One of the things that happened, that shows how UO was different than other games due to being "worldly", was the Mage Towers. There was a gaming site that had a very popular message board called "The Mage Tower", devoted to magery in UO. The players there decided that when UO opened, they'd collectively gather gold and build a tower and call it "The Mage Tower". Once it was posted that there would be 3 shards instead of just 1 to start the game with, players chose their shards and each would build a Mage Tower. Naturally, it became a race between the players of each shard. Towers were expensive and it wasn't an easy task, even for such large groups.
The day came when, first one shard, then followed closely by the other 2, each Mage Tower was built. They became places where any player could go to talk, practice, skill up, share information, etc. They also ran player events from these towers, and soon the GMs of the game were also running events out of them.
Evetually though, as is bound to happen in a wide open PvP game, some players made a habit of bushwacking other players at these Mage Towers. Bad feelings ensued, irreconcilable differences, and these collectives of players soon started breaking up and going their separate ways. Even newer shards had Mage Towers, but one after another fell to the ravages of time, forgotten for what they once had been. It's been years since the last of the Mage Towers fell into ruin, except for 1 that I believe still stands. (I think on a European shard, if it's still there.)
Another example, like the Mage Towers, was a player run tavern. Kazola's Tavern. Kazolas was a player who built one of the larger homes available, and turned it into a tavern. The first player run tavern anywhere. It was supposed to be a roleplayer place, but everyone went there. She had friends that helped out working as bartenders, serving food, etc. Many roleplayer events were held there. Again, GMs started showing up to run events too. It was a busy place for quite a while. PKers of course came to PK, but the patrons usually fought them off. One of the infamous bug abuses used by PKers happened there. You could have pets "guard" other things besides yourself, but it was a bug that someone realized you could have a pet guard a door. And when someone used that door, they went "gray" as if they had tried to steal it. This allowed PKers to kill them as if they were a criminal, and not get a mark for killing someone. They used it, of course, at Kazolas. This ability to "guard" things was very quickly removed from the game.
Kazola's Tavern was a wild and busy place, and so popular that Lord British (Richard Garriott's in game character with his special armor and uniquely realistic face and all) came one night to place two special, unique plaques on the walls to commemorate the establishment. GMs had already "blessed" Kazola's with special decorative features, a hedge around the front yard with a fountain.
Again, time ravashes all, and Kazola's slowed and then pretty much died. Mainly due to the innexcusable tendency of developers to make games "easier" and easier for players. No longer a need to talk to people, to gather in some place, Kazola's Tavern went unused for years, with a rare exception of old players holding some event there. But some time in the last few weeks, Kazola's Tavern fell, dissappeared from the world of Sosaria. No more to stand as a testament to the will of players to do something special.
As I sit and think back so my stories come to mind. One of the first started in UO, arriving in this world with so many ideas of what I wanted to do. I started out simple enough learning my way around town, meeting new people and actually talking to them. Gathering around the bank and hearing stories from other players of the dangers they face outside of town along with the rewards they had won. Everything was new to me so learning my own strengths and weakness in itself was a task. Going outside of town and attacking little animals as other players came and went. In the back of my mind keeping a watchful eye on them knowing they could decide to turn me into their prey. Finding out that while killing a bunny or rat was rather easy, I might want to hold off on the eagles, deer, and wolfves for awhile. While know of these task had yet invited death I felt he was close by watching my every move. I continued my skill building moving greater and greater distances from my starting home till I found eneimes that walked on two legs the orc. I quickly found I was strong enough to edge them in combat and with little rest would move from orc to orc. But my first dance with death was at hand, after recovering from one battle I quickly spotted my next targer. He looked no different then the ones before him so I felt his fate would quickly be the same. As I engaged him in battle everything seemed fine, it did appear this orc was alittle stronger but not enough to cause worry. As the battle drew on I heard a different sound, one I would come to learn was a spell called energy bolt. With my life taking a huge hit from this spell for the first time I found myself running in terror. Sadly as I gained distance on my foe I heard the sound once more and this time saw the blast coming for my backside. My charcter lets out a mourn and falls the the ground lifeless the orcish mage standing near by as to laugh at me. This was the first of many lessons and adventure in UO. I could go on and on when it cames to UO or even another game SWG when it first started out. I would love to go back to those days but even with these games major changes have come and the same expriences could not be found. Maybe I'll drop back in and tell other UO and/or SWG stories.
The first MMO I ever played was UO, and safe to say I still play it whenever I can find a chance. To be fair though, I couldn't be bothered with paying a subscription fee for EA's UO, which is incredibly different from what was termed "T2A" or "The Renaissance" before it. Trammel essentially killed what was so magical about UO, but aside from the open world freedoms it presented, there was a great deal of detail that you simply cannot find in a modern title.
