How was UO in its early days?

[Lugh Simaldinach]

There was this thing called 'learn by watching'. You could be riding up the pass toward the crossroads, pass a miner as he was digging and gain a few tenths of mining. This was almost a good thing except that there were no skill locks and the skill that had the most points to lose was always knocked down first. So, you bust your heinie to GM a skill, run past someone doing something that you had no skill at all in and poof, there goes your GM'ed skill and you go work on it for another 4 or 5 days.

For a while, to stop runaway gains, each shard had a skill pool of so many points. Once enough chars made enough gains to empty the pool, no more gains for anyone for the rest of the day. Naturally, this lead to a lot of people launching looping macros at server up and going back to bed or off to work or school, which, in turn, lead to the unattended macro ban.

Pets were a lot smarter untill "localization" came along, and you had to earn their loyalty. If you had a well fed pet and said some nice keywords like "good dog" or "Nice cat", they would do something cute and gain a few points of loyalty. If you said too many bad things, like maybe call your pack horse lazy or stupid, the pet would run off, even if they were still tame. At that time, NPC's were a lot smarter and would RP a bit. There was even a time when they would hire you for a small quest. I even made a couple hundred gold once in Buc's Den when the boat builder told me, "Henry the smith has offended me. I will pay you well if you should bring me his head."
There was an in-game bounty on reds and, if you managed to defeat one and take his head to any guard, you could collect some amount depending on his notoriety. There was also a provision for players to put bounties on other players.
Wandering healers would go into players houses and take scrolls and reagents from their chests. NPC thiefs could (and did) snatch stuff from your open bankbox. Fortunately, they never taught players this skill, they could only steal from your pack.
There was an interesting exploit back when houses could be locked but containers couldn't be secured. A player would tame a mongbat, then use herding to get it to fly through a window into a house. Then he'd call his pet. When called, mongbats always walked, so the critter would walk out the door, and the player would run in while it was open and empty out the house.
I knew a guy who was almost banned once for using this to get several tamed dragons into someones house. He then went home and logged off. By the time the owner of the house logged on, the dragons had gone wild and ate him.
Speaking of dragons, there was a player that had taken up sitting on a log near the crossroads in a deathrobe looking as if he had just been ressed and was waiting for his health to recover. What was not so obvious was that he was wearing plate armour (it did something back then) under the robe and was guarded by 2 dragons that he had invis'ed. A gank squad would come along, assume he was easy pickings and get BBQ'ed by the dragons.

By the way, in case nobody has answered this yet, dread lord is the reputation title you get at max fame and max negative carma. In those days, they got this title by PK'ing everyone in sight. Back then, you gained a percentage of your opponents fame and lost a lot of carma for PK'ing, so they would kill everyone they could while specifically hunting those of great fame to keep up their reputation. Naturally, you had to be quite skillful to achieve that title.

 

[Guest]

I started in april of 98. Within 5 mins of starting the game I was pk'd. They rezzed me and killed me 3 more times before I shut the game off. I had no idea about logout wait times. I figured if I left they couldnt kill me. I was dead each time with one hit of course and had nothing. That did not matter to the PK's back then. Probably still doesn't.

I eventually logged back in a week later, figured I had a free month and wasn't going to waste the 59.95 I paid for the game. I made my way to Brit bank. Stood there and listened to people talk. Trying to get a handle on the game. There was no instruction manual back then. Just a quick reference card.

I finally talked to a guy who was fishing. I figured in RL fishermen don't mind conversation. He took me to Brit Castle training grounds and showed me how to use the dummies to train. He also showed me how to fish. Except in those days the fish fell to your feet. There was always jerkwads who took your fish just to be arseholes. I made GM fisherman soon after. I saved up 50k from selling fish. Back then you could only sell 10 fish per 20 mins to the npc. I found players would buy cooked fish so that helped alot.

I had heard about houses so I bought a house deed. Within 1 minute it was stolen. The thief was hidden in the carpentry shop.

I always picked up the garbage at the bank and sold it, While doing that I alwyas heard people asking if anyone was a GM Bowyer. There were tons of smiths but no bowyers. So I started making one. I saved up another 400k selling my bows to the npc's. Bought more house deeds and promptly lost them. Finally I bought a house from someone already placed. A one roomer, paid 60k. It was out of town. I recalled there got pk'd lost key, lost house.

I spent the next few months just making bows, giving alot of them away. Selling to npc's. Then the archery patch went in and archery was king. If you think artifacts are hot, archery made them look like ice cream. I was selling 10,000 bows a day. I had to hire 5 people to make deliveries for me and hire 10 more just to chop wood.

I met some great people and made some great friendshps. When people needed help a quick call would bring 50 to the aid. Gaining skill meant something back then. Getting to GM took months not days. There was a pride of accomplishment. The community also showed respect for people that stuck it out and made gm in anything.

Skills are too easy nowdays. It takes a great deal away from the game I feel. If I can be a gm swords in a couple of days where is the excitement of that. But have it take 6 months and when that day hits you are all smiles. I remember when a friend of mine hit gm smith. It took him almost a year. We had a huge party at the forge in brit. It made everyone happy that he made it.

UO needs some of those feelings brought back to it.

 

[Guest]

Let's see….
After about three months when people settled into the game you could not walk through certain areas of the map without getting ganked by hordes of red's…Brit pass, edge of the major towns like Trinsic and Brit were common gank spots, along with the entrance to any dungeon.
The concept of "Player justice" was thrown around, Justice meant .."I need an excuse to kill you, but do not want to get a count".
This brought about exploiting the murder system. A person would say…flag gray for stealing, then wait for another player to attack him, then he would suddenly have 2-3 "Blue" healers and kill his attacker…that was called "justice" and let people get around the murder count system.
Then people figured out how to macro off murder counts, so they could kill people without going red, this brought about the "Long term and ping pong" counts.

