Death of a Game: Ultima Online

[@Hanseshadow]

I worked on UO. I still have code running on MUDs to this day (around 35 years). The ecology system was not fully removed. Some of it did ship with the game. I had to remove the rest of it, because it was so broken. Richard Garriot had little to no involvement with the game development. He was solely a studio head that employed UO developers. Todd McFarlane did not work on UO. He had a contract for toys that he would make, which were intended for UO 2. He forced us to put them into UO or be sued. I made Malas for expanded housing (and hid a bunch of housing locations). At the same time, I made the new magic item system, which was something I developed with the Bulk Order Deed system. After Origin was shut down, I went on to move with the UO team to EA's main campus. Once my contract was up, I left to work on Star Wars: Galaxies. I redid the Jedi and many other classes, along with a ton of changes to the game. At this point in my life, I've worked on seven MMO's.

[@Warface]

Thanks for your involvement in the game. UO will always be one of the best MMO ever created

[@howyalikdemapls]

When you say you hid housing locations, do you mean those spots in the mountains? Like, there are random spots in the middle of mountain ranges that are totally inaccessible, although some people somehow have runes to them and have placed houses there.

[@Hanseshadow]

@@howyalikdemapls Yup! Those are the ones. They're accessible, if you figure out how (production servers only...not sure about player run shards). Folks took a few days after launch figuring out that little puzzle. The really large one northeast of Luna was not intended to be a housing region. A smart Japanese player went into the cave underneath, logged out, had someone place a barrel where they logged out, and then logged in. The only valid location to log in was up top on the plateau. The other locations are accessible by other means.

[@MrCorvou]

omg you're the creator of the BOD system? dude I hate you so much lol

[@Mike-cq4no]

As someone who enjoyed the game for years upon years.. Thank you. Still waiting for a Valorite runic hammer though.. Still convinced there will never be another game like it that captures the feeling UO gave.

[@DeltaDragon79]

I built a computer to play UO... Now the phone in my pocket is fifty times more powerful than it was. Crazy.

[@Deceit-hx7ey]

not to mention the price, right? hehe

[@ShittyWankDemon]

lmfao you haven't built a new PC in 20 years?

[@ab-wz2ny]

@@ShittyWankDemon are you insane?

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Willlldddddd

[@KerzacTransformed]

​@ShittyWankDemon how did you get that out of their comment?

[@vittekantilles4178]

Its been almost 30 years and hearing stones still takes me right back

[@daviddobarganes9115]

A truly inspired piece of music

[@LostCrumpet]

Excited to watch this one! 27 years later and im still playing Ultima Online (Outlands), it's also the game i can 100% say helped me launch a career in game development. Thank you for making this, now, ill make a cuppa and get watching!

[@NecroBanana]

Which guild you in?

[@LostCrumpet]

@NecroBanana LT 👍

[@NecroBanana]

​@@LostCrumpet SQzD here

[@DSToNe19and83]

I too am a outlander, love your videos bud! 🍻

[@LostCrumpet]

@DSToNe19and83 💛

[@Byhythloh]

I'm 38yo now. Every online game I try, has just been me chasing the feeling that UO once brought me. I hear that town music, close my eyes, and I'm instantly 14 again, waking up at 5am, hitting that Dial up (and suffocating it with a pillow so the noise doesn't wake my parents). What I would give for a proper UO remake, done by a competent team (NOT EA).

[@teapotcubby]

Same, at 40

[@joemomma534]

Same at 35

[@SamNonDuality]

It's Outlands.

[@wonkals]

100% brother, i am the same age and to this day some of the most impactful memories not just in gaming but in life come from uo and that general era.

[@markjackman1712]

48, same here

[@raphkoster4490]

Nice job, and it was a pleasure to chat with you!

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

The same Raph, an absolute pleasure and I hope we did it some justice! One of the most impactful virtual worlds....ever!

[@gogol1st]

Mister Raph. let me bow before thee. i m game designer myself. thou shaped my fate. hail to you master

[@einoleinogron]

Thank you sir for ruining my teen and early adult years! Just kidding. Was amazing times (as pvper/faction). Managed to stay all way from 1999 to 2011 or so. Tried some mmorpgs but nothing comes close to "first love". That feeling just is not there anymore, sadly.

[@Seb_Falkor]

Majuular has an incredible series playing through the Ultima games and discussing the history of the games. Highly recommend it for anyone interested in Ultima

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Good content creator

[@sicKlown86]

He's so good at presenting those games that I can even recommend them to people who didn't have any particular interest in Ultima before hand. His Underworld video got me sunk down the rabbit hole.

[@ZhuDaoLong]

With his coverage of the development it's also an interesting look at the way the industry develeoped

[@italianspartacus]

I've been watching this, I can't wait for him to do Ultima 8! It's the engine that becomes UO

[@TableDuck]

@@italianspartacussame here. Dude is just awesome.

[@danvain]

My first online game, my first mmo, my first pvp. It was mind blowing for me at the time.

[@kylerobinson6102]

You could steal someone's house. Epic game.

[@bekidox]

UO retail may be dead, but private shards like UO Outlands is alive and thriving. Anyone wanting to get back into UO and discover what it could have become should really find UO Outlands.

[@chipsalom]

Outlands for the win! Hell yes that server is really keeping the joy of that game alive. They're tweaking and changing things in just the right kind of way that has kept the game fun and interesting while not string too much from the core joys of what Ultima online is! Hell and well met, fellow outlander! (You weren't ever a member of VIP/Very Important Pixels were you?)

[@bekidox]

@chipsalom no i run the glc guild, garriots lost children

[@papabones8753]

I'm just too scared to take the plunge. Back then I was playing only on console, got PC way, way later when I was older. Would it even be fine as a noobie to get into it?

[@xdwnwthvwls416]

@@papabones8753 yes, we get new players all the time.

[@Drawfill]

@@papabones8753 You'd be surprised how helpful the community is in that game. New players are always welcome :D

[@botep5529]

Yes! Been waiting for this one. UO was my first MMO and like a junkie always chasing that dragon I've found few games that have come close to scratching that itch

[@calliph]

The only one I've found that even kinda comes close is oddly enough a WW1esque MMO named foxhole. The only other one since then was Shadowbane. That was a very short lived experience and now very old experience.

[@botep5529]

@calliph I've heard good things about foxhole. For me 3 that stick out as coming close to that adrenaline rush was Albion online, dark and darker and hunt showdown

[@shib5267]

Yeah because you want to be 14 again, it's not really about the game being that good

[@botep5529]

@@shib5267 nah being 14 sucked. I like adrenaline rushes

[@diphMO2]

Try Mortal Online 2.

