[...] I have been using Tablet PCs for a decade now. Back in the UO days, I always walked around with a paper notebook full of doodles, and I often sketch out design ideas as diagrams and quickie cartoons. With a pressure sensitive [...]

[...] was reading Raph Koster’s notes on the launch of Ultimate Online back in 1997, and it made me realize that the online world that I programmed also launched just over 15 years [...]

[...] Ultima Online is fifteen by Ralph Koster:  http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/09/25/ultima-online-is-fifteen/ Concept Artist Spotlight: Jamie Ro: [...]

Yes, the roleplay community of Great Lakes were hard workers that brought the world to a new level. The finest roleplay moment I’ve ever been a part of was when Blitz Phoenix the rares collector (who provided many of the images of one of a kind items for the Stratics archives) was running for mayor of Yew against Mythra. And they decided to “secretly” fall in love (in roleplay only as far as I know). And one day Trebr Drab’s father, Drab Mintr, at the Yew bank “overheard” Blitz mention it to another. Where my character’s persona as an old warrior full of good humor and bluster had to laugh at the thought of Blitz, who was quite the ladies charmer over the years, could fall in love. So the teasing commenced, and the blushing and “hush, hush” by Blitz, and in the end he cut up some valuable Ranger’s Armor (which you could sell on EBay at the time for around $20 a piece) and made a cloak and boots and then gave them to Drab as a bribe to keep quiet. So they showed as “a cloak made of Ranger’s Armor” and same for the boots. Quite a generous move in the name of roleplay, and spur of the moment roleplay to boot.

Some other great moments that were made greater by the players…

In the very early days in the capital city of Britain, the GMs were going to set out the Relics of Mondain for viewing. But evidently before he could lock them down, one or more Relics were stolen by a player. I was running around the city looking for Regs to buy, and it was very crowded. All of a sudden the new spread like wildfire that some relics were stolen, and everyone was running around looking for the thief. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I suppose the GMs tracked them down on their end and removed them from the player. It was just interesting how something like that could happen in an MMORPG.

The funniest thing I’ve ever witnessed in an MMO was this. To set the scene, Spectre was the board Mod at the Vault for the Mage Tower forum, which is where the idea was born to build the first towers in UO after release and call them “The Mage Tower”. One on each server (shard). Spectre led the effort on Great Lakes and they built the first Mage Tower. So his name was well known. But then he turned evil, and took a faltering PK guild known as the Shadows of Britannia and rebuilt them into one of the most powerful guilds on Great Lakes. And the SoB claimed the dungeon Covetous and would run through it PKing and looting everyone in it. Well, I was still a weak character and spent time in a room full of crates in Covetous waiting for them to respawn loot to take, and at the same time practicing my “Hide” skill. This room usually had a dozen or so players in it, some others also using “Hide” the same as me. And one day a Gate popped up in the middle of the room, and through it comes Spectre and a few other Shadows. I was luckily in hiding at the time, so I kept still. They proceeded to kill some while everyone else ran, then all of the Shadows but Spectre ran in chase of the escapees. Here I was hiding in a room with Spectre standing there. I was sure he was using “Detect Hidden” skill to find hiders, and while I was considering if his friends were close outside the room or not, to break for it or not, Spectre “Revealed” another player. I knew this guy (though I’ve forgotten the name now). So it went like this…
Player revealed
Spectre casts “Paralize” and targets him to freezes him
Spectre casts Explosion and targets him (a delay timer on it, since the damage would unfreeze him)
Spectre casts Paralize again but holds off of targeting him
Explosion goes off and Spectre immediately targets him with the Paralize he’s holding to re-freeze him
Player: “Lets…”
Spectre casting Lightning
Player: “Be reasonable.”
Spectre targets him with Lightning and kills him.

“Lets be reasonable”, I laughed so hard my side was splitting.
I did make my break then and got away, only to let curiosity get me soon after.

So many memories, and the best ones were not scripted. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

I loved UO. The community worked alot out of game to make ingame more interesting. I met and made alot of friends in UO, it was a grest time.
Uo player houses were works of art, People using common items if stacked correctly would look like another item was a work of art in UO. People had imagination, I have never played a game like it since.

Cheers to Ultima Online for fifteen years of service!

- Hanse

[...] of the first major MMO; Ultima Online.That game turns fifteen this year, and to celebrate; Koster has updated his site with a pretty awesome history lesson on the game. Aside from lots of cool scans of documents, he [...]