for them to turn on themselves.

Heheh. Those were the early days. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif That week went -fast-. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

 

[Ascension]

My first days of UO were a lot like my last days of UO.

Wandering around wondering what would become of the game.

Except back then, I logged in and did that a lot more often.

My account expires near the end of this month, the likelihood of me renewing is about slim to none.

It was a good run while it lasted, I had a lot of fun, made a lot of friends, lost a few along the way. All in all, UO was a good experience, and I will mourn its death appropriately.

 

[Guest]

I started way later then the rest of these guys/gals...January 2000. My first char was on Catskills, and 3 years later she's still not complete cause I kept changing her around. I was there a day or two and I met this really nice man and his fiance who also played, who then took me to Sonoma. He put me in COD, one of the oldest guilds on Sonoma. I remember being terrified of Fel (now I rarely leave) because of how he described it (don't bring anything you don't want to loose and prepare to die). My son used to do the mouse and I did the keyboard so he could play as well. I never thought magery was fun (looked kinda skilly running around casting spells to avoid being hit by monsters and people) so I only made dexers, swearing to never ever play a mage...since then I've made over 40 mages, some for me, some for other people hehe. My third day on Sonoma I met a guy I became pretty good friends with and got rezkilled by some red npcs at the xroads together. Little did I know 2 months later I'd be rezkilled because I WAS the red person (read Gohan playing target practice with me for fun...for him)

Dire wolves, orcs (oh god how I still hate them to this day), and "evil trees" as I called them, were the bane of my existance. I remember hitting a bull with my katana and ended up dead rather quickly.

At three months into the game I was made co-gm of COD, and at 8 months, I became the GM and took them to the top of the charts with 125 members. Only guild to come remotely close to that at the time was hunters GOH. I left COD a year ago I believe and am much happier now in a small guild (some are from COD) based on pvp (even tho I still suck at it ) instead of monster bashing.

Oh boy...I'm lucky I could even do THAT on my dialup. I was on MSN and could barely function. I'd crash recalling to the guild tower EVERY SINGLE TIME or when I'd step on the front steps. Fire, Ice, Wrong, Hyloth...ugh how horrid for my computer. I'd die more times to freeze lag then anything else. A few weeks before I got cable I pinged...NO JOKE over 2500. It was SO funny watching people duel with that. Could see every single sparkle, every mm of movement from an ebolt. You learn to appreciate all that goes into the graphics of UO when you can actually see them in ultra slomo! Thankfully that only lasted 2 days of horrid ping then I was back to my semi slomo.

My fondest UO memories: meeting Juno of COD (the guy that took me from Catskills); meeting Mesdoram Elmdor on Chessie even tho I had met him out of game first, it was my first experience IN game with him as he returned to UO after a long absence; and being introduced to Kaoru Nagisa from YA by a mutual friend, Jitsu.

My greatest accomplishments: GMing taming and FINALLY finishing a mule with mining (I had made 3 others over my 3 years and I always killed them cause they were boring as hell).

My scariest moment: 2nd day on Sonoma and I'm in the YMCA watching my GM get killed because he poly'd into an orc (which he knew I hated and did it for a joke).

The happiest day: Nov 15, 2002 for so many reasons.

The saddest: When Juno quit and gave me his stuff. It now sits in a house that a friend of mine was holding for me, and then he quit. I only hope that I can loot the stuff before anyone else does so I can have these memories of him and his fiance.

The day I did the most stupid thing: Yesterday...I let over 50 mil of stuff decay on the floor of my tower...not realizing things decay SO FREAKING FAST now (box of stat scrolls and 120 power scrolls), old hair dyes (lots of them), full sets of plants, ranger armor, one phoenix armor part, 3 singing balls...bleh so much..while I continued to loot 50-60 houses that fell in Fel.

Hopefully I'll continue to have such fond memories of UO...as long as they don't continue to drastically change it. My son asked if they put UO back to when it was fun (he wanted to come back to play) and unfortunately, I had to tell him no they didnt...he doesn't like the item playstyle so refuses to come back.

