Ultima Online - Europa ....anyone still there?

[Sasso]

hey all,

just wondering if any one is still actively playing this game. I haven't played on an official server for about 8 years now as i haven't had any of those "return for free for a week" emails and the last time i played on a free shard was about 3 years ago.

but every now and then i get the itch to get back into it, try and rekindle some of the magic.... but i'm not sure if i'll just be wasting my time

so just want to see how many on here still play this game preferably on the europa server... or maybe got a community on a free server?

so many hours on my parents 56k connection, a ping of 400ms, rocking through doing strafing runs against ogre lords with my halberd on the back of my trusty steed xD



also just general info, the last expansion i got was Age of Shadows, managed to get my old account tied to my origin account so i can actually sub and go back on. says i have most of the expansions, think everything up to the latest one. guessing they just gave them to people for the anniversary as they are pretty old now.

so what has gone on with this game... is it silly played? is it a ghost town? anything funky and new with the more recent expansions? whats this this "enhanced client" ??

just want to go back and play it moreeeeeeeeee miss my guild. [KSD] knights of the sleeping dragon.... hehe

 

[Sasso]

Ultima Online, THEE best MMO of all time, wasted my childhood on it Awesome awesome game, unfortunately I have never been able to recreate the experience, mainly due to lack of players.

wasted?!?! hehe it did draw you in for hours. i remember having to sneak downstairs and plug the upstairs phone line back in so i could keep playing late into the night

yea i've imagined that the subscriber base has depleted somewhat with lots of new games that have been release and just people moving on from it.

i think we need to get band of brothers together and get on it xD

 

[Sasso]

This was the first online game I ever played. Was annoying as all I had was a 56k modem and line! ;D

hehe same, my mates who played had cable 256k connections (or there abouts), and i would be rubber banding all over the place!!! although... i barely complained about it at the time as it was pretty much the only game i could play online at that time and only interested in play online. before that it was all just single player for me.....

...well me and a mate did try to play a 1v1 quake but who ever hosted would be fine but the other person would get soooo much lag xD


i think..... i might re sub, if only for a month.... have a potter about... see what's going down. in vein, i am hoping that my old guild is still on there and maybe some of the members are still playing, only names i remember are Bombatta and Lady Perl, who were the GM's.

i did a quick google and the only reference i could find to my guild really was a post on some UO forums about nostalgia and some one was listing a bunch of guilds with the gm's next to it..... apart from that i can;t see anything also doesn't help the "MyUO" has been down for some time so can't do a guild/char search on the official website :\

 

[Sasso]

I reactivated my account just over a year ago just to see what was happening. I was on Europa.
What I found was that all the old haunts were dead. Remember Britannia Bank? Not a single sole there.
Moonglow? Empty.
There were places a plenty to pop a tower - in fact that is exactly what I did as when I first played the game all those years ago that is all I ever wanted.
The players left have all moved to some new lands. I only stayed in the game for a week or so.
It's a shame to see it that way. I loved that game and played it from beta (I was on a 14.4k modem connection and playing on US servers from here in the UK).

ay i remember britannia west bank was what dalaran used to be in wow when it had all the portals.... so many people just sitting around and it being laggy as people would just be spamming gambling dice and selling rares xD

yea i think the biggest house i had was a 8x10 3 story, our guild had a nice big tower was awesome have guild duels on the roof hehe. always wanted a bigger house but space was soooo rare, and every time i found a house in danger of collapse i would go back and there would be about 20 others waiting loved that aspect of the game though all the houses, and the fact if you didnt go into them they could fall down haha!

I read a big about the beta testing about how they implemented a mechanic system where everything would have an effect on everything else, like you kills rabbits, wolves have to hunt deer, not as many mobs so dragons have to hunt further for food and wander into towns.... but in the beta everyone just killed everything so no one even got a chance to notice the mechanic so they removed it xD haha ..... i want to play

 

[Sasso]

wtf has happened to the bank xD haha.

yea AoS kinda changed things for the worse, i think i was playing for about a year before AoS came out... and when it did all of a sudden it seemed like everyone became elitist :\

i've been on quite a few different free servers but i dunno..... just didn;t feel the same, probably because trying to get to talk to someone was hard, no one cared

 

[Sasso]

ahhh the good old days of £400 a month phone bills on 14k modems This game just has the perfect character progression model and im amazed no one has copied it. Cant beleive its still running downloading now.

haha i remember having to apologise for going over the monthly minuets connected to the dial up

what's up with the patching files... taking foreverrrrr

 

[Sasso]

http://i49.tinypic.com/rua9no.jpg



wooooo... time to go to brit




http://i49.tinypic.com/2yl2nib.jpg


bank...is....empty.....



http://i45.tinypic.com/155i1bl.jpg

last member online over a month ago.....others not played since 2010 and 2007

 

[Sasso]

lame.... UO crashes when i try to log in using razor :\


lets see what the enhanced client is like

 

