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Do you remember... (and a newbie moment)
retrospectic
Member UncommonPosts: 1,466
I thought I would start a bit of a nostalgia thread.
Here's mine.
Here's mine.
During the Trammel housing rush I was a "newbie". I didn't have the cash for a house, and I made so many characters that I didn't have a "true" main shard. I also played most on the Test shard because I enjoyed setting my skills and (get this!) I really thought the server was just called "Test" and I actually sat around the bank collecting things people dropped. When they wiped the shard I was really upset. Finally I rested on Pacific (on Dial-up, on the East Coast, ugh). The housing rush was amazing to me. People let loose dragons, and housing areas with large monster spawns were deadly.
I spent most of the time in ghost form. I had no real clue what was going on. Later I actually placed a house in Tram on Moonglow island. Some how no one tried it (or it decayed). I turned it into a vendor house, but I had very few things to sell (I was a provoker. I know, carebear).
Does anyone remember when you could call the guards on someone in Tram who a para field in town? It only worked if you hired someone and walked them into it. The corpse of the person was lootable.
I must admit I abused that.
I spent most of the time in ghost form. I had no real clue what was going on. Later I actually placed a house in Tram on Moonglow island. Some how no one tried it (or it decayed). I turned it into a vendor house, but I had very few things to sell (I was a provoker. I know, carebear).
Does anyone remember when you could call the guards on someone in Tram who a para field in town? It only worked if you hired someone and walked them into it. The corpse of the person was lootable.
I must admit I abused that.
Comments
Ok I'l bite on some UO nostalgia.
This may be a little long, but maybe not if I can condence it as I recall
It was prolly in 99... My main was a mage/scribe mid 60's scribe, and I was usually found in Vesper selling recalls at the bank. My partner convinced me to come to Brit and sell with him by the mage tower, so I did. He was mid 50's scribe, there were one or two others there, and we all were about the same. We did this each night for a few months and got to know each other, formed a tiny community os street vendors. Fast forward...
So as time passed I was getting closer to GM, selling gate scrolls now, and casting energy field at the entrance to the mage tower now and then to both train and slightly disrupt traffic in and out of the reagent shop there. We had gotten to know the spot very well by then, the passers by to the graveyard above, the smithy shop to the west, and the bank to the south. The healers were close so we were getting to know the thieves fairly well too, and got good at watching our pockets.
It was really a bustling spot and very real with walkup business and the distraction of thieves. We'd chat while mana regenerated (this was before the meditation skill), and advertise our wares (not spamming, just now and then as people passed by). We had our prices set, 45 gold for recalls and +10 gold per circle up to 6th. I was now doing 7th and 8th Circle as I was nearly GM scribe by now. My prices were 85 gold for gates, and 100 gold for 8th circle spells.
Granted some player npc vendors would sell for a little less, but we were in town and scribed to order. Plus I did fail a lot (the 7th and 8th circles) so had to keep my profit margins up.
We had a couple new guys come to sell with us, we did'nt know them nor they us, but they tried to take business by selling recalls for less. We had a little price war going on until we reached a compromise of 45 for small orders (up to 10 scrolls) and 40 for bulk orders (10 or more scrolls). We soon became a good group of freindly merchants.
Then one day this guy comes up and wants me to sell him a couple EQ scrolls, I tell him my price of 100 gold each, and he refuses. He did'nt realise I was the only one that had the skill to scribe them.
So instead he says "Ok i'l ask some of these other guys here and get them for less"
My reply "Suit yourself, but the price will go up to 110 gold each if you do"
He act's pissy and makes a full circle of the square asking for EQ scrolls from each vendor.
I'm laughing, my buddy is laughing, and all the other player merchants are laughing as they see this guy trying to beat my price.
He returns, and says "ok 100 gold, you got a deal"
I say "nope, 110 gold now remember?"
He whines and complains and I tell him that was the deal... (I really did'nt want to do the scrolls anyways, because I had a large order of recalls I was working on) So actually I was providing him more of a service than making a sale.
Anyways he agrees and I tell him to return in 15-20 minutes for the scrolls...
It was one of those moments where you really felt proud of the work it had taken to gain skill in a craft. To be one of the only ones available in an area to fill a request, and also to be able to (within reason) set your price.