 

[Rotte]

Started back in 97/98, back then you died every single day, were dry looted, and had to run around trying to wrestle creatures to get enough money to buy a weapon, just to have another person ride up and chase you down and kill you again if you happened to be outside of the range of the guards. Playing solo with dialup was incredibly bad, and the servers tended to disconnect me randomly throughout the hour or so I tried to play, so I usually ended up dead from bears, or other creatures I was trying to train/fight. I had a simple warrior type but my skills were pretty pitiful and I quickly got frustrated and annoyed at the endless "back at square one" deaths. I gave up after a month and moved onto FPS which was much more fun and less tedious.

Now, early this year I'm cleaning out a closet of old software and my son notices the Ultima Online box and asks to try it. I get him setup again and he logs in and plays some. My wife joins him and they both play together for a month or 2, while I continue playing in FPS leagues (quake/rtcw). They finally convince me to give it a shot, so I end up playing UO once again. What a big difference from before. I'm not dying constantly, and I actually can leave the city without being attacked and I can log out without waking up dead. (I'd also have to say that having cable/dsl makes a huge difference in playing too..)

Now me and my son (in between playing warcraft and other games) can log in and go hunt monsters, actually get houses and things, and have been able to train are characters up to the point where they are pretty good fighters.

Been playing for 7 months since, and still having some fun..

Rotte - The Friendly Ogre
The Knights who say Ni!
Citizen of Sonoma

 

[Jakaro]

I started in December 2001. My brother had gotten me UO:R for Christmas and it looked so freaking awesome. My first day, I was in the Haven castle and suddenly I froze [not knowing that that was what happens when you lag in UO] and I'm like "OMGAZ HOW DO I MOVE?!??!" But I logged back in and played.

Back then my computer screen was UBER dark so I couldn't see jack crap.. It was so dark, when it was night time it was completely black and when it was day, i couldn't see the bottom of my backpack. Anyway, I was a warrior, and powerhour kicked ass [GM Swords/Tactics/etc in two days rofl], lala.

I got interested in magery and decided to completely convert Jakaro into a mage (I only had one character at the time). I never really thought of making new characters, so over the course of 10 months or so, I'd change from Mage to Warrior to Mage to Warrior etc. I once changed to Thief, and then to a Tamer, and then to a Miner/Murderer [rofl]. All on one character. Lalala...

I decided to make Jakaro into an assassin, moved to Atlantic shard, formed the Shadow Syndicate, got tired of UO, quit UO, played other games, and now I'm missing UO but I can't come back because I smashed my CD into a million pieces. On purpose.

Doh =/


Stuff:

Best Day: Joining S*F with WhiteKnightBC and getting my RL friends Agent and Scheme to play, and being looters, and scaring newbs in Haven, and meeting Bam Margera, and meeting LuT, and chilling at the YMCA, and GMing my first skill, and killing my first person, and being called "good", and actually being known by people, the first time I became red, etc. etc. etc.

Worst Day: Getting betrayed by three of my former friends from Sonoma, being told I sucked and that they didn't know me [That's why I left Sonoma], being told one of my friends that I looted with on Sonoma had died /php-bin/shared/images/icons/frown.gif, Lagging out of UO 1200200003x in a row

There's so much :-/

 

[Bronwyn]

My first day playing UO was starting a character for my son...chopping endless trees to build strength for his character who still is in game after 5 years. My first day on my own character, I was absolutely amazed at how quickly I died....kept dying and have kept up that tradition way into today. The best day of UO for me was when I placed my first house...it was along the road to the cemetary in Moonglow, now an unplaceable spot btw...I had great vendors there for a long time..until Trammel came along.

The best and most enduring part of UO, the friends...I have them from the first week I played until now. And I will stay until they click off the servers.

 

[Bert]

When I started I didnt' know that bears and wolves didnt come after you..hehehe I would always run from them and about have a heart attack thinking they were going to kill me. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/laugh.gif Now I have been playing for about 4 years and....hehehe I think I know now...they don't attack LOL. Since I started playing I play on several different shards and have maxed chars on Sanoma. Sanoma is my main shard so much so that I bought another account and got more chars /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif Enjoy UO all!
Bert.