The sort of things that I grew to accept as a norm, such as a vast array of dyeable clothing that held no other meaning than to provide individual appearances, have been almost completely over looked since the MMO genre entered the mainstream. Even housing (and boats), an amazing resource to allow players to fill an open world with hubs that they designate, design, and upkeep themselves has nearly been forgotten all together. The housing market alone was a huge part of the game, and there were entire characters whose sole purpose in the world was buying and trading real estate. Alone, the amount of time spent in-game decorating houses was staggering, and it kept players interested in their own piece of the map. Other details included a crafting system that actually put valuable and useful items in the players possesion (as well as items as simple as carpentered furniture), items that existed in the world for no other reason than role play (such as books, which could be written in, produced, and spread around), a skill system that allowed you to do whatever you wanted within the skill cap (seven hundred points total, with 100 being the cap for any skill, and a large list of skills to choose from), a wide variety of tameable creatures (such as horses, wolves, or even dragons if you were dedicated enough), treasure hunting (finding maps that would lead players to different areas of the world, which promoted a partnership between atleast one combat character and one crafter-type, treasure hunter) -- the list could go on for a very, very long while, but these are just the things that stand out in my mind.
And say what you will about griefing, but it too has it's place in a social game. Not only does it create villains and heroes, but the murder/death count system gave players the ability to police themselves. The world itself allowed for so many clever ways to promote conflict amongst the players, between an active and very useful stealing system (my main character was a theif, and stealing from players was one of the best adrenaline rushes I've ever had in a game), disputes over guild ownership over a territory or town, and made people question if they were ever truly safe. I can understand when people just want to play a game and enjoy themselves, but the enjoyable part of UO was constantly scheming and planning the demise of your enemies, or the next aimless victim. Even then, I represented just a portion of the community that consisted of rather cutthroat tactics, but the world gave players of all types a place to shine. I still believe the true beauty of Ultima Online was the amount of different play styles that permeated within the world, be it PvP, PvE, Crafting, Adventure, Exploring -- what have you. Everyone had a place, and everyone could succeed if they put in the effort.
TL;DR: T2A UO and earlier represented a time in gaming in which we focused on socially connecting with other members of the community, and provided an experience to a wide range of players that was less about holding hands, and more about discovery, with amazing attention to detail.
I was going to post here my thoughts...but I cannot explain it better than this post!! ^^^ Good job.
Disclaimer: This is not a troll post and is not here to promote any negative energy. Although this may be a criticism, it is not meant to offend anyone. If a moderator feels the post is inappropriate, please remove it immediately before it is subject to consideration for a warning. Thank you.
One of the things that happened, that shows how UO was different than other games due to being "worldly", was the Mage Towers. There was a gaming site that had a very popular message board called "The Mage Tower", devoted to magery in UO. The players there decided that when UO opened, they'd collectively gather gold and build a tower and call it "The Mage Tower". Once it was posted that there would be 3 shards instead of just 1 to start the game with, players chose their shards and each would build a Mage Tower. Naturally, it became a race between the players of each shard. Towers were expensive and it wasn't an easy task, even for such large groups.
The day came when, first one shard, then followed closely by the other 2, each Mage Tower was built. They became places where any player could go to talk, practice, skill up, share information, etc. They also ran player events from these towers, and soon the GMs of the game were also running events out of them.
Evetually though, as is bound to happen in a wide open PvP game, some players made a habit of bushwacking other players at these Mage Towers. Bad feelings ensued, irreconcilable differences, and these collectives of players soon started breaking up and going their separate ways. Even newer shards had Mage Towers, but one after another fell to the ravages of time, forgotten for what they once had been. It's been years since the last of the Mage Towers fell into ruin, except for 1 that I believe still stands. (I think on a European shard, if it's still there.)
As I was reading this a thought popped into my head: How horrible that players would destroy something like that!
And then I immediately began to think... Well... The destruction of the Towers is just as important and memorable as their creation! In a modern game, what do you think would happen? The Mage Tower owners would most likely complain to GMs or something... And so the Towers would stand. But that doesn't really enfore memorable experiences like you just metioned doesn't it?
Wow... I'm reading these stories one after the other, and I just gotta say again, they're such a great source of information and entertainment to me.
My best memories was my first Character Isrel a Necromancer in Nektulos forest hanging out on the newbie log by the spiders and killing skeletons to collect bones in stacks of 20 filling an 8 slot backpack to sell for (I don't rember) 5 Plat maybe. Also killing black or brown bears and making potion pouches to sell to shamans for some plat.
My highest point is when instead of saving up for the Stein of Moggok I decided to do the quest instead, I spent probably 5 hours doing each step to get it, I was SO proud of carrying around that stein.
I have alot of good memories from then but those are the most prominent.
