So, I was just thinking, I started playing UO when Origin first launched it, before EA bought it, and well before "free Shards" even became possible.  I was just wondering if there was anyone on our player base who has NOT played the original $10 per month /”real" UO.  Give some fun back info on memories.  If your "newer" to the game, how did you get into UO and well, what do you think?
 
 I'll start.  Originally was a Chesapeake Shard player, (spelling?) I remember trusting no one, unless you personally knew them in RL.  And quite honestly, even that was a stretch as greed could quickly over come friendships in the online world.  I remember killing players and discovering a Key and Rune to their house on them, and the exciting rush of quickly assembling to loot them.  Back in the beginning there was no such thing as security, and unless someone was home to put up a fight, there was usually little someone could do to stop their house from being looted.  Anyone remember TENTS?  God, how many of those cheap things took up map space?  Tents, which were the size of a house plot, but had no way of keeping people out, were only useful as a vendor plot, and offered one secure chest.
 In the beginning, days of looting and PKing were different than even most free shards today.  You could recall in the heat of battle, even if you attempted to engage, or you, the attacker found yourself praying on an easy target, that happened to have better skills, or friends close by.
 Patch updates were almost every day, and it was common to find skills and spells nerfed.  The Brit Graveyard was the place to be, if you were red, you took control the the land, and taunted would be hero’s of blue to cross the guard zone for some quick attempts at a tricky red kill.  Using friends and guild mates, we would set up cleverly placed players, each assigned a task, as a Red, you always had to disarm a magic reflect, and a player or two with explosion precasted could deal 3/4 or more damage to a player right as they see what appears to be just an ebolt coming at them.  Perhaps they got across the guard zone before they died, allowing their items to remain on their corpse for another fight, but if they ventured too far, they might not have made it.
 Paralyze, explosion, paralyze, ebolt and a shot off the bow, or swing of the sword could also "solo" these would be heroes, if ones states and skills were build right. There was no noriety at first, so no one was a lord, dreaded or otherwise.  You were either Blue or Red.
 Items didn't need to be locked down in a house, just simply dropped; they would be there until the house disappeared.  Camping "in danger of collapsing" houses was a wandering adventures dream, and I myself got ridiculously wealthy by finding, marking runes, and camping these type of houses.  I remember setting alarms for "estimated" times when a house would drop, and making sure I was in the area when it happened.
 Things like Razor, EasyUO and several other programs were coming out, but highly ban able if caught using it.  Magic Items were basic magic, no item properties, not resistance to elements, and there was no such thing as luck.  Luck back in the day was how well your hally or Bardich hit on first pass, and recalling out of trouble with 1 hp left.
 
 I must say, I am older now, and with a family and 2 kids, this game is still fun for me.  I enjoy this server and was attracted to it because it spawned an entirely NEW way of playing the old game that I loved.  Also, due to LIFE I simply couldn't afford to grind hard, play well and still have everything I played for be vulnerable to being taken / looted or otherwise.  The free server I played prior to this one was set up to closely resemble the old game described above, but they too quickly nerfed a lot of the features, and went care bearish in the wrong way, without providing adventure and different things to do, like UOE does.  Either way, that's my story, so now, share yours!
 

I don't recall how old Ultima Online was when I played it, but I was 12 years old roughly, now I am 25.  I played with my mother, my cousin and my Aunt.  I'd assume it was out for a little while, because Trammel was around. 

  I played on the Sonoma Server, and was leveling a warrior melee type, simply due to the fact I didn't need reagents.  The more I hung around my cousin and aunt, who were both Mage Tamers... the more I wanted to be a mage myself.  Some of my fondest memories were training my weapon in the bone knight room of Deceit.  Players stacked on players just hitting bone knights for skill gains.  I remember going places to my cousin and digging up buried treasure, and fighting giant monsters. 

  Even then you had people who would trick you for there personal greed.  My aunt was buying a house from someone for about 1 mil (which at the time was a lot),  he put up the trade window and what we saw on our end was a double rolled up scroll,  I asked her if she knew that was the deed to the house and she said, " It looks like it, I'm sure it is." I said, "Ooookkkk."  No sooner did she put the check in, hit the check box and the guy recalled away did she find out it was just a blank scroll.  It was a... don't want to say I told ya so.. moments.