 

[Jakaro]

Newbie Moment: Back in my "dark computer days" where my screen was very dark, I was running around SOMEWHERE in the woods and I found an ogre. I was like AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and started running like hell. Since I was on 56k, I was a bit laggy and I was on foot, so the ogre was able to keep up. I saw a miner and I screamed HELP MEEEEE and he said "I can't, I'm a miner!" Then I died =/

I also remember the first time I got Pk'ed...

 

[Faun(LS-TRAM)]

My very first hour of UO...I thought the proffession thief sounded really cool and made Faun, and appeared at the Vesper Inn. I saw someone nearby fishing, and thought "Oh goodie here's my chance". I was *ahem* creeping up to him when he says "You aren't thinking of trying to steal from me, are you?" I stopped dead in my tracks, realizing for the first time someone was directly talking to me! He then proceeded to lecture me about how thieves are not viewed favorably in the game, and showed me how to do many things, answered my questions for like an hour.

After that I would collect fur off the bank floors and use it for leather, go practise my archery at the moonglow zoo, mine my butt off, gm my first skill in smithing...only to have OSI "lose" my beloved Faun and not able to retrieve her char. I remember players being amazed a rl girl was gaming, lol I also remember seeing a grey, someone who stole from me that day, and RUNNING after his sorry butt trying to kill him with him saying, "oh come on! For FEATHERS, man?" Got him too. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif Don't steal from ME.

I finally quit after the pking outside the Moonglow gates got so bad I just couldn't handle it anymore (no mage=a life of black and white)and the game had taken a turn towards "not fun". Pks were grouping together and *raping* you after they killed and looted yer butt...to me, that was enough to disgust me to the point of quitting.

Then a good year later I was told that UO had this Tram thing where non-fighters like me could live in peace...so I tried again.

 

[Evilynn Carnate]

Thankies Faramir for this thread. I know it's not the first of it's type but there are ALWAYS good stories attached whenever the subject is breeched. Like the ones above... *looks up*

I too bought UO for myself for my Birfday, almost two years ago as a matter of fact. I are a baby. *blushes* It was spring of 2002, I remember it well, Yew had just been reduced to a bog full of nasties, Minoc and Papua were over run as well and I had a brand new character on Sonoma. I stumbled around Haven the first day and managed to upset a lizardman who chased my sorry butt back into town. My 30 massive skill points in swords were just not enough to handle the beast. I recall sitting in my chair wondering WHAT I had gotten myself into.

The next week was about the same. My friend that got me started here bought this cute little tower and wanted to show it to me. We had no idea what it was to "recall" so we set off on horseback from the Yew moongate. She lead me to the road by the farms in Yew because she couldn't find the house except from the road. (Neither one of us knew about UOAM. I finally asked enough of the right questions we found it roughly a week later.) So here we are a couple of noobs with the dreaded [young] tag keeping us from being eaten by all the Juka. What's a Juka anyway? I didn't know... *shrug* We stopped to break at a farm house that was full of the nasty things and I got off my horse to feed it. Scratch one horse... Naturally I had no idea why I was on foot but now I was. Then we wandered around until we found the house. It only took about an hour. Not too bad. Funny I still remember right where it was too, right at the sharp bend in the main road just north of the guard tower and almost directly SE of the Yew moongate.

I spent a lot of time exploring and when my [young] status wore off I spent even more of that time viewing the world in monochrome. I read stratics and found out that there was this lost city called Papua. Hum... I wonder if you can get anything different there than you can get in the other cities? Well let's go have a look. "recdu" COOL! OooOOoo OOooO There was a golem standing on the teleporter pad in Papua. Of course, I didn't want to rez in Papua but also didn't know you could leave via the porter while dead. So instead of typing "recsu" I went off and tried to find a healer outside of town. My first view of T2A was the dead tour. Not one healer to be found, I'll have to remember that.

I finally got my very first house shortly after that. Oh I was HAPPY! A friend just gave it to me. There are some truly nice people that play this game. So here I am in my new house, a small tower on the road where those same farm houses were that I passed days earlier, Juka all over and no longer young. lol I ended up living in the Britain Inn because I recalled into my new home and found that one of my friends had left this pack horse in my livingroom and there was now a golem an a bog thing guarding my house.