One of the things that happened, that shows how UO was different than other games due to being "worldly", was the Mage Towers. There was a gaming site that had a very popular message board called "The Mage Tower", devoted to magery in UO. The players there decided that when UO opened, they'd collectively gather gold and build a tower and call it "The Mage Tower". Once it was posted that there would be 3 shards instead of just 1 to start the game with, players chose their shards and each would build a Mage Tower. Naturally, it became a race between the players of each shard. Towers were expensive and it wasn't an easy task, even for such large groups.
The day came when, first one shard, then followed closely by the other 2, each Mage Tower was built. They became places where any player could go to talk, practice, skill up, share information, etc. They also ran player events from these towers, and soon the GMs of the game were also running events out of them.
Evetually though, as is bound to happen in a wide open PvP game, some players made a habit of bushwacking other players at these Mage Towers. Bad feelings ensued, irreconcilable differences, and these collectives of players soon started breaking up and going their separate ways. Even newer shards had Mage Towers, but one after another fell to the ravages of time, forgotten for what they once had been. It's been years since the last of the Mage Towers fell into ruin, except for 1 that I believe still stands. (I think on a European shard, if it's still there.)
As I was reading this a thought popped into my head: How horrible that players would destroy something like that!
And then I immediately began to think... Well... The destruction of the Towers is just as important and memorable as their creation! In a modern game, what do you think would happen? The Mage Tower owners would most likely complain to GMs or something... And so the Towers would stand. But that doesn't really enfore memorable experiences like you just metioned doesn't it?
Wow... I'm reading these stories one after the other, and I just gotta say again, they're such a great source of information and entertainment to me.
"And then I immediately began to think... Well... The destruction of the Towers is just as important and memorable as their creation!"
That is very true. The story isn't complete without it. If I were creating a new game today, a real next gen game, I'd start by going back to UO, and then build it up. I'd make it so there'd actually be ruins left there for all to see, as a testament to what once was, created by players and lost in time. But I'd also have given them a better chance through a justice system. UO started with no justice system at all, and their early attempts were very much lacking. It was in this time frame that players started stearing away from the Towers because they had become just a trap. Maybe they'd all still be standing and active (and maybe UO wouldn't have turned into what it has) if they'd had some means to protect themselves better. Or maybe politics would have led to the downfall of some.
One of the things that happened, that shows how UO was different than other games due to being "worldly", was the Mage Towers. There was a gaming site that had a very popular message board called "The Mage Tower", devoted to magery in UO. The players there decided that when UO opened, they'd collectively gather gold and build a tower and call it "The Mage Tower". Once it was posted that there would be 3 shards instead of just 1 to start the game with, players chose their shards and each would build a Mage Tower. Naturally, it became a race between the players of each shard. Towers were expensive and it wasn't an easy task, even for such large groups.
The day came when, first one shard, then followed closely by the other 2, each Mage Tower was built. They became places where any player could go to talk, practice, skill up, share information, etc. They also ran player events from these towers, and soon the GMs of the game were also running events out of them.
Evetually though, as is bound to happen in a wide open PvP game, some players made a habit of bushwacking other players at these Mage Towers. Bad feelings ensued, irreconcilable differences, and these collectives of players soon started breaking up and going their separate ways. Even newer shards had Mage Towers, but one after another fell to the ravages of time, forgotten for what they once had been. It's been years since the last of the Mage Towers fell into ruin, except for 1 that I believe still stands. (I think on a European shard, if it's still there.)
As I was reading this a thought popped into my head: How horrible that players would destroy something like that!
And then I immediately began to think... Well... The destruction of the Towers is just as important and memorable as their creation! In a modern game, what do you think would happen? The Mage Tower owners would most likely complain to GMs or something... And so the Towers would stand. But that doesn't really enfore memorable experiences like you just metioned doesn't it?
Wow... I'm reading these stories one after the other, and I just gotta say again, they're such a great source of information and entertainment to me.
"And then I immediately began to think... Well... The destruction of the Towers is just as important and memorable as their creation!"
That is very true. The story isn't complete without it. If I were creating a new game today, a real next gen game, I'd start by going back to UO, and then build it up. I'd make it so there'd actually be ruins left there for all to see, as a testament to what once was, created by players and lost in time. But I'd also have given them a better chance through a justice system. UO started with no justice system at all, and their early attempts were very much lacking. It was in this time frame that players started stearing away from the Towers because they had become just a trap. Maybe they'd all still be standing and active (and maybe UO wouldn't have turned into what it has) if they'd had some means to protect themselves better. Or maybe politics would have led to the downfall of some.
The history lives on, it just could be better.
