X-UO players come in!!!!

[Cuda1447]

After reading the WoW thread and how so many people thought it was great, I couldn't help but remember the good old days of UO. Pre-Trammel of course. UO was without a doubt the BEST MMORPG ever. Completely raw and hardcore. You mouth off to someone, you better be able to back it up cause they will kill you right there and take ALL your shiat. No levels and it was nearly impossible for someone to see how strong you were. Camp a road with your friends for 20 minutes and gank the unsuspecting noob riding his horse. Than kill his horse to be a b@stard!

How about the bone wall? Who remembers that? 10 people sitting in a wall of skeletons healing each other and killing these skele's to gain skill. Great fun, until a group of PK's gates in behind the wall. So now you've got skele's to your front and 5 PK's to your back. Luckily there are 10 of you, so maybe you can survive. WRONG!!!! Mass chaos and bodies dropping everywhere. Some people run, but they don't get far. They either get chased down by the PK's or tagged by a lich in the next room. That lich just so happened to get one of the PK's too. Now the lich loots the PK's Vanq Katana! WOOT! Icq all your friends and tell them to get to deceit NOW! You get a res and go lich hunting. The PK's gotten a res by now too, and he's got his 4 buddies with him. More chaos ensues, bodies everywhere.


Luckily you've trained the hiding skill. You just hide in the midst of the chaos. Everyones dead and the liches and walked off screen. Quickly, loot as much as you can before anyone comes back and recall to your house.



Ahhh. Now you've got regs to train your new mage, a fresh set of GM chainmail armor and of course a ton of heal pots for your next PvP encounter.




The thing about UO that made it so great was the risk/reward system. You wanted to leave town? You better be ready to defend yourself. Want easy training at the bone wall, others know it. They will come kill you there and take EVERYTHING. Want to use the best sword in the game? You better be the best with it, cause if/when you die, its gone. Anything worth doing also had a major risk involved. The game was so raw, yet so perfect. No sissy rules about pvp and stealing etc. Hell, back in the day if someone left their house key on their body when they died, you could take the key. If you knew which house it went to you could go there, unlock the door and loot their house.


Wow, I miss those days. That was a GREAT game and I don't think there will ever be anything quite like it.



oh, and FVCK TRAMMEL!

 

[Kev]

trammel?

 

[CrackRabbit]

Tamers and Tank Mages FTW...
Don't fark with the guy that has a drake or a nightmare...

 

[pontifex]

some of you might want to contact a mod because you apparently can't see the PC GAMING forum.

 

[TheAdvocate]

It seems absolutely archaic by today's standards, but UO was just an upgrade of the original NWN back on AOL in the mid 90's. It was based on the old "Gold Box" SSI D&D games. PVP was an unintended "glitch" of including friendly fire damage from spells in a game never intended to have players killing players. It gave birth to the first strong guild base in an online game (TSoY had a few, but it wasnt the same), and the better part of the game's areas became fair game to get ganked or duke it out.

All PvP fights featured npc mobs - as it was only possible to initiate the combat interface by engaging NPCs - so every fight essentially had 3 sides - two players or teams or alliances, plus random NPCs that would attack whoever the AI felt they should attack. A favorite fighting ground was the Dracoliches (undead dragons that packed a significant punch and could see invised players). Master PvPers weren't just good at clicking fireball every turn, they learned how to manipulate the NPCs to aid them in a fight, and there were a dozen or more tricks, plus some very quirky line of sight issues that had to be mastered in order to be an effective PvPer.

And the game had a unqiue feature added to it in a subsequent player-created (i know, can you believe AOL allowed that?) patch that I don't think has ever been duplicated: "tha chamba" a/k/a the death chamber. In the game's arena (in the Triboar area), a special "room" was created where players could challenge one another to a real death match. The room was coded to delete the character of anyone who died inside. It wasn't terribly time consuming to level a new character, which sofetened the blow, but you also lost ALL of your gear as well. Some players would add the (honor code) stipulation that the loser had to reroll as a female gnome warrior and wear a pink dress for a month. (aka "you've been gnomed"). I hesitate to think what that might be like in a modern game.

I loved jumping in to West Woods fights and then picking a side to help (usually the underdog). If you died, you lost at least some of your unequipped items (first death penalty in a pvp game?) and it was oh so satisfying to land a feeb (feeblemind) on a trash talking opponent (THUD!!), sending his drooling ass (Int 3, Wis 3, inable to cast spells or communicate) to the healer for a 5k gold fix. Or jumping newbs at the Beholder fights (Fluffy & Bunny) and bouncing their asses off the gate (each area had a starting point a/k/a gate that you'd rez at if you died).