Shortly after that we moved to LS because I wanted to try my hand at vending. I ran a high volume vendor just outside Vesper for the next six months. The lag on LS was so bad that I was just about to quit and return to Sonoma when they announced the opening of the first new shard in god knows how many years. We moved to LA instead.

I learned everything I know about the game on LA in the following months but the shard just never felt like home. I met some great people and accomplished some amazing things but... I'm back home now and finally building the characters I started the game with.

Be well!

Lynn

 

[cR@zY A$tor]

I'm a recent transplant from playing Everquest ( 4 years, gag)
My first day was about 1 month and three weeks ago. I started out doing the newbie quest in Haven. People all seemed to know I was new and I couldn't figure how, lol. I met a player named Gabriel who was kind and gave me a full set of spined armor to adventure wearing so I'd have a fighting chance. ( Thanks, Gabe!!!) A guy named Drizzt gave me some good information while reg shopping in Haven.
The next couple of days I spent digging up newbie treasure chests and learning how to fight ( and get rezzed, and what item insurance was...etc.)
I'm happy to report a little over a month later I've managed to get Glorious Lord Status, 104.2 magery( bought a PS, yay!, fought the bone demon (had a lot of help with that, thank, DoS and Diamind) and oddly enough what I'm most proud of, GMing inscription; trust me, this was like sitting on a bed of needles perched atop an iodine geyser!)
I've had a lot of fun and met nice ( and a couple of not so nice ) people.
Since I like to focus on the good things, I want to send out my heartfelt thanks to ( in no particular order):
Gabriel
Eric
Amadeus
Redwolf
Zeke
Necro"" ( I can never remember the last part, sorry =o()
Xeno
Gypsy ( for your gracious hospitality on Halloween)
Sorry if I flaked and forgot to mention anyone!
I am looking very forward to having more adventures and meeting more people soon!
Astor - The Laughing Wizard

 

[imported_Ghost_Knight]

I got the game a few weeks after it came out. The first time I logged on, the lag was so bad I wanted to bring it back to the store. The next day I got on and was able to get around decent and started to like it more. I made a swordsman on Napa...named Ghost Knight of course. I fought all of the vicious creatures to be found above Minoc...rabbits, sheep, deer, etc. I met a guy that was working swords too and we started hanging out. We wanted to see the Dragons in Destard, so we ran from Minoc to Destard and back fighting everything along the way. The entire trip took us over 12 hours. We even killed a pk that attacked us outside Covetous. After that trip I was absolutely hooked on the game. When I got back to Minoc, there were two people at the Minoc Bank argueing about something. One of them was a female and she put on some really nice plate and armed a nice viking sword and challenged the guy to fight her outside of town. She was a swords/mage hybrid and absolutely owned the guy. It turned out that her and her friends were starting a pk guild. I went pking with them in Covetous and died, but had a great time. She had purchased a deed for a castle and we went to place it above Minoc. A guy ran by while we were placing it and I killed him. That kill made me red and he had a house deed on him, so I placed my first house in front of our guild castle. We had four dragons trapped in the corners of the main room of the castle. I trained with them and the guild members to gm swords. Then I added some magery to my template, because fireballs were like ebolts back then and I got tired of having to be gated around. Later I moved to Atlantic and added archery to my swords/mage template. I've pked with a hybrid ever since. In fact, Ghost Knight on Sonoma was originally a swords/archer/mage, but I decided to drop swords for more meditation. I noticed that my gm made bow was doing more damage than my verite runic katana, so the choice was an easy one. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

 

[iolo]

