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

Well, my cousin got me to the game saying you can do anything you want. His other cousins started a kingdom in a shard and they were basically mining, making weapons and selling them to make money and buy houses and women(okay maybe not). Think the year is 1999. I have to say though, the emulator where we run UO is different (i.e. non tamers can ride mares).

So I start naming my first character Ajantis (from BG2) because I wanted to be a paladin.

I hang around Brit cemetary, am killing ghouls and zombies and selling their gems. I made 10k in a week or something. I decide to buy better armour, so I buy myself a shining golden plate set and throw myself again to the arena.

I see 10-15 blues around a red who is riding a dark horse and if anyone attacks him, he dismounts and says all kill to guard himself. Being a complete newb, I tell myself, what the hell can a horse do? I lunge with my "a broadsword" to a 500 str horse. I get hit once and it's all monochrome. It was so frustrating, so I deleted the char.

A week later another swordsman named "Dracon" was still hunting ghouls for gems and gp.

I started playing UO at the end of 5th grade. My best friend had an account and a computer (my family didn't own a PC yet). After school most days I went over to his place to play UO. I would use his computer to play UO while he would play FF7 on Playstation. Occassionally we would switch off. We made characters and started in Trinsic never venturing too far away from the town.. We were lost most days. One day we were at school and I told him that today was going to be the day that I leave Trinsic and headed due north in search of more civilization. He said I was crazy and there were playkillers out there. We get to his house after school I log onto his account and start my journey north. I didn't have a horse cause during this time I was not sure how to make money besides begging. After 30mins or so of following the road out of Trinsic I arrived at Britain. I couldn't believe my eyes how many people were there and how big and easily accessible the city was. My buddy watched from behind and was like "this is the coolest town ever". I rubbed it in his face he was too much of a pussy to leave Trinsic. He ended up quitting uo after a few more months of playing and moving onto games like DAOC and EQ. I never could get into those games and was stuck on UO.

After a few days in Britain I headed out of town and ended up getting stuck inside someones small marble and was killed by a goat. I couldn't figure out how to get out of his house so I deleted my character and realized I could start a new character in Britain. I never returned to Trinsic,... That town sucks Bartimus.

I can't remember exactly. My uncle and a bunch of his coworkers were obsessed, and he got me the game in late 1998. I remember starting in West Britain as a macer and doing a lot of exploring. Tried killing harts and grey wolves until I realized I needed to practice with dummies first. Then my uncle and company logged on, and we met up at their shared small wooden house for some sparring. I was hitting this one guy with a newb war mace when he lost conn. All of the sudden, I got a bunch of messages on ICQ telling me to back off before he dies. I thought it was kind of funny, but I gave the guy a break.

Actually, another memory, warning this might make you cry.

I am still on the same shard, 3 years later, but due to having lost access to my account, I decide to start anew. I get a pure warrior again with fencing and gm most of skills this time. (Last toon could only get to expert sw in 4 months!!!).

One day I see someone killing a pk mage with a poisoned weapon which seems so cool, that I ask the guy how is it possible? Seems like there is a skill called "Poisoning" that allows you to poison weapons, and it can be found on mages (Poisoning is a very important skill in sphere emulator, the entire pvp is around two words, In Nox). I search for a mage for hours to have them poison my kryss until I see a mage in ice white shroud riding a unicorn in Moonglow bank (like the death shroud here) which agrees to both brew the poison potion and poison my kryss.

I was so happy, that I never forgot the mage's name because they helped me out of nothing, which is so rare where I got used to playing UO. So a year after I leave this shard for a RP-only Middle Earth shard and due to my awesomeness (of course), I managed to become something like Elrond, the king of elves. One day strolling in Rohan, I strumble upon the same name, so i completely go OOC and ask if he was the same guy who helped me back in the old shard. He says yes, and I immediately get him started up and to this day we've played amongst countless UO shards (including here), and we're very good real life friends (we found few years later we were going to the same university, college and now I live in London and he's in California).

That mage is @Eladrin on the forums and still plays the same named elven mage.

@Nymeros Who would've thought we'd become best friends in college when you asked that question in Moonglow? Life is weird in so many ways sometimes. I still hate you

The first time I played UO was so many years ago, I don't exactly remember when but game was so big it was on gaming magazines back where we grew up. The first sentence I read about the game was: "Ultima Online allows you to become anything you want in a world with limitless options" and to me that was the ultimate evolution of tabletop D&D type rpgs.

I remember starting in Britain, my very first character's name was Arasys and I still use that name for my main. Having absolutely no clue about crime system, I was nearby Britain graveyard where pks were killing everyone. The only thing I had was a fireworks wand in my hand so I ended up double clicking on others' corpses to see what would happen, then saw all those shiny items and wanted to have them all Next thing I know screen went black and white and I was like "wut? but..but why?!" then got mad and decided to quit..for "sometime".

.. way to quit the game huh; after how many years I'm still playing UO.

I remember as a kid, I played Ultima 6 and thought it was the best game that I have ever played. I only played it a few times because my Dad did not like me playing games a lot.

