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Ultima Online: The Beginning
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
Every gamer had a beginning, a place where this new hobby began. Today Pokket recalls one of her earlier adventures in Ultima Online. Check it out and then tell us your story in the comments.
Walking through the woods at this time of the night happens to be one of the most dangerous things a girl can do. The whistling of the wind holds tune with the howling of distant dire wolves that run in packs of four or five. Their howl serves a sign that another victim has been defeated and dinner awaits. The full moon hovers above the trees, casting light down upon the shadowy path that seems to lead to nowhere. Leaves, foliage, and fallen branches often get in the way and cover the trail that once was wide and clear and up-kept by fellow countrymen. Now their abandoned houses promise nothing but doom as the rickety porch doors sway in the wind, slamming against the side of the house in anger. I can’t help myself from wondering what scared them all away, but somehow I felt I knew. This is Felucca, a place unfriendly to strangers and unfit for the weak.
Read more of Hillary Nicole's Pokket Says: The Beginning.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
Does this have something to do with video games, or is it more Twilight fan fiction?
It's nice that you're getting to write again.
This and the last 2 columns are an interesting change of pace from the usual facts/criticism articles that one sees at MMORPG.com.It's sort of like the screenshots section that way.
so if i rad between the lines here pocket?you answered the CALL TO ARM?for those wondering what it is:
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=/watch?v=Cu7QjL2FKP8&feature=player_embedded&feature=player_embedded&v=Cu7QjL2FKP8&gl=CA
Much better, Pokket. Much better. Good work.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Sorry Pokket, but your "diary" column is just boring.
You honestly dont look old enough to have played UO. At least not when it was in its prime.
This brings back fond memories of my days roaming around in a band of black cloaked PKers, descending upon the unwary, and relieving them of their hard earned stuff. Great times.
Hahaha. This actually reminds me of some of my adventures when there was drama in our guild or in a dungeon and my wife is bla bla bla in my ear. Luckily I have two ears...one for the wife and one for the mmo. Unluckily for me, my eyes are my ear antennas, and whatever they are pointed at that is what my ear is listening too.
To be fair I'm 29 but I look like I'm 21. I doubt anyone would expect me to have played UO in its old days either, but she definitely seems to have captured the wild, untamed aspect of the way it was. It helps that she's a very capable writer, and if you found it boring, then you're obviously not much of a reader, and I question why you read it in the first place.
Oh to be back in the Ultima Online days, missed playing with my older brother when he introduced this game to me.. hell i missed making weapons and armor for everyone in a little house near a mountain..
Then when i got killed... everything changed, the hell with making armor and the hell with making swords... THIS MEANS WAR! *unarmed combat and lots of immunities to magic* youd be surprised at how effecient that was at times against players who tried to gank you while you were mining or just in town
anyone remember when Lord British was Slain and they had to reroll the servers?
Oh my God, I remember that! The dude got perma banned for abusing a 'hack', but I saw the pics and it looked like just a really clever placement of Firewall. Maybe he used a bug while placing the spell, I don't know.
My favorite thing to do during those early days was exactly what you said, prey on miners. Or get someone to attack me on a town border, then cross the guard line and call guards on them. Completely cheap and a total abuse of a poorly thought out mechanic... but I was 15, and it was hilarious every time.
It was a fail by the guy behind the GM tools.
The GM invun command only stopped you actually being hit by a player it did not stop you from taking damage
this was something nobody was really aware of until a player created a fire at Garriotts feet. The rest as they say is history.
Theres a great video out there of a 20 minute interview with Garriott where he goes into more detail on this chuckling away about it the whole time.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
Pokket was right around 10 or 11 when Ultima Online was released. 13 or 14 by the time the game was ruined.
I always admire someone who started gaming at such an early age.
Content Writer for RTSGuru.com
And overall bitter old man.