There were dozens of little flaws in the game, but instead of hurting it, they made it better (for instance, mirror image and globe of invulnerability had lame graphical effects that didnt continue past the initial cast, so you had to keep track on your own of who was invulnerable to attacks for how much longer, and who had doubles to absorb effects). PvP was really a lot like live chess - a cold sweat hoping you were in the right position and making the right assumptions 3 moves ahead.

It would never have lasted, because even UO was a huge graphical step forward, but it sure was great in its day, and UO and every other game after it owe a lot to this relatively unknown precursor game. It was the primitive grandfather of all PvP fantasy MMOs.

 

[QuantumPion]

!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock

 

[QuantumPion]

I started playing UO in the beta test on atlantic, quit at the trammel/felucca split.

 

[novasatori]

lake superior
Played from release until trammel/fel

I remember using UOE on my dialup and fastrun/last target
back before last target had a range check hahaha EB 2 screens away ftw

 

[James Bond]

Originally posted by: QuantumPion
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock
!bank kill open guards trade buy sell lock unlock

LOL!

 

[James Bond]

I miss bonewall.

I miss UO in general. Why do they have to make that crappy 3D client?

I really wish they would create a whole new badass engine for it using the same perspective and everything, and go strait to '98 rules... I wonder how many people would play?

 

[kedlav]

chesepeake from T2A until Tram/Fel. Damn I was young then. Go order!

*Beam me up Scotty*
Kal Ort Por

 

[bfdd]

Trammel ruined the best part of my life =\

 

[Engraver]

I remember when I first started I got roped into joining a PK guild. None of us had skills above 50, and we went and attacked some people at Deceit or Hythloth's entrance. I was the only one with a horse, so while the others were dying I ran my red ass and hid in someone's tent. It wasn't 5 minutes before they found me, and they killed me and my horse .

This was before the notoriety revamp, so it was very very hard to lose your dread lord status. I spent the next week or so trying to use the pickpocket backpacks from the floor bug to get blue again (which didn't really work very well). Luckily on patch day, I turned blue again.


Another funny thing that happened was when I was hunting daemons in Hythloth. It was back when you could use chests and boxes to block monsters, then all you had to do was toss a blade spirit or an energy vortex down to finish them off. Somehow I managed to get killed and was trapped for hours in my box fort waiting for a GM to set me free.

Edit: Now I remember, a daemon spawned on top me, probably a GM's doing no less.


Abyss server was also super fun, as well as the one where they let you play as monsters.

 

[SilthDraeth]

Man, UO was without a doubt the best MMORPG. I started on Hokuto, then later played on Catskills.
On a related note, a site ran by a friend of mine was www.feluccasrevenge.com Sadly it appears to be no longer up, but it was tons of stories of him joining trammel guilds and killing all the members he could in each guild.

 

[Shyatic]

UO was the best game I ever played. Lots of fun and good times in it...

I'm waiting for Darkfall Online now, hopefully it will be decent.

 

[Boney]

Man this brings back so many memories ...... Even now when ever I hear someone talking about an online RPG or something close to it I always thing - I wonder if it is as good as UO was? Once EA bought it though and formed trammel, then all that other BS item/stat crap that came with it it died REAL quick.

Ultima Online was the beginning and end of my freshman year of highschool.

Lake Superior all the way....

 

[Balt]

I will take thee!

I remember back in the day some ass could set up a campfire by the bank and he would get flamed because it would raise everyone's camping skill at the cost of skill points in something else (because of the cap). This was before you could control whether you gained/lost skill points in a particular skill.

UO was painfully 'realistic' when it came to PVP. If you left the city without some friends you stood a fair chance of some bandits killing you and jacking your stuff. :laugh: After they introduced the stat loss for murderers who died I stopped playing, even though I didn't PK much. It seemed at that point like the game was going to leave behind its days of being the 'wild west'.

 

[novasatori]

Originally posted by: Engraver
I remember when I first started I got roped into joining a PK guild. None of us had skills above 50, and we went and attacked some people at Deceit or Hythloth's entrance. I was the only one with a horse, so while the others were dying I ran my red ass and hid in someone's tent. It wasn't 5 minutes before they found me, and they killed me and my horse .

This was before the notoriety revamp, so it was very very hard to lose your dread lord status. I spent the next week or so trying to use the pickpocket backpacks from the floor bug to get blue again (which didn't really work very well). Luckily on patch day, I turned blue again.


Another funny thing that happened was when I was hunting daemons in Hythloth. It was back when you could use chests and boxes to block monsters, then all you had to do was toss a blade spirit or an energy vortex down to finish them off. Somehow I managed to get killed and was trapped for hours in my box fort waiting for a GM to set me free.

