What was the first thing you did when you played Ultima Online?

I'm talking the first episode or escapade you had when you joined Ultima Online. Your first adventure in the multiverse!

Mine:

As my friend Eddy and I huddled around my badass 233mhz beast of a PC we eagerly logged into Ultima Online for the first time. The year was 1997 and the dial-up modem was loud. First thing we did was wander around Brit trying to get into containers in NPC houses. Eventually we got guard wacked trying to steal a bottle of wine from a guard. While dead we wandered our way all the way into the huge fields of houses North of Minoc. (Land of OoO here)

Investigating each and every house we picked up everything that wasn't nailed down. All the wondrous trash we could carry. Speculating that we might be rich with some of the things we'd found!

Unfortunately a short time later we were met by a pair of wizards. Loudly, in some cryptic language I faintly remembered from long ago, they shouted at me. The faint memory of this strange language suddenly sparked. FLAM... Fire spell! Twas then I noticed a little red dot on my forehead. Lagged gripped my modem... for a few seconds we looked on in horror, then a huge flame engulfed me and with a ridiculous yelp I was sucking monochrome once again.

I suppose it was love at first sight.

My first memory was adventuring in a forest and getting aggroed by a spider. This was during beta so they did not have everything tweeked correctly yet. mobs moved faster than a player could run so I couldn't get away from the damn thing. As I ran past a lamp post it started talking to me and I was like WTF. At this stage of the game you could talk while hidden. I was so new I didn't even know about the hiding skill yet. As I stopped to marvel at the talking lamp post the spider ate my brain.

After I went back to town and got geared up, some knucklehead decided to PK me in town. At this stage of the game guards were not insta kill. If a crime was committed they did not teleport in, they just came running so it wasn't too difficult for people to get away. As soon as I went down everyone in the area swarmed my corpse like locusts. You could also loot people without getting flagged as well.

After all this I was hooked.

I remember playing for the first time at my brother's apartment in 1998. I ran around Trinsic and was thrilled to find bone armor on the ground. Someone summoned a daemon and transferred it to me and I felt like the man! I wanted a horse desperately, but had no idea how to go about getting one. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and loved every minute of it.

First encounter with UO:

Install: Demo and test version sometime around 1998 ?
Character generation: A mage! Mages are totally awesome!
Starting city: After reading through all the describtions of the cities --> Moonglow!
First thing to do: Run to the Graveyard and cast mighty magic arrows!
After some casts: Run out of regs. Bash with staff.
Die a painful death, revive and run around without items until losing interest.

Second encounter with UO:

Try another trial version.
Character generation: Fighter! Mages suck!
Starting city: No clue.
First thing to do: Get strength up via lumberjacking! How do I get an axe? A shop! How to buy stuff!?! *10 minutes later* VENDOR BUY! Where are the axes? Why does the weaponsmith have no hatchet?
After finding a hatchet and bashing trees for two hours: This sucks! Hey, what's that, a blue gate?!
Hop into gate, find oneself in desert. Poisoned by scorpions, died fast and painful. No healers around, all items lost.
Conclusion: This sucks! Back to Starcraft. Damn!

After 15 years and several short playtimes on freeshards: The promised land - UO:R. --> Hey, let's try a thief. That might be fun.

Awesome stories folks! I LOL'd for real @Astragon's tale.

I looted a blue cape off a player's corpse and thought it was rare because everyone else had either white (freshly tailored cloak) or dark (newbie cloak). This was literally the day UO became available for purchase in stores in the US.

The year, 1997, the place, Pacific, Vesper.

I met up with some friends from Diablo and they were super strong players since beta (78 magery...woooo big guys!).

Two met me at Vesper bank (that took about 40 minutes to find on 28.8k modem!

They cast gate and tell me walk through. So being my friends of course I did!

Get to a house in the spot just north of Compassion west of the small river next to mountains.

Being all of 45 minutes old into the game, low and behold A DEMON!

Holy crap! Run like the wind while everyone else laughs their butts off. Third friend was able to cast Polymorph into a demon and scared the crap out of me.

Since that day....hooked!

Read that Yew was the place for lumberjacks, so I rolled up a ~33 Lumberjack, 33 Bowcraft, 33 Archery character. Ran out of arrows in about 20 seconds. Tried to find my way back to town but had no map and Yew doesn't really have defined town limits.