[@Ritchian]

Oh man. Ultima Online. That's... That's hitting right in the nostalgia. I've been an Ultima fan since I was a kid in the '90s discovering RPGs. Ultima VII remains my one of my favorite games of all time. And when I heard rumblings about UO, I got hyped. I even got into the beta, but was unable to actually play it on the old computer my parents had at the time. But by the time the main game was released, I had built my own system. And once I got UO, well... It took over all my free time for a long time to come. UO was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was, at first, the only game in town. Literally. So, you had shards full of everyone from normal adventuring monster slayers to murderous player killers to hardcore craftsmen to role players who built their own towns. If you can think of a play style, they were there, all bumping up against each other. It was beautiful chaos those first couple years. You will never, ever be able to build a world quite like it again. Not with how fractured user bases are. I absolutely loved the game. I loved the freedom. I loved the journey I made on my characters, each ending up different with different skills. I miss my old mage archer - the first place I ever used the very user name this comment is being written under, Ritchian. It was a silly build, but I enjoyed it. II loved running around on my craftsman, cutting down trees and mining, then building all sorts of fun stuff, including trapped boxes that could utterly kill the most hardened warrior. I had another that handled tailoring and scribe stuff. Then there was my thief character, who when he wasn't (poorly) running around being a sneaky thief with an OK dagger skill, also moonlit as a master fisherman. And later on, I had a paladin who was a master swordsman and healer on who I spent an awful lot of time killing demons and other nasty creatures. I played the game for years. More than a decade. I made a lot of friends, all of whom I've sadly lost track of as tech shifted and old IM services died (RIP ICQ), not to mention people leaving the game. I made many dear memories playing that old, silly game. I miss my old small house at the edge of the Trinsic swamp. The little homestead I barely as able to place and I made my own. I drifted away over time, and as expansions started to teeter out and I got busy with other games, I finally closed my account. I wonder sometimes if some lucky soul swooped in on my old house as it finally fell to decay and picked up the treasure trove of goodies I had in there. UO was a special game. I've thought about trying to find a free shard and give it a go again for nostalgia's sake, but I haven't gotten around to it. I will forever be bitter about how poorly EA treated Ultima and Origin. The mess of Ultima IX and the canceled UO sequels were bad enough, but then the later utter abuse of the IP with cheap, awful cash-in games have left me eternally pissed at EA. But the game the developers at Origin that built with UO, warts and all, was an incredible experience. One I will always look back on fondly.

[@ZapatosVibes]

Check out Outlands if you ever feel like scratching that itch, tons of community members love welcoming new players!

[@DSToNe19and83]

I too had a similar experience, even to the point of playing it again. UO outlands definitely gives you that UO2 feel. If you decide to give it a go let me know, I’ll help you out because there’s a lot to learn! 🍻

[@JacoNotorious]

I really enjoyed reading your post, I can heavily relate. I have to agree with another reply, UO Outlands is phenomenal. It feels like a true spiritual successor to UO. The community is amazing, there is even an entire guild of full RP orcs that harass the public, but will usually leave you alone if you offer them something shiny. Ignore them, and your fate may be doomed haha

[@kerrycarpenter3818]

If you wanna get back into it UO outlands is amazing. UO came out when I was 2 so i never got to play the original. But outlands has made me fall in love with this game.

[@timm_3r]

This was all done out of greed and to exploit Garriot's market share. EA has done this to so many awesome franchises that you can't even pretend it happened by accident.

[@Basuko_Smoker]

Baffling hoy that company IS even Alive, i bet without FIFA, NBA and those anual recycled trash, they'd be wiped out od existence over a decade ago...

[@z2ei]

It's a little more complicated than that, though. Origin would've been dead without EA - their games were just too expensive to make and they weren't getting the revenue they needed. Still, I do agree that EA/UO killed the Ultima series, because we never got the U9 we deserved.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Garriott doesn't treat EA like a boogie man either.

[@timm_3r]

EA is the reason we can't have any competing franchises to sports licensed games for decades at a time. Their card systems were a clear indication of profit over quality back in the early 2010's. What other studios did EA bury? Visceral. Mythic, Bullfrog, Origin, Westwood, Dreamworks. Individual studios don't do well because of rediculous demands from publishers, the industry is tarnished by buerocracy and red tape making it more appealing to artists and devs to venture into the indy space if they want any sort of creative freedom. All of these games die because of poor management and insurmountable obstacles or regulation to choose winners in the marketplace.

[@Cr0wsMurd3r]

EA is a cancer... maybe even the original cancer of gaming. ActiBlizz, Ubisoft and others soon followed.

[@hothnogg]

The fear of leaving the town alone, being weak . Towns being raided by mobs every now and then, the unwanted loot around banks that pretty much kitted out new players to leave town only to turn up again later to repeat. Hitting a monster for it to turn out it was a PK using poloymorph spell to trick you. GUARDS! Spam round banks to stop them pesky thief’s. The ooOooO chat for the dead. So many good memories 😊

[@indestructibleobject]

Great video, that game was something else. The feeling of exhilaration when a red name popped up on the edge of your screen... I have so many memories of fighting reds who tried to gank me while I was farming Ice Fiends in the temple inside Ice. Or defending PaxLair, the player-run town on Chesapeake, from PK guild attacks. Would love to one day see another UO game developed to change the entire industry

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

I felt the same way :)

[@fluffytuff]

At the time, I ran the biggest PK guild on Lake Superior, and my now current wife hired me to PK somebody that kept harrassing her in game. So I did, brought her his head, and we started talking. We've been married now for over 20 years, and started a family. Crazy how this game created the life I know now.

[@sifayun6336]

When you PK for hire, do you like, tell them why they're gonna die? Or is it a surprise gank? How much gold did you get paid and what does it translate to for non-UO players?

[@Everdred]

Why do I feel like I just recently heard about this story the other day from somewhere else?

[@coldspell]

I used to play on Lake Superior as well under the name ZaBooEe. I totally scammed a huge guild out of 500k by selling a house deed to a castle to them. They didn't realize I actually gave them the deed to the tiny house out front of that castle. Muahahhaaa. Never did get in trouble since the entire time I never once wrote in game it was a castle but always said something like selling my place or house.

[@FigmentForever]

I was active on LS for 20 solid years with the last 5 being pretty much alone. Ran with NBK, TC/UOF, *S*, EVL; and many more!

[@FigmentForever]

I also run the largest former/current LS player group online on FB. A lot of old names I’m sure you’d recognize

[@PheseantNetsuke]

I really respect how much effort you put into these videos being as informative as possible, cheers

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Thanks, it's a balance of fun, emotion evoking, but above all else...information/storytelling!

