Essay Contest!!

About nine months ago, one of my best friends, Dave, mentioned about getting back into Ultima Online playing on a free shard UO:Forever. He has been working in NC and we had only gotten the opportunity to hang out on limited occasions since college. Since he was getting back into the game I figured I would look into it. I downloaded the client and started playing . . .

During the first few minutes of logging into the game, I was hit with a blast from the past. “I remember this game, I’ve played this before.” A game I haven’t seen or played in almost 20 years came rushing back. I was an adolescent off of school for the summer. My cousin had just picked up a brand new online game called Ultima Online. I remember hanging out at his house taking turns running from the healer (we died a lot) up into the forest where we were attempting to take out a wolf or a bear. For the life of us, we could not figure out how to be successful at this game. As we all know, every time we died the struggle to get back to our corpse was real. Needless to say, we were both too young to have a steady income, so the month subscription that came with the game and ran out. We didn’t have a method to keep playing at that time, I didn’t realize I’d be back in that same world some 20 years later.

Looking back at those last 20 years or so, I see how I have grown. I’ve went from the carefree attitude of my preteen years where I was ignorant and naïve to where I am today, a mechanical engineer who is renovating a house and going through grad school on the side. Through all of this time, fantasy RPGs have been there and are still used as a pastime and as a method to relax. As I go through the memories, which there have been a lot of them, the best ones are not beating this monster or doing this raid, but the friendships I have made in this culture and with so many players.

Since playing UO back in the late 90s, I have tried my own plethora of MMOs along with tabletop RPGs. What I remember best about those is the people I was playing with and the amount of time I would spend hanging out with them both in game and outside of game. I remember the tabletop sessions where we would hang out on the front porch (leaving) for an hour talking about what the session had just done. I remember messaging buddies talking about strategies and character builds on instant messenger or otherwise. I remember the moments out of game and interacting with the people that have made this game and this culture what it is.

So as much as this is my memorable moment of UO it is as much to all of you. It is the admins and the players, and the culture that makes this game what it is. (Even if I do hate the amount of PKs I see in dungeons at times) [Like all of them]

Whether with you as a comrade, against you as a PK or griefer, or as a rival going after the same loot, here’s to you: Cheers!!

It was a Friday back in 2000, and I was barely ten. My uncle Mike, had me over and we were using his windows 98. Mike was playing as a treasure hunting mage. He was farming the evil mages in Shame, trying to get enough reagents to train his magery. I was enthralled, and I wanted to try my hand at the game.

My first character was a basic Miner. I had set up the character on Lake Superior. It took me about an hour just to get used to the controls, and I went out mining north of Britain. I spent nearly two hours filling up my pack horse with iron, when I encountered my first red. I didn't have any defenses, nor hiding and I was murdered. That was the first time I felt my heart pound, sweat dripping from my brow. I was hooked and I wanted to become a well known black smith.

Grinding for three months with my uncle was the first step to this journey. We needed to buy a home, and we spent our time in shame killing Scorpions, and Earth Elemental's. Once we saved up two hundred thousand gold, we bought ourselves a mining house along the mountain of shame, it was our first real victory.

On my eleventh birthday, my mother purchased our first computer. It wasn't a fancy computer, it was a HP with windows 98. My uncle surprised me with a copy of Ultima Online second age, and he paid my first year to play.
Thus began my life long addiction to Ultima Online.

Ok so this is a good little story that happened when I was a freshman in high school so about the year 2000. I used to come home from school every day and hang out in Moonglow with the same people. There were probably 30-40 of us that frequented Moonglow and we had little cliques among us. My clique was kind of the store-brand UO player clique. None of us had big houses or fancy rares or anything like that, but we had a good time with the game anyways. Well, we had a girl in our group named Emerald and she was the biggest sweetheart ever. We were all teenage boys so of course we wanted pics of her. She finally shows us and well she was not very attractive. It didn't matter, though. We liked her she was part of our crew and a great person.

Skip ahead maybe a month or so and we're still doing our thing. Some drama happened and I don't recall exactly what ignited the fight but this girl from another clique, Misty, got into it with our girl, Emerald, and you know how girls are they got super nasty towards each other. Misty got ahold of Emerald's pic and started calling her fat and ugly. It was really mean. Emerald didn't play much after that because she was embarrassed and obviously someone had shared her picture with Misty and then Misty used it against her. I still talked to Emerald on ICQ and tried to get her to come back though she was hesitant.

So now my clique is pissed off. We don't like how Misty treated her and then gloated when she noticed Emerald wasn't around. We were talking one day and one of my friends said, "man, wouldn't it be something if we could get Misty's nightmare?" A little backstory or trip down memory lane. Misty had a pure nightmare. In the year 2000, at least on Napa Valley, they stopped spawning pure nightmares. There were maybe 5 or 6 on the entire server and misty had one. So I tell my friend yeah, that would be great. So I started concocting my evil plan.