Logged out, waited a few minutes, and made another character to start in Britain. 10 STR, 35 DEX, 10 INT. Same skills as above. Went to Brit grave, spent my 10 or so newbie arrows trying to defend myself against a skeleton. Then tried the dagger, but no luck, so I ran away from a skeleton after getting hit once. Ran away from a zombie. Ran away from another skeleton. Finally decided I would need to kill *something* in this game, or why was I even playing, so I attacked a dog in the woods with my dagger. It killed me.

Started on Napa 99 with some military buddies (40 miles from closest town, not much to do) Minoc was the town they used. Found some animals south of Minoc regular Hart as I recall, attacked it... how hard could it be for an adult figure like character with a knife to kill one right? Well that thing almost killed me but I was able to run back into town and get away from it. Later I was checking out the shops around Minoc when another player came up to me. He asked me if I wanted any boxes or bags... I of course was glad to accept. He told me the bags were in the box, he put the box on the ground, I excitedly open the box (not even knowing how to drag items yet) and get blown up! Someone in game was nice enough to see that I was a lost soul looking for a rez and led me to a healer.

Buddies tell me later to make a miner and sell the ingots to get started so I go mining (over the bridge in Minoc) hour later I'm dragging my pile over (figured out how to drag!) to a forge and it disappears wth? I go back and forth for a bit trying to figure out what I did wrong and was just about to page for help.... guy appears (was hidden) and says thanks for the ingots and runs off. My miner was killed so many times in Minoc mines. I wasted so much time figuring the game out wish I had read a guide back when I started but the unknown element made it fun.

I started playing on my brother-in-laws account 1998-99 while he was gone on vaction. I was in Buc's Den the entire time attacking people. It was so fun I had to go out and get my own account. I then made a character and went straight to Buc's Den because I didn't know anywhere else to go. I made a thief and tried to steal whatever I could and kill whoever I could. I did that for months before ever leaving Buc's Den and had a blast!

I was a programmer back then and someone at work told me about this new game UO and convinced me to buy it. I had just started reading LOTR also based on suggestions from fellow programmers so I not-nearly-as-original-as-I-thought named my first guy Boromir, who was my favorite character then. I remember starting in Vesper and watching a guy attack a deer and everyone healed and buffed the deer until it killed him. He begged for mercy but none was given. I thought it was hilarious but learned day 1 only to trust my RL friends.

Preface:

I had worked a ton of overtime and had some money to burn. I know, I'll buy a computer!

• Made a quick run to the computer store and picked up a sweeeet 1998 Compaq Presario with a Celeron processor.
• Got home, hooked it up, sat there staring at the screen in wonder... what to do now?
• Games! I need to go back and buy a game!
• Go back to the computer store.
• Rummaged through the PC game isle... then I saw this awesome dragon on the cover of this box.
• Picked it up, looked at the back, didn't even read it... took it up front and bought it.

So, I take this game home and put it in the computer and it began to install. Install completed then I get this message that I had to have an internet connection to continue? What the hell? I don't have internet!

• Back to the store, asking anyone around, "How do I get internet? Scuse me sir, how do I internet?"
• Clerk gives me an AOL CD for 10 dollars.

Ug... back home, I put in the AOL CD... nothing. Started reading instructions... something about a phone line... a damned phone line?

• Back to the store, "Scuze me sir, I need a 20' long phone cord... needs to reach from my living room to my bedroom"

Ran back home, hooked up phone line, got internet, reinstalled UO game... now I have to pause and admit something.

You see, up to this point I STILL had no idea this was an online game. I just thought this was some new intense awesome game that needed internet for "reasons".

Then the damn thing is asking me for a credit card number. I don't have one of those!

A week later, I'm back at the computer... fresh credit card in hand. I create my first character...


Joe... the miner with black smithing.


I started in Moonglow. I managed to get lost in the woods and a character came up to me and asked, "Hi, how are you?"

I sat back in my chair, "Wow" I said to myself, "This game is really interactive!"

I typed in, "I am well, and how are you?"

To shorten it up, I had a conversation with what I thought was a really smart artificial intelligence. Then it asked me one last question...

"Do you wanna see something cool?", it asked.

"Sure", I replied.


It killed me with corp por and took all my things.