[@howardm2642]

It's incredible how long it lasted. There were some great things about the game. It was the first non-text MUD I'd played, and I had a lot of fun playing it. For me, the rampant cheating (exploiting into houses, crashing servers when your guild lost a fight, duplication bugs, etc), little consequences for PKing including cheap kills in dungeons, need for macroing, limited end-game content, and the lag with big groups made me quit but only after many years and eventually moving with friends to Everquest.

[@ashtonackerman9246]

I remember the game being the Wild West prior to Trammel. A few griefer/PKs were causing trouble, so someone ran into town and got the whole place into basically a lynch mob. Dozens of players of various levels stormed through a portal and swarmed a pair of super OP PK players. Newbies dropped like flies, but the tide kept coming. Eventually the PKs were overwhelmed, their loot and various body parts distributed to the mob. I kept something from that as a souvenir in my bank until I quit playing. Hadn't thought of that in like two or more decades.

[@Domitiani]

I remember being the "someone" running into Moonglow when encountering the PKs by the graveyard a few times. Getting away and bringing the cavalry was always so much fun. Of course I had another character that was a thief and part of a group of thieves who would steal from people sitting at the bank, which was *also* a blast

[@zzzzzzz8473]

a fantastic memory , the upstanding blues rallying together to push back the murderous villains , its what made pre trammel so special . i never PKed but i understood their importance in creating a dynamic and dangerous world , and loved to see the anti-PK guilds show up to defend the noobs in brit graveyard from

[@FigmentForever]

God I miss those fights, but I was a PK from the get go. Can’t even describe how many times I lost skill & had stat loss because my kill counts were in the mid 1,000s. One toon still has about 7k kills & I miss those days.

[@dan5122]

Well said my friend. These are the memories which made the game so special

[@zszyTW]

For me UO died shortly after Age of Shadows when they changed the loot to be reminiscent of Diablo II. The game stopped being about just having fun doing whatever and became a loot grind where the moment to moment gameplay was no-where near as good as Diablo.

[@BigSteveLive]

100% this

[@rawrtoupz4830]

Skill issue or lack of creativity, lol

[@marc-andremichaud1251]

I feel like AoS had some redeeming qualities but it definitely started going downhill at this point. Compared to modern UO, I'd play AoS any day.

[@Izmotus]

UO has been reduced to a bot driven grind. Every event has a bot team of 3+. Watching a lead bot followed by 2 or more follow bots killing adds and vacuuming drops.

[@JacoNotorious]

@@zszyTW come to Outlands! No artis here, no broken gear, some broken builds but that is from skill setup and play style.

[@CaptainRufus]

Uo. The game where pking was so out of control early on I got killed before I managed to learn how to MOVE. It was an unpleasant time that if I wasn't a huge Ultima fan I would have quit immediately and probably never looked back.

[@deltav864]

I remember my first death like it was yesterday: I made my character, spawn at the inn in Britain, I walk outside and see a timber wolf chasing after an innocent Britannian citizen. I take a breath, ready the sword that was already in my hand and charge the foul creature. Just moments later I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder and before I could turn around and see the halberd cleaving my neck, my vision fades into black and white... Turned out the timber wolf was his pet and what I did was very criminal.

[@vanion0513]

Out of control player killing drove me off Origin servers. But my time on free shards was glorious

[@teapotcubby]

@@vanion0513 People keep mentioning UO:Outlands here, but it's PK heaven. You can't go 10 min without being PKd. Sucks man

[@Baleur]

One of the greatest things pushing player "loyalty" and immersion, in the sense of keeping interest in the game to login every day, was because the lead devs actually participated. Richard Garriot himself played the game, and would login in his "Lord British" castle, walk among the players and sometimes even spawn custom events like dragons attacking the main town. It gave a sensation of, "i must login today, because anything could be happening and i might miss it". I remember logging on one night and there were 2 dead bodies on the dark dimly lantern lit cobblestone streets. "There is a murderer" echoed in town via local chat. People investigated, nobody rushed to loot the bodies or be a jerk, everyone calmly gathered and started talking about who it could have been, and why someone would do this in town. You just dont see this in online games today. If anything happens, if open pvp is possible, its just ALWAYS a nonstop 24/7 anarchy warzone to the point where no event is special anymore, and its just an endless trope of "dont trust anyone". And game devs acting dungeon masters and spawning events? Cant happen today without people being outraged at dying to an npc that a dev spawned in. Back then, we had no sense of "im entitled to never be attacked or never lose anything". Back then it was just an open true sandbox, and if you made it 1 week without losing your gear, you essentially felt like a king.

[@LuaanTi]

Yeah, Ultima Online was open PvP because it was meant to be a "real" virtual world, and a sandbox. The expectation was that you wouldn't just randomly murder people, and the vast majority of the players didn't. Nowadays, a game with open PvP is generally approached as an open murder game, which is a shame. Haven and Hearth is a pretty nice follow-up, though. Of course, it was also helped by the tolerance of unofficial shards - the whole thing works much better when people can form meaningful societies. As the server population grows larger, it's more common (and easier) to just be an anonymous murderer and overall jerk.

[@stonerhino83]

@@LuaanTi There were also the order and chaos guilds, who could openly PVP each other at any time. If someone murdered too many people they would be flagged, and members of the order guild could kill them without penalty. That caused players to behave in town, and dissuaded continued ganking if they ever wanted to use the banks and merchants again.

[@jhoward2436]

@@stonerhino83 "That caused players to behave in town" -- Well, that, and the fact if you committed a crime within city limits such as attacking or stealing from an innocent, guards would literally spawn in and one-shot you lol.

[@deltav864]

I absolutely agree the IGM & Seer teams running quests like it was a D&D campaign was phenomenal and immersive. If you were involved you felt like your actions mattered. There's a cave on Atlantic near Wrong (Felucca), that you can't get into anymore and anyone passing by is left to wonder what it was for... I can tell you exactly who's cave that was: Claudia Raym's, a shy girl raised by a dragon who was very distrusting of humans (in reality the roleplay character of one of Atlantic's seers) and I was one of the few who managed to gain her trust, by calming her down, teaching her chess in that very cave and agreeing to help her dying dragon mother. This was over 20 years ago. I don't think player complaints is stopping companies from this approach. It's a resources thing and much of it was possible through the volunteer system and the canning of that system after a petty lawsuit was another precedent set by UO. I was a counselor at the time, so I followed that saga closely, and you were expected to do 3 shifts of 2 hours doing tickets (in return your account was free from monthly payments). One senior counselor went to court arguing this constitutes a contract and thus deserved pay, she won and the result was axing the whole voluteer program, keeping only the bare minimum on payroll. Our accounts stayed free though. ​ @jhoward2436 Not in the very beginning; guards would actually just walk towards the perpetrator like an NPC monster and you could easily outrun them. The notoriety system at the start had nothing to do with the amount of murders, but purely based on your rep (Dread Lord was red and you could get there by just casting earthquake at a bank once).