I went to my log cabin which was outside Minoc. I got on my crafter and I crafted tables, chairs, plates, silverware, candles, etc. I then bought food and wine from the provisioner and took it back to my cabin. Once I rounded everything up I made a romantic dinner setting for two people. That part of the plan was done. Next I made a new character. I think I named him Moose. Anyways, I hung out in Moonglow on my alt until Misty showed up. Sure enough, Misty showed up. I engaged her in conversation and told her I was like a secret admirer with a crush on her. She played along and wanted to know who I was. I didn't tell her and then I left. I did this a few more times, the curiosity was getting to her so I told her to come back to my place I want to show her my house.

So we get to my house. I had cheapo rare deco on the first floor which she pretended to admire. I then told her let's go upstairs. Once we got there she saw the dinner scene I had arranged. I told her this could be our first date and to have dinner with me. I sat down at the table and asked her to join me. She walked over the chair on her mare and realized it looked funny so she walked a couple steps away and got off her mare and told it to stay. She walked over to the table to sit but I just banned her ass and trapped her mare in. She tried to make it follow her but it wouldn't listen to her commands.

Hours pass. Now we are chilling at the bank just waiting for it to go untame so we can tame it and give it to Emerald. Misty shows up, she starts freaking out. She says shes quitting the game. I sent Emerald a message on ICQ excited and told her what we had done. I told her we were going to give her the mare. Emerald logs on and comes to the bank and sees this dumb Misty chick throwing her items on the ground and Emerald told us guys, don't do this. Just give her mare back I don't want anybody's game ruined. I couldn't believe it. I told her no at first but she started really pressing us to give her the mare back. We told Misty not to be a b*tch anymore and give us some gold. She gave us a little gold supposedly all she had. We gave her mare back. Moral of the story: don't be a b*tch, Misty. Emerald rules.

THANK U FOR LISTENING.

Somewhere, along the time-frame of the years 1999-2000, I was introduced to the world of Ultima Online. My brother had told me about the game and showed me the gameplay. Being not but a pre-teen at the time, I was in awe at how vast the world of Ultima Online was. The countless things you can do! You feel like crafting something? You go on a resource gathering spree! Whether it be mining Ingots, skinning for leather, killing sheep/picking cotton for cloth, chopping wood from trees! You name it! There are countless possibilities that this game brought into light. My brother lost interest in the game rather quickly because he stayed in Moonglow running on foot back and forth from graveyard to kill undead to the Moonglow inn to log back out. With him being 7 years older than me it was hard to convince him that there was so much much more to what he experienced to the game than what he did. This game is endless, there is no real "end" to it, and that is one of the main things I love about Ultima Online. I have left off and on to play games such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. They had their time in the spotlight but the game I always return to is Ultima Online. "THE" Game where if you die, you lose all of your belongings, Player Vs. Player is based on skill itself, not what tier armor/weapon you use. Just one of the countless things you can do in this amazing game. Feel like hunting down some treasure chest? Go get you a treasure map and use your memory of the vast world of Brittannia to go dig it up! Feel like using boat to do some SoS's? Grab you a sextant and sail away! Feel like going through the monotony of raising your Animal Taming to be able to use WhiteWyrms/Dragons/Nightmares to help you kill stuff? Then it is worth it in the long run! I remember the days of the "Delucia Invasion" on OSI. The thrill of fighting the orcs that were invading. The excitement of when you looted that rare "Scout's Bow" after trying to track him down because he teleported and hid when he got down to a certain % of life and had to listen to where his grunting was coming from to be able to reveal and kill him. Raising your melee skills? The bone wall! Everyone remembers that skeleton knight wall in deceit where everyone teamed up to crossheal with bandages as the skeleton knights in the passageway continued their onslaught!Thats one of my fondest memories of when I was young. The faction PVP on the Test Centers was also very fun! Everyone using 56k internetspeed, using manual macroes in the UO client itself which made the Battlefield equal. Fast forward to 15 years off and on of ********:uoforever, now to UOForever which is my now my favorite and only server I will continue to play. This is the server I should have been on from its start. I feel the nostalgia as I had back when I first started my adventure on Ultima Online playing UoForever. I would like to thank you all for hosting a content filled/constantly updated server. I appreciate all the hard work and effort that goes into this server. From a very dedicated player. Thank you to the staff that keep it going !

The year is 1997. I am 10 years old, nearly 11. My older brother and I take the bus to future shop (the electronics store) to buy a copy of Ultima Online with my pickle jar full of allowance money. I unceremoniously dump its entire contents on the counter in front of this poor young lady. We helped count. The next 2 or 3 years of our lives had just been decided with that pickle-smelling change.

The server was Napa Valley, character name: "Burger King" because I was such a little fat ass. Alright, that's enough backstory. One of my favourite moments when it comes to UO was all the unique griefing that used to take place. So harsh and eye-opening by its nature - think 3 tile island gates after being pk'd in despise.