I hope new developers would take a page out of your book and begin thinking in similar ways. Instead of looking to WoW (difficult, yes, because that cash flow is so bloody tantilizing) they should research games like UO which clearly had much more freedom in both character customization and player-player and player-world influence.
my life never really revolved so much around MMO's that I have a real story behind it. Now adays I'm older and need something like an online game I suppose, no more running the streets and partying it up like I did in my teens and early -mid 20's.
Anyhow, My first MMO was zelda Online (graal online now) back in 96-97 I was in the Beta. I have always been a zelda fan and my brother found this particular game and I decided it was ok. I played that game on and off until about 2000, I was actually given the position of head GM when the gold server went live. I was elected by a player base to be the Graal Gold chief of police, which was the head GM over the other GM's for that server. In graal they called it Graal Police. That didn't last very long before I got tired of the position and the game.
During this time I also played Nexus TK 97-2000 thought it was a pretty good korean game for its time.
Never really got into the UO or EQ, though I wanted to try it out, probably should have, but meh.
I did get into swg some played a month after the release, decided I didn't like it. Came back during one of the freebies and played for a year, this was after NGE. Pretty much bored of everything else.
I have played plenty of games. WoW AION, AOC, WAR ,SWG , these are the games that I sub for sometimes. Mainly AION SWG and WOW. There are others, but for the most part I didn't play those games long enough to have an opinion.
I know I don't have a UO story, but I figured since everyone else does and UO was not the only game out at the time, regardless of how good it was, I should add a few lesser known MMO's.
Perhaps if this thread sees any more activity, I may alter it a bit to be a sort official "unofficial" "your stories" type of thread. These stories are entertaining, I think plenty of other would be interested in reading them and posting their own.
I started Ultima Online October of 1998 when The Second Age launched (T2A), I was 15. It was very sandbox, you could "train up" any skills you wanted to (max of 720 skill points) and basically enjoy your time anywhere in the game doing anything you wanted to do.
It had a really fail karma system (which was supposed to be a checks and balances against PKing) so PKs were rampant and there wasn't really a downside to PK'ing (you could easily get resssurected as a red or work of kills by AFKing in a house). Needless to say, the ganking/griefing didn't bother me because I was 15 and had nothing else to do with my time. If I picked up a game like that at 27, I wouldn't play it. Too much griefing and ganking.
But UO was an epic fun game for a kid with a lot of time. I played until I left for college in 2002, so for four full years. By the time I left I had two 7x GM (grandmasters) - one for PvP and a Tamer for PVE fun. I left a little after legendary scrolls were launched (which I hated because people would bring their reds and just pk for the loot).
Both of these are amazing stories and sadly just something you simply cant have in current day mmo's. EvE is about the closest thing to either of these but just not quite the same.
One other post...
This is a PvP primer I wrote for AoC back before it launched, and sadly failed miserably. However, it was more or less a slightly modified Asheron's Call primer that we'd had on the forums for a while. Definitely worth a read.
I had just started playing Everquest. I guess I was level 6, and had started in Kelethin. A high level character came to town and was offering what seemed to me a King's ransom for spider silk. I told a real life friend who was around level 3 or 4 about this opportunity, and suggested we go and kill some spiders so we could sell the silk. He agreed and off we went to an area that had a lot of spiders.
Two things about original EQ. One is you take experience loss when you die, so you can lose levels. Later they exempted newbs like us from xp loss, but this was before. The other thing is that mobs higher level than you had a large aggro range and they would come from farther away than you would expect to kick your ass.
With that in mind, when we got to the area with spiders they swarmed my friend like crazy. I swear that spiders were calling other spiders on their spidy cell phones to get in on the action. I look over and there was this mountain of spiders with him at the bottom. I kept trying to save him but there were too many. He died over and over. Every time he came back they offed him again. Level 4, gone. Level 3, gone. Level 2, gone. He went all the way back to level 1.
There were a lot of ways that all could have been avoided but we were complete noobs so we didn't know any better.
Anyway, afterwards the phrase "a spidering" came to mean an invitation by one friend to another to do something profoundly dangerous and self destructive.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Thats one memory.. Gix munched on noobs all day long.. not to mention the giants that frequently romped around in the commonlands... EQ was a very good game.. lol
haha...ahh man
I can definitely relate to this..
not to mention Poacher Hill and Rungupp in Toxxulia forest..or the Werewolf in West Karana...
bastards would always sneak up on ya.
*sigh* I miss the days of EQ...There's nothing quite like your virgin experiences in your first MMO,nothing will ever replicate the feelings you get.
Older games sacrificed convenience for social interaction and sometimes, freedom.
Modern MMO's however sacrifice social interaction and freedom for convenience.
The extreme examples of both types are a) sandbox for freedom and social interaction, and b) online RPG's (not MMO's) for their unrivaled convenience.
