Reminded me of when UO opened. i was playing on pac in trinsic. an evil guild of reds called LOE controlled the shard. occasionally other pker's, whom i was friendly with - like Jodocast - could be seen running around slaying vile miners
Alchemists sold 20 of each reagent and they were perma camped. you started with a very low amount of gold - maybe 100.
fastest way to get regs to build magery was to create 50 magery characters and hand the regs off. until they added the function to force you to wait a week in between deletions.
besides the reds, i was one of the only high level magery guys around. my whole guild was doing the reg and deletion thing daily to pump me up so i could gate them around.