But one of the griefs / exploits that really stood out from the rest was the doorstep glitch. OSI had decided in a recent patch to have non-friends flag grey when standing on others' doorsteps. This led to some underhanded and utterly hilarious tactics to be employed by reds and non-reds alike in the pursuit of them phat lewts.

My brother and I would stand on the brit bank roof spamming "HOUSE DECAY - PHAT LEWTS CHECKITOUTGUISE"

And more than half of them would run right through that gate, not knowing what was actually on the other side.

Water barrels and an An Ort. And like 3 or 4 little kids ready to Kal Vas Flam on you. That's what was actually on the other side.

The other half were smart enough to put their shit in the bank first. We always res'd / gated out, as we still do now when we go redpk'ing, my bro and I. We're 31 and 33 now and we're still pretty shit at pvp - but at least we outgrew the scamming, right? right.

Ok thanks for reading guys

What a great idea!

I'm going to enter, but not doing it over mobile.

I began playing UO with some guys in my dorm when I was a freshman in college. To me, the game was always less about mechanics, etc. and more about the people with whom I interacted. From sharing a 7x7 house way out east of Minoc with four other players to joining the Guild of Friends (the largest guild on any OSI server at the time), my experience was always about people.

In early 2001, I hit a bit of a financial snag and ended up deciding to quit UO to save a little money every month, so I gave many of my in-game possessions to people I considered friends and closed my account. Six months later I decided to return to UO and reopened my account. One of the first experiences I remember after my return was being banned from my old villa by the very person to whom I had transferred ownership! Now, I had not requested the house back from him, nor had I asked him for any of the rares that I had left therein … I just wanted to use my old rune library to create a new set of runebooks for my characters to use. Now, so far this seems like a contradiction to the idea that the joy of UO was always the people, but the story doesn’t end there.

A day or two after being banned from the house, a former guildmate heard about what had happened and offered to let me use the second floor of his tower as my temporary home. He went further and helped me reestablish my in-game finances through treasure hunts, lich hunts, and even some excursions into Hythloth. In a very short time, I was back on my feet with a new house and replacements for the equipment and runebooks that had been lost. To me, this is the essence of UO. There are some bad apples (not all of whom are red or in the thieves’ guild), but most people I have known are decent people who are willing to help another player when they’re down on their luck. As a matter of fact, many of the reds and thieves I have known are also pretty decent folks if you get to know them (one of the guys I shared that 7x7 with was our neighborhood red).

I’ve only been on this server for a short time but have already had some very positive experiences (getting PKed but not looted when they realized how noob I was or a neighbor welcoming me to my new house with a lot of equipment). UO isn’t just about the game mechanics, it’s about the people.

It may be difficult to share the memories of a 20 year old MMORPG with people unaware of how deep the rabbit hole really goes but it is not difficult to explain them, at least not for me. I find it rather easy with such a brilliantly unique and engaging mixture of human roles, conflicts and creativity, all of it driven by living people who somehow found the same virtual world at their fingertips and decided to log on. If you keep logging on, that just makes it even better for everyone.

I played Atlantic in the late 90s when virtual real estate commanded ludicrous prices on eBay due to land shortages while dungeons were overflowing with blue players, having to wait in line for your turn at the lich lord in Deceit. I played numerous free servers and witnessed more than a few server births and deaths, each with their own unique flavor of hype, mania, loss and tragedy. Contrary to the name, UO Forever can not last forever, just like the sun will eventually burn out and everyone you know someday will die. But until that day, I don't know what's going to happen the next time I log in or the time after that. This may be my final UO resting place but the mirrored dynamics of life are what make this bunch of pixels and IP addresses so viscerally endearing.

As an adolescent, the concepts of Stealing and Player Killing were just so liberating for someone unaware of how to move ahead in their own life. To be the bully, to hold the power of "haha thanks for the gold" over someone you knew was real, was intoxicating. It felt good but it was not a healthy moral compass when the emotion of victory was so gleefully at someone else's expense. You can commit to those actions in a virtual game without being a bad person but everyone has different motives. Some people take from others to profit, others do it out of cruelty and there are many shades in between. I won't judge you. My peak moment was convincing someone selling an L-shaped two story to deed up their house on Atlantic because I would buy something larger, a home I was convinced would fit...the ol' Galad trick. I was waiting hidden, placed my house immediately after they redeeded theirs and was inside and logged out before they even knew what had happened. They pleaded with me, I laughed, I had my dream house and I later sold it on eBay. I was thrilled and yet, today, I regret it.

The advantage (or disadvantage) of UO is that you can disconnect and reconnect at will. Maybe that guy blew off the loss as soon as he logged off that night. Maybe he got drunk. Maybe he hurt himself. I'll never know but I can assure you this little piece of software coaxed some undeniably human emotions out of a few strangers that night.