MMO's these days try to be online RPG's like Monster Hunter without actually being online RPG's, because they are still not convenient enough and their gameplay can not rival the potential of online RPG's.
Most upcoming games are precisely like I described, but there are exceptions even in the AAA MMO market.
For example, FFXIV sacrifices some convenience for social interaction and freedom. It is also it's biggest threat; if it sacrifices too much convenience, the game just won't be fun to play. However, social interaction is a great tool to overcome the flaw of gameplay being sub-par compared to single, or online RPG's.
Poker is much more fun with friends than "alone". It's the greatest strength of MMORPG's, but it comes by sacrificing convenience, therefore most modern MMO's try to make gameplay better instead while making the game convenient. It's just not working because gameplay in MMO's is still shit.
So, if you want to experience the "older days", try out FFXIV. It's not as user friendly as other upcoming games, but tries to find a good middleground between social interaction, freedom and convenience.
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
My first MMO was Anarchy Online, I loved that game but left due to no quests/grinding missions. Unlike many MMOs today it took a long time to level in this game. So after a month I decided to make an alt and at level 5 was running around west athens. Well some level 90 opened up trade with me and gave me a level 160 implant that had all 3 slots full!!! Anyway me being poor I ran to the vendor and got a whopping 5k for it. (Vendors gave craptastic money for stuff) If someone was to buy it at that time it would probably have gone for a 100-200k or whatever. This person meant to trade it to someone sitting next to me after I had sold it so I feigned ignorance. Poor sucker was shouting out in chat asking if anyone got it by accident. That's my most memorable MMO story.
people say the appeal of some mmorpgs is they're like a 'second' place, that say a pub or a sports club the familiarity of that comes to you, the same is for these mmorpgs. And thats probably how I remember EQ, knowing and going to all the different zones.
Best memory was probably with a friend ingame, spontaneously forming a raid of a dragon in skyfire. No seriousness to it, just casual players and taking it down. I remember Karnor's Castle as well. Awful xp, but its trains where you could have mobs from the deepest of KC come down- that would kill your lowly ass- that was quite exciting- and that these dropped specific desirable class loots.
Saddest memory was probably on christmas Eve spending like 8 hours camping this mob for some resist gear. See part of the appeal in EQ was that you had rare spawns, and rare loots. So you could spend a fair amount out of the game researching what dropped what, and how tough certain camps were. Then when you got the item, and you could buy/sell in EC tunnel. I think I camped a desirable item called a GBS. That was worth 4k- went to EC tunnel, bought and sold stuff and raised enough for a Fungi Tunic. (very desirable item- as it had massive regen and you could twink it) That was fun. People overlook it's item system as part of it's memories- but it was pretty well-done.
Worst memories-going on mindless raids night after night. 72-man raids- seems ludicrous now. For me the core appeal was grouping, and its a shame they opted away from dungeons and group-play. The original game had legendary (and wacky when you look back) dungeons- and the idea you could be deep in a dungeon fighting was exciting, as the same time aggravating. You'd fight your way deep in a dungeon- and someone would have to go...not easy to find a replacement. Alternatively, deep in a dungeon and someone does a mispull- cue wipeout and a not-so-fun corpse run. (as you lost all your equipment on death)
Have no doubt about it, Everquest was very hit or miss- you could get pissed off with the game one day and go to a new mmorpg that came out (DAoC)- then go back to EQ just out of a sort of fondness of the game. It's classes (barring melee) were good- and the spells. The zones weren't cookie-cutter (as they've turned into over time)but completely wacky- an example being Oasis and its crocs, sand-giants and spectres, orcs and desert madmen. I think this is why EQ2 was just completely far off the mark when it came along- its zones in comparison were very serious.
Comments
One of the things that happened, that shows how UO was different than other games due to being "worldly", was the Mage Towers. There was a gaming site that had a very popular message board called "The Mage Tower", devoted to magery in UO. The players there decided that when UO opened, they'd collectively gather gold and build a tower and call it "The Mage Tower". Once it was posted that there would be 3 shards instead of just 1 to start the game with, players chose their shards and each would build a Mage Tower. Naturally, it became a race between the players of each shard. Towers were expensive and it wasn't an easy task, even for such large groups.
The day came when, first one shard, then followed closely by the other 2, each Mage Tower was built. They became places where any player could go to talk, practice, skill up, share information, etc. They also ran player events from these towers, and soon the GMs of the game were also running events out of them.
Evetually though, as is bound to happen in a wide open PvP game, some players made a habit of bushwacking other players at these Mage Towers. Bad feelings ensued, irreconcilable differences, and these collectives of players soon started breaking up and going their separate ways. Even newer shards had Mage Towers, but one after another fell to the ravages of time, forgotten for what they once had been. It's been years since the last of the Mage Towers fell into ruin, except for 1 that I believe still stands. (I think on a European shard, if it's still there.)