Bounties…BWAHAHAHAHAHAH…oh god, make her stop…BWAHAHAHAHAH

Ok, this is how bounties worked….You kill a few people, vets never gave bounties, but a newbie would, and sometimes a lot..once you had a BIG bounty on your head, you had your friend kill you and collect the bounty, then split the reward.
Bounties were just stupid players giving the red an extra reward for killing them. Bounties only encouraged murders by giving an incentive of the reward and the status of high bounty to the murderers.

Lets see….some other nice things to make the game fun….

Trap the bank door, when a player opens it, the guards killed them, then you loot them…..yea FUN!

Wait with 6 friends till someone recalls into the brit bank, when they first recall in you instantly hit them with 6 Corp Por's, they die and you loot, guards would not come because the player was (And still is not) in the guard zone till they move.

Oh yea…Go to a place newbies fight MOB's, like the east side of Brit, poly into a lizard man or orc, then when the newb attacks you, you kill them and avoid taking the count.

Hmm…lets see….Oh yea…Buy a bunch of Dragons off a tamer, you only needed 0, that’s right ZERO tame skill to own and control them, go to cross roads and kill players for fun.

Oh yea, tame bunnies and stuff, put them in the stable, no limit on stable slots, BUT the numbers of MOB's in the game was limited, so after enough people did this all surface MOB spawn stopped due to all the MOB's being in the stables.


This lead to another fun thing, killing stable masters, two things this did, stable masters were SPECIFIC to the pet who was stabled, you kill "Reebdoog the stable master" and you killed EVERY pet that was stabled with that stable master, Dragons, horses, etc. Nice way to grief the tamers.

Other fun stuff…..

Put a very expensive item in your backpack, wait for the backup to occur, put the item in your house on the floor, go to the nearest mongate, keep stepping through till the item appears in your pack again…AND is still on the floor of your house…..DUPING WAS RAMPENT.

I could think of another 100 things about early UO that made it suck eggs, but there were so many….trust me, the game is 100% better today then it ever was, UO used to be a griefers heaven.

 

[imported_landicine]

The early days...magical. Everything was new. First trips to a dungeon. First time out of town. First time dying to an orc. Finding odd items. Being really confused that all the dungeons' floors were covered with ale and wine bottles (most monsters spawned them for some reason, so I was an unofficial bootlegger for a bit).

The early days...dangerous. Thieves were everywhere. You lost connection at Brit bank, and a few gray robes would pick you to the bone. PKs were very common (you went to a dungeon, there was a 50% chance of being pked no matter where you went). The best PKs were the dread lords. I had tracking in those days, and if I said "I'm tracking a dread lord," everyone around me would scatter. It was painful, losing great loot sometimes, but there was a thrill of never being exactly safe.

The early days...close. The early communities. The early player towns. The early taverns. Heck even the early pks seemed pretty friendly by today's uo standards. I remember a pk ressing me, giving me back some of the junk from my corpse, and then talking about why he killed folks. He wasn't a mediocre pk either. When the bounty boards were first introduced, he jumped to a decent spot pretty quickly.

The early days...poor. 20k was a decent amount of money. Weapons were junk, but losing one meant you had to use a practice sword and kill low level monsters for a bit. When I would get pked, I'd go back to the dungeon with nothing but an orc helm, a death robe, a practice sword, and a sewing kit. I'd sew up armor as I went along, and if I found a better sword, it was my lucky day. You could actually place a small house, but even then, it was worth having for the storage (which was basically the entire floor).

The early days...memorable. Fall of Trinsic. The Rebellion on LS. The old system where attacking a person made you red for a bit. The new noto system that left everyone at honorable for a bit. Seers, counselors, etc. Some idealistic dev team members, some practical ones. Lots of memories, good and bad from those days and the next few years.

 

[OriginalRanter]

Man, thanks for the memories. I began hating all that UO had become just about the time they intro'd Trammel. I no longer even play and I'd have to say that the main reason is the lack of excitement, the dulled edge of what once was a razor. vwcorrado, you are 100% right.
It's really sad that for years now Newbies have never had a chance to experiance that.
I remember fleeing from PK's and monsters the 1st time I was in a dungeon, and running headlong into a group of Great Lords. Great Lord meant something in those days, and it was one hell of a show.

 

[Syncros]

I started in may 98' after reading alot of the posts on how everyone started around then makes me miss alot of the way the game used to be with the
"danger" of pks. Reason the game isnt as great as it used to be then is mainly because everyone figured out how to gain skills best and work by themselves.

As someone said when they took this multiplayer game and made it into a single player game it went downhill.

 

[Stardestroyer]

I started with the release of T2A, made myself a mage and went out to hunt... died from a cat, didnt know how to heal so I deleted the char

And the music when you started up, it was spellbinding I tell ya!

 

[shadow_Slayer]

Without Tram, UO would be no game.

 

[shadow_Slayer]

People loosing everything because they got pked with their key on them.

Countless bugs/exploits allowing people to gain access to your house and loot it dry.

PKs sweeping mines for easy kills.

PKs sweeping Covetous, a newbie dungeon for a cheap Thrill.

PKS having comming into town.

Instant death outside most towns.

1/100th the spawn.

 

[Durt]

it was the best game on earth , challenging , breath taking and adrenaline pumpin .

I broke 3 mouse and 2 keyboards due to frustration of friends leaving me so other collected bounty on my head wich gave me a stat loss .

Dreads were mortal enemies with great lords , they were the trammy of today , enjoying fighting monsters and collecting billions of gold .

But still the great lords had challenges wich they loved.

I remember going to vesper bank where there was like 150 people on my screen watching people ask for a group to go take out the dreads that were cleaning deceit , and i was actually with my dreads in town but had Incognito casted on me so i was Blue not red. that was a crazy business tough. but hey i was a crazy dread LOL

and when u were a dread lord u had to find friends to hunt with otherwise u were dead meat. and boy even the dreads fought each others when they couldnt find meat while raiding a dungeon after dying their robe same color so they wouldnt target each other.