I became a GM scribe before meditation skill trivialised mana regeneration.
To become a scribe you had to have both magery skill to cast a spell successfully, and scribe skill to create the scroll. Failing to scribe cost you reagents, mana, and the blank scroll, Training these skills of course cost you much much more in time and ingredients. The skill and the accomplishments then were not trivial to the player. They may have been unknown to the customer not aware of the costs... but there were'nt a lot of scribes at my level. Many did'nt want to invest the time or gold to get there.
I miss that in todays games...
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game
What I listen to
Yeah, good memories in this game. I havn't played it in over 2 years or however long its been since the destruction of the game. I mean the age of shadows expansion.
My favorite moment in the game was when you could train up chickens to kill dragons. Nothing like an unstoppable chicken.
I'll add in myself.
I was new at this point, it was like my 5th day in UO. Housing was already an issue and you could NOT find a spot anywhere. I remember I wanted a house bad, but did not have the cash. I didn't understand how the whole land system worked and how to place a house. I remember I found an area just north of Minoc (the huge field) with houses everywhere. My buddy had several houses up in that area. I was standing around until I met this guy, who was named after a famous singer, forgot the name. But he was so nice. He started talking to me as did I. Remember, this was the first real MMo, this was so amazing to talk to someone. We talked about how the game is so free and fun. Then somwhere I mentioned I wanted to buy a house one day. He said "I'll be right back" He then teleported out and was gone for a second, until he came running back to my area. he handed me a deed, I had no idea what it was. when I looked at it, it was a small marble house (sells for around 77,000 gold). I was shocked. He then said, goodluck finding a spot. Again, having no idea what I was doing, I double clicked the deed and an invisible house was on my screen...I clicked it in a spot that looked big enough and BOOM, the house was there. The guy was shocked. He couldn't believe that the house fit in there and that it was an actual spot. He congrats me, and we said our goodbyes. Never again did I see him.
I get sad at times when I think back to my old friends I used to have in UO in 1999. I always think "I wonder what they are doing now...i wonder if they remember me." I used to have a couple of buddies that I used to hunt with alot and we would just protect each other basically. In UO, friendship was different. You had to actually gain each other's trust and show that you are able to be a good hunter or protector. If you didn't watch your back, you could be killed and looted. That is why friends in UO were great. We would all watch out for each other, protect each other. There is no friendship in games today, like there was in old days of UO.
Sad thing is, that no other game, near or far, will touch our hearts like UO did.
Total time played: 9125 Days, 21 Hours, 29 Minutes, 27 Seconds
Time played this level: 39 Days, 1 Hour, 24 Minutes, 5 Seconds
Heh... my first day playing UO was my ultimate noob day now that I think of it. As I said before in other topics, I played it back in my friend's place. This is what happened basically.
Me : "Hey, cool, this is awesome. I'm gonna go kill a bunny."
Friend - Grinning.
Me : "Hmm... I'm not doing much damage. Ho...Wha...." Character : 'OoOoooooOOOooOoo'
Friend - Laughing.
Me : --slaps friend on arm-- "Why you laughing?"
Friend : "You might want to use something other than a wood training sword."
The doll would surely say, "I do not want to be human!" although her master wants her to be even more.
Ahhh, nostalgia. Like a fine wine, it only gets sweeter with age.
More often than not our stories will vary slightly from the truth.Only because we are the grandaddy gamers (with an equivalent grasp on our 'good times') basically telling our "war" stories when factions was a baby bred of the bastardized felucia, and that one time we got hitched in the Brit castle by a Rabii on a Llama and a significant other who had a questionable gender. Any time I speak with my good buddies, friends in my waking (not WoWing) life. Their eyes light up at the lightest hint of Balrogs and Nightmares. Dodging PKs at the crossroads, swearing to kill everything with a crimson name, only hours later taking up arms against our innocent brethren in the most mundane of locals like the Sewers. Ahhh, a tangent worthy of going off on.
The sewers!