Once upon a time....
Another example, like the Mage Towers, was a player run tavern. Kazola's Tavern. Kazolas was a player who built one of the larger homes available, and turned it into a tavern. The first player run tavern anywhere. It was supposed to be a roleplayer place, but everyone went there. She had friends that helped out working as bartenders, serving food, etc. Many roleplayer events were held there. Again, GMs started showing up to run events too. It was a busy place for quite a while. PKers of course came to PK, but the patrons usually fought them off. One of the infamous bug abuses used by PKers happened there. You could have pets "guard" other things besides yourself, but it was a bug that someone realized you could have a pet guard a door. And when someone used that door, they went "gray" as if they had tried to steal it. This allowed PKers to kill them as if they were a criminal, and not get a mark for killing someone. They used it, of course, at Kazolas. This ability to "guard" things was very quickly removed from the game.
Kazola's Tavern was a wild and busy place, and so popular that Lord British (Richard Garriott's in game character with his special armor and uniquely realistic face and all) came one night to place two special, unique plaques on the walls to commemorate the establishment. GMs had already "blessed" Kazola's with special decorative features, a hedge around the front yard with a fountain.
Again, time ravashes all, and Kazola's slowed and then pretty much died. Mainly due to the innexcusable tendency of developers to make games "easier" and easier for players. No longer a need to talk to people, to gather in some place, Kazola's Tavern went unused for years, with a rare exception of old players holding some event there. But some time in the last few weeks, Kazola's Tavern fell, dissappeared from the world of Sosaria. No more to stand as a testament to the will of players to do something special.
Once upon a time....
As I sit and think back so my stories come to mind. One of the first started in UO, arriving in this world with so many ideas of what I wanted to do. I started out simple enough learning my way around town, meeting new people and actually talking to them. Gathering around the bank and hearing stories from other players of the dangers they face outside of town along with the rewards they had won. Everything was new to me so learning my own strengths and weakness in itself was a task. Going outside of town and attacking little animals as other players came and went. In the back of my mind keeping a watchful eye on them knowing they could decide to turn me into their prey. Finding out that while killing a bunny or rat was rather easy, I might want to hold off on the eagles, deer, and wolfves for awhile. While know of these task had yet invited death I felt he was close by watching my every move. I continued my skill building moving greater and greater distances from my starting home till I found eneimes that walked on two legs the orc. I quickly found I was strong enough to edge them in combat and with little rest would move from orc to orc. But my first dance with death was at hand, after recovering from one battle I quickly spotted my next targer. He looked no different then the ones before him so I felt his fate would quickly be the same. As I engaged him in battle everything seemed fine, it did appear this orc was alittle stronger but not enough to cause worry. As the battle drew on I heard a different sound, one I would come to learn was a spell called energy bolt. With my life taking a huge hit from this spell for the first time I found myself running in terror. Sadly as I gained distance on my foe I heard the sound once more and this time saw the blast coming for my backside. My charcter lets out a mourn and falls the the ground lifeless the orcish mage standing near by as to laugh at me. This was the first of many lessons and adventure in UO. I could go on and on when it cames to UO or even another game SWG when it first started out. I would love to go back to those days but even with these games major changes have come and the same expriences could not be found. Maybe I'll drop back in and tell other UO and/or SWG stories.
I was going to post here my thoughts...but I cannot explain it better than this post!! ^^^ Good job.
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As I was reading this a thought popped into my head: How horrible that players would destroy something like that!
And then I immediately began to think... Well... The destruction of the Towers is just as important and memorable as their creation! In a modern game, what do you think would happen? The Mage Tower owners would most likely complain to GMs or something... And so the Towers would stand. But that doesn't really enfore memorable experiences like you just metioned doesn't it?
Wow... I'm reading these stories one after the other, and I just gotta say again, they're such a great source of information and entertainment to me.
EQ 1998 first ever MMO
Was Playing Baldur's Gate at the same time.
The concept of PVP never even occured to me.
My best memories was my first Character Isrel a Necromancer in Nektulos forest hanging out on the newbie log by the spiders and killing skeletons to collect bones in stacks of 20 filling an 8 slot backpack to sell for (I don't rember) 5 Plat maybe. Also killing black or brown bears and making potion pouches to sell to shamans for some plat.
My highest point is when instead of saving up for the Stein of Moggok I decided to do the quest instead, I spent probably 5 hours doing each step to get it, I was SO proud of carrying around that stein.
I have alot of good memories from then but those are the most prominent.
"And then I immediately began to think... Well... The destruction of the Towers is just as important and memorable as their creation!"