I eagerly await the release of UO and got it soon after, knowing that their wasn't really a 'point' other than what you made of your 'life'. So i started in Magincia, and of course I clicked through all the tutorial bits, and didn't read any part of the manual, but i think i did pin the UO pin on my lapel...
so i'm walking around with a dagger in my hand thinking, this is pretty sweet, back to the U3 days and i decide to test out my combat skills on some hapless deer while i'm in town. so i go to combat and i try double clicking on the poor little thing that was named 'Bambi' which I thought was hysterical! Imagine naming all deer in the game Bambi! FUNNY stuf.. OooOoooo
what the hell just happened? why did everything go grey?
took me two hours to res, and i couldn't figure out how to get my title back to the positive side!
so i started a second character in Britian this time and immediately fled the town to rid myself of the guards. i spent the rest of the day walking ALL THE WAY AROUND the Britannia coast, the majority of which I spent trying to escape a FIERCE pig that I attacked and realized I could not handle with my limited skillset.

ah the good old days when i used to set F9 to Use Skill 'Hiding' and rest a coffee mug on the F9 key before going to work, just to come home and find the first day 30-65, second day 65 - 70, third day 70-72, hmmm... why can't i reach 100?

 

[HawkML]

I have that UO pin sitting on the edge of my keyboard.

And when my brother played way back then he got killed by a deer. I still make fun of him for that.

 

[Goldie Broker]

Well since my account is 56 Months old now.. I guess I started 4 1/2 years ago. Dont remember the month. My Best Friend Ricky who lived in Florida kept telling me about this new game he was playing. How awesome it was.. He told me I had to get it. So I did. He tried to help me get started in game. Told me how to make the new char, Brought me to his small house that he and Lord Thor owned together and gave me a key. Told me to never go out with the key in my pack. He had to sign off after that.. So what did I do? I went out with the key in my pack to look around the house when BAM!!!! I got nailed by a red named Thorin Greylock. He took the key and proceeded to loot the house of its entire contents (Before secure chests and lock downs ever existed).. Lord Thor had like 10K Ingots in the house and tons of weapons. I had no idea what to do. I was trying to call Ricky and tell him to come quick and I couldnt get him on the phone the whole time Thorin was just gating away all the items in the house. By the time this ended I felt Like such a piece of crap.. I called Ricky later that day crying telling him I lost everything he had etc.. when he started laughing at me. He told me, do you think I would have given you the key to the house with all our good stuff in it? I knew you would die with the key! After that I traveled around the land being PK'd here and there by the good fellows of 409 and learned to take it as a joke and actually admire the guys who killed me sooo easily! I discovered the world of vendor shops and worked forever on my Mule characters. Alot of my UO Life is lived being a vendor. When I decided years ago that I wanted to be RICH on Sonoma I decided to try to become a Broker. I made a website, advertisied my services on Tradespot (Before you werent allowed to anymore) and got a few customers. It snowballed from there. I became successful and had a good reputation and when Papa formed UOBrokers.com he had aksed to me join. Once Papa sold UOBrokers.com, Markeedragon took us all and moved us to his site. So there is the history of Goldie from day 1. But Sonoma was my home from day one and it has never changed! I have to thank all of you who actually read my ramblings to the end of this post .. hehe

 

[Senechal]

My first character was started in Trinsic. I immediately armed my mace (because I wanted to literally bash my foes) and walked out the western gate. I came across a wolf, and decided to ATTTACKK. It didn't kill me, because I would back off enough, let myself heal, and attack it again. I was getting no where fast, so I decided to leave it behind and walk to Britain. This was shortly after the introduction of the Lost Lands, but I felt that the world was just so vast that I would likely never even get there.

Well, on the road to Britain, shortly after crossing a bridge, an orc targetted me. He was doing far more damage to me than I was to him, and I had no means of healing. Especially since this orc thing was faster than the wolf, and on my 56k dialup, I just could not get away. He followed me all the way into Britain where I started yelling for someone to help me since I couldn't defeat this orc. A kind soul came over and started working on the orc (that quickly targetted him instead of me thankfully, heh). So I'm standing next to him, double clicking the orc wildly and apparently targetted the fellow that came over to help me because I get the message "You are attacking Samaratan" (not his name, but after all these years, I think it's okay) "Guards can be called upon you". Another individual nearby came over and said "You are gray." I told him I knew, and that I accidentally attacked the guy helping me.

Seemed everyone was understanding of the newbie, because this happened right NEXT TO WEST BRIT BANK. We didn't have the Noto's then that we do now.