Anyways fast forward about 10 years, I see this game called Ultima Online and I had to have it remembering the other game I played. Started it up found out I needed a credit card and internet, which at the time only my in-laws had the internet in 97'. I started the first month the game came out in Trinsic with no idea what was going on.

I made a miner thinking it would be great to mine. I ran all over the place trying to find a mountain or cave not knowing anything about PKs. Died about the same time I found a mountain. Black and white screen and no idea what happened. I ran around as a ghost for a few days before I ran into a wandering healer since I had no idea where I was. I thought once you died, you were dead and the game could be played as a ghost also.....

I finally did get back to mining after running around trying to find a pick or 2. Mined up a bunch or ore that was toooooo heavy and dragged it everywhere not knowing I could smelt it until another player came along and I saw him doing it. He told me to bring it to the forge and dbl click it. But he felt like he needed to smelt all my ore before me and ran off with all my ingots..... Ahh the fond memories of being screwed for months...

Memories of UO, or How Richard Garriott helped out.

When I was in Jr. High my parents owned a small computer store. We sold PC clones for business types and Commodores for the rest. (Yes, I am that old, lol)

After school I would work in the store and finally earned enough money to buy my own C=64. I had Telengard! Then picked up Ultima. My dad let me order the games for the store. I think it was Ultima III. I was hooked. I was a DM for AD&D, computer geek from the way back, etc. Many many hours were passed in fun. This was the age when geeks were NOT cool. But we had good times together.


Then it was the summer of '97. I had decided to go to grad school for reasons I still can't explain. In the student union was a rack of software. I saw the box and picked it up. Ultima Online? Why not?

Took it home. A little cloth map, an ankh and a whole world to explore. It was my one little escape. Played for several years off and on and then life happens. Didn't play for ages, then discovered free shards in my old age. Played on one years back but it imploded. Then tried again.

When I first got on UO I can't remember the shard. Probably Great Lakes. I do remember people killing me with arrows, for no damn reason. I got mad. Then decided I needed to learn to be an archer too!

Read Stratics. Enjoyed events, like invasion of Trinsic, etc.

I never joined a guild, etc. It was my fun little escape, but I didn't want to commit to anything. I think it was 9.99 a month, but it may have been 15. Either way it was worth it. I would play hardcore for like 15 hours straight. Then not play for weeks. But like I said, life happens. And it got really weird. Beetles, neons, trammel, etc. I don't know when I quit, but I think it was around 2000/20001.

Years later I tried a freeshard and it was fun. Kinda like the old days. It sounds really nerdy, but I am so grateful we have this shard and community.

And in all these years, I have never made a tamer.
And God Willing, I never will!

Atlantic, Day One of the servers going live.

I created a swordsman, in Trinsic. I was walking around thinking, "Who laid out this city," when I saw someone ask for an escort to somewhere. Figured out how to say I would do it, even though I didn't know where anywhere was. Decided to get rid of him because he was annoying, and kept following me around. Found my way to the beach East? of Trinsic, and decided to just kill the bast...guy. A guard said something because I was gray. I got pissed because some random guard was chastising me?? I'm a killa! So I attacked. Instant guardwhacked!!

Welcome to the tyranny of Lord British!

I don't remember a whole lot about the first time I played UO other than I actually intended to order the Ultimate Collection cd of all the other ultima games like akalabeth to UVIII Pagan. It was whenever second age came out. I didn't get very far with it and sent it back for the cd I intended to buy in the first place. When I had a part time job after high school in the summer before i started college i bought the UO renaissance cd and gave it another go.

I started in Britain I believe. I wandered around until I found a bakery and some random guy (a real person) standing in there. I noticed he said hello to me and I thought this guy was working there for some reason. I didn't know about the npcs yet so I assumed people could just do whatever job they wanted. This guy explained to me the rather robotic people walking around the shop were actually the real shop owner npcs.

I pretty much scarfed up all the junk I could find on the ground, in marvel of my badass bone armor i snagged. I found the young program and was whisked away to Haven / Occlo and got a newbie ticket. Someone told me if I let them target my ticket we'd both get something from it. I though the guy was just shitting me and was going to rob me so I ran off. I got hopelessly lost in Haven, probably somewhere outside of the occlo cotton fields and started a new character in Britain.

Going to the west bank of britain was an overwhelming experience....hundreds upon hundreds of people spamming, bard music playing, cats meowing, footsteps, horses neighing, people getting guardwhacked, and most of all, my comp grinding to a near halt while this was going on. I tended to avoid that bank during peak hours, otherwise it always seemed to take me nearly 30 minutes just to walk through.

Soon after arriving in Britain is when I rounded up my posse of other newbs at the Brit Graveyard in hopes to overthrow Lord British and take over the land. Of course I was hilariously guardwhacked as my comrades in arms ran off laughing at my plight

It took months to convince my parents to let me use their credit card online (super risky stuff!).