That is very true. The story isn't complete without it. If I were creating a new game today, a real next gen game, I'd start by going back to UO, and then build it up. I'd make it so there'd actually be ruins left there for all to see, as a testament to what once was, created by players and lost in time. But I'd also have given them a better chance through a justice system. UO started with no justice system at all, and their early attempts were very much lacking. It was in this time frame that players started stearing away from the Towers because they had become just a trap. Maybe they'd all still be standing and active (and maybe UO wouldn't have turned into what it has) if they'd had some means to protect themselves better. Or maybe politics would have led to the downfall of some.
The history lives on, it just could be better.
Once upon a time....
I hope new developers would take a page out of your book and begin thinking in similar ways. Instead of looking to WoW (difficult, yes, because that cash flow is so bloody tantilizing) they should research games like UO which clearly had much more freedom in both character customization and player-player and player-world influence.
my life never really revolved so much around MMO's that I have a real story behind it. Now adays I'm older and need something like an online game I suppose, no more running the streets and partying it up like I did in my teens and early -mid 20's.
Anyhow, My first MMO was zelda Online (graal online now) back in 96-97 I was in the Beta. I have always been a zelda fan and my brother found this particular game and I decided it was ok. I played that game on and off until about 2000, I was actually given the position of head GM when the gold server went live. I was elected by a player base to be the Graal Gold chief of police, which was the head GM over the other GM's for that server. In graal they called it Graal Police. That didn't last very long before I got tired of the position and the game.
During this time I also played Nexus TK 97-2000 thought it was a pretty good korean game for its time.
Never really got into the UO or EQ, though I wanted to try it out, probably should have, but meh.
I did get into swg some played a month after the release, decided I didn't like it. Came back during one of the freebies and played for a year, this was after NGE. Pretty much bored of everything else.
I have played plenty of games. WoW AION, AOC, WAR ,SWG , these are the games that I sub for sometimes. Mainly AION SWG and WOW. There are others, but for the most part I didn't play those games long enough to have an opinion.
I know I don't have a UO story, but I figured since everyone else does and UO was not the only game out at the time, regardless of how good it was, I should add a few lesser known MMO's.
Perhaps if this thread sees any more activity, I may alter it a bit to be a sort official "unofficial" "your stories" type of thread. These stories are entertaining, I think plenty of other would be interested in reading them and posting their own.
I started Ultima Online October of 1998 when The Second Age launched (T2A), I was 15. It was very sandbox, you could "train up" any skills you wanted to (max of 720 skill points) and basically enjoy your time anywhere in the game doing anything you wanted to do.
It had a really fail karma system (which was supposed to be a checks and balances against PKing) so PKs were rampant and there wasn't really a downside to PK'ing (you could easily get resssurected as a red or work of kills by AFKing in a house). Needless to say, the ganking/griefing didn't bother me because I was 15 and had nothing else to do with my time. If I picked up a game like that at 27, I wouldn't play it. Too much griefing and ganking.
But UO was an epic fun game for a kid with a lot of time. I played until I left for college in 2002, so for four full years. By the time I left I had two 7x GM (grandmasters) - one for PvP and a Tamer for PVE fun. I left a little after legendary scrolls were launched (which I hated because people would bring their reds and just pk for the loot).
I have two I posted on MMORPG a long time ago, but not sure where they are now. I've reposted them on my guild site.
One is a story about Ultima Online its a tale of getting screwed over, and then plotting and extracting revenge.
The undoing of Akari Sucks
My other favorite old story is an Asheron's Call Tale. My guild moved from UO after stats loss / tramel were implemented.
Its a story about fighting for your hunting grounds.
Guild war with DLT
Both of these are amazing stories and sadly just something you simply cant have in current day mmo's. EvE is about the closest thing to either of these but just not quite the same.
One other post...
This is a PvP primer I wrote for AoC back before it launched, and sadly failed miserably. However, it was more or less a slightly modified Asheron's Call primer that we'd had on the forums for a while. Definitely worth a read.
PvP Primer
I particularly like the UO stories about theft... They make modern MMOs seem so Carebare.
Also, EQ sounds like a lot of corpse runs!
I had just started playing Everquest. I guess I was level 6, and had started in Kelethin. A high level character came to town and was offering what seemed to me a King's ransom for spider silk. I told a real life friend who was around level 3 or 4 about this opportunity, and suggested we go and kill some spiders so we could sell the silk. He agreed and off we went to an area that had a lot of spiders.
Two things about original EQ. One is you take experience loss when you die, so you can lose levels. Later they exempted newbs like us from xp loss, but this was before. The other thing is that mobs higher level than you had a large aggro range and they would come from farther away than you would expect to kick your ass.