AND BOY back then there was a HEAVIER BETTER COMMUNITY SPIRIT.
u were either dread or anti , thats it all ur characters were based on a side.
but they screwed it all up because people kept complaining , and they tried to turn the game into what it is today , a trammel candy game , but they made a hic up , all the players that bragged about the game back then moved to everquest , and they kept pissing us off with each and every release.

i personally wouldnt mind paying 30 box a month for a version 1.25.2 server , because thats how much i pay to find myself bored in the modern uo * wich is boring *
oh and one thing ,if u had a GM'ed skill back then you were a god !!!

so everyone played even at 50 skill , they didint wait to have 7xgm to finally play.

end of story

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

So...anyone saying that is was just a lawless Land O' Instant Death is....wrong.

<hr></blockquote>

Not where I played. I started in Vesper. I don't remember what shard. (I started in Oct 97) EVERY time I left the guard zone I would be PKed within one screen of the guard zone (usually AT the guard line). It didn't matter if it was on the road or trying to sneak out through the woods. The gank squads were running rampant.

I really thought the "bad old days" sucked! I played one or two months and quit because it was no fun being PKed all the time. I came back with the release of LBR and I LOVE it.

You want pre UOR, you can have it, but leave me and most of the player base here, and happy! (my 5 accounts vote for AOS, best incarnation of UO yet)

 

[Thrakkar]

Interesting. So you want to tell me, that between Sept. 97 and Feb. 99 all UO players paid their monthly fee for playing no game???

Edit:
Sorry. Just saw you changed the subject line. It would have been a complete different player base, and maybe there would be less shards and less players, but I would have liked it more without tram. At least it would have been a complete alternative compared to the rest of the MMORPGs out there...

 

[Just Because]

I remember making a healer/archer character to start in Trinsic... wanted to go to Britian... so I took the pathway. There were monsters and Murderers prowling that road, and it was a full adventure just walking from Trinsic to Britain. I ran the entire way, freaking out that I had three ratmen and a murderer at my heels.

Now, I can walk from Trinsic to Vesper... with no problem. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/frown.gif

 

[Guest]

Bah, it was not that bad, I survived fine,

Sure it was always a risk, that I could lose everything in my house, but I knew that.
I did get my house bug looted 2 times, but it did not take me long time to fill it with alot of stuff again.

I also lost my key to 2 thieves, but did not lose anything from the house. Me, my son and a friend of him tryed to kill them to get the key back, but the key was never on the one we killed and after a while, I gave up, and told them, I did not mind sharing the house, but not my stuff. They accepted and moved in.

They lived in my house for a month and my floor was items they had stolen or looted from players.

They told all the other thieves to leave me alone and I was sad to see them move when they got their own house.

I did start as a miner, but PK's was not that big problem. I rarely got killed more as one time of each of them. I got alot of red friends /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

Sure, like Siege is not for everyone, so was old UO not for everyone, but Trammel and Felucca on same shards was a big mistake, they should had made some happy shards and had let the old shards stay evil.

 

[Alhana_Elvae]

Well lets see, I too started back in 1999. Before purchasing our first computer, my husband would tell me about this game, Ultima Online, where you could play and meet real life people and talk and make friends, and so I waited and waited and finally convinced my dear husband to get us a computer! We ordered from Gateway, so while waiting for it to arrive, we went out and bought UO. Heheh I was so excited!

The time before Trammel/Felucca split, was prolly the most fun Ive ever had playing UO. There was random "raids" by Lizardmen, Ratmen.. The town of Brit would band together, and we would fight and heal each other. In Vesper Ettins I believe were raiding, sometimes I would go there to help fight. I made a great friend who was in my guild, he let me move into his little small plaster house outside of moonglow. It was wonderful. Things werent so easy, and things didnt come so easily. By the land split, I had about 60k gold, and that was from normal fighting ect. People seemed alot more friendly, more willing to talk with you. I sit at Brit bank, and not a single person will even attempt to chat with me. Nor do I see others chatting amongst themselves. I can remember sitting on top of Brit Bank with guildmates and chatting away for hours. Its got to be the thing that disapoints me the most, the lack of friendly-ness. We all needed each other. Someone would always wonder into town and complain about reds being at such and such, and folks would band together and hunt them down. I think the trammel split was the worst thing that could have happened.

 

[Lyra Morningstar]

Thank you all for sharing your memories from the days long ago. It is very exciting to read and very interesting to hear how it was in the early days and before the split. Trammel was a few months old when I started and its really exciting to hear how it was in past times.

 

[CitizenKane2]

vwcorrado, I enjoyed readling your posts. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif/php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

 

[mrbwiz422]

It was great. Amazing actually.

Not everyone had millions like they do now, so people actually worked together with their guild to raise funds and such. Or 7x Gm characters.. 7x GM chars were VERY rare and respected. People weren't mass abusing easy skill gain like the 8x8 system and macro boat free reg casting like they are now.

Imagine no 8x8 and no real easy gains.
What people did was group together. Just random people. At the entrance to the Terathan dungeon in T2A, you would find 20+ people fighting avengers.
They would either blast them from a cliff, or use 1 high skilled warrior as a tank and the rest would also attack melee to gain skill while healing the skilled warrior.

Community was very strong. People stuck together because there was an advantage in sticking together.. Kills were easier, skill gain was easier, ect. Player cities were actually populated 24-7 instead of one day a month wow.

Things were hard, but dangerous and fun.

Oh and at one point horses were a RARITY. Only the elite could afford horses, because the spawns were blocked. Imagine 20v20 battles where no one could just speed off and run away.. Very few were horsed, maybe 4 out of 20. Made for some great fights.

Now UO has turned into a no-community solo fest and it blows. I can't remember the last time I saw a 20vs20 battle.. Last one I remember was over dungeon control, and was done on the Shame bridge. Most fun I've ever had, even though it was laggy. Bodies everywhere. No one was mad at dying, everyone was just happy to be in such a great fight.