[@Vielthic]

EA killer of 3 of the greatest online games ever designed! RIP UO, DAoC, Warhammer 😢!

[@warr39]

Return of Reckoning

[@coldspell]

Warhammer was dead before it ever launched, though. I do agree they butchered Uo and DAoC

[@Rebazar]

They killed Earth & Beyond and the company that made it too (Westwood of C&C fame).

[@lyinginertia]

I just started playing this a few days ago and have been looking for reviews/retrospectives on it. Perfect timing man

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Welcome to the party!

[@derekwood8195]

Such a well done recap. Thanks for the fond memories. U8 forced me to actually create ramdisks to play effectively. One of the main reasons I became a pc builder and programmer when I was younger. At one time I was a super power user (13 accounts). That’s how much I enjoyed playing it. More then one perma-red running around in felucca ;-)

[@Rebazar]

Early UO had a hard time figuring out what kind of game it wanted to be, especially PvP wise. I spent most of my time as "the gray robed bandit" pickpocketing people for valuables at the Trinsic bank. I still remember the day the game died for me as I watched a GM take a boat deed out of my inventory that I had just stolen from another player. Good times.

[@realxombit]

Oh man, the staff abuse in that game was legendary!

[@John_Goodman90]

Still blows my mind to this day that not only the players but, even some devs have no idea where the term 'shard' comes from and it's all thanks to Mondain the Wizard, his power was absolute. I personally still play UO on Outlands. The game refuses to lose its' luster and still has an amazing player base. From playing when I was 8-9 to 35 now is a wild ride..

[@neveridle]

cant believe nerdslayer just released a 50 min doc on ultima online. this is just amazing, ty

[@brianlhughes]

I beta tested SWG and got work directly with Koster, I successfully suggested they use the Everquest method of steering forward movement by holding down the right mouse button.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Interesting!

[@mbeecher9921]

Sure you did.

[@JacoNotorious]

​@@mbeecher9921I know the Internet is full of deceptive lies and bots, but let's try just being willing to believe. It's such a more fun and optimistic world to live in 😊

[@jayyrod1]

Ultima Online is alive and well on Outlands. Highly recommend playing it in 2025.

[@Al1987ac]

It's a fan made server?

[@HorsesArePeople2]

​@@Al1987ac Yes

[@TheBallsofst33l]

It’s a fan server based upon the original game, however, it’s extremely divorced from the original experience with many skills completely reworked and intentionally large amount of grinding built in

[@bknoid]

This. UO 2.0

[@glorypaxson]

Aka Camping adds carry weight. Forensics Eval affects skinning Societies are in place of BODs Custom world and dungeons Custom GH by server creator who is very active when guilds level up. Ridiculously healthy server. Every single place in game has people most of the time. Only cons imo: It hates thieves. Lol

[@krisreddish3066]

When it came out, I was in the Army in a light infantry unit in AK. The game saved me from any sort of cabin fever. It would in turn by my curse, I would play it for the next 20 years, while other folks got out and made careers, I was playing UO. I stopped at one point like 10 years ago when my guild leader died of old age. Hit me right in the midlife crisis.

[@johnsmitherman3179]

Everyone talking about Outlands, but no mention of UOG Hybrid and the guys that created the RunUO code is a shame.

[@sho76und3wd]

Great video! I absolutely love the UO series and it was a huge party of my childhood. Still play on a few free servers today to scratch the itch, and to this day, wonder what could have been if there had been better decisions made.

[@miked6777]

OMG, I've been waiting for you to cover this game since I first started watching your videos many years ago. It's my favorite game of all time. You did a great job!

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@WhatAboutZoidberg]

I sometimes wish I would've been around for the era of MUDs. Thinking about 200+ people online together before the year 2000 is WILD, truly incredible devs. UO is THE legacy mmo, even as someone who never played it. Such a cool game.

[@Ghostcharm]

one of my favorite videos of yours in years, man. awesome work

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Thanks it was one that made me pretty nervous to be honest

[@CapObv]

I was there when Lord British got PK'd. It was glorious.

[@DSToNe19and83]

UO is a guilty pleasure, I still play outlands..

[@reloadpsi]

Blurring the screen when you said "CoX" actually made me palm my face, you absolute legend.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

lmao, I did it after saying it when I realized

[@westisnt]

Earth and Beyond, another victim of EA, was one of my favourite MMOs. Hope to see it on here some day.

[@savageduck4487]

Yeah remember joining that and 2 months later canned

[@bigchungus1888]

Oo that was a fun one.

[@Rebazar]

That game was something special, sad that it got so little time

[@CyberneticArgumentCreator]

Star Citizen struggling with object persistence in 2025, meanwhile UO in 1999 had global object persistence.

[@moonasha]

I mean, one of these is a small map you can doodle on a piece of paper, the other has like 20 full sized planets/moons. It doesn't exactly take a genius to understand that these things aren't the same.

[@fullarmourtracksuit4023]

Sweet comparison bro. Fully sick burn.

[@cubiclesmurf]

this guys a bit of a dumb dumb

[@MalekitGJ]

​@@moonashano, with basic programming knowledge you can intuit that there are problems on how the game engine has been coded on how to interact with databases

[@juliawolf156]

To be fair, the world in Star Citizen is slightly larger. Nevertheless its funny 😄

[@SpecShadow]

* Spoony's "Betrayal" starts playing in the background *

[@metagen77]

BETRAYED ME

[@betelguse16]

“What’s a Paladin?” “Your knowledge of the land shall be great.” “The Codex of Infinite Wisdom?”

[@an.avatar]

UO is alive and well - many consider UO Outlands to be the spiritual successor to UO. Holds true to the original spirit of the game while expanding on it. 3000+ active players at any given time

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

welcome to the channel and thanks for the support!

[@cannukian1]

I straight up got addicted to this game. It got so bad I made the decision to quit because my grades at college we're going in the tubes. I would stay up till 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, wake up at 11:00 a.m. and just grind again till 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

[@jeffery9]

some guys developed macos to max out skills like mining and blacksmithy - lumberjack/(building bows) ...everyone grinded 24/7 on the game

[@wargamer234]

I remember UO was the first MMO I ever bought, had no idea it needed monthly payments and a good internet... so funnily enough never got to play it until years later.