On the flip side of that, I remember placing my first small house on Fire Island on Atlantic much earlier in my UO career and how exciting it was to mark a unique piece of virtual real estate as my own. One day, teenage me was moving some things into my first small home. A murderer ran by and narrowly got inside of my home. He killed me almost immediately. None of my friends were online. Few people had second accounts back then and I certainly didn't. As a ghost, I watched this criminal ransack my home, completely and utterly helpless to prevent the looting. I screamed. I probably cried. I beat my fist on the table until I ruptured my gel mouse pad. I sure didn't expect any of that to happen when I logged on. Like life, this world is unpredictable and merely a series of moments, one after another.

As an adult and father, I have mellowed out so much that I can't even bring myself to be mean to someone I don't know on this server. One of my first characters here was a thief and I rarely play him. If I ever stole something of true value, I'd probably search the person out and sell it back to the person at a significantly reduced rate without even gloating. Hell, I'd take installments if it were expensive enough. During the week-long invasion of Vesper, I watched a guy accidentally flag and get guard whacked in front of me in full Repond/Invulnerable leather and a Repond/Vanquishing halberd back when Slayer armor was a rare sight. I was the only one that saw it. I collected it all and gave it back to him and, in return, he gave me a nice little starting set of Repond leather. The potential profit meant nothing to me. It felt genuinely good to know I was going to lighten his mood and nothing more even if this guy had 500 million in the bank and the loss meant nothing to him in the grand scheme of things. Things can change your whole outlook after a few twists and turns and surprises in the real world.

When players acting like my adolescent self attempt to grief me on here, I am overly nice about it. At first. I don't call in my guild of rabid PKs who I don't even PK with that would love to rip you apart. I gently ask you to refrain from your mischief and if they still remain committed (they always do, don't they?), I will then devise a blatantly cheap-shot attempt at revenge and crush you with quick, surgical precision. Yes, I will insult you afterward and I will certainly dry loot you but justice is sometimes so rarely served in the real world that I do enjoy being the change that I want to see on UO Forever. On UOF, I do not PVP and I do not PK but rest assured that I lovingly cherish those moments of slaying another in pure, justified vengeance. I suppose it's probably a good thing that reality tends to deter this kind of activity in society but, damnit, I watched you steal the gold off of the last two paragons I killed by myself and now somebody needs to feel helpless, crushed and in their rightful place. Remember, you did this to yourself.

I quite enjoy all of the quality content being added to this server because it keeps you people around and it draws new blood in. This game is nothing without humans. I can't speed run it. There's no point in collecting purposeless rare items unless there's someone to sell them to. Besides, I can't solo these RDAs by myself.

I do, however, wish we could patch that treasure chest menu in that eventually proclaims "Entering Britannia". I cannot tell you the world of emotions that are stirred up by remembering the sights and sounds of clicking through that menu unaware of what was going to happen after I was eventually logged in with a bunch of roleplayers, deviants, clueless saps and everyone else in between. Here's to some new memories.

My most memorable uo experience...

As a scoundrel, griefer, deviant, murderer, bone ar looter and just a general piece of sheeet i have had many memorable experiences...

One that comes to mind was back on the EA production shards during AoS. My brother and i had basically quit and moved to freeshards, but we still had tremendous lootz from pwning too many newbs (just like on UOF). We were messaged by a friend that they had sold these "rubble rares" to some shard cross trader from a large american server.

These "rubble rares" were cool event drops when magincia fell and certain mobs when doing their special attack would destroy surrounding buildings and change the terrain, i think 1 or 2 bits of the screen could then be picked up by players - it was pretty cool uo stuff tbh.

Anyways, just like anything of value in UOF we exploited the hell out of this and had acquired quite the set.

This basement dweller then spoke to us over messages. He was a complete tool of a yankee and completely full of his wizard wealth. We eventually agreed on a price for the sale - around 250 million (this was pretty substantial back then).

So this chump xfers over from a yank server and demands his wares forgetting that some of us have work/lives and don't play uo at 5am in mother's basement. Once we finally log in he is belligerent, however overly trusting.

He actually agrees to pony up the 250m first. In which case he transfers and comes to our castle (cuz we are uo ballers on all shards) with pack llamas in tow to collect his huge haul of "rubble".

Now we're sitting there for a bit on our reds (because we only play reds like real pvpers) looking at this dipshit who really just was a worthless human sickened with an online game pixel addiction and a serious case of self entitlement that would rival a single mother on welfare.

We start speaking over vent to our guild saying "this guy is such a bad human...." etc etc. So eventually we went "f..k it", killed the yankee, killed his pack llamas and banned him from our castle whilst keeping the cool qtr billion of uo gold.

Now... this is where it got strange...

At first, he jokingly laughs over messages thinking it's a joke. We start laughing at him. He still thinks it is a joke... we start telling him how erect our pe.... are and that rubble don't come cheap... and how he's trying to scam us.

Well... off this guy went...

At first it is abuse, then it gets wierd. He starts telling us our IP and how he's going to find us and get the local authorities on us for... wait for it... "Stealing his online property".... aka uo gold!