Sadly, that will never happen again... As now we have private houses that are impossible to deal with when a battle is going on there. And no one groups up anymore really, only in small packs. No more 10v10 or 20v20 or anything exciting and fun like that.

There is nothing in that will come in this game, or any other, that will beat all the anti pk vs pk fights I've had in the old UO days. Pks attacked, blues grouped together to battle it out.. It was a daily occurance. These weren't small fights either, tons of people would join in.

Oh and to gain skill, all the newbies in town would beg mages to summon earth elementals. And the mages would heal the earth eles when they got low health. They were the fastest safest skill gain at the time. There would be like 8 newbies on an earth elemental attacking away with a dagger.. And if one person used a real weapon on it everyone would tell him to use a lower damage one.

I could go on and on.. the bottom like is that there was a real community, there were people everywhere you went, there were massive battles especially anti-pk vs pk, it wasn't a single player game like it is today

The good memories just keep coming...
Way way back, my friend had just gotten the game and he was showing me some things. He was practicing his stealing skill.
Well we stole a chair from a town. A day later, it didn't come back (nothing respawned)
So we formulated a plan to steal ALL of the chairs from a specific city just for kicks. Soon after they made it so you couldn't steal chairs and junk from town, dammit.

 

[Guest]

There were no instructions included in the box with the software when I started. There was a cloth map of the lands that had runic names for all the cities. No readable names.... I also got a funky UO pin. There was no help at all except from other players. You were almost entirely reliant on other players, which made you very easy prey. Trial and error was the other option. I chose trial and error as I didn't have very much time to play the game. I canceled my account after 30 days. If you couldn't play *a lot*, it was a very frustrating experience. Who has time to figure out all the game play mechanics themselves? I didn't. In short, it blew unless you had mega time on your hands or established friends. You didn't stand a chance otherwise.

There was no place for the "casual" (couple hours a day max) player. Hardcore 24/7 players ruled, but they are smaller in numbers compared to casual gamers which OSI gradually realized. Some bright person at OSI realized that if they wanted to really grow the game, they had to make it more "accessible" to the casual gamer. Enter Trammel and instruction books in the box. The hardcores no longer ruled the roost and some of those that are still around still aren't happy about it.

 

[OriginalRanter]

No, Tram made UO into romper room. Tram took the finely honed blade of a fantastic game, no, not game, expreiance and turned it into something that Fischer Price would put out. If you were around in the begining, and you think Tram helped the game, then you never figured out how to play it.

 

[Syrik]

As my previous posts indicated, I was around at the very beginning of the game, but I had no complaints whatsoever about the introduction of Trammel. Like many, many players (both those still active at the time and those who quit out of frustration), I was tired of being forced into non-consensual PvP and having my daily online experience be tainted by constant anti-social behavior. No, Trammel didn't fix all the problems (and certainly created some new ones), but it did allow me to go out with guildmates unhindered, finally build a house, and do my duties at the bank and elsewhere without having to avoid the myriad, obnoxious thieves and rapacious PKs. With a division of the world into the two areas, people could finally deal with being PKed and the like on their own time, not someone else's.

Did Tram help the game? In OSI's eyes, that's an undeniable yes. Whether the hardcore veterans accept it or not, it *is* what saved the game. People were leaving the game like refugees from a wartorn country, and it was only the introduction of a consensual-PvP facet that turned this around. If they had left it the way it was, I doubt the game would be around today (most certainly not to any significant degree). The numbers show this to be the case, and when it comes down to it, a company is most interested in the bottom line.

Did Tram help the game in terms of the overall community? That's more ambiguous and disputable. I'd say yes and no, and probably would lean most on the former at this point. But if people believe that UO would have remained this 'hardcore gaming experience' had it not been introduced, I think they're being a little unrealistic. By the time UO:R came in, the game had already been 'cracked.' GMs (in most skills) were a dime-a-dozen and it was no hard task to find information on how best to fly through skill development. Most everything had been explored, and the novelty was gone. In the end though, what a large percentage of the population wanted was someplace where they could enjoy the game in peace. It's the subsequent changes that have contributed to the community's decline. The world's enormous now, it's very simple to build up characters, and you could be entirely self-sufficient on your own set of characters. The changes came so that UO could continue to compete, and that's just reality. Saying that people who consider the current game superior are out of it is just pointless. UO can and never will be the game it was at the beginning, and nothing OSI can do now - perhaps apart from create an entirely new game - can change that.

 

[Chap]

(dont bother about the typos, Im from Norway= english is 2nd language)
(bought UO in 1998, when it first arrived to this country, played with 3 rl friends that quit when UO:R came(heh, wonder why )

Alot of interesting posts, I espesially enjoyed mrbwiz422 post.

Think it describes pretty much the "PvP" back then... also known as Red vs blue or reds vs anti-pks. This was the most fun I had in the game, after dying alot of times I learned to recall, so everytime I saw a pk I hit the recall buttom.
I might have been a coward, but atleast I survived /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif Eventually I had the balls to attack back. Me and a friend started to hunt with antipks in dungeons, as I remember it Deceit seemed to be the most popular one. There were also many Anti-pk guilds at that time, who hunt down pks and tried to defend those who couldnt defend themselves.
Antis vs pk fights were seen everyday, many often took place on the roads outside brit(where my chars grew up). Outside Brit, North East theres a road which goes North, then East and North again, at the East curve there were always pks. The area North East of brit were the main hunting area for monsters(at least mine), Very often pks showed up to make meat out of you if they didnt get enough action at the road.

One of the best things back then were all the people that hunted gold for their Guilds. Guilds used to put all the gold together from all the members and buy guildhouses. That way they could afford even bigger houses. (such as Brick house, 2-story etc) I espesially remember a pk guild that put all their money together to buy a Castle, yes back then it was even room for castles, and 1 million gold was alot. Back then it was a different community, were friends was the most important thing if you wanted to succeed/advance in the game.