[@thefinancier12]

AoS was a nightmare. It destroyed skill based play and made the base dependent on insured items.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Insured items aren't a bad thing...sorry mate

[@thefinancier12]

@nerdSlayerstudioss I disagree. The beauty of UO was risk vs reward. It's what drove excitement and also provided an incentive to treasure hunt, not to mention stimulate a virtual economy. If you grind for irreplaceable gear and insure it, you've eliminated the need to continue to gather, you're "maxed" out. Not to mention, the level of realism is also removed. In the golden age, there were a few "blessed" weapons that wreaked havoc on the battlefield, they were few and far between. I stand by AoS being total garbage that led to thousands of veteran players leaving (see wikipedia).

[@FigmentForever]

@@nerdSlayerstudiossI’m with you. Played UO since Beta & it HAD to evolve. AoS just drove away so many that didn’t want to grind & just wanted to stick with the status quo. Helped run some of the biggest (150+) guilds on LS for years (up til 2015/16) and it thrived for years like this. We always upgraded our guild members suits & characters since we had a bustling economy. Hell, I paid for all of my college from the money we made running the guild & put several others through Uni as well. The death knell was really WoW & heavier graphics based MMOs with bigger budgets & player bases. Nothing could compete - player # wise - with WoW. I still have my original accounts up and running as being a seer on 2 of them allowed me to have a lifetime sub. I even still work on the patches & bug fixes for the retail UO.

[@NoOne-fe3gc]

I find it amazing that the reason there are many servers, many words, is covered in the game lore (at the beginning when the character picked up a SHARD with a world inside). UO coined the term Shard to mean multiple images of a complete world. That went on to be used in the Database world in tech.

[@MATCHLESS789]

I started playing UO in 2007 (in private servers) after already having played a lot of L2 and WoW and testing other countless MMOs. It's a great game, I wish I played it at its peak.

[@skottlee8959]

It's currently at It's peak in the form of Outlands. Play it now before they screw it up

[@bknoid]

​@@skottlee8959this. UO 2.0 on Outlands.

[@BigSteveLive]

@@skottlee8959 I do not believe for one second outlands is even possible to be comparable to peak. The players aren't the same anymore, the game is dead.

[@skottlee8959]

@BigSteveLive nothing will ever be as fun as it was when you were a teenager, but outlands is the natural progression of UO if the official devs hadn't ruined it early into its lifecycle. Don't go through life with rose tinted glasses.

[@pelinoregeryon6593]

​@@skottlee8959"natural progression" and "peak" are not always synonymous, those words don't mean the same thing, just an observation 🤗

[@RLHooper]

As a first wave beta tester I salute this game for all it achieved and accomplished, I still have my first wave beta test disc in a case I sealed for posterity. This game was done dirty by EA.

[@daledozerx2920]

very appropriate timing after Outlands, the most popular free shard in modern times for Ultima just released a pretty rough patch increasing game difficulty.

[@ZapatosVibes]

Very happy you mentionned Outlands. I've been playing on and off since 2018 and it truly is what Ultima Online always should have been. The fact that this tiny dev team is running circles around billion dollar companies is amazing. Hope for many more years of success and Ultima Online!

[@sneakyrune]

@33:08 I’ll say this as a hardcore UO fan-I’ve been playing since 1998 and still do to this day. Age of Shadows is largely the most hated expansion because it was the final nail in the coffin for the world of Ultima Online. It shifted the game from being a community-driven experience to one centered around items. Crafting was no longer the backbone of acquiring weapons and gear; instead, the game became all about chasing loot drops. This change fundamentally altered the spirit of UO, moving it away from what made it unique in the first place. Most UO fan will understand this.

[@terrycraft6500]

UO speed was the benchmark for internet for me. People forget that dial up was way worse than 56k..... 14.4, 28.8 getting dsl and breaking 100 was wild back then.

[@davidsalvador8989]

We luckily got to beta test cox cable in the late 90s. We were anti ok and the speeds helped a lot.

[@nedt8778]

Played day 1 of launch, survived the server crash the first weekend. Played on the Atlantic server. Name was Tradesman. One of the first if not the first GM Blacksmith. Hung around Minoc and the Peninsula.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Og status

[@Godseyyy]

If anyone was in the UO Excelsior shard from 2007-2010, it's me, Wade Wilson This video really reminded me how much fun it was to grind away and max level everything in that shard, even if some of the skills didn't work there. Having bandages on a hot key that would insta-heal my solo tryhard dork of a character were some of my favorite times

[@dogsoupblues]

I paid for two accounts from 1997 to 2015. That opening song always brings me right back to high school age 🙂 it was the reason we got a cable modem from first 36.6 and then a 56k modem, and caused me to learn how to build a pc, which led ultimately to me working for a software company now 😁 I weirdly have used it as a point of pride to have been in it from the beginning, and just how influential this game was and is. It's the granddaddy of them all. I met some great people, sadly lost some guildmates to illness, and just generally always had an amazing time. I love this game, especially the version from the late 90s. Thank you for bringing back these memories!

[@FercPolo]

Escaping a PVP duel with your life, or winning one when you're prepared, is still one of the best feelings in all of gaming history. The sheer emotion with how much stuff we could lose if we went down. Man, I loved this game so much.

[@bambino133t5]

I started playing right around the release of T2A, but peaked while playing In Por Ylem (IPY). I was the first player to GM tailoring while cornering the leather armor market, ran the best vendor spot in the world, was the first player to get exiled from Britain for primarily killing pack horses, and won an election to be King of Britain - on different character of course.

[@realxombit]

Before the wipe?

[@Statikkilla]

0 Mention of Sphereserver 0 Mention of UOgateway 0 Mention of UOGamers OSI to Outlands rofl

[@Statikkilla]

test center

[@scott4092]

Excellent tribute. I'll never forget the message boards and chat rooms and fan sites and all the crazy themed guilds, or the day I finally got into the beta and there were thousands of gamers are trying to figure out what they were going to do in this mad world, from launch and the increased craziness that ensured, my god what a glorious world. I might have to load up a freeshard tonight!

[@Baleur]

9:27 i know this sounds weird in todays graphics driven world. But whenever i sat down and played UO, these are the graphics i saw in my mind. I saw this artwork when playing. I didnt see the low res sprites and textures, i saw this. And thats why it was so immersive and pulled you in. Hard to experience that in todays games where the imagination is completely deactivated.