[Sasso]

memories indeed

remember going to the moonglow cotten fields and letting loose vorpal bunnies and trying to get them cornered so they would go down faster

used some of my rune stones to tp about the place... see what was there..... guild tower gone, my house has gone, quite a few i can;t tp because something is blocking the way

 

[Sasso]

ahhh lich lords, tough cookies they were! i remember going to the fire island i think which had that massive temple thing and killing dragons and drakes

also the dungeon through the cliffs north of brit they were always fun with the 3/4 levels it had i think, with the bottom floor being full or ogres and ogre lords on the island in the middle.... think i only went on that island once while they were dead... normally about 5 or 6 of the ******** on there. i remember just doing strafing runs on a single ogre lord... whittling his health down whilst trying to to get hit and bandage up like a trooper

also the enhanced client doesn't seem that bad, i like being able to move the UI and game screen about and zooming... that's pretty cool... tho i'm not so much a fan of the polished textures :\ i prefer the old school classic client graphics for players and the world.

i'm going to the i46 event in Telford and would be cool if anyone else was going or had it installed and subbed if we had a bit of a session over the bank holiday weekend

haha completely forgot about the ooOOoooOO OoooOOoOOoo .... that was genius xD wasn;t there a skill so that you could see what the dead were saying? oh the many runs from the brit grave yard to the healer and then back and trying to ninja loot your own body before a nasty ghoul or shade/spectra chased you down

 

[Sasso]

I almsot forgot treasure hunting lvl 5 cartography stuff.... that was mad PVE fun...i had a mate who could do it we just mopped up all the critters..

jeez that game had NOTHING to it at all but what the players made of it and it was really really really great....I think only SWG had the same feel to it as UO. Nothing to do but try and kill other people .. lol

i wouldn't say nothing as there were actually quest lines in game from NPCs

but yea it was a rather open world "do what you will" game. but as you said, it's what you made of it. i remember going out on guild adventures and also having guild quests to rise up the guild ranks

spent a good few hours doing a quest to get my knighthood with my guild xD had to go alone (with one senior member to keep watch/an eye ), the whole thing had to be done in silence. had to trek from one place to another, collect certain items, go on boat and navigate it to an island, and so on was great fun... tho a pain in the bum for the guy watching me as my net kept dropping out... and i had to break my silence as they forgot to give me the boat xD haha!!!!!

yea skills actually took ages to build up... think the fastest were focus (added in AoS) which was just passive and anatomy... just sat outside the bank spamming it on everyone to get it up till it started to grind.

had a look got 705 skill cap, i'm sure i had higher xD but got a good few 115, 110 and 105 skills and the magic at 32.8 or what ever it was... just enough to cast recall xD

 

[Sasso]

also i dont think i ever saw a single hacker in the game.... seen people use exploits before they were patched out but never anything more than that.

i remember is you use a housing deed on leather it did something like a funky coloured scroll. my favorite though was being able to use basic HTML on rune books xD

could use <BR > to jump down lines and the <i ></i > tags so that you could get a simple rune boot to read stuff like:

artifact rarity 11
reduce reg cost 100%
reduce mana cost 50%
physical resist 20%


etc etc... so it would look like a kick ass item to someone but it was just a recall book xD ..... my mate made BILLIONS that way..... he was on the atlantic server i think and wrote me a cheque before and there were soooooo many zeros on it i couldn't count xD

also droping items on the floor but instantly grabbing them so beople would try and pick them up but fail... hehe xD

more about rune/recall books.... i remember players setting up libraries in their houses with books and books of runs to every place imaginable. all the dungeons, cities, banks, shrines, spawns, scenic locations... you name it there was a rune that could take you there


also those moments when casting a speel to safe your life and all you heard was that fizzle noise xD bain of my existence Kal Ort Por......"the spell fizzles" ooooOOoooOOooOooo ....

 

[Sasso]

Vendor buy the bank some guards with a recdu recsu!!

Along with All Kill

my previously dragon slaughtering pack of bonded frenzied ostards suddenly became about as useful as a candy floss sword )

haha ahhh yeaaa i remember those macros/ blocks of text xD

yea... was much better when it was all just resist as skills and a single armor rating.... then they added fire poison cold and energy resists to armor as well as the AR. things changed too much

tho i am rocking a set of valorite armor with some neon fire boots xD and my halberd with some crazy stats... which are probably rubbish now

i also remember making a tamer and just running about the grave yard with a horde of chickens, cats, dogs.... what ever i could tame haha.

i could never get the hang of using potions or the macros to throw/use them. bandages can fix everything and if they cant my horse will help me run away....... or i'll just die

 

[Sasso]

Eugh, I hated when they added all the neon ****. Made the game look like a 90s illegal rave XD (Although the fire steed did look awesome)

Had me a nice set of valorite plate, with a vet reward gold cloak and a valorite halberd, riding on a nightmare and a white wyrm on tow

yea, all the funky colours did offend the eyes slightly xD mmmm val plate when i logged in i have a vet reward to choose... dunno what to get tho

also completely forgot that to repair your stuff you actually need a blacksmith to do it for you!!!!! the days of trust, going the the blacksmith south of the brit GY, putting all my stuff in a bag and handing it over with 1000g or what ever the rate was for them to fix it and give it back ahhh the trust we had back then.

