My new favorite boat pilot/tillerman story.

[GalenKnighthawke]

Had to share, for no particular reason:

"Did I ever tell thee about the time I was in Moonglow and I met a fellow who said he'd found a piece of Exodus, but accidentally dropped it in a well? Anyway, 'tis a dull story."

-Galen's player

 

[Mirt]

I am partial to the wench that rusted solid and starved, myself. But for some reason every time I see a captured pirate say "Look a flying golem" I laugh hysterically. I wish I knew why.

 

[Cogniac]

I'm pretty sure the stories are somewhat related to the region you're sailing in. I say this because I always sail around Serpent's Hold (because I happen to live there) and my tillerman has only ever given me a story about how he once married a wench in Serpent's Hold only to discover after the fact that she was dead.

 

[TullyMars]

The wench and the ferret story.
If you haven't seen it yet, watch for it...and I hope you aren't drinking liquid when it comes up.

 

[LordDrago]

laughing just thinking about tillerman stories.

Devs were smokin' something when they came up with these. lol



****SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health. ****



****All Devs appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.****

 

[Ludes]

I'm with you guys.. I fish quite a bit and find the tillermans stories a source of great amusement.

 

[Merion]

back in the day you could talk to most NPCs, ask them what time it is and such. I really liked that. Wonder why they turned that off...

 

[Cogniac]

back in the day you could talk to most NPCs, ask them what time it is and such. I really liked that. Wonder why they turned that off...

One word: Localization.

 

[Mirt]

Its really really too bad becuase so many of those stories had me in stiches.

 

[Woodsman]

One word: Localization.

There was translation software built into UO from either T2A or Ren for the supported languages, so it can't be that much of a problem.

I remember a bug where NPCs/tillerman would apparently talk when nobody was around. For some reason I though that was pretty cool, it kind of gave me the image of a crazy tillerman who baked in the sun too long and talks to himself, as well as the idea of stuff happening in the world when people weren't around.

 

[Viquire]

If I remember correctly, the design, and a good part of the intelligent world problems arose from "things" in game interacting with each other while no one was around, lol.

 

[Woodsman]

If I remember correctly, the design, and a good part of the intelligent world problems arose from "things" in game interacting with each other while no one was around, lol.

Weather and the ecology seemed to be two major things that gave them fits when they first started out and it's easy to see how those things could really bog down a server from the late 90s if they were random and comprehensive.

Plus with the ecology, so many players killing all of the animals in sight made it useless to have plants growing that were eaten by the herbivores. The idea of herds of cattle or sheep moving their way across Britannia and munching down on plants was pretty cool.

 

[Banner]

I just wish there was some way to get them to finish telling there story?? I would like to hear some of them...

 

[DenAlton036]

My fav is still "the greatest healer" in all of Sosaria.... he got sick and died.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

One word: Localization.

Yup. Localization was... well, it was a VERY bumpy time in the game. Post UO:R but before AOS, (Edit: My screenshots put it around the time that Third Dawn was released) so everything was still using the old magic system.

So an "Indestructible, Supremely Accurate Katana of Vanquishing" all of a sudden one morning turned into "A katana [15,15,20,10} or something of the like. All of the old SOS messages went away as well as the NPC chatter and (for a long time) the tillerman stories. A little later, they refined the system so that magic items read "A katana [Indestructible/Supremely Accurate/Vanquishing]"

If I remember correctly, this was happening around the same time that the Volunteer system (Counselors ans Seers) got canned, so it was a ROUGH time for the game.