[@mrbrown38]

Come join us on Outlands! Very much alive over here.

[@Max44321]

Nice to see City of Heroes mentioned again ^^. And something's up with youtube again, it unsubscribed me at some point and I missed so many videos!

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Welcome back!

[@ShrekonDVD745]

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOREVER FOR THIS THANK YOU

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

💛

[@azure3456]

Im in a weird position as a UO player. My parents played when i was a baby (literally, im 28, and the game is 27). I grew up around this game, and actually my tag (Azure) came from UO. My mom had a blue dragon she named Azure, and since i didn't know it was a color at the time, i really liked that name, and so made it my tag for YEARS. I ended up joining later in my childhood, around 13. By that time it seemed the damage had been done. There weren't many players left on the Chesapeake shard my family called home, and i didn't even really get to play with my family, since my mom had my character on her account, meaning i couldn't play with her. But i grew up totally fascinated with this world, and have only ever experienced it in it's Post-T2A state. I would eventually have my own account when i was around 17, and kept it for a couple years before i let it lapse and i lost my house. As time went on i wanted to get back into it. I tried the Endless Journey thing, and was mad when i couldn't place a house, which was my favorite part of the game. So i abandoned ship. Then i got an ad for World of Warcraft Ascension. It's a free WoW server that has unique systems and concepts for progression. I tried WoW years ago when my parents played that too, but never really enjoyed it. But that got me thinking about UO again. I looked up freeshards, and holy shit did my world open up. I joined Outlands for a bit, but it was a little too hardcore for me. I like a more laid-back experience with my MMOs, and a few too many PKs had me ready to move on. Great shard, just not for me. Then i found the Forbidden Lands shard. Start out with GM in all skills, and the focus was getting 120 in all skills and taming their custom animals to take on their INSANE boss spawns around the world. But i don't really like the focus on taming. So i moved to UO Eventine. This is where i call home now, and i love it. A normal start, but with really interesting custom and more grounded systems that help everything feel attainable, but you have to really work for it. I love this shard, and i guess the moral of the story here is that there is a free shard for everyone who wants to play.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Cool story

[@rancid2124]

AoS fundamentally changed the game from skill-based to item-based. This is why there was a sharp drop in the number of players following the release of AoS. Yes, UO hit it's peak of 250,000 subscribers with the AoS release, but that was because of the hype of a new expansion and retail placement in Wal-Mart, GameStop, etc. AoS never sustained those numbers. I won't say that AoS is a bad game, but it's not the UO that the majority of people liked to play. It should have just been released as UO2 (remember that promise?) or had the AoS ruleset confined to Malas and maybe any new worlds after that. I think the devs realized early on that it was going to fail, but there's no job security in telling your company that the thing you produced isn't as good as the thing that already existed and you want to revert back. I think the PK/PvP argument is overblown, as there was very little help available when UO launched, compared to the multitude of sites that existed at the launch of UO:R. PvP was readily available up to AoS's release. The only difference is you could rarely PK someone who had spent the past 4 hours mining ore and take all their stuff. Almost everyone who participated in PvP post-UO:R did so by choice, either through Order/Chaos, guild wars, or Factions. UO could have saved some of the playerbase by releasing a classic shard at any point over the last 21 years. WoW has done it successfully. DAoC did it. Other games have done it. UO devs constantly claim they "lost the code" or "no one can agree on what a classic shard should be like" but these excuses are tired, and in my opinion, untrue. You'll never make everyone happy, but UO can be divided into 3 main eras: Pre-UOR, UOR, and AoS. A shard with anything up to UOR would eliminate Trammel. A UOR shard with anything up to Publish 14 gives you the UOR experience. I'd actually release a Publish 16 shard as well, as that did add a lot to the game with powerscroll farming and other content. AoS shards exist, and judging by player numbers, are generally disliked. UO devs have never understood that we want the mechanics, not necessarily the experience, of previous UO shards. You'll never recreate the Pre-UOR/T2A experience due to the internet not being full of noobs anymore, help sites existing, and broadband internet being in practically every gamer's home. No one who plays online is using dial-up anymore. UO was a game loved by a lot of people. It was one of the main MMOs, and at one time the most popular, before losing the throne to Everquest. I think most of us who played it seriously look back at it with fond memories. Wild claims like a pre-AoS shard would kill WoW are nonsense, but throw up a couple shards with Pre-UOR and UOR rulesets and I think you get enough people back to be profitable.

[@Unquestionable]

Saw this title and immediately got excited. As someone who loves Ultima less for the memories I have of it, which are treasured but very limited, but for how groundbreaking and important most every release was. I was a gaming magazine junkie back in the day and UO coverage was always incredible, making the concept of a virtual world closer to reality than anything before it.

[@RakkothX]

I remember getting a gaming mag that had an article on UO. My big memory of it was a couple players on a winding cliff-side path chased by.. skeletons? and one of the players yelling 'Feet don't fail me now!' Also remember a demo CD being UO themed, with various monster models across the screens.

[@cheetah2003-z5w]

I was there the day UO died. It was the Age of Shadows expansion. Many will say it was the introduction of Trammel. But I think AOS is what truly was the death blow to what was one of best MMOs ever. And has never been surpassed, except maybe by EVE Online.

[@realxombit]

UO:R was the first death.

[@cheetah2003-z5w]

@@realxombit Yeah, that was the introduction of Trammel. Mmhmm. I had heard from many vets it was never the same after that. Alas, I joined UO shortly after UO:R was released. It may have been the first death, but I disagree. The forced PVP was a problem since UO's start. UO:R corrected that problem. UO was absolutely insanely popular after UO:R. That was it's peak.

[@realxombit]

@@cheetah2003-z5w I respect your opinion, but you also say you weren't there. There's a certain thing that I'm coming to realize wasn't conveyed to the next generation in any real way. This may be a topic that I need to talk more about. You've inspired me today, and I would like to thank you for that!

[@cheetah2003-z5w]

@ Yeah I wasn't there. I respect your opinion as well! As I said, even at the time, many said it wasn't the same after UO:R. And of course it wasn't. That was a huge change. I know for me, at that time, the way UO was prior to UO:R was a huge reason I was not interested in playing. UO:R changed that for me, and I was so grateful I could enjoy that virtual world as someone who played Ultima since the first game on the Apple II. I was a huge fan of the series.

