Somewhere in the late 90s I was a teenager playing UO. A lot changed pretty quick, I was t2a era I believe (pre UO:R). I was an insta-UO crackhead, my parents hated it, and it consumed my life. I spent a lot of time doing n00b stuff like farming mongbat gold, collecting valuable trash others dumped around bank, getting wool off sheep, and chatting it up while slowly building skill or looking for wandering healers. Let's call this the uogem era since that's the name I used on forums around that time.
One day I met some more developed characters that hooked it up and taught me you don't have to be a newbie forever. I started doing things other players considered normal, like using non-town vendor purchased weapons, surviving in dungeons, GMing skills, etc. This would be the BugBite era since it's the main/only other name I remember using. I never really PvP'd and spent a lot of time making new characters, friends, collecting gold, exploring the world and experiencing what it's like to be a successful happening adult in a medieval online game. Eventually that got old and I began what I consider the longest most interesting, and most memorable era (still BugBite).
Rares, 3rd party apps, and bugs were where it was at! Super fast skill gain, duping, stealing, I loved it all. No glitch was too small to interest me. I was well known and highly involved at AskChopper, eventually became a bug tester there. Did things like make black dye tubes, open other peoples bank, get death shrouds, fun stuff. I'm realizing now that working at AC was in fact my first job
My 3rd party program interest lead me to play on another shard with cool hues (who's name I forgot) before starting a shard of my own, Quintessence. It was short-lived, under a year, but would be considered fairly popular I believe. For a period of time we averaged 25-50 people at a time. --speaking of AC & apps, shout out to a good friend I remember and doubt I'll locate, an ultima legend, Lord Anonymous -- Absolute power was a blast, but I believe the ultimate downfall of the shard. Mixing business & pleasure (or whatever) lead to a lack of interest in Quintessence. The value of items, gold, and skills became unstable since at times they would be cool, fun, interesting, and challenging; and at other times they'd be created out of thin air =\
My UO life came to an end mid/late high school. I lost interest and started partying instead. Playing that game was the most addictive thing I'd ever done in my life. When I started EA hadn't purchased UO yet, their were no special moves, tram, colored looting rules. It was the #1 game of its kind at the time, only game of its kind imo. Every now'n then I'd pop on ICQ or AC until I started forgetting passwords of years. I *knew* I had sobered up after nearly a decade of w/ no play.
Almost two months ago I decided to google ultima and pokemon just to see what ever happened to those games. I thought I saw a free trial for a UO:R era world EA made so figured, why not? Weeks later I find out its 'player run' and stays free, UOF. Weeks later of no sun, sleepless nights, and same stuff my teenage self went threw. It was like I never stopped. AC is dead and scriptuo may be it's replacement. I like the intro effort requirement, made me remember more than I knew.