He then proceeded to suggest that I start up another character right there in town as a tailor, because you could make as much as 5k an hour doing that. That was big money then, and I earned it every click of the way. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif However, this is not what I wanted to do ALL of my UO time, so I would venture out into the East Britan Forest whereupon I would die on a semi-regular bases, using up that 5k/hour surplus I would generate. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

My main armament became whatever ringmail tunic I could loot off a slain orc captain, and my sword was usually some bent to helngon strip of metal. I could not afford repairs (Yeah, they were pretty much done for "free", but if you didn't tip well, then most of the smiths just wouldn't get around to free repairs for you unless you were the only one standing there for 10-15 minutes while they "worked on their skills".

That second character (the first one didn't "live" for long") became my main, and he did EVERYthing. He had between 30-60 points in whatever was doable and being high in some combat skills (70s-80s) only because that's what came my way. This was a true character in the original sense of UO. He didn't place any makers mark on anything, but he could make something of everything. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif He could make some leather armor from the skins, or bows and arrows from the wood. He spent his time out in the woods (when he wasn't grudgingly making a few k of gold tailoring), so he didn't do any smithing. That became left to the next character to come along.

Well, you guys don't want to hear about the next 5 years in detail, so I'll leave it there.

From those humble beginnings, I now have a full tower and two log cabins in Tram and a 18x18 and 9x13 in Fel. All this time, I have probably have been over 1 mill in total liquid assets only about twice in my UO career, but that's not why I play anyways. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/wink.gif

 

[VetoPower]

It took me a while to settle on a shard, when I first started I didnt realize that each shard was different, I thought it was all one world, with different host computers all linked, so I was confused when I kept having to recreate my character. My first "Main" was on Lake Superior, named Veto Power. I think originally I was going to name him something along the lines of Judas Priest, but my bro said no, veto power. He was saying he didnt like the name and was vetoing it, I thought he meant name em Veto Power. Silly me.

Veto was born during the time where you could do the ol' tab tab hide dance. It didnt matter if they were right next to you or if you were around the corner, you hit hide poof you disappeared. Very useful while luring dragons to piles of rocks to trap them in in Destard, or escaping from other people. Tents were everywhere, houses were placed on top of houses, and the only way to have a secure house was to build a house wall in front of your door, and then mark a rune to the courtyard, and you BETTER not lose that rune! Something else I remember from that time was there was literally LINES to use training dummies. People would do it all night to try raising stat points, and gain thier hiding skill.

Anyhow, I retired from the game for about a year when all my friends quit, then got an icq from a group that had moved to Sonoma, so I reincarnated Veto, and Joshua, mainly to try my hand at Pvp'ing again (I still sucked, but had fun). I played Sonoma for about a year, met some great people, had fun fighting in the dungeons/champ spawns, and building a new group of characters up. I just recently retired 3 months ago and gave the account away. Perhaps one day I'll return to the lands.



Joshua/Veto

 

[Guest]

Hello,

Well I have a kind of funny story about my first few weeks in Uo. When I first started I had no Idea what shards were. After installing Uo, I proceeded to look through the list of servers. I wasn’t sure which one I should pick, there were so many to choose from. So after looking at all the names for a while, I thought that “Wakoku” sounded like a cool name, and started there.
After playing for quite some time (a few weeks) I was wondering why there was no one around, and if there were, they would not speak to me. I dismissed it for a while, and continued to work on my skills. Anyways some more time went on, and I was still baffled at the fact that no one would talk with me.
I walked around the towns looking for some one to talk with. It just so happened that on my journeys I ran into a game counselor. He said “hello” I was shocked! Some one actually was talking with me. I proceeded to ask him why no one was around, and why no one would talk to me. As we began to talk more, and he questioned me about my time zone and location, I quickly became embarrassed. I was playing on an Asian shard, out of my time zone. That’s why no one was around, and people were not ignoring me, they just could not understand what I was saying. So needless to say I switched shards, and that is how I found my home here in Sonoma.