I dont know how many here played Atlantic, but I remember the 2 pks "Frankenstein II" and "Draconius". They were both on the bounty-board, draconius on top with a bounty of a few hundred k. The dread Lords of the bounty boards were feared and not many wanted to fight them unless they had many people on their side. Also remember "lehas Rune Libary" on Atlantic (think it was spelled right), it was located North of Trinsic and were often camped by pks. Graveyards and dungeons were also camped by pks. I remember one of the last times I got pked on Atlantic, I had just been at "Orc-Valley" and bought a "silver of might" x-bow at a vendor there, recalled to Cove graveyard and saw 5-6pks came rushing towards me. 3 on foot and 2 on horse, I tried to recall, but wham! Paralyze hit me... Then 2 of them killed me with their weapons. I was so amazed, 3 of them didnt even attack me. I was not angry for loosing a very good weapon, I was just amazed over how effective the pks were. My character had around 80 str=hit points, not much, but I was still amazed over their tactics, I didnt even manage to recall before I was in a certain death modus.

That was the good times of UO, not surprisingly it all ended when Trammel came. First the new rep system, then Statloss and UO:R with Trammel as the 'final blow'
After that uo has only gone one way... but Im still playing! 64 months now, still living in Felluca, still trying to PvP to enjoy this game.
UO will never be what it once was. But they can make it good again! One world, hard skill gain(+you can train on eachother/elementals), and a total whipe of items/characters and you`ve come a long way. yes, sorry, the total whipe of chars/items is needed... since all got maxed out chars now, and all got their own 'mule' char /php-bin/shared/images/icons/frown.gif

Anyway, Id like to see more pictures from the 'good old days', pics and historys are fun to read as it brings back all these good memmories /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

And One more thing... please respect the pvpers asking for faction/pvp to be fixed/balanced, its all thats left of his once-good game. (Factions came with UO:R and over 3 yrs later it still got its bugs)
Thanks

 

[OriginalRanter]

While I can see how UO:R might have been a welcome reprieve, I disagree that the PK's were engaging in anti-social behavior. Sure, they were mean, they were rude, they were jerks, but what they were doing was social, they were interacting with others.
Trammel is an anti-social behavoir. It allows, even encourages players to believe that the game is all about them. Go play Diablo or some other single player game if you want that. PK's, like several others have pointed out, forced people to go out in groups, to interact with other players in order to survive. Giving people to oppurtunity to simply avoid any and all challenge though? Come on, thats like drinking non alcoholic beer.

 

[OriginalRanter]

Chap, recalling out isn't being a coward, it's surviving. Good for you.

 

[Syrik]

'Anti-social' doesn't just mean avoiding or withdrawing from society; it also can mean hostile and averse to organized society - i.e. acting against acceptable social norms. Stealing and murder in modern society are clearly anti-social behavior in this context. Whether or not you consider them to be so by Britannia's norms may not be worth arguing over, of course. My point was just that they weren't acting within most people's concepts of acceptable and positive behavior.

Trammel today is anti-social in other ways . . . no arguments there. It permits and even encourages people to be reclusive and egoistic. I've never played by that standard; the game was always about the friends for as long as I've played it. I don't like hunting solo. If I hadn't found a group of tight-knit, close friends to play with in-game, I probably would have quit years ago. Now with my old guild mostly in tatters, it's a little trickier, but some people are still around. The hardest part is considering what to do should more friends leave; it isn't so easy to find like-minded people in the UO community of today. UO for me was never about the challenge. For me it was about the exploration and the community . . . the adventures and creativity. Some of that's still around (and to some degree, it *is* a good thing that they've expanded the lands more), but it ain't like it used to be. Few things ever are though.

 

[OriginalRanter]

The only arguement that I would really have about PKs and thieves being anti-social is that most people don't complain about them unless they themselves cannot become good at it. While I can't prove the numbers, and doubt I can be disproved, I'd bet that most people take a shot at either killing another player or making a thief at one point or another. Even if it's only in college girl 'curiosity', I'll bet they do. It's when they find that they suck at it that they consider it 'bad'.
My favorite UO character of all time was a thief. I stole everything and anything. I had fun and I'd occasionally give things back if the person was 'cool' about it. By cool, I mean give a good chase, or not be a jerkass trashtalker when they killed me or got me killed. I had friends that were thieves (lots of them), and would work together. We had a great time. Sure some people were pissed about it, but a lot enjoyed the experiance.

 

[Syrik]

That's a bit of reacher there. A lot of people didn't pursue being a thief or PK because they simply weren't interested in it. Not all PKs were jerks, but there were more than enough out there that just got their kicks from ruining other peoples' games. They gave the rest a bad rep. The same goes for thieves. Most of my friends in-game never bothered PKing or playing as a thief because they didn't want to - not because they "couldn't become good at it." Of my guildmates, only one member developed a thief, but never to any great extent, and with the focus of using her only against PKs and other thieves. I messed around with a thief concept early on, but didn't want to contribute to the problems they already were causing *and* was more caught up in developing other kinds of characters. I've never PKed, and never had the interest (although I have PvPed some).

I don't have a problem with thieves and murderers across the board. I did have a problem with them being unrestrained, as they were at one point. They should exist in the game and certainly have their place, and as it stands right now thieves are seriously neglected in UO. But I don't miss the hassle of having to watch my back each and every time I went to the bank or anywhere worth hunting in. Sometimes it's entertaining and fun, but I'm quite content to control whether I want to deal with it or not.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>


It was great. Amazing actually.


<hr></blockquote>
It was amazing because it was the first, once a competitor came out, it was exposed as the griefer anti-social game it really was.

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Not everyone had millions like they do now, so people actually worked together with their guild to raise funds and such. Or 7x Gm characters.. 7x GM chars were VERY rare and respected. People weren't mass abusing easy skill gain like the 8x8 system and macro boat free reg casting like they are now.