Edit: Now I remember, a daemon spawned on top me, probably a GM's doing no less.


Abyss server was also super fun, as well as the one where they let you play as monsters.

reminds me of trapping ogres and stuff in houses and macroing stuff like archery and parry etc on them

or blade spirits in the wild between some boxes and then fighting them for parry

 

[natep]

I remember really wanting to get my mining skill up and my stockpile of ore, so I could blacksmith. Most mountain areas weren't by towns, so I hired my friend from school (we were only 12 and 13 at the time) to be my bodyguard, in exchange for free equipment and a big chunk of profits once I started.

It actually worked pretty well, he was pretty quick w/ the heavy x-bow and Corp Por'ing. He got GM mining too, but later dumped it.

It is weird to think that I played a game w/ so many risks and losses (and even a virtue system) involved when I was 12. I think it was actually a game that was good for a kid to play.

 

[Genx87]

Yes, I think UO will be a one of the kind game. I dont see any game company willing to put up the capital to bring a game so cut throat to market. I also dont believe there is a large base of people who would be interested in such a game today. Back then it was the only thing in town.

I had lots of fun in that game, truely an adventure.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

The thing is, it wasn't just the open PvP that made the game great. Case in point, open PvP servers and other open PvP games have failed entirely to capture the magic of UO.

Far too big a deal was always made of it. Primarily because it usually caught the newbies off guard and sent many of them flaily towards the exit with lots of bitter words for sharing all over cyberspace.

Avoiding reds was never a problem for me. I mostly hunted alone in the vast wilderness between Trinsic and Skara Brae. Talk about fond memories. Anybody remember the orc camps with the captives. During my early days I spent a large part of my time running around the forest looking for these. I was so broke, and, as an archer, I just ended up wearing the orc captain armor and used the gold I got for escorting the captives back to town to buy arrows. They got rid of the camps after a few months I remember.

Anyway, I seldom ran into any reds out there. Once I discovered magery it was as easy as pre-casting recall. eventually most of us got to the point where finding a red was a thrill we sought.

But what made the game so great was the variety and options. You could own a house. And not just a storage locker....you could build a pub or library or vendor mall. You could place forges and ovens in them. In the search for whatever you sought you could acquire riches by becoming a crafting powerhouse or stealing rares orbartering at the banks for magic weapons. Wear dozens of different types of armor in dozens of shades, dye your clothing, start a guild, sail the ocean and fish up bottles, tame dragons, go to auctions, almost endless possibilities.

And, call me crazy, but the artwork and music in that game was astounding. It was and still is gorgeous.

Even now, the game is actualy fairly decent. They've added tons and tons of content so that there really is so much to do if you're inclined. They added artifiact, and bulk order deeds, and customized houses, factions, etc. It's just too painful to play when everywhere you go you remember the game that it was. You remember your friends and guildmates and enemies and how you thundered together through the game.

 

[Craig234]

I played it when it came out - about twice.

I remember making a tamer who tried to tame a deer and the deer, I think, killed him.

Then he wandered into a room where players were hitting 'practice dummies' over and over and over to raise skills. I couldn't believe people would pay money for that gaming experience and stopped playing.

Later when I was an EQ addict, I recalled the story and realized how treadmills can be addicting.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Actually, I think most of us were hitting practice dummies so that we wouldn't die when we went out of town to encounter our first deer.

 

[kainlongshot]

Not to turn the topic way off subject but thats one of big complaints I had in WoW. No guild houses? This I really don't understand. UO had it EQ had it, but why are MMOs having such a hard time with building guild houses. I think Guild wars did it nicely, it just became its own separate instance. (You can argue that GW is or isn't an MMO but the concept would world for any MMO). UO and EQ being one of the best ones to implement a guild house, at least guildies have a place to congregate, meet, or use a guild bank rather than having someone sacrifice a character slot.

Not to go off topic.

Definitely like UO. It was a very different game at the time. I didn't play much of it during my stint but definitely like the aspect that your decisions carried a higher quantity of permanent risk. Go after that dragon? Are you strong enough? Will you die? If you die will a ganker come and take your stuff. Etc. That kind of game play is what I like about EvE online and the like. You're choices can sometimes really cost you, but at the same time its that risk that really gets your adrenaline going.

 

[QuantumPion]

I think housing only worked in UO in the beginning when the player base wasn't so large and the houses were so expensive only a few could afford them. Now days with more players per shard, less real estate, and grindaholics and gold farmers, real housing would be impractical. I do miss my fish tank made out of stacks of cloth though, hehe.