I started with Air Warrior, a half real time air to air combat sim. I guess you could say MMO, but it probably had 100 simultaneous users in those days They were an exclusive offer of GEnie when it was costing 6 bucks an hour just to get online
Yea, can you say 1990? In the mid 90s they moved to the web to a site called Gamestorm that offered all of Kesmai's games for a flat rate of 9.95 a month. I was still on 1200 baud dial up back then. Around 2000 or so EA bought them out and like so many other things EA has bought, they discontinued them. But they sent me a UO CD. My life was changed at that moment. Oh I had played multiple player games, but Uo was "REAL" . That was me in that world walking around. I was so clueless. EA's game guide said that a good way to make money was chop wood and make bolts and sell the bolts. And where else would you go but Yew, the wood capital of UO right? Uhh one hitch, you could not buy an axe in Yew. I still think that was the stupidest omission ever made in the game.
Anyway, after running all the way to Vesper to get an Axe, I died on the way back. But I met Cupcake, who belonged to BFH, Bitches From Hell. She fixed me up, mentored me a few days and eventually, I ended up with a Bard, and my wife a Tamer, my oldest daughter a little of everything and we all played the game. I remember driving to Fed Ex on the day Ishenar opened so we could have the CDs early in the day. I remember we all got down 18x lots, all three close together.
So eventually after the big bard nerf, then I was a beta tester for Third dawn, which I loathed, and the buggy mess was released. That was the death of UO, up till that release UO had been growing (source for that is Koster himself) and the whole item thing we have now, I just hated. Eventually I moved on to Jumpgate, WOW and then nothing. I joined back up a few years back on UO Freedom but have not played for much after. I just recently got back on the Mythic UO. And here I am