<hr></blockquote>
Really…wow, you never understood the game enough to figure out that people were making MILLIONS duping The UO economy was ruined pre-UO:R by dupers. The people who strugeled to make a few thousand and though it was hard had no idea how bad the reality of the game was. There were a LOT of people pre-UO:R who had over 100 MILLION, some by duping, some by playing the game well.
<blockquote><hr>


Imagine no 8x8 and no real easy gains.


<hr></blockquote>
Your memory of the game is so convenient. Reality check: Get a skinning knife and GM tactics in 4 hours, stand in your house running a macro for casting a spell and GM magery in 8 hours, same macro on hide and EV and run it, same result, yea, no 8x8, it was worse, people were GM'ing much faster and easier then.
<blockquote><hr>


What people did was group together. Just random people. At the entrance to the Terathan dungeon in T2A, you would find 20+ people fighting avengers.
They would either blast them from a cliff, or use 1 high skilled warrior as a tank and the rest would also attack melee to gain skill while healing the skilled warrior.


<hr></blockquote>
Well if you like that play style that's great, and NOTHING is stopping you from doing that now, if you do you can join a large guild doing large guild hunts, personally I don't need game mechanics to force people to be my friend.

<blockquote><hr>


Community was very strong. People stuck together because there was an advantage in sticking together.. Kills were easier, skill gain was easier, ect. Player cities were actually populated 24-7 instead of one day a month wow.


<hr></blockquote>

<blockquote><hr>


Things were hard, but dangerous and fun.


<hr></blockquote>

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Oh and at one point horses were a RARITY. Only the elite could afford horses, because the spawns were blocked. Imagine 20v20 battles where no one could just speed off and run away.. Very few were horsed, maybe 4 out of 20. Made for some great fights.


<hr></blockquote>
Thanks for remembering that wonderful bug, yes the world of pre-UO:R bugs, including being able to stable unlimited pets and block the spawn by buying up all the horses with your duped gold and stabling them, thus blocking the spawn.
<blockquote><hr>


Now UO has turned into a no-community solo fest and it blows. I can't remember the last time I saw a 20vs20 battle.. Last one I remember was over dungeon control, and was done on the Shame bridge. Most fun I've ever had, even though it was laggy. Bodies everywhere. No one was mad at dying, everyone was just happy to be in such a great fight.


<hr></blockquote>
So you want large scale battles? What is stopping you, you can still have a guild war in Trammel, or go to Fel and do non-consent. Oh, you mean you want OSI to FORCE other people to play the way you want to, you cant earn friends to play with on your own, and no one wants to do the things you like, so you want OSI to change the game to suite your needs…news flash, everyone would quite and find another game, we have a choice now of a LOT of other games that do not try to force our play style.

<blockquote><hr>


Sadly, that will never happen again... As now we have private houses that are impossible to deal with when a battle is going on there. And no one groups up anymore really, only in small packs. No more 10v10 or 20v20 or anything exciting and fun like that.


<hr></blockquote>
Thank god for that!

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There is nothing in that will come in this game, or any other, that will beat all the anti pk vs pk fights I've had in the old UO days. Pks attacked, blues grouped together to battle it out.. It was a daily occurance. These weren't small fights either, tons of people would join in.


<hr></blockquote>
Like I said before, nothing stopping you now, except all your victims went to trammel so you have no one to force to your play style.
<blockquote><hr>


Oh and to gain skill, all the newbies in town would beg mages to summon earth elementals. And the mages would heal the earth eles when they got low health. They were the fastest safest skill gain at the time. There would be like 8 newbies on an earth elemental attacking away with a dagger.. And if one person used a real weapon on it everyone would tell him to use a lower damage one.


<hr></blockquote>
Your contradicting yourself, remember when you said skills were HARD to gain, and the game was HARD, now your saying people were to chicken to leave town for fear of PK's so they gained skills in town on summoned earth ele? That is SO LAME, I am so happy I never did that!
<blockquote><hr>


I could go on and on.. the bottom like is that there was a real community, there were people everywhere you went, there were massive battles especially anti-pk vs pk, it wasn't a single player game like it is today


<hr></blockquote>
It is never a single player game for me, my guild has fun together all the time.
<blockquote><hr>


The good memories just keep coming...
Way way back, my friend had just gotten the game and he was showing me some things. He was practicing his stealing skill.
Well we stole a chair from a town. A day later, it didn't come back (nothing respawned)
So we formulated a plan to steal ALL of the chairs from a specific city just for kicks. Soon after they made it so you couldn't steal chairs and junk from town, dammit.


<hr></blockquote>

Lets talk about what is "Social" and "Anti-Social".

Social is any interaction between people or groups.
Anti-social is any activity that is un-wanted or un-desired by one or more recipient of the interaction.
So if I say that Pre-UO:R was an ANTI-SOCIAL game, it was, most every interaction was involving a person who had no desire to be involved in the interaction.
Trammel is VERY social in that almost all interactions between the massive number of people who exist in Trammel is a positive desired interaction between two people.
If I say Fel is ANTI-SOCIAL, its because you still have interaction that is undesired by one party, AND FEL IS A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. I can play in Fel for hours and never see another person, or if I do they recall out or run when they see me.

Trammel is a social game, Fel is an anti-social game by these definitions.

There is nothing more pathetic then some looser trying to rewrite UO before Trammel into some paradise.

 

[Guest]

"Most of my friends in-game never bothered PKing or playing as a thief because they didn't want to - not because they 'couldn't become good at it.' "

That is how some people justify in-game criminal actions (thieving, murder). They lead themselves to believe that the only reason other people don't pursue in-game criminal activities is either that they are bad at it, or that they are weak in some way. It helps them rationalize their in-game choices. They can't understand that some folks don't enjoy the idea of criminal activity in-game.

 

[blip]

I'm going into my 5th year of the game and I tell ya, it's changed A LOT!

I have memories of having pink braids as a male character and being harassed by literally every person who saw me. I'm not sure you can still get that same color. The hair dyes were the same interface as furniture dye tub so you could be more selective about the color. Those were the not so "gay" times. Now we've got people who run around with every hair color imaginable. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif I loved how male characters could wear female armor, I think I miss that the most in terms of fashion.