THEN his real claim was that his brother in law was in the FBI and we were really screwed now... how we've committed some bs crime and jail imminent...

We told him to "blow us" and blocked him.

To this day I'm still waiting to be extradited...

The funny part is we didn't need or want the gold. It's actually sitting there probably 8-10 years later on our inactive accounts rotting. It's just that this guy was such a POS, that we couldn't in clear conscious give him nice rare items.

I hope this traumatic scam gave this guy the incentive to better himself. If he's on UOF he's probably in werkt.

But that's probably my highest level scam. I'm actually very trustworthy, which I'm sure my entire guild can vouch for on any shard I've ever played.

For this story we have to go back 20 long years ago.....

flash back begins

It was approximately spring 1998. Alanis Morrisette was still on the radio, while The Spice Girls were busy dethroning her. The Nintendo 64 and Playstation had taken firm root in households everywhere. I was still confused why Rose did not let Jack onto the floating piece of ship wreckage. However, I did not let these things trouble me because I was huddled down all winter playing my new favorite game: Ultima Online. Little did I know that my troubles had just begun.

To put this story into context we must travel back just a little while longer. Yes another flashback. A flashback inside a flashback, if you will.

Flash back inside flashback begins

It was September 1997, I had just heard about this game called Ultima Online. It was in beta testing and I was very much interested. I signed up for the beta but learned that the disks were no longer shipping. Being on dial-up in those days, downloading something that filled an entire CD was not usually an option. While browsing the UO fan-websites looking for a way to get the beta version of the game, I came across a site with a person that was offering to send out disks for a few dollars. I quickly sent this person an email and waited patiently. It was less than two weeks until the game officially launched and I did not know if my CD would arrive in time. Everyday I checked the mail box but still no disk. The two weeks passed, it was at this point that I realized that my hopes were dashed for beta access. But that was okay because I had saved enough money to purchase the game.


Release day came and we headed to our local Software Etc and secured my copy of Ultima Online.

I raced home to install it on my “brand new” Packard Bell Pentium 75. That computer was my pride and joy. My grandfather had purchased it for me the year prior and it was time to put it to the test.
I put the CD into the CD-Rom and fired up the install. After it installed I opened the link to my ISP and listened to the sounds of computers talking to each other.

ping pong sheeeeshshehsh gung gugngngnng

I was in. Almost....just had to wait for a series of game updates. Then I was in. Finally.

I created a character and choose Trinsic as my starting city. As I logged in I was quickly enchanted. The colors, the sounds, the things, oh my the things! How do I interact with the things?!? It was a learning experience as I had never interacted with a game environment quite like this before. It took some time but I figured it out. The Packard Bell kept up with some frame skipping but nothing deterred me.

Eventually I made my way from Trinsic to the town of Britain. In those days when you would need your armor repaired you would go to the blacksmith and hand your armor (yes hand it all) straight to a player blacksmith. He would repair it all, hand it back and you would offer a tip. Well one day I met a nice fellow named Smithy Blue. He informed me that we could communicate outside of the game with a program called ICQ. I was amazed at this new type of chat program and quickly began using it for much of my gaming communication. I kept in daily contact with Smithy Blue. He helped me place a house inside the Britain city limits on the north east of town. I had been saving for quite some time now and was super happy with my new little stone field classic house. However that did not last.

It was not much longer after that, that the houses inside town were no longer allowed and I had to move. I had no where to go at the time and I asked Smithy if I could live with him for a little while. I setup shop in his large house with a patio. It was in the desert northeast of Britain. We spent our time killing scorpions and training our skills with this new program called UoAutoPilot. It was not uncommon for us to have several monsters trapped inside by boxes for training. After a while Smithy offered me a spot that he had found close to the large brick house he had placed in the jungle far south of Trinsic. I quickly grabbed a deed and headed to place my new house. It is at this point our flashback inside the flashback ends...

I filled up this new house with lots of treasures from camping Despise entrance while the PK's ran a muck. Smithy and I had grown pretty close and he had told me he lived close to me in RL. Around a hundred miles away. Then one day, out of the blue, Smithy asks me to check out this screenshot he had taken. He sent it to me over ICQ. I opened it but nothing happened. I waited still nothing. I thought my trusty Packard Bell was having issues. So I tried again, still nothing. I asked him to send it again which he did and I tried one last time and it still did not open. I told him there was something wrong and he said that it was fine, it wasn't that cool.

We played a bit more that day and then I set my macro for the night to train. I woke up the next morning ready to play. The internet always seemed to disconnect in the night so I sat down at the computer listened to the machines wailing at each other just like the million times before. Loaded UO and proceeded to type in my user name and password.

Ultima Online: The password is incorrect, please try again.
I must have missed typed it. I typed it again, this time slowly and more carefully.
Ultima Online: The password is incorrect, please try again.
I tried again. And again, and again.

