Thirteen years ago I received a present for my birthday from my brother.   I am sure this goes without saying, it was Ultima Online.  I have to say that there are not many presents I still enjoy after 13 years.  I still remember three things about the first month I played.  The first thing was when I killed my first RED.  I was so excited.  I called my brother on the phone and told him all about it.  He didn't believe me.  Here I am playing a couple of weeks and I have my first kill.   I met my brother in game later that week and I took him to the spot where I killed him.  I explained that he attacked me on foot and I managed to kill him with minimal effort.  My brother, laughing, informed me that it was a Red NPC.  The second one was when I got my first horse.  I thought I was some sort of Hero.  I managed to get a horse before my brother and another real life friend that I was playing with.  It later got killed in the orc spawn down at the Yew graveyard.  The third thing was the worst.  His name was MR. Happy.  Yep, I remember him 13 years later.  How pathetic is that?  Anyways, he invited me into his house and I flagged grey (obviously I didn't know that at the time) and he killed me.  That was the day that I found out that I wanted to play this game to PVP.

When I first started playing UO I lived in NY so I started on the Catskills shard.  I played mostly out of Yew.  The first guild I was in was The Keepers of Justice.  We would have organized fights with the Orcs and it was the best.  Later on I joined an Undead guild and did a little role playing.  I eventually moved to Drachenfals and Origin.  I moved to Arizona in 2007 and then moved my characters to west coast shards (Pacific, Sonoma and Napa Valley).  The majority of my charcters are on Sonoma. I have been pretty acitive over the last 13 years.  My longest break was two years ago.  That break was for roughly 6 months. 

I look forward to playing for many more years.  Sure beats watching TV (except football).