There used to be a time when only a handful of characters had nightmares and when they graced us with their presence, people were in awe! Lords and Ladies were rare, and when you gained that title, it actually gained the respect of other players. It was very hard to earn and easily lost.

Liches were extremely difficult - even though they were the "easier" of monsters to kill (based on loot and fame/karma). People would die to them frequently. Die to a lich now and you're a "noob".

I remember how I would panic when reds came through deceit (my favorite haunt when I had an exceedingly durable, accurate, silver sword of ruin) and recall out of there in a very frantic heartbeat. I thought reds were SO COOL because they were the ultimate players - they had mastered their skills and the game. I hated dying to them but that was also part of the fun even though they would loot you dry and defile your corpse by cutting you up!

I loved how when a pk actually went down there'd be a rush to cut up the bones and grab the head. You could turn it in to a town guard and claim the bounty if there was one on it. I have a box of Dread Lord heads that I held on to. Wish I could display them but they can no longer be locked down.

You never ever logged out anywhere you couldn't insta-log because inevitably the next time you logged in, you'd be a ghost, your corpse having long been looted and decayed. You could log out in town under the protection of the town guards but a person could cast an energy vortex, get guard whacked, but come back (or have a friend there) who would wait until your body turned to bones and became grey so that it was lootable.

Few people had dragons and other high end tamed creatures. You'd certainly never see them being sold at 15K at WWB. Only in the recent years have I had the honor of having a white wyrm companion. Honestly, people were thrilled if they could have a horse! Losing your horse was the saddest thing ever. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/frown.gif

I remember a time at the bank when a thief stole something from me. Too late to call "guards", so the only thing I could do was chase them around and try to kill them to get the item back. I am such a poor pvp'r, even with a thief that had no warrior skills. Nobody else could even attempt to aid me since the person was only a criminal to me. Thank God I didn't EVER carry my house key around. That would have been extremely foolish.
The funniest times were when people would leave trapped containers on the ground at a bank and inevitably, many bodies would accumulate. At the end of it, the corpses were from people who were trying to loot the grey corpses, and people accidentally looting blue corpses.

Gold was so hard to make! When I made my first 100K I was considered rich. My friend and I worked so hard for everything. There was a lot more risk involved in making gold. You couldn't even leave town without expecting to run into a pk.

I had a house right next door to a pk and when their friends got together, they'd come over to my house and cast area spells. I don't know how many times I died to them and it pissed me off so much! I even paged a GM because I seriously couldn't do ANYTHING in my house because they'd kill me over and over again. But the GM told me "tough". I soon sold the house. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

One of the best things was going around looking for houses that were "In Danger of Collapsing" and marking runes, then sitting it out. You could use circle of transparency, get up on the step of the house and try to figure out if the house had stuff worth waiting hours for. I'd walk around the entire house and click on the containers to see how many items it held and what the weight was. Usually you could find mass regs or resources and even hard to get items - like magic weapons! The only bad thing is sometimes other people would find the house and wait there too. They'd try to discourage your presence by bringing dragons and releasing them, or killing you. But when the house finally went down, CHAOS! It's so much fun going through everything trying to figure out which stuff you should carry first. I've scored a lot of good stuff from house sitting. With Phase 3, I may get to relive some of the past looting.

Good or bad, those days were great! I really loved playing from day one and still enjoy the game. I guess there's something for everybody in the game even if you started from the beginning, but I have to say that there is something very special that no longer exists in the game. The thrill is gone... Felucca is dead. The lands are hardly inhabited by people, except for those that hang out at WBB. I liked going to different cities and meeting new people. The best time I've ever had in the game was when Trinsic was invaded by the undead. This brought together all kinds of people. There'd be reds running through pk'ing people, hordes of people would come in groups to kill the monsters, I met a ton of people who I'd never run into. I GM'd provocation because of the invasion. And back then, this skill was nearly impossible to GM.

I look forward to many more memories. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/smile.gif

 

[Moir]

Lyra,

How was it you ask? Not good IMHO. I much prefer it now.

In '97 Houses and tents were all over the place. At times they formed a row which you couldn't get through. There were no lockdowns or secure storage and you needed your house key if you locked your door. If you didn't immediately recall into town to put your key in your bank you were courting ruin. Someone could steal your key or you could get ganked and have all of the stuff in your house looted. You only gave out copies of your house key to your most trusted friends and at times they turned out not to be so trustworthy. You'd find that out when you went into your house and nothing was there.

Things decayed but slowly. To speed up the decay trash barrels came about.

Lag.... two steps - lag, two steps - lag, two steps 0ooOOooooo didn't even know what hit you.

No instructions and little help. How do you make arrows? Seems so simple now.

What do you do with your newbie char who has been pk'd several times, your bank box is empty and you got pk'd again?

The H-Xbow was king! Once I started using that my miner could hold off one pk.

Of course the pk guilds used ICQ, gathered up a few, gated in and there went my miner. There was simply no defense against 6 pks gating into each dungeon, wiping out the few blues then gating back out. Happened to me and my friend quite a few times.

I attended a UO luncheon in NYC in '98 (I think) and a pk guild was there. They would all meet on-line at a certain time head out and gank blues. To get back to blue they'd macro walking around their house, head to bed and in the morning they were blue. Then OSI created long-term and short-term murder counts which helped some.

Naturally, if there were enough blues to put up a fight, most reds ran out. It was dangerous heading anywhere in groups less than four. I remember walking down the road from Minoc to Vesper with a person following peeking in my pack trying to steal some stuff. With 55 str you didn't live long.

Grief players galore. Walk around Trammel and you'll see horses outside houses. Do that pre-trammel and a grief player was bound to try and kill your horses. Try to have an event outside the guard zone...good luck. Ev's blade spirits.. You made sure to dragged stuff from your bank vault to your backpack. If you just dropped it on yourself a person hiding in your spot just might get your stuff.