and the gamblers with dice, handing over vast amounts of monies!!! 1-6 low, 8-12 high, 7 triple xD

 

[Sasso]

If you're after a quick bit of UO nostalgia there is an Android app with all the midi tunes. Search the store for "UO Ultima Online Soundboard", or just "Ultima Online". Some of those midi tunes were fantastic, I still regularly listen to them on my PC.

yea i've seen that, also the music files are on the pc... many times i;ve just had music on shuffle and just had some UO bard music come on hehe

The game was just more than a game to most. It was an almost living, breathing world with an incredible community that I have yet to see equalled in ANY mmo. It is a shame it never evolved away from the 2D client - the players are to blame for that though. The 'hardcore' addicts who refused to give anything '3D' a chance more or less sabotaged UO's progress forward and the game's state is due to those fools really. The 3D client was never really accepted as the 2D diehards never gave it a single chance to flourish.

UOX: Oddssey was a chance for UO to move forward but just as the project was progressing nicely with Callandryll (of the uo.com boards) at the helm, EA decided to shift OSI's offices (in Texas) to their San Francisco HQ. Not everyone wanted to move to SF and UOX died in less than a week.

i'm one of those who didn't really want to see it turn full 3d. the game would be a completely different play style but the 3d client they did make was kinda laughable.... everything just looked pointy xD think FFVI/VII

would have been interesting to see what would have been though. i remember there was some random guy/studio working on a basic 3d render of UO as it was.... that was going back yearssssssss so i doubt anything came of that :\

 

[Sasso]

so anyone fancy playing/making a new character? i still got a few on europa but looks like atlantic is the closest/fullest server going... would mind making a new adventurer for the fun of it. maybe a tamer, always good for a laugh hehe

if anyone is up for it let me know, can prob use voice comms and just storm about the place followed by little critters

 

[Sasso]

lamer tamer xD haha!!!! i remember seeing peple before and thinking... oh they just got off their horse.... this should be easy......**** IT'S NOT A HORSE!!! AHHHHHH damm nightmares!!!


damm dark horses firing lazers our their asses hehe xD

 

[Sasso]

Yup, I played on Catskills for my entire UO time too, my character was Kith Kanan, was leader of the player run town of Kinship Village (on the mainland opposite Skara Brae) for quite a while.

wow that sounds awesome!!!!! when you say player run town it was just a collection of peoples buildings close together yea? would love to see a screen shot of that!!!! bet that was so much fun... and the sense of community

when i went on that was one of the first things i noticed.... because there was no one sitting by the blacksmiths i was like.... uhhh..... who's going to fix my stuff xD and since my house has gone it's a bit meh

need to try and find something similar Might just run about naked with my main guy for a bit to get used to the game again.... armed with a sword, shield and bandis still got some of the dungeons in my rune book so might do a bit of crawling.... prob get in over my head tho.... or lose my horse been with it for what must be.....6-7 years since my last sub.... better be bonded by now!!!! haha xD

 

[Sasso]

hehe yea those orcs were killer.... think i first came across them in the AoS lands, they had a fort along one of the main paths.

anything with poison if you didnt have pots was such a *****! i never had pots on me (i swear officer ) so it would be putting my 100+healing to good use, one bandi to cure the poison and another to heal up the damage.... however..... it never worked out like that.... would usually be the case if stuff was going crazy i would heal one poison, about the finish the second bandi when i would be poisoned again so heal that... and so on.... my health being whittled away xD

oh god! getting your first horse and being able to actually out run stuff efficiently!!! CHARGGGEEEE!!!!!!!!

another great memory i have is randomly there was a dude called "a spartan" wearing a red robe, helm, sandals and a spear/lance.... then another popped up.... then within 10 mins there were about 15 of us all with "a spartan" dressed the same next to the BS south of the brit graveyard xD

twas a sight to see indeed..... all letting out our war cries and saluting as people went past..... then storming the grave yard casting the evil out and swarming around new players letting them know that there was no need to thank us for "rescuing" them from certain doom......

 

[Sasso]

You mention SWG having a skill system like UO's, is that worth looking at then? I think it has gone F2P recently or something?

yea it was similar in the respect there were just loads of skills and you could choose just which ones you wanted to increase for your play style. also they had player house too which was cool. <<<<<going back again to 56k days haha!!!

i think this had a similar downfall, they changed some pretty major game mechanics and the ease of leveling certain skills... I remember first seeing my mates characters and running about... if you saw a jedi you were in awe! they were pretty uncommon.....but then after some patch releases it seemed really easy to get to jedi and then everyone was... :\ ....from what i remember anyways. not sure if they still have official servers?

was trying to make a tamer on atlantic last night..... but no matter what name i chose it said it was invalid