Oh my god what is happening. I had heard about passwords being stolen but I did not know how they did it. Or that it had even happened to me. I was confused. I still had hope that it had not been hacked and just figured it was a problem with OSI servers. I was not sure what to do at first. I ran into the other room and told my grandfather what was going on. I said I might be hacked. Since he was the one who paid for the monthly subscription I figured he would want to know. He said “Someone better not have hacked you, we paid good money for that.” I assured him that the credit card was safe and that I could recover the account if it did get hacked.

A few moments later I had found the original CD jewel case with the license key and retrieved the phone numbers for customer support. I was still hopeful at this point that I had not been hacked. That my house and all its contents were safe and sound waiting for my return. After several prompts and waiting on hold which seemed like FOREVER. I was on the phone with a real live person. I told him what had happened and that I was not sure why my password had been changed. He said give him a minute and he would retrieve it for me. I waited about one minute and he comes back onto the line. He says “Sir, I have recovered your account password, it is.....”

WAIT FOR IT

“haxor”

I said “haxor?” He said “Yes sir, the password has been changed to haxor.”

My heart sank. I was truly devastated at this point. I quickly got off the phone and logged in with my new password. “haxor” The first thing I did was to check my house. It was ransacked. Almost everything was gone. All that really remained was furniture. I did not know what had happened. I loaded up Netscape and logged in to my OSI account, changed my password and then began to investigate. I quickly pulled up ICQ and messaged Smithy Blue. He was very sad for me and told me he would help me get my stuff back. I was so grateful for his help. I immediately started recouping from my losses. Mind you I was just a kid going to school playing UO. Then, a few days later it hit me. Like a TON of BRICKS. S.M.I.T.H.Y B.L.U.E, that son of a b*tch........

I logged in, I asked him, he said no “he didn't hack me”. I asked again. He said that he didn't even know how to do that kind of thing. I trusted him. I looked up to him. And I believed him. We had many other adventures together after that. We still shared the large brick house for storage and trained together on occasion. He eventually stopped playing as much but did manage to GM blacksmithing and a few other trade skills. Things that I thought very highly of him for achieving. As I grew older I played less and less but did eventually acquire a large two story close to Britain from my old guild. That was a nice house but was lost in a similar fashion one day. However that is a story for another day.

I occasionally look back on this and shake my fist a little at Smithy Blue.

Thank you, I hope you enjoyed

*Elements in this story are retold to the best of my memory.

The original tale I was going to tell I decided against as down on paper it less than a a third of the way in it's 20 pages long I am going to finish writing it for my own entertainment and if anyone wants to hear it when it's finished I will post it.
Instead I will pin point one small story about my greatest enemy who became my greatest friend I've made in any game.

Coming very soon

Crome please finish it. Personally I read all the stories with great joy. I think this contest was a great idea, motivating the community to share. Also this was a very fun experiment on writing fiction because in any fantasy text it is challenging to develop the story while at the same time teaching the reader about the unique world. But here we all share a fantasy world of which we already know quite a bit. So we can just say "I tried to cast a paralyzing spell to the approachin ogre lord but I was out of mandrake root" without worrying about reader understanding what the heck is all that. Good luck everybody!

Everyone that games in some sort of MMO has those moments and memories that they will never forget. Some moments are funny lines like, “Kill him and take his shoes” whenever a clan would raid another clan. Or a friend of yours just starting out running passed you yelling “HES GOING TO KILL ME!” and a couple seconds later a bear gives chase. Some moments are moments of generosity such as a community coming together to donate a new computer for a beloved peer. Other moments, may even be moments of tragedy.

West Bit Bank has always been and always will be the hub of UO activity. On a seemingly normal Tuesday morning after waking, I sat down at my computer with a bowl of cereal. My first class wasn’t until noon, so I had some time to kill. The first thing you do is always check the “ads” at Brit bank! We didn’t always have fancy house vendors and Discord to sell and buy. We had to squint to read the turd yellow txt spamming atop Brit Bank advertising their wares or check a message board. This wasn’t done in a timely manner! As the closer to the Bank you ventured, the more lag you experienced! Heaven forbid you get a phone call at any time during the game as the “call waiting” feature would boot you off the internet!

But this day as it turns out was not a typical Tuesday morning. Being Tuesday, there wasn’t a lot of activity around the bank, which meant less than normal lag. Eating cereal and typing to online guild members via in game chat and ICQ, I noticed a naked man running around. The Naked Man spammed a message that was confusing at first but would soon make sense. “THEY BOMBED THE TRADE CENTER!” Was the message he spammed over and over. He was ignored for the most part, or met with “STFU! What are you talking about?” messages. Very shortly, other messages and validation of the Naked Man’s words begin to come in. Guild chat, ICQ and AIM all began to ring in with similar messages. Brit Bank “selling” messages decayed away, making way for talks of what was going on. Within Minutes of the Naked Man’s initial message, we knew the World Trade Center had not been “bombed” but was hit with an air plane. How could this happen? I remember talking to guild members and people at the bank about whether the plane had a malfunction, or how a commercial jet could make such an error. News of a potential hijacking spread quickly as the media began to cover the events unfolding in New York. Seventeen minutes later, a second plane was crashed into the World Trade Center.