  After a little while my cousins friend started to play as well, and of course when your all in the same guild you can attack each other.  Well, his friend would grief my mother and I by killing us and taking our stuff.  My aunt, nor my cousin really seemed to care much.  So,  we both ended up kind of drifting away because all the stuff we worked for was taking by this guy and we just didn't have the drive/time to get it back. 

  Eventually I went back MUCH later in life, probably 1-2 years ago.  It wasn't the same, everything was about skilling.. no adventure.  Go AFK and hit a Golem to gain, stand in one spot and gain, never any lets go do a dungeon run and gain.  I tried multiple different free shards but only one actually kept my attention and I don't remember it now.  However,  this server is absolutely amazing and has me hook, line and sinker at this point.  I do not see me leaving in the near future.  

  Thanks for the fun topic.

Hubby and I started playing a couple years into the release. But we started off on free shards. The shard we played on is still active to this day. But is old school. We met some friends on the free server and decided to follow them to Lake Superior. Where I had a tamer/mage that ran White wyrms and dragons and nightmares.  I remember the nightly restarts and the dash to log on first to get server restart rares.  I stayed up many of nights/mornings trying to get some of those rares.
It was the OSI servers that got me hooked on custom houses and growing plants. This is what kept me from going back to my original server.
So a long hunt threw servers to find a US and english speaking server. And here we are. Minus a roughly 7 year break while we played World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft.

Hey ya'll ,
  I started playing UO when I was 10. My grandpa got me into it shortly after I bought the game and my mommy paid for the monthly subs.. I played on Origin for around 3 years, I pvped a little and PVM was my main goal at the time,before I left I had around 60mil worth of items and 10mil gold layin around. Then i went to excelsior....I played there for 3 years without relizing it was GOD AWEFUL. No pvp every wep could be leveled...it was sad. Then I started at evo around a year ago. I was the 2nd red ever to be on UO evo.

I played it from the start on a dial up modem back then. Having played the 'offline' games, i simply rolled into it.
I had a few RL friends that i played with, but then work happened - and allot of other stuff - and i lost track of the friends and switched over to Everquest (and later on EQ2). After i got bored with EQ2 i played some WoW, but i could never shake Ultima Online. No game has come close to the stuff i really like: building and collecting.
i simply like to own quirks and rarities. Plants (*yey* vorpal bunnies) was something i intensely enjoyed back then, and i came back to it.

I love the extra's on the free shards. Beekeeping, Archeology, weapon leveling, breeding, bio engineering. All things that could have happened on the OSI shards but didn't. I have fond memories of camping and trying to use what trickery available to get baskets and hay and whatnot, and am glad that it partially returns on the free shards. I would love to see the chest/barrel spawns happen, to reinstate all the glorious rares that were in effect on OSI servers.

I'm 36 now, and in a few yers time i'm hoping to introduce my kids to this game.

Moris

I too played inthe old "dial up days' for about three years with my two sons and several friend then actully sold my original account on Ebay for $600 (can you beleive it?)
 
Took a break for a couple years then started playing Free Shards.
 
Still here
 
 

 
 

I started playing UO shortly after I got DSL in the apartment I had moved into.  I was young and had very little money for entertainment so $10 a month for unlimited access was a dream.  I went to Wal-Mart and was looking at the top two games they had for sale, Everquest and Ultima Online Renaissance.  I decided on UO because it seemed to be more open and free for the players to do what they wanted (I have played both extensively at this point).


When I first started on UO I ran into a player who was about 1 hour older then me.  I was playing a pure melee and he was playing a melee/caster hybrid.  I had already be chased down and killed by a horse I accidentally attacked and was a little gun shy about attacking stuff.  I was feeling pretty good as I had beaten down a couple mongbats and earned a little bit of cash.  My new friend and I decided we were going to run to this town called Skara Brae.  On our way we saw a Bull and figured he needed to die.  This presented a tougher fight then we expected and fought with this bull for about 30 minutes.  We won and that is when we figured out how to cut up a corpse for leather and meat.


Ever since then I have kind of had a place in the back of my mind for UO.  When I started playing I thought all skills could go to 100 and all 3 stats could go to 100.  Found out I was wrong after working about 30 skills up enough to be mostly useless (swords was at like 70, rest was gimp).  I found this shard completely by accident.  I was randomly searching at work for free UO shards and found one of those sites that we vote on.  I had read the info on about a dozen that night and Evolution seemed like the best fit for my play style.  I have been playing on this shard for about a month and a half now and I must say this is what I always thought UO should have been way back when I started playing.