How old is Pokket? I don't buy that UO was her first game. Most 10 or 11 year olds didn't play UO.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
Yup! I was 12 when I started playing with my uncle and dad. They still had "power hour" in the game and I'd go to Humility Shrine to train my disarm thief and lumberjack on the rotting corpses.
I got about a year or two in before they "ruined it". I bounced back and forth between the main servers and [mod edit] That server was a lot of fun. Not going to lie, I still liked UO even after Age of Shadows
I played up to Kingdom Reborn.
I can buy that an older male in the house was playing and you picked up on it. Not to sound sexist but not a lot of 12 yr old girls played computer games back then. It was hard enough to get them to play Nintendo.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
Well then my family was just strange
Almost everyone in my generation is female... and all of us play video games (and played them back then). It was definitely due to the fathers' influence. UO was just my first online game. I played console games before that (mainly on playstation and nintendo).
Most girls my age hate video games. I'm guessing you're a litle younger than I am. I think they are jealous that we spent all our time playing games and not telling them that they aren't fat.
There was no way to say that without sounding sexist so whatever.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
I did not think that Pokket was old enough to have played Ultima Online...
Which server were you on Girl?
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
UO had some incredible features, but also had tow that completely ruined it for alot of us: FFA PVP and a terrible communtiy..........COmbine FFA PVP with a legion of ganking jerks and you have one terrible game regardless of what other features it offers......For many of us UO wasn't even playable until Trammell came along.
Mmmm... reapers.
IMO, the site needs more blogs or articles of this nature. Cool stuff.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I always get confused when reading things like that. Trammell actually defies what UO was supposed to be. It was supposed to be a world where when you walked out of town it wasn't safe. You had to be smart and use your brain. It wasn't supposed to be a carebear land where you can go wherever you want and nothing will hurt your poor innocent soul. It was a game of consequence, and if you didn't use your head, you would feel the wrath. Those who learned are those who thrived.
Then the developers heard the cries of the few who could not learn. They created your safe haven so you could run around and frolic in your invincible version of the world. It also destroyed every fun aspect the game had to offer.
You probably think I was some rampant pk'er. When in fact I was not. My clan and I would have amazing battles against the servers most notorious pks. Sometimes we would win, other times we wouldn't. It was amazing fun, but at least you got your way.
Great story, Pokket. I always love UO firsts! The game was so unique that everyone's first few steps into Britannia were different - and some down right hilarious.
I started in 1997, the first day UO was released. I remember creating a character in Britannia and I had no idea STR=HP, so I had like 25hp or so as most everyone initially did from balancing their stats. I was on the outskirts of Britannia south of the stable, and I ran into a guy who looked like Robin of the Hood; green, feather brimmed hat, slacks, boots, white shirt, and sash(for some reason I thought sashes were cool looking). He asked if I had any clothes, which I responded "Nope", so he took me to the tailors and then crafted me a set of clothes just like his. I then learned you could "dye" clothing ... which to this day is still one of the better UO features not to mention MMO features in general. So we both dressed like Robin Hood and went north. As we took a few steps north we started noticing a ton of ghostly figures "oOOoooOOOOooo"ing and a lot of naked corpses. Next thing I know this guy was shooting rapid fire fireballs at us (which I later discovered to be a bug) and PKed both of us instantly - looting our helpless corpses of our newly fashioned clothes! The PK was named Baba MonKey who was one of the top PKs on the Atlantic shard the first few months/year UO was out.
It took me a few months but by the end of UO's first year, I was finally no longer a noob! I had befriended some PKs and had a little fun doing it until the Reputation patch. After the patch, UO became a far improved experience and from 1998-2002, it notched itself as not just my favorite MMO of all time, but my favorite game of all time.
Some of my best stories are during that time period ... but those are tales for another day over some beers (or mugs of ale!)
I hated Trammel. I liked it much better when you could kill or be killed on a whim. When seeing someone pop on your scren in a dungeon mid-fight always made your heart skip and you wondered if they were going to help the monster, you or move along.
I loved how "wild-west" it felt in that there was no law other than group consensus. It was just good fun.