 

[Ningauble of HOG]

Hmmm, I started either late 99 or early 2000....in the waning months of the "Fel Only" world. I had a RL friend that had been playing about 6 months or so who kept trying to get me to try UO and I kept resisting cuz I was "STILL waiting for Diablo 2" and didnt want to pay to play n such. Well, I finally relented, tried UO because of him and a few old guildmates from Diablo on Battle.net played Sonoma too (Waynebo, Saramus, Vormicia) and thought it would be cool to play with them again. I and a couple RL friends all started together (Ramone and Demanknght) and needless to say we never did try D2.

I was introduced to Bedouin and Rabble Rouser who guilded me into HOG and Ive had that tag above my head ever since.

We 3 started on Moonglow island, I wanted to start in Trinsic because of the whole "warrior town" thing but that was right during the time of the Trinsic Invasion and newbs couldnt start there....heh, I remember still thinking that I WAS in Trinsic for like the first few days I played....such a noob I was.

We were terrified of getting lost and had no idea how to get around anywhere so we spent our first 6 weeks or so living at the Moonglow Hotel and never leaving the island and hunting the woods and that accursed graveyard. OCH maintained a stranglehold on that graveyard and used to terrorize us every day. Hunt for 4-5 hours and be lucky to get 1000 gold actually TO TOWN, much less INTO THE BANK (thieves were everywhere).

I came into some money and discovered this vendor shop outside town that had this REALLY COOL blue and green armor for sale and INSISTED that I looked cool in it so I would buy it and get PK'ed and dry looted several times a day....this went on til I was broke again of course because I would NOT give up wearing that armor that made me look so cool /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

I had a small house on Ice Isle that my and like 6 of my friends shared (more RL guys that I got to start) and then bought 2 more smalls from a friend over by Minoc to use for loot storage (I learned how to camp house falls in Fel and made a fortune). I remember being so weak and the spawn so bad at those houses that I couldnt even go there without backup or Id never even make it into my house /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

Tram placement opened up finally....Trammel was cool to hunt when I lived in Fel because I actually could go into a DUNGEON! Something I was always afraid to do in Fel. I was gonna stay in Fel but on a last moment whim decided to take a crack at placing a castle....like 600 other people.....I was one of the lucky few that got one and moved to Tram.

Eventually I ended up with the castle, 2 towers, and a host of other large homes all over Fel and Tram...kept multi accounts just to have em...heh, I was such a real estate *****, and quite good at placing.

Left UO for DAoC....ebayed my homes and rares....kept my characters tho. Came back to UO again and got settled with the help of Pluffy and Bob (2 finer people never existed) and played a couple months before money issues forced me to lay my accts dormant again. During that time I played Planetside, still do from time to time, but a few days ago my wife and I reupped our UO accts again and here we are...again. This is a game and a community that you just cant ever really leave /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

 

[Dor of Sonoma]

Ahhh...such memories! *grins*

The original owner of my account bought UO when it hit the shelves, October 11th, 1997. He kept trying to sell me on playing it at the time, but I was too busy with my work shedule to even take a look at it. Then one day, I was walking through the house, and I heard some incredibly lovely music. I followed it to its source at the end of the hallway, and asked, "What is that?!" "Ultima Online", came the answer..."Here, you want to take a look?" I stood behind him, staring at the screen, as he showed me scene after beautiful scene. As an artist, a longtime wargamer and participant in Renaissance/Living History reenactments, I was enthralled. And the music! I was sold, but still unable to try it out until May or June of '98, when I finally had a short break in my work schedule.

By then, I had inherited the account. He had moved, taking the CD with him, but leaving the game installed on my computer, along with the pertinent details for the account (username and password). He had allowed me only one character slot on one shard, and so Dor was my only character for the first two years. He had also selected Sonoma for me--at the time, I just thought that it was because I live in Sonoma County--heh, I had no clue. (In retrospect, I figured out that Pacific, Napa et al, were crammed with his PKer characters I had no manual, no CD, knew no one to ask advice of...in short, I was utterly clueless. So! I decided that I would create a character who would assist parties of players (hey, I didn't know!) as they wandered through the land, fighting evil and promoting peace. Heh...to that end, I chose a template of the time...*winces*...a Bard, who would strum her lute, causing all nasty conflict to cease and Peace to ensue. I looked at the options included, and dismissed Provocation as being an Evil skill (I could not imagine wanting to make anything into a slave to do my bidding by causing harm to another) Therefore, Dor began at the Vesper Youth Hostel with a template and only two skills: Peacemaking, Musicianship, and...13 strength. (If she even sneezed too hard, she would die) *coughs* *takes 10 damage*