[@kylewellman402]

Back in its height, was absolutely the funnest PvP and PvE ever. Running champ spawns, guild wars, PvP in Fel Brit and Luna... lots of really really good memories. I still have a couple accounts on official server I just can't seem to let go of. So much gold and items.. I've even lost half by some bullcrap rule of "free accounts not having houses" and they not charging that account one month and kicking it to free version and dropping my house. No matter how furious it still makes me for all the soul stones, gold, legendary items, power scrolls, extremely rare ingredients, and what not I lost (enough to make anyone rage quit) I still pay for one of the accounts with my house on it. Just can't let it go.

[@MiamiSammy]

Remember faction battles on test servers? The BEST

[@DogukanSeptem]

"Ultima Online, hayat offline", a saying in Turkish translates to "Ultima Online. life is offline" (shocker, I know). The game shaped my (and many others) life. This was some trip to the memory lane, thank you.

[@RenzoTravelsTheEarth]

I remember some kid telling me about this game on the bus back from school when I was about 10 years old. I bought it the next weekend and it blew my mind.

[@JohnAlexiou]

All UO needed is a cooldown for spells, to level them with skills and weapons. A PK just called a macro with a sequence of spells that allowed multiple spells to hit at the same time.

[@realxombit]

One of many problems that kept coming back!

[@chrimony]

@18:00: I can speak from experience how terrible it is to be expected to work 40+ hours a week, and then be expected to be oncall at any time during your off-hours.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Same, in construction

[@Limp_Briskit]

Try running a business

[@chrimony]

@ Oddly enough, the managers who were callous to our concerns about having our downtime under constant threat of the pager didn't have to carry a pager. Funny how that works.

[@MrDigitop]

To this day, I still remember my life around the Orc Fort in Yew Forest, RP'ing as an Orc! Grumchuck - Grandmaster Archer, Howler of the Shadowclan - HOOWAH!

[@RakkothX]

Seeing that BNN article of the Shadowclan officially being given the orc was something else. Never played an orc myself, just a crazy priest that kept littering the fort with food and liquor, but Cats was a phenomenal server back in the day.

[@patrickvance5502]

loved my time in shadowclan, both on catskills and seige

[@vsolyomi]

"Richard Garriot went to the same college as me" - nerdSlayer found his Nemesis, the Ultimate Nerd (all puns absolutely intended!) :)

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

lol 😆

[@JacoNotorious]

What a masterpiece, you have a new sub in me. UO Outlands feels the true spiritual successor, I'm so glad to see your video getting so many views. I believe us Outlanders have coopted your content as an opportunity to evangelize Outlands haha, so thank you!

[@khaosterminator]

I still have the cloth map that came with UO and the Blackthorn figure that came with the 3D client.

[@whytemc1]

This game taught me what a Van Dyke beard was.

[@botep5529]

Few things can compare to the rush of full loot PVP from UO. Albion online came close. Dark and darker is also another good one.

[@vanion0513]

Rampant player killing was the only bad part of UO and the reason I left Origin servers for free shards and I never regretted it.

[@inigomontoya6968]

In '97 I started my carrier post school and bought my first PC just for UO. I played it for over half a decade and have so many cool and unique memories I experienced there. Such a fantastic game that's one of my favorites. I may have to check out UO Outlands. I didn't know about it. Thanks for pointing it out! One of my coolest and most unique memories was a friend and I came face to face with a GM controlled huge gazer who was taking over a small town. We were both high skilled players and we fought it, while it was casting and taunting us. We got it down to a sliver of health and it bugged out so fast we couldn't keep up on our 56K modems. lol It was an epic fight and an epic experience I'll never forget.

[@frosty8724]

UO got me into gaming when I was like 6-8. I didn't even know it was still around I am DLing the OG one right now and might try the better version soon. Thanks for the video.

[@amirulhakim6899]

It's kinda difficult isn't it, to cater towards the older players but also try to attract newer ones, especially when the competition just looks shinier?

[@marcofabro]

Awesome video! Watching it as I'm playing UO! Been playing since 1997 with a few breaks. Played the original OSI servers from 97-07 and free servers from 08-now. I encourage everyone to give UO a shot even in 2025. Currently playing UO Enigma which is amazing.

[@resowar7archives]

I only played between 2001 - 2003 before moving onto DAOC, but this still feels like such a significant part of my gaming history. I remember my first moments being chasing birds with an axe to get their feathers so I could fletch arrows, with minimal success.

[@victorfroes6650]

This and Majuular’s recent coverage of the Ultima titles go together like peanut butter and jam (jelly)

[@Dewderonomy]

Finally approaching the age where I've played the game less than half as long as I've been alive lol. 20+ years, half of which was on Felucca-only freeshards, to your point about freeshards' popularity. The freedom to do whatever is what defined my expectations of games, particularly MMOs, in my formative years; it wasn't just a catchphrase for E3 trailers. I killed players for money as a hitman; worked for guilds as a mercenary; escorted players through T2A when it first opened (you couldn't recall between expansions at first); ran taverns and player festivals; extorted fishermen with licensing through aggressive piracy; hunted bounties and evaded bounty hunters; looted houses and sabotaged guilds to steal their guildstones; and raised role-playing cities, establishing player guards and player-run governments. Oh, and died and got blind-looted a lot lol. UO was like nothing else. The players I've met - including one I actually married lol - became close friends, second families, and bitter rivals. Everything was more genuine, for better or for worse, and to Koster's point, the internet then was a different time. I think a lot of UO's magic has died since the early internet's sense of "social media" has changed so dramatically. UO was an absolute garbage game, mechanically speaking - it was never properly balanced in any era, the flagging systems hurt the innocent more than the criminals, even Trammel killed the core identity of the game irreparably - but the experience of what Felucca-only Ultima Online offered its players was unparalleled, even to this day. SWG got close, EVE not so much but it was on a similar tack, and honestly I have no hope for Ashes of Creation or anything out of "AAA" studios. Star Citizen has about the only direction and design to get back to the core of what made UO great, but time will continue to tell on that one. To the pirates off of Vesper and the murderers at Britain crossroads; to the role-players in Yew and the blacksmiths at the Forgery in Minoc; and to the tamers in Skara Brae and the thieves in West Brit: thanks for the laughs, thanks for the loot, and thanks most of all for the memories. Hope to see y'all again in the next world. -Brandon, Catskills (et al)

[@LagunaLoiregr]

I never played UO. Back then I was playing Starwars Galaxies and Diablo 2. But noone can deny the influence that UO had to the whole MMO genre.

[@Mobscene_CDN]

One of my favorite games of all time, loved playing this back in the 90s. Kind of off topic, but surprised you didn't mention the murder of Lord British. Still hilarious whenever I think about it or hear it mentioned.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Only because of how covered it is/was tbh!

[@JesskiLove]

Stones, the title song, will always be so nostalgic for me. At the same time though, it brings a lot of sadness knowing we will probably never have another game like UO.