In my early days, my time solely spent on non-test shards, I remembered popping my "grinding" cherry on multiple characters in the Sewers of britania. These were no colorful beasts that dropped fangs, paws and the occasional gold. These were slimey little toads, and giant rats, which the soul purpose of their life was to make my power hour a time of sincere happiness. Back when all the lands of Britania were bustling with theives, merchants and wizards, swashbucklers and bards, even the most meager of dungeons; the Sewers, held claim to being one of the most sincere attempts at fun, and my first real experience with nostalgia for any MMO. My first two friends, who, for years after, would remain my compatriots, showed me the path of the dark-side. They PKed my noobish little arse, yet something about them was different than your average l337 kill3r PK 2 PWNZOR bone-helml/hally/grey robe sort. They ressurected, let me loot my stuff, and continue to train. Soon after I endured what would probably be the most fun outside of a test-shard my keyboard and mouse ever witnessed me witnessing. I joined the band of warriors, led by a grandmaster mage (not your everyday sight in old-old UO). His name was Merlina, his close friend Shivan, and a few others that they commanded to do their bidding. There was a slight element of Roleplaying when we'd recruit complete buffoons (people willing to PK on freshly created characters), en masse, to dismount and loot even the royal, blessed black sandal wearing, Dragon commanding bastards, Lord SoandSo and HimandHer the Tamer. Along with other reds, blues, greys, theives, newbs, and Lord British himself if he'd ever dared.
In an essence, we were unstoppable. Believe it or not, UO was a game where you actually gained skill from FIGHTING other PLAYERS. So the more we killed, the more we lusted for blood and vanqs and gold. Hell, I even got adept taming from the horses that eventually abandoned their masters and we'd train to ride ourselves. At the apex of our brotherhood's history, we ventured into T2A. It was an amazing sight for myself, who'd hardly seen the east side of Britian itself, my home city. No 3d game can ever rekindle the immediate sense of amazement I had at looking at toads a dozen times larger than those I'd previously been slaying. Giant serpents, causing such oddities as green health bars (later to be dubbed poisoning) We'd spent almost a week and a half soulely in Britian, killing newbs and lords alike in the little hell of the Britania Sewers. Suddenly, outside our territory, the adventurers in us took over, and decided it'd be best if we explored ALL the lands that UO had to offer.
A week later my murder counts caught up with me, and I was Red. Nothing was more aggrivating as waiting for my friends to return from town with new recruits, and not being able to join them myself. I slightly remember being one of the last few stat-lossers, but that may be memories mixing with eachother. Regardless, time fell apart, and I moved on to mostly test playing.
Ahh the thrill. If anyone happens to have been playing back then, you might remember my guild as Lords of Khaos, I believe. It was led by the best PvPer I ever knew, BurN. Anyone in the britt GY would recognize a few names immediately, and soon mine own was one of them. Much more respected than myself were the likes of Jennylove (The dude) Balls Of Steel, Teriyaki (spelling?) , god, and gotochurchonsunday I believe. It's been so long, if someone could help me identify the rest then we'd have plenty more to talk about.
Another one of my fond memories is when the OSI Test-Center admins placed the first real "bosses" in UO outside our villa east of the GY gates. Literally, Lich Lords with quadruple their normal HP, and double their damage. Pheonix's, Purple blade spirits, Balrogs, etc etc. I felt truely involved in the game. It's sad to say, with such a weak yet imaginitive graphics engine, we havn't been able to dupe the likes of UO with a great 3d engine. I've never really played another MMO with decent housing, but nothing ever beat a line of hidden rangers on a second story of a villa patio suddenly opening fire on a shit-talking axer with a full set of invul plate and just imagining how hard he must be screaming as his screen hiccups and turns grey.
Blah, im getting drunker by the second, and my ramblings are starting to make less and more sense. Buh bye.
Holy crap dude, reading this, I was suddenly reminded of this one thing I read about so long ago.
Does anyone remember the time when Lord British himself was at the castle, and there was a bunch of people... and this one guy got banned from the game because he actually killed Lord British somehow? It had something to do with a fire field I think, I dunno. I can't remember if it was just a rumor or not.
The doll would surely say, "I do not want to be human!" although her master wants her to be even more.