Shortly after my girlfriend (now wife) called me, telling me classes were cancelled and she wanted me to go with her to see her grandparents. I grabbed my keys, picked her up and drove an hour plus to her grandparents. Without smartphones the only way to keep up on events was radio news. As we walked in the front door of their house, the North Tower collapsed. And it was the most horrible feeling I’ve ever had. Just watching it made me sick. To this day I still have no idea what prompted my girlfriend to want to go see her grandparents, but it is the last memory we have of her grandmother.

The Naked Man’s message spam at West Brit Bank may not be my favorite memory of Ultima Online, but it is by far my “most memorable.” When people ask “Do you remember what you were doing on September 11?” My answer is always and forever be, “standing at Brit Bank.” I may be met with weird looks and have to explain, but that’s my response. The catch phrase for the tragedy was “Never Forget.” I will never forget the Naked Man’s words and how minutes seemed like hours and how hours seemed like minutes in the chaos of that day.

My most memorable moment of Ultima Online is a very hard thing to quantify in a short essay. For me it's a culmination and a collage of many different experiences and days.

What I think I'll do is just write about a person who showed me that this game was much more than just a bunch of people running around trying to kill each other, it was a real community with people of all types and mindsets carving out their own niche.

So here I find myself within the great city of Trinsic. This huge city was brand new to me and I felt like exploring it that day. I was already familiar with the capitol of Britain and even managed to check out the peaceful seaside village of Vesper. Trinsic was naturally the next place to go an check out for me.

There I am, a hopeless newbie mage who was trying to find his path. I'm running around this great city when I happen upon a rather mystical looking fellow by the name of Kerros, I believe. It has been many years and I hope my memory is accurate but we will go with that name. Here stands this figure about in the mage shop all dressed in off white from head to toe. He looked like a mage in every sense. A long grey beard and his wizard hat with a robe. I struck up a conversation with him since he could probably at the very least offer some words of wisdom for an practicing almost expert mage like me!

What became of a simple "Hello", changed my entire experience with the game. This veteran wizard could see my enthusiam for magic and informed me that he was looking for apprentices to train at his mage academy. This sounded like a wonderful thing that I was very much excited to be a part of that.

After a bit more conversation and some city sight seeing that Kerros had arranged, he opened a magical gate to the academy, which was based on Moonglow. I had only been there once before and had my ship stolen! So I wasn't real keen on this place but this is where the magic happened so I needed to be there. What I found was amazing though, he worked out of this tower which was FLOATING WITH MAGIC on the water off the coast of the island. I was very interested at this point.

Over the course of the next few days when I was in the town, I would run into Kerros naturally and we would go about exploring the world and go into training sessions at the academy. These training sessions were split up by the magic school, so Kerros would go over each spell, describe it's general uses an give a demonstration. By the time we were done me and my fellow apprentice were both ready for the next step. There was an issue however as Kerros would only take you under his tutelage further if you were pure of heart and without any malice....

Here is where I started to falter... and Kerros knew this of me and picked up on it. He even chastised me on more then one occasion for using the unholy arts to summon a daemon which he says is not something a pure an good mage should ever bring to his aid.

On the day of choosing his next personal apprentice I was there and in all white, except for my black shoes, which I thought I could hide. The wise old mage kindly reminded me on the day of choosing that I'm already starting off kinda bad as he could see my shoes were not up to spec if you will. Well when it came time to choose, I was not the one taken to train further to become a pure mage. Kerros knew who I was and where I was headed but he still trained me. He just knew I was a mage but had hoped I would use it for the betterment of the people of moonglow. Unfortunately for him though I had been corrupted by watching those who's names were in blood live a life of great fun an wealth.

That was the path that would be laid out for me. Kerros enjoyed training the recruits but I think his heart was a bit heavy when he discovered my using of daemons an even hanging around some of the murderous mages of the moonglow wizard tower. So the mage taken under him wasn't me and I was cast out of the academy for my multiple slights from purity.

Even still, Kerros was a great man and he took great pride in helping others even when they weren't of pure heart as he. And eventually when I took up a bloody name I never once used my power to strike down my mentor and the one who showed me how magic even works. I think it pained him when he saw I was not on the same path as him, but he still never shunned me or refused to speak with me like before. I just could not be a pure white mage like he and that was our difference.

This person formed a great community around him and he showed me how families could grow in this world and for a few years we had a great thing going. Eventually though with all games, real life is much more important an people disappear.

What Kerros showed me is that this was a wonderful community of many types of people coming together to share in it's glory an fun. I think Kerros just wanted others to be able to extract as much fun out of the game as he did. Funnily enough I found myself trying to replicate his teachings to others years later but in my own evil mage academy way. This game allows you the freedom unlike anything else to create a virtual persona and community that can be impactful for a lifetime.