Unattended macroing ruled. Many times I would see some one tailoring (snip, snip), and an hour or so later when I came back there he was, snip, snipping and hadn't moved at all. Duped gold and items.

Basically it was anarchy.

Yet I found a great guild, joined it and have stayed with it for these last 74 months. It is much improved since the split the lands to Felucca and Trammel. Trammel is alive with people... Felucca is dead. I was in Felucca this morning getting hides and didn't see anyone. Once they split the lands there was a mass exodus from Felucca. If Felucca was so great, why did most leave?

I think many of the MMORPG's learned a lot from the early days of UO. None to my knowledge have tried to duplicate what UO was like in those days. Yes, you can PvP but under controlled conditions which are essentially consensual. And I don't know of any that allow grief players like the early days of UO.

You know, at one time the exchange rate for UO gold on ebay was higher than that of the Italian Lira!

That's my take on the early days of UO.

 

[OriginalRanter]

Lots of good points there Daemonbone:

I do disagree on a few things though:

*UO is only a griefer game for those that caused grief. Not everyone, not even every thief or PK, was like that.
*True there was duping, but there was also a post UO:R duping bug that caused a MUCH bigger problem.
*Yeah, it was easier to do unattended macro'ing, but not for everything. I remember having to keep a pen cap jammed into the key board for a couple of nights to GM hiding the first time. And having done both ways, once you figured out how 8x8 worked, it was much better. IMHO
*Most of the ingame friends I made were not made through forced interaction. I am just naturally friendly and outgoing, if a bit of a PITA. Fact is though, I cannot recall having seen strangers using teamwork in any situation even once in Trammel. Admittedly, my time in trammel was extremely limited.
*Far as stabling bugs, I don't remember them because I never once made a tamer. I really didn't even ride til I got my first ethereal. Only thing I ever did with taming was collect things in cities, but if I go into details, you'll probably think me a griefer.
*I don't see how you can be sarcastic about someone not liking things OSI does. You make a comment about "so you want OSI to change the game to suite your needs." Ummm, hello, they did. Trammel, remember? Changed the entire thing to suite SOME people. Remember that always, joke if you want, but OSI just might do it to ya.
*The Private House thing I agree with you on. I've never heard a single person that wasn't using the house looting bugs complain about private houses.
* "Like I said before, nothing stopping you now, except all your victims went to trammel so you have no one to force to your play style." Yeah, and no longer can the Great Lords and valiant fighters rise up to serve and defend those weaker than themselves. Instead, they just prance around in fancy armor and clothes like it's a pride parade.
*I remember fighting earth ele's for skill. Ummm, except that they weren't in town, weren't summoned, and no one was healing them..... I'm with you on this one Daemonbone
*As far as Social vs Anti-social, I disagree with you. I would hardly call 30 people spamming "***** for sale" or BUYING 10,000 ****" a social interaction.

 

[hijii]

*blows dust off thread*

nice little read.

what can i say, im bored at work

 

[Guest]

I started whit T2A and i do miss alot from that time.
The comunety was beter
The money ment some
A frend was a frend to death
Wanqusing was a bost, but not all the difrence
Real cursed items which realy cursed you and droped stats for you
Could train skills whit guild buddys
My demon put fer in other people
My EV poised and cursed
Blou pk's
Only to fer inside towns was thieves
Anti slayer
There was alot fun and not fun, but way more fun.


My first char i did was a carpenter whit lumberjack.
When i loged in at vesper i moved up against Covetous and a red guy come up to me. I said " Hi " and he killed me. I dident know i could be ressed at a healer so i loged out and made a new char

 

[hollylight]

I didnt start in beta i started about a year before trammel

This is funny thought you might like to hear it.

I was out killing pigs and such gathering stuff to sell i town.
I found out fast not to go to places everyone else was at when your new.

A player ( red ) walk up to me and pars me i caint run he keep paring me
doesnt kill me and began to speak.

"Dude are you a ****** " i replied i dont think so but i have not been playing long so i might be.

He laughed that a kewl name you have there " Doc Holiday "

I stopped tring to run and started talking to him and ask him why i was a ******

he replied " You killing pigs with a vanq katt and a full suit of invul armor "

Which meant nothing to me i didnt know turned out a vendor have priced it wrong i bought it for 5 k . He was so shocked i had that stuff more than 2 mins i been hunting all day with it on.

for well over 6 years now i have been the guy that couldnt kill a pig without using a vanq wepon ( we like giving each other the business alot )

In the end we all came big pals and still are today even thou they all have quit uo those days were best time i ever seen in uo they already had stas loss controling the reds just enought to make balance. And you couldnt lose your home so i might be talking about a era more recent than your looking for here.

 

[Antion_Vallin]

Required PvP Content
Naked Reds on Llama's
Orcs at The Lost Lands Fort
Order and Chaose
Powerful Dragons (before the HP nerf)
AR
Tank Mages (Armor and Haliberd)
Horde of Magical Equipment
More Newbie Exploration (Maby just for me... I learned things the hard way.)
Deadly Silver Serpents (I was on dialup back then...

)
No Pet Slots (Had an old pic of my Dragon, Wyrm and Nightmare on top of a Delucia hut.)
Nato-PK's "Blue PK's" (Still possible, but allot of nato-meathods were removed over the years.)
More Hotspots (There still there for training, but it seems everybody goes to a few certain places to train these days.)


There's allot of things different from today, though most are probubly just my personal views.

 

[WarUltima]

<blockquote><hr>

UO has now its 6th birthday and I wondered how it was in the beginning.

[/ QUOTE ]

The 9th..... no when UO was at its peak Everquest was still in beta testing stat...... I just want to say it because so many kids I met said UO is a Everquest wannabe. UO copied EQ when uo is released...... I cant stop laughing and when I told them UO was b4 EQ they think Im on crack and think Im a "noob".....