[@Maddness101]

Full PvP with no restrictions but what the community enforces will always be the dream for some, but theres always going to be some restrictions, even if it’s just things like ‘don’t hack the game’ or ‘don’t use this exploit’ and ‘don’t mass report someone falsely to keep them off the game’. Of course the later requires a reporting system to actually be in place, but you catch my drift.

[@Garrette63]

Full PVP almost killed the Ultima Online initially. Players were constantly getting killed and having their items taken and UO was losing players because of it. It wasn't until the introduction of Trammel in UO Renaissance that the game really took off.

[@Aetrion]

The problem with open PvP is twofold: 1. The aggressor has an absolutely insane advantage in an MMORPG. They get to pick the fights, so they can make sure they only attack when they are certain of victory. 2. Players who don't want open PvP can't ever win. Even if they defend themselves successfully, they are unable to ever make the world safe for themselves. So basically you have a world that operates as though criminals are arrested, but never actually go to prison. Someone robs you, you call the police, and even if they catch the guy, he just robs you again the next day. So what's the point of even calling the police? It's a paradise for criminals, it's hell for everyone else. There is a solution to this though. UO was close. Trammel and Felucca were a good idea, but they weren't utilized correctly. How they should have worked is this: You CAN kill people in Trammel, but if a red flag character gets killed in Trammel they get tossed into Felucca, and they can't leave Felucca for a significant amount of time depending on how many kills they had before they were brought down. So that way you can have all the emergent gameplay of a gang of murderous thugs spreading a reign of terror across the nice, safe world, but when someone finally runs them down and brings them to justice it actually works. As far as the people who don't want to fight are concerned the PKs are actually defeated for a meaningful amount of time, and the PKs aren't prevented from playing the game by this, they are just stuck in the underworld for a few weeks where they can still PvP to their heart's content. So murder would be a thing in Trammel, but if you want to be a murderer you'd have to either keep it on the down low and only kill maybe once a week so that you don't get such bad karma that you go to the underworld, or you'd go on your crazy murder spree, but when you get brought down you'll just have to wait for a while until you get to invade Trammel again.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

cool idea

[@Nazralte]

I started playing UO in 98 so I got to experience the "glory" days of all that. When Trammel first came out I was one of those who was kinda happy about it because as someone who didn't PvP much I did not get to enjoy many aspects of the game. It was really hard to explore and go to dungeons as those were the prime hunting grounds of PKers. One aspect nerdslayer only touched upon was the "cheating" that was happening and never stopped when it came to PvP. Other than exploits which some people would get banned for there were macro programs which really made a big difference in PvP. I always felt like that was a cheating kinda thing and never used one but I recall early on UO devs or whoever saying they are illegal to use but after a while of I guess not being able to enforce them ended up embracing them. Always sucked to be running along and have someone pop out from hiding and cast 2 or 3 spells before you knew what was happening. You'd be dead sometimes before you even saw someone. However, after a few years and looking back I do totally agree that a better system would have been the way to go instead of an "on / off" switch that Trammel and Felucca provided. I don't think a better system would have kept me playing any longer. I quit sometime around that Mondain's Legacy expansion and the main reason for quitting is that I just didn't have time anymore. It's difficult to play a MMO when you only have an hour or two at most to play.

[@Aetrion]

@@Nazralte Yea, and another thing people forget is that Ultima Online didn't have any lag compensation. The latency of your connection determined how quickly your character was allowed to move another tile, so if you were sitting on a T1, cable or early DSL connection you could absolutely curbstomp anyone in the game who was still on dialup or ISDN. In early Ultima Online your PvP ability was heavily determined by nothing more than your internet speed.

[@Nazralte]

@@Aetrion Of course. I went from classic 56k dial up to cable and the difference was massive. 😄

[@dennisyounker1032]

That's what made UO great. Fellucia and Trammel kind of ruined it. The risk is what made it exciting. Having PvP land and PvM land just took away the magic.

[@drakainen4555]

If I remember correctly it's not that they didn't try stopping private servers(pretty sure they did try at one point and lost) it was more they legally couldn't due to their user agreement or lack thereof because you legally owned anything on the CD when you purchased the game which contained all the assets and the client and that was all it took for people to start working on private servers.

[@Endymion766]

I was one of the first players on release. I remember my shard was just me and one guy named Carlos who proceeded to ignore me as if I didn't exist. He proceeded to drop all of his gold on the ground and ran out of town. So, I got some starting bonus gold. Thank you Carlos, wherever you are now.

[@LaughterIsDeadly]

When I was in highschool I was an active player on the UO official shards. My best friend at the time's older brother was the vice president of EA sports out of Orlando. He made many decisions about changes to the game. I got to meet him and argued to the best of my ability as a long term player that the changes they were making would destroy the game. He told me I was wrong because of all the emails he got from players who lost their stuff and felt it was unfair. They introduced Trammel and Felucia and the game died as predicted. I'm still mad to this day that I couldn't change his mind.

[@ericswintell8850]

So basically this is kinda your fault. Thanks a lot.

[@LaughterIsDeadly]

@@ericswintell8850 lol because a 15 year old boy couldn't convince an executive to make better decisions? I guess you're right

[@AndrewCapela]

​@@LaughterIsDeadlyI think he was joking

[@LaughterIsDeadly]

@@AndrewCapela Don't worry sport, China wont get you either.

[@fortvalor]

Pub 16 ruined it Left kiss method. The game was the best I would fall asleep with a lan party next to me waiting for a SL raid with sound on full blast to wake us.

[@qxz9p]

I had a buddy in high school who would level up characters to max level in some set of skills in like a week and then sell the character for massive profit. What a time to be alive.

[@RyanDanielG]

I remember signing up for the beta tests for UO when I was 16. Never thought I would get that CD in the mail, but it came. It was great, even on a crappy 36.6 dial-up. I only played for a few months but it was a lot of fun.

[@nathans1787]

I played UO from launch, and those first early days in a living, virtual world were absolutely amazing. But the unrelenting ganking was a major turn off, and once a friend turned me on to EQ, it wasn’t a hard choice to make. Thank you for the great video!

[@gasparnovo2725]

Transformar Ultima Onilne en 3D es destruir el juego , el 2D es lo que hace posible UO ser el mejor MMORPG de todos los tiempos.

[@sneslive1556]

My first encounter with UO was watching my friend's older brother playing it. Got in after the splitting of PVP/PVE so I didn't really know any different. Was like 11 at the time. So it was probably not only my first MMO but my first online multiplayer game ever.