My most memorable experience of UO is from a pure white mage by the name of Kerros who showed me there was more to this game then just pixels on the sceen, it was all the people behind everything, that's how the magic of the game works.
If you read all of this, thank you.

I started playing UO when I was a teenager and into my early twenty’s. I loved playing so much that many of my friends played also and we would hunt together almost every day. One day I found out I was going to be father. I knew my life would change but I had no idea how much. Once my daughter was born she was my world and everything I did was for her. I never touched another video game until she turned 15 several months ago. I raised a beautiful girl who loves to play video games as I did growing up. I would sit and watch her play game after game giving her tips and ideas how to solve the more difficult challenges she came across. Two months ago she asked me if I would play a game with her. I began to think about a game that would be good for both of us to play where we could do it together. I came across UO Forever and was amazed and so happy to find that UO was still around! Who would have thought that the game I loved so many years ago would still be around and doing awesome! While the game may have added some features sense I stopped playing it just made the game better instead of worse. Now that we are playing together day after day training together, hunting together, and sharing a house together I feel so much closer to her then I have in years. Teenagers can be difficult as they feel they no longer need their parents. The joy I get from showing my little girl all of the amazing places in the world I use to run is just amazing. I just hope we can enjoy playing together for many years to come.


Thanks for reading keep on playing!

Nice turn out. Thanks everyone who participated. I’ll announce winner Tomorrow. Probably do another one soon.

baseball dad said:

My most memorable uo experience...

As a scoundrel, griefer, deviant, murderer, bone ar looter and just a general piece of sheeet i have had many memorable experiences...

One that comes to mind was back on the EA production shards during AoS. My brother and i had basically quit and moved to freeshards, but we still had tremendous lootz from pwning too many newbs (just like on UOF). We were messaged by a friend that they had sold these "rubble rares" to some shard cross trader from a large american server.

These "rubble rares" were cool event drops when magincia fell and certain mobs when doing their special attack would destroy surrounding buildings and change the terrain, i think 1 or 2 bits of the screen could then be picked up by players - it was pretty cool uo stuff tbh.

Anyways, just like anything of value in UOF we exploited the hell out of this and had acquired quite the set.

This basement dweller then spoke to us over messages. He was a complete tool of a yankee and completely full of his wizard wealth. We eventually agreed on a price for the sale - around 250 million (this was pretty substantial back then).

So this chump xfers over from a yank server and demands his wares forgetting that some of us have work/lives and don't play uo at 5am in mother's basement. Once we finally log in he is belligerent, however overly trusting.

He actually agrees to pony up the 250m first. In which case he transfers and comes to our castle (cuz we are uo ballers on all shards) with pack llamas in tow to collect his huge haul of "rubble".

Now we're sitting there for a bit on our reds (because we only play reds like real pvpers) looking at this dipshit who really just was a worthless human sickened with an online game pixel addiction and a serious case of self entitlement that would rival a single mother on welfare.

We start speaking over vent to our guild saying "this guy is such a bad human...." etc etc. So eventually we went "f..k it", killed the yankee, killed his pack llamas and banned him from our castle whilst keeping the cool qtr billion of uo gold.

Now... this is where it got strange...

At first, he jokingly laughs over messages thinking it's a joke. We start laughing at him. He still thinks it is a joke... we start telling him how erect our pe.... are and that rubble don't come cheap... and how he's trying to scam us.

Well... off this guy went...

At first it is abuse, then it gets wierd. He starts telling us our IP and how he's going to find us and get the local authorities on us for... wait for it... "Stealing his online property".... aka uo gold!

THEN his real claim was that his brother in law was in the FBI and we were really screwed now... how we've committed some bs crime and jail imminent...

We told him to "blow us" and blocked him.

To this day I'm still waiting to be extradited...

The funny part is we didn't need or want the gold. It's actually sitting there probably 8-10 years later on our inactive accounts rotting. It's just that this guy was such a POS, that we couldn't in clear conscious give him nice rare items.

I hope this traumatic scam gave this guy the incentive to better himself. If he's on UOF he's probably in werkt.

But that's probably my highest level scam. I'm actually very trustworthy, which I'm sure my entire guild can vouch for on any shard I've ever played.

Click to expand...

holy shit what a cool story

Was Arch Daemon. Haevens killed me. What a day.

-The end-

Pls take into account that I am not a native speaker.

Bromista said:

holy shit what a cool story

Click to expand...

AoS release - Spring 2003

Magincia invasion/destruction - Fall of 2007

Guy telling story? Worse than the guy he fukt over and a scum bag for doing such.

Sounds like bullshit anyway lol

Sephid said:

AoS release - Spring 2003

Magincia invasion/destruction - Fall of 2007

Guy telling story? Worse than the guy he fukt over and a scum bag for doing such.

Sounds like bullshit anyway lol

Click to expand...

It was a true story and please form a que behind bromista for my fan club.

If you want a personalised message directed towards you - 1k dono or 160k.

Thankfully yours
Baseball dad