Hi. I am Westra on irc and my main character in game is Marjo. Today on irc I had a brief conversation with another player, which lead me to thinking I would like to share some things for those interested. Telamon asked me if I would like to do the Alpha Test for this server. I jumped at the chance. I've never done an Alpha or Beta test for any game before, at the least I thought it would be a fun and exciting experience, which it proved to be that and much more. Wow, the world was UO, and T2A, but no houses, just the landscape and towns and some spawns. No Champ spawns etc. We were told just to play the game, report how we did and any bug issues, etc. Such fun. There was no "Young Program" so we started fresh. I was given a small keep, Telamon had created the small keep, large keep and fortress. I ran around the keep, amazed at the room. . When I logged in next,( I believe I got the time frame correct) I was under the floor. lol....One day Telamon was there and so was Samorite, but, he choose to stay invisable. LOL Suddenly all these fantastic things started to appear. Blazers and all manner of decorations. I fought monsters of all sorts, some of which I'd never seen before. Telamon would ask us questions and give us some voice in chosing color hues, etc. Finally the Alpha testing was over, gulp, everything was wiped. Even our characters. Than came the Beta test. More of the same, lot of the bugs had been fixed, and more decisions had been made in what would actually go into the final game. Telamon and Sam wanted the game to appeal to a large cross section of UO fans, not be just another pvp server. Thus lot of things for crafting, etc were tested. We had to build up our Characters, was no skill setting etc. Than came the news. Soon the actually launch was going to happen and the Alpha test world also be wiped. It was not until a couple days before the end of Alpha that we were told as a thank you, we would be allowed to keep one character with skills in place, one spell book and one rune book. We had to log out inside a inn, with that precious spell book and rune book on our character. Everything else was wiped. Our bank contents, all our pets, houses, all gone in a command of the UOR Gods. lol Launch day was so exciting, none of us knew what to expect. They wouldn't tell us what we'd start with. lol. I logged in, my character Marjo, she had 200 gold and a few regents. lol And the spell book and rune book. There was no Young program. so even though we had the advantage of one character with skills, many of us had not a full 7X character,because we were busy testing things, not macroing. lol So we basically had to work hard to earn gold,. I chose to do the npc character escorts to towns, My 200 gold went for gate and recall regents. lol It was all a fantastic experience, one I am so appreciative to been a part of. Thank you Telamon, Sam and all the rest for giving us this great server to enjoy
Starting on UOR was quite an awesome experience. I was here with a week or so left in Beta testing. At the end of Beta testing, everything was wiped except for our character's skills. Everyone was super nice and helpful during Beta, passing around gold and resources like they didn't matter. Anything to progress, and help your nerd friends progress. Finally the last day of Beta hit and the real fun began!!! Everyone logged in with just about NOTHING. I came @ the end of Beta so I was a bit behind the curve. But that didn't stop me! With 30 - 50 unique ips on board, we hit the dungeons to farm up to place our first homes. Housing placement was restricted to just around Britain and wars were already starting to develop between rival groups. Players pushed forward through thick and thin. Population spiked from 30 clients to 100 and then back down to 70... For what seemed like forever. We were in it for the long haul, and the players knew we were making the right decision playing here. TL;DR We have come a long way and we aren't slowing down. UOR HYPE TRAIN!!
I can still recover them Shadowjack, just takes a bit of work. Just link me any thread missing screenshots. (I've recovered a great deal of them already). Thanks for the nice sentiments westra. Just don't forget that it was Ezekiel and Rammar who started Renaissance with me. Samorite volunteered for a year before accepting his punishmen.... err role as a staff member.
I wish I heard about UOR prior to when I did. I was still wasting my time on another server until summer 2013 Alas; I am thankful I got here at least when I did! Awesome reflection of a time long passed Westra/Bart - thanks!
I don't want any particular thing, but a "lookback" thread with shots would be fun to read sometime. I loved the first year here quite a bit, what with all of the events and the stuff where we had those buc den fights with the purple pot stone and etc
Ezekiel and Rammar Giant, Giant shout out to Ezekiel and Rammar. lol sorry about leaving you guys out. Wrote that last night and grey matter was bit on fritz. ( everyone knows me knows if something can be messed us, I can mess it up ) lol Thanks Tela for mentioning them. they deserve big time Also forgot about housing around Brit only. lol
For me, as a new player (1 month to UO) reading his sounds like I missed a damn exciting time. However, I like to think with roughly 700 people currently on the server; it will be a unique experience in a couple years when there is triple that (hopefully!).