With that in mind, when we got to the area with spiders they swarmed my friend like crazy. I swear that spiders were calling other spiders on their spidy cell phones to get in on the action. I look over and there was this mountain of spiders with him at the bottom. I kept trying to save him but there were too many. He died over and over. Every time he came back they offed him again. Level 4, gone. Level 3, gone. Level 2, gone. He went all the way back to level 1.
There were a lot of ways that all could have been avoided but we were complete noobs so we didn't know any better.
Anyway, afterwards the phrase "a spidering" came to mean an invitation by one friend to another to do something profoundly dangerous and self destructive.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
haha...ahh man
I can definitely relate to this..
not to mention Poacher Hill and Rungupp in Toxxulia forest..or the Werewolf in West Karana...
bastards would always sneak up on ya.
*sigh* I miss the days of EQ...There's nothing quite like your virgin experiences in your first MMO,nothing will ever replicate the feelings you get.
Shameless self bump.
Older games sacrificed convenience for social interaction and sometimes, freedom.
Modern MMO's however sacrifice social interaction and freedom for convenience.
The extreme examples of both types are a) sandbox for freedom and social interaction, and b) online RPG's (not MMO's) for their unrivaled convenience.
MMO's these days try to be online RPG's like Monster Hunter without actually being online RPG's, because they are still not convenient enough and their gameplay can not rival the potential of online RPG's.
Most upcoming games are precisely like I described, but there are exceptions even in the AAA MMO market.
For example, FFXIV sacrifices some convenience for social interaction and freedom. It is also it's biggest threat; if it sacrifices too much convenience, the game just won't be fun to play. However, social interaction is a great tool to overcome the flaw of gameplay being sub-par compared to single, or online RPG's.
Poker is much more fun with friends than "alone". It's the greatest strength of MMORPG's, but it comes by sacrificing convenience, therefore most modern MMO's try to make gameplay better instead while making the game convenient. It's just not working because gameplay in MMO's is still shit.
So, if you want to experience the "older days", try out FFXIV. It's not as user friendly as other upcoming games, but tries to find a good middleground between social interaction, freedom and convenience.
My first MMO was Anarchy Online, I loved that game but left due to no quests/grinding missions. Unlike many MMOs today it took a long time to level in this game. So after a month I decided to make an alt and at level 5 was running around west athens. Well some level 90 opened up trade with me and gave me a level 160 implant that had all 3 slots full!!! Anyway me being poor I ran to the vendor and got a whopping 5k for it. (Vendors gave craptastic money for stuff) If someone was to buy it at that time it would probably have gone for a 100-200k or whatever. This person meant to trade it to someone sitting next to me after I had sold it so I feigned ignorance. Poor sucker was shouting out in chat asking if anyone got it by accident. That's my most memorable MMO story.
people say the appeal of some mmorpgs is they're like a 'second' place, that say a pub or a sports club the familiarity of that comes to you, the same is for these mmorpgs. And thats probably how I remember EQ, knowing and going to all the different zones.
Best memory was probably with a friend ingame, spontaneously forming a raid of a dragon in skyfire. No seriousness to it, just casual players and taking it down.
I remember Karnor's Castle as well. Awful xp, but its trains where you could have mobs from the deepest of KC come down- that would kill your lowly ass- that was quite exciting- and that these dropped specific desirable class loots.
Saddest memory was probably on christmas Eve spending like 8 hours camping this mob for some resist gear.
See part of the appeal in EQ was that you had rare spawns, and rare loots. So you could spend a fair amount out of the game researching what dropped what, and how tough certain camps were. Then when you got the item, and you could buy/sell in EC tunnel. I think I camped a desirable item called a GBS. That was worth 4k- went to EC tunnel, bought and sold stuff and raised enough for a Fungi Tunic. (very desirable item- as it had massive regen and you could twink it) That was fun. People overlook it's item system as part of it's memories- but it was pretty well-done.
Worst memories-going on mindless raids night after night. 72-man raids- seems ludicrous now. For me the core appeal was grouping, and its a shame they opted away from dungeons and group-play. The original game had legendary (and wacky when you look back) dungeons- and the idea you could be deep in a dungeon fighting was exciting, as the same time aggravating. You'd fight your way deep in a dungeon- and someone would have to go...not easy to find a replacement. Alternatively, deep in a dungeon and someone does a mispull- cue wipeout and a not-so-fun corpse run. (as you lost all your equipment on death)
Have no doubt about it, Everquest was very hit or miss- you could get pissed off with the game one day and go to a new mmorpg that came out (DAoC)- then go back to EQ just out of a sort of fondness of the game. It's classes (barring melee) were good- and the spells. The zones weren't cookie-cutter (as they've turned into over time)but completely wacky- an example being Oasis and its crocs, sand-giants and spectres, orcs and desert madmen. I think this is why EQ2 was just completely far off the mark when it came along- its zones in comparison were very serious.