I logged out of that character after realizing I was online with other players and immediately made my first PK.

I've been hooked ever since terrorizing the Pacific shard for many years.

Back in 1997, a friend and his friend convinced me that this new game UO was the most open ended game in the world. You could do anything. They told me about how a player had bought a bunch of balistas and sieged another players castle to the ground, and how there was always a massive war in one section of the world you could go fight in and rank up. Basically they were lying to me cause they though it was funny, and how excited I was getting at this awesome new game. Neither of them played it, they just read about it and decided to fabricate how awesome it was.

Well, I went out and bought it thinking it was what they had said it was. After figuring out the payment method and all the technical install stuff, I finally got into the game.

I cant recall the first character I made, but I know I started in Brit. I literally had no idea what I was doing. None of my friends played, Wiki had not been invented yet, and I had didnt read through the manual at all. After just running around Brit looking at stuff and talking to NPCs I finally found the bank. I spend a long time trying to get the other players there to talk to me about this game and how to play it.

Finally found someone who explained the very very basics to me and then I understood.... I understood that I needed to make a blacksmith to get money, money to get weapons, weapons to get fame, fame to get the women.

It all made sense.

So I reroll a blacksmith character with just bullcrap stats cause no one explained the 50-49-1 method to me. I set off to do some mining at just a random side of a hill. To my amazement I am getting some ore. Then a red named player shows up on the screen and I try out my RP legs and attempt to converse with them. They only say two words to me (I am sure you can figure out which two) an I see the death screen for the first time. I reroll a fighter warrior swordsguy (now we call them dexxers) and that became my favorite playstyle for years.

I love that you remember this.

I'm crying. LMFAO

My first experience in UO was actually at my friend Nick's house...

He'd had the game and played for a few months, but to this day he's still the biggest noob I've ever met.

He had posted on stratics that he was going to host a tournament one Saturday morning, and so I slept over at his house Friday night to see what it was all about.

10am saturday rolls around and we go to Brit Bank to meet all the participants. He collects and banks entry fees from everyone that he says will be used for the prize pool (what he tells me is more money than he's ever seen in the game haha... it was like 8 people from what I remember at like 5k a person?)

and then tells them to follow him to the tournament location.

He literally just starts running around looking for an open spot of land for everyone to circle up... he had no house... much less any idea how to actually run a PVP tournament (rules, and what not)

The group of participants, slowly realizes he doesn't have ANY idea what he's doing... and turns on him.

He runs for what seemed like ever, on foot, from an angry mob... but they eventually caught up to him, killed him, and looted him dry.

When my mom picked me up later I told her I'd do anything to get that game.... and here I am.

That was a referee's father. http://www.uorenaissance.com/player/318103

j/k j/k

I read about Meridian 69 in a magazine sometime around Dec. '98. I had just gotten a computer and was really new to online gaming. I Went to a Electronic Boutique and the girl there talked me in Ultima Online.

I started on Great Lakes in a Trinsic tavern. I meet a guy there and we decided to do some exploring. We ran out the gate and got attacked by what I found out later was a ettin. Made it to the mountains west of the city and a guy there was making armor for anyone who came by. I grouped up with some people there and we ran over to Destard.

No other game since has even come close to how I felt that night. Being connected to other players around the country amazed me. I remember the girl at EB saying how she was into Live Action and stuff like that. Crazy broad changed my life and I never saw her again.

We (Nick and I) had a few other friends who played too... when I started they all recruited me to the guild they were in called "Angelic Fury" on Lake Superior. With a guild city also located in the vicinity of land of oOo area here.

The day I joined they looted the city, used me as a scapegoat and got me booted from the guild.

... and that's when I first discovered UO was truly ruthless lol.

I met 2 other newbs about 30 minutes into first time playing in the Moonglow cemetery (spent so many hours in those places newbing it up). We exchanged our vast wealth of un-knowledge of the game and became a super skeleton killing team. One guy brought out a dye tub, and we huddled around it like it was the holy grail. We dyed the hell out of our clothing, all the same green. We were green bros now. Like a guild. Unstoppable green newb force. The one guy had a cape. Man did I want a cape like him. He must have been playing so much longer!

Then we logged off and never saw each other again. I think i logged into a different shard the second time and couldn't figure out what i did with my character. Probably for the best.