Or my favorite, when my friend Cory was begging in town for money or scrolls, and this guy told him he had a ton of free stuff he could have if he'd go to his house with him. They get there, suddenly a handful of other guys pop up and stand in front of the door, and they proceed to obliterate my friend. They were cool though, they resurrected him.....only to kill him again. Good times.
|Or how can you beat unleashing a summoned daemon on a guy outside of the city limits because he was irritating you? God those were the days.
This was back in the 'Golden Age' of UO mind you, before all the useless expansions and shard splitting nonsense.
I played this game since it's release with a good friend of mine. We made one character, Traven, and we both controlled him. I had the keyboard, and he had the mouse. Now this may sound strange, but believe me it was a very efficient method of playing and gave us a distinct edge over our peers more times than i can count. At the time only my friend had a computer, so thats why we shared.
So anyways, i guess you could call us 'part-time pker'. We weren't devoted to it, but if an opportunity presented itself . . .
So one day we're in some dungeon (Despise i think, but maybe Covetous) playin around with the tracking skill. At this time we were an Adept swordsman, but started getting pretty decent with tracking. So we're in this dungeon killin stuff and another lone warrior approaches us and asks to join up. We agree and tell him we're a tracker and he says "Great, you point, i'll kill". We pair up and start fighting. As time goes by and we start to get bored, we did a track check and saw that there was a dragon directly north of us. When our hapless teammate asked us if the way was clear, we of course said "yeah nothing too bad up there". So off he goes, while we kinda stay well back. He disappears off our screen for a second (my friend and i are snickering to ourselves all the while) and then comes running back towards us, with a fireball at his back! The poor guy died at our feet. His ghost appears and we say we can't resurrect but we'll guard his body til he can get back. So his ghost runs off and we promptly loot everything he had on him. And he had some good loot too
At that point we decided to get outta there and deposit our spoils at the bank in town. Now we always ran around naked because we discovered that you were far less likely to be attacked by other players if they thought you were doing a corpse run and therefore had nothing to loot. Just outside the dungeon, we happen upon some other guy guarding a dead body of a friend of his. As soon as we appear he tells us to leave it alone, so of course we start looting shamelessly. Didn't take but a few seconds work and we cleaned the body of all equipment. His guardian immediately starts to attack us but we're naked so we're trying to fight him off while we get on some armor! Turns out he wasn't very good cuz we killed him with nothing but leather leggings and a scimitar! Needless to say when he got back to his body there would be nothing of his gear left waiting for him
damn english
Some of my UO moments...
One day I hear about UO, I waited and waited, finally beta came and I was accepted. Lag was so horrid at times that you couldn't even move. The server was reset every few days, just about the time I'd manage to get anything productive done it would reset and I'd lose everything.
I remember mining outside of brit one day, no combat skills whatsoever and I got PKed and lost hours worth of smelted ore. A few days later I ran into some friends from other games, they were PKs, so I joined them and figured out that it was so much easier to PK than it was to play legit.
One day I find a war hammer of power, this was back when the bonus damage was +5, +10, +15, +20 and +25 (which was later changed to +1, +2, +3, +4, +5. OMG the +20 hammer owned, I'd 1 shot nubs, and 2 shot just about anybody else.
I remember when you couldn't find mandrake anywhere (needed for lightning bolt), and CORP POR whatever the spell was (energy bolt?), it was bugged and did crazy damage, so me and my PK buddies walked around slaughtering everybody in sight with it. Eventually the GMs got pissed at us for killing nubs so one showed up and called us "pussies." So I shot off a CORP POR at him and almost killed him. He said we shouldn't use that spell because it was bugged. We explained we couldn't find mandrake so we had no other choice. He agreed to sell us a mountain of mandrake, so we gave him all the gold we'd made from killing people that day and got huge stacks of mandrake. I was so happy I went to the nearest mining area. Dressed in all black plate, I humbly asked the miners to spare me some gold since I was broke (well I didn't have any gold on me). One kind sole came up and gave me all his gold, 26 gold if I remember correctly. Then I rained down lightning bolts on all the greedy miners who refused to donate to my cause, I killed 10 or 12 of them, the guy who donated of course spared. He told me he knew something was up....smart fella
I ran into that guy again in Shadowbane, he said I changed his MMO experience...he became a PK.