In those days, Vesper was a veritable hub of activity, and the Warrior's Guild (with the four practice dummies) was literally standing-room only. You would have to wait your turn in line, sometimes for an hour or more, to get your chance at training there. I therefore moved into the Warrior's Guild for the next couple of months (I didn't know that you could log out in inns till much later), training fervently to raise my strength by training in every combat skill, interspersed with Music and Hiding. (I also didn't know that players hate the sound of practicing Bards...I actually found the sound appealing When I was ready to log out, I would sneak into the Warrior Guildmaster's room there and hide, then unroll my bedroll, light a campfire and log out. It was the only way I knew of, to log out. *laughs* I was so afraid that if the Warrior Guildmaster caught me trying to sleep in the back room, they'd ban me from the building or Vesper or something.

My big, huge goal was to own and wield a Sword. A Real Sword, unlike my [practice] longsword. However, I was penniless and so I began cutting kindling with my newbie dagger and selling it to the smithy for...one gold piece per stack? Two? After quite some time of raising money in such a (tedious) fashion, I proudly walked to the armourer's in Vesper, and pointing to the shiny new Viking Sword that was glittering in the display case, purchased it. Imagine my dismay when I was too weak to even take a couple of practice swings with it...*laughs*

Oh man, I have so many more memories about starting out...the hushed feeling of great anticipation when the chest would slowly open as the theme music beagn to play, revealing the glowing gem to press..."Entering Britannia..." always such an exciting moment...! Learning how to walk, by trial and error (I had no manual, remember?)--took me two days of trying, before I could enter a doorway, and then...omigods! "Being perfectly rested, you shove through..." "SHOVE?!" I would never shove! Shoving is so rude! I spent weeks abjectly apologizing to anyone I "shoved", terrified that I was gonna get attacked and killed for being so RUDE!

 

[Dead Face Down]

It was 98 maybe... when the log in screen still had the chest that opened up... I wne to visit my cousin and he was playing... he didnt tell me anything about the game, except beware of people with red names.
I cant even remember what my first character was, but I decided to make some gold I would take an npc escort from vesper to yew.... about halfway there I see an amazing sight, a chest sitting in the road waiting to be looted, my mind filled with thoughts of gems and gold. then from the forest comes a RED chasing me down, I couldnt escape him, because i was caught behind the chest, he killed me *sigh* then as he wandered around aimlessly I cursed him to high heaven, "WHY DID YOU KILL ME? IM NEW!!! THATS SO RUDE" you see at the time I didnt know what a brigand was.... and I didnt know I had just been killed by one....

soon after I purchased my own account, my main char was swordsman.... took me nearly 8 months to gm tactics... and that was his only gm. I managed to place a small house on Ocllo, I still love that island. and in the house I placed a guild stone for me and 2 rl friends... since we were "good" guys I decided to make our guild Order.... hehehe, i didnt really know what that meant, except I could carry an order shield.... I was at WBB when the 7 day timer to become order kicked in, and was soon taken out by 2 chaos guys, hehehe, moments later the guild was changed back to standard...

I remember being so jealous that my friend got to THE FAIR before me, and I remember trying out an explosion pot on a rat in moonglow, and it hit a sailor on the docks... guard whacked.... lost my brand new verite armor, and had to spend all day making wooden shields to pay 5k to the OCH lady who looted it off me so I could have it back

I remember killing npc artists in town to get their sandals, then selling them for 5-10k based on the color.... and I remember Killing a macroing bard in town with repeated poisons, and PKing my first lumberjack, after he ahd lost conn....

this was all about the first month and a half of my UO experience....

I quit about a year into that account, I got to see trammel once before I left.

then I came back last fal and did it all differently, but its still just as fun