I started in britain - my first character was (unintentionally) basically a street urchin. I had heard stories of all the murderers outside of town, so I avoided it as much as possible. I begged from npcs, I begged from players, and I instantly gobbled up any trash that got dropped at WBB. Occasionally I would kill rats, cats, and dogs, carve them up for their one piece of meat, and then sell it to the butcher for 4 gold.

Tough times.

I started in Brit, it was Beta, There were no newbied items. I explored over the west bridge and eventually came to crossroads. I was paralyzed and shot down by crossbow PKs. I went back to brit and got ressed. I had nothing. I begged for some stuff and some guy gave me a set of chainmail and a longsword and kite shield. I went back to x-roads and got massacred.

That was almost 20 years ago.

I died. A lot. Mostly to orcish mages ironically enough. It wasn't until me and my RL buddies caught wind of a way to gain resist that I wouldn't run from them. Somehow we used blade spirits to get like 90 resist, which pretty much made us god-tier pvpers in 1999/2000.

One of our rich buddies (parents) had a business land line set up, he would call us all on a "conference call" and the 4 of us would be on the phone with each other wrecking people.

I started back in the beta and was instantly hooked. One of my earliest memories is working for days saving for a boat and then setting out to plunder the seas. It was a lot easier back then as there was a bug that allowed you to forcefully board another ship simply by pulling along side it, dropping the plank and walking into the neighboring ship.

After spending a full night looting I realized I had a problem, I needed to get to bed and I knew if I logged off some other pirate was going to come by and steal all of my hard earned loot! Anyway, at this time there were no limits on how much you could place in your backup, so I had the genius idea of moving everything into a single backpack and then I would log off with it on my character. After sorting the loot and placing it in my pack I decided that I'd logoff after hitting one last boat. As I give the "forward" command I watch as the boat proceeds to move, but there was one problem it didn't take my character with it. I watched as the boat continued to fly forward and off mini-map and left me standing in the middle of the ocean. I couldn't believe it, it was likely just a fluke glitch, but at that time I was convinced that I was so over encumbered that I clipped through the boat.

Anyway after re-logging it dropped me north of Trinsic and I leapfrogged the pack all the way to the main gates where I was promptly killed by a group. That's what I get for getting greedy!

HAHA @PaddyOBrien, I had the same experience with NPCs when I started. No clue that the rudely unresponsive people walking around in boring clothes were artificial. I think I spent collectively at least 2 hours wasting my time chatting with npcs, asking questions etc, over the first week of playing. I remember my first week of UO incredibly well, probably because of how amazing of a "first-experience" it all was for me. I bought UO roughly a month or so after it came out retail, I was 14 and didnt have any online experience by that point really. First character, I picked Minoc (still my favorite little hic town) with magery and dont remember what else. Kind of laugh when i think about it now cuz literally the moment my character popped on screen, I just bee lined towards finding action and blasted through the forest south lookin for things to kill.... I didnt even have my spell book open yet, let alone know wtf regs were. I was arrogantly running by animals I presumed were "beneath" battling but eventually (I dont remember how) I got i a fight with a dog and it totally rocked me dead. I felt really sheepish, ran back to a healer and pretty much stayed in town for the first few days after that lol. After 5ish days I made a fighter with high STR and felt like I had found something that fit my personality at that time more (reckless and rash).

My best friend bought the game by that point and then it really became a blast. I remember both of us getting in so much trouble the first 2 months because we would play all day while on speaker phone together and both our parents phone bills were utterly insane. At some point (don't remember when) we came across our first exploit/bug... "pet guard gate". I dont remember if this was only a singular bugged gate, or if they all were like that, or even how long it lasted cuz we got bored of it really fast and moved on but for a time you were able to have your pet guard a cemetery gate and if people opened/went through it they would turn grey. We thought that was hilarious. Eventually we stopped caring about being "allowed" to kill people and just attacked everyone we ran by. We were the worst PKs in the history of UO, I think we had like 60? in melee skills and were less interested in winning but rather how annoying we cud be to our targets. Wed kill someone, loot their stuff then leave a bread crumb trail of their gear from their corpse to a spot down the road where wed be hiding and kill them again. I think we wasted days doing that. Wed also try to see how long we cud follow/harass people as ghosts OoOoOo-ing them to death. Favorite early memory ever though was getting drunk and sparring with butcher knives for hours and taking bets.

So I guess my answer to: what was the first thing I did in UO.. was being a little bastard? lol - honestly, one of my top 5 best points in my life.

So you're the reason OSI instituted Trammel hahaha

Part of the fun of UO was just dicking around and being obnoxious though

My first character was a thief on atlantic back in 97 (now i was 8years old) i use to roam thr town of trinsic and steal house keys and house runes and then rob their houses as my younger brother sitting next to me would sit outside the player house keeping watch and pk them(with his 50ish skills because he chose whatever weapon he liked that day to use) if they came to save their home. This is the exact reason i will forever love UO.

I gave away my regs because I didn't know what they were or understood how they worked. Then I asked others why I couldn't cast spells even though they were in my spellbook.