Back in the day you could put exploding traps or poison traps on boxes. I had a GM trapper or whatever the skill was called, so I'd put a big nasty trap on a box, then "accidentally" drop it at the brit bank. Of course some greedy nub would snatch it. I'd ask for it back but of course nobody would fork it over. I'd beg, I'd plead, eventually I'd say "ok you can have the box but please let me have the robe inside" then, without fail, BOOM they'd open the box, die, and everybody would loot their stuff. The poison traps were even more fun, because people would run away and the poison would just eat away at them while they begged for help but nobody would ever help anybody, they'd just follow them and wait for them to die and take their loot.
One day we figured out you could drop a portal just inside the bank in such a way that you couldn't see the portal until you walked through the door, at which point it was too late you were already being ported. Of course the portal lead to an distant place, far far away, usually on some island or something. And of course me and my PK buddies had a group of people there waiting to kill them...usually before the lag of portaling wore off. Oh god we got rich. Eventually the GMs would threaten to thow us in jail. One day the GM said there were no less than 100 people stuck as ghost on a little island as ghost because of us, LOL.
Remember when you could peek in someones bag and go from Dread Lord to Great Lord? Oh that was a riot. We did use that bug for some good tho. After PK'ing for a while and filling our bags, we'd peek until we hit Great Lord then recall to town and head to the forge. Once there we'd just start thowing out all the gear we didn't want and all the nubs thought we were swell people.
Then there was this one time when metal armor multipled the damage done by the basic low level flame ball spell, whatever it was called. You could one shot anybody in plate armor, that was a riot. Fully plate clad guy with a big halbard sees some naked dread lords....BOOM dead, haha, that was too much fun. GMs also warned us about exploiting that bug. We told them we weren't exploiting, their game was just buggy. They couldn't do squat to us and they knew it.
Then there was the one time me and a buddy were actually thrown in jail for doing the bank portal trick (I honestly think the jail was invited for us). We couldn't move, we couldn't cast, we couldn't use weapons, we couldn't even talk unless the GM let us, but we could throw exploding potions...funny how pissed off a GM gets when you kill him....especially when you are in jail and supposidly unable to do ANYTHING. HAHA.
At one point we setup a house right outside of a dungeon and claimed the dungeon for ourselves. We'd let people use it if they paid us a toll...but oddly nobody ever did. We'd just sit in the house and shoot through the windows...too bad the suckers outside couldn't see inside to target us. We did that so much that GMs would regularly come by and blow up our house, but we'd always have another one ready to throw down. One day the GM got so mad at us that he spawned a ton of high level monsters right on top of us. So we just ran in the house and killed them from the safety of window targeting, haha. THe GM would try to talk us into leaving the house, but we knew that he couldn't blow up our house if there was someone in it.
Back in the day when the peek bug still worked we perfected town killing. We'd get 3-4 guys, strip naked except enough reagents to cast 1 energy bolt each, we'd all target one person, we'd have another standing by the victim. We'd all nuke at the same time, then the one standing by the target would ninja all his loot before anybody else could.
Poisoning apples was great fun too. Poison apple, drop it by some guy with a horse, he'd grab the apple then feed it to his horse, then run away crying after his horse died, LOL.
Remember when you could work up your magic resist by running back and forth through a wall spell, like flame wall or force wall or whatever it was called. GM resist rocked.
And finally, towards the end of my UO days, I had a full set of the most lame looking armor you could imagine...but it all had great stats, to match it I had a little 1 handed axe that looked exactly like a nub weapon. I'd sit on this log in the middle of the road. As people came on screen they'd see the bright red DREAD LORD over my name. Some were "smart" and they'd run around the section of road I sat on....of course I wasn't alone I had friends hiding stealth in the woods, friends with big bad crossbows. Anybody who did actually make it past the crossfire of crossbows, I'd hack to little pieces with my uber axe of lameness.
Oops, one more.... Back in the day we weren't completely evil, we'd be nice sometimes. We'd camp in front of a dungeon for hours on end, there would be cut up bodies, half clothed bodies, any kind of body you'd imagine. We'd let nubs take their fill...if they asked nicely, which surprisingly many of them did. But we'd also kill anybody who asked "what happened here?" and you wouldn't beleive how many people would actually stop and ask a big group of Dread Lords "what happened' when they'd see a huge pile of bodies.
In short, that game was so fun, mainly because of the exploitable bugs.
Back then I had so much more time, though I remember having to play it on 56k and putting money in a tin next to the PC for my parents to play longer since it was pay as you go dial-up!
It's actually amazing to think of the things the game allowed you to do when you compare to where we are now...Only now TEN years after it's launch, and even longer from it's conception, we are getting games like UO with non-instanced player housing, sailing, ship construction and in-depth crafting. UO was a game not based on a linear leveling and limited class system, it actually had more in-common with Morrowind/Oblivion's open-plan skill system, yet for years after it's launch, all we have seen is the same bland level/class systems that have been regurgitated a million times over since EQ. I'm not gonna go on about stuff that countless other people have already stated, but UO pre-trammel really was something special. It was a game you respected, because if you didn't, you would soon pay the price. You wouldnt trust to wander out in the vast wilderness without protection, if you did you ran the risk and more often then not you paid the price.
I remember mining along the Serpant's Spine mountains near Britain, meeting a felllow miner, greeting him.... only for him to stab me in the back and steal my ore after hours of slogging - I felt betrayed, furious and yet it was fun and astonishing at the same time that a game could be this entralling,to instill such emotion in you - the complete opposite to the boredom experienced in MMO's today.
Other hilarious memories such as the bastards who would trap box's with high level spells and leave them around Britain Bank as bait for newbs and dumb rich players to come, open them up - dying instantly and being looted by dozens of players all furiously running to drag what they could off the corpse of the poor guy...but he never made that mistake again, we all learnt the hard way in UO :P
The game had character and quirks, it wasn't bug free and things wern't as streamlined as well as could have been, but it was logical and you learned to love the system, the graphics, the UI.
Me and my mate had a house on Ice Island where we would mine rare ore veins till the cows came home...it wasn't the safest place to have a house, and we had a neighbour who was notoriously deadly for PK'ing and often he would catch us with our pants down hauling ore back to our smelter in the house...one day we got our revenge and ganked him, but moments like this are priceless. The sheer tention of combat & death was fantastic, knowing that everything on your body would be looted in seconds should you die...at face value people are against the idea, in practise it gives you respect for the game, and you enjoy a game a lot more with respect.
One more memory i'll leave you with is when once my mate was showing me around his new house and he'd bought a new ship and we decided we wanted to go do some coastal mining out on the seas straight onto the ships deck - just minding our business and earning some gold. Well, as a miner you would be pretty much naked, since you needed to be as light as possible to carry more ore. Unknowingly to us, a thief had seen us waiting to board the ship and had hidden near the plank, as my mate opened the plank to let us board the ship, I ran on and so did the thief, he instantly began sailing the boat leaving the shore and my buddy stranded on the coast...because he was the owner only he could ban the guy from within the boat and I was stuck on this thing with a thief, chasing him around the deck with my Halbard swinging furiously at him to try and get my mates boat back, this guy not only managed to avoid my swings but also successfully navigate the boat, my mate was going mental not knowing what was happening! I can't even remember how it ended, however it was both hilarious and tragic...but that was UO, my mate had simply unlocked his boat for a second in the wilderness and he paid the price...
It's all about memories, and I tell you what, after playing EQ, EQ2, AC2, WOW, DAOC, EVE, VG since then...there are few moments I can remember as vividly. With UO I could go on all day with tales, the game just had soul.
Well not really, the first year was crazy because of the bugs and exploits, but not nearly as fun as it was later when they cleaned it up, but still had the harsh penalties and rules. I mean yeah there was a LOT of stuff wrong with UO first year, and even with all of that crap, it was a LOT of fun to play and very immersive.
When they had most of that stuff fixed, the game was golden, and far better than what exists today, even with 2D graphics... it just blows everything else away in terms a broad scope and depth in meaningful gameplay. Now well... it's just as bad as the other games that it's trying to be like.
They never should have changed it. people will come and go, but it would have been far more popular than it is now had it not changed.
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game
What I listen to