Hello and well met!
I'm Pistol, nice to meet you all officially. I've been playing UO since '98; a real life friend introduced me to the game. I was watching him play his dexer in fel one day and he asked me to watch his character while he went to the bathroom; he just wanted to make sure no pk's came by and killed him afk. As I watched his toon, a player came on the screen. They didn't seem to notice me, or so I thought. Keep in mind I never played UO... but that was about to change. UO was revolutionary for many reasons, and I was so amazed that the other person on the screen was an actual player IRL... so what did I do? I decided to double click his toon to check out their gear, but I wasn't aware my toon was in war mode, and I began shooting arrows at them. They killed me in under 20 seconds. I was shaking, it felt so real as I witnessed this person loot all the items from my friends toon. At this point I was hooked, a game that actually forced you to have skin in the game. My friend finally returned and said, "wtfman!!!??" Up until this point I never owned a computer or had internet access. Within a week I bought my first computer and got something called DSL. Back then DSL was provided via static IP, it required a Pacbell technician to come out to set up. When the tech was done, my friend (who had dial up) and I watched as my character run on screen without lagging, I was pumped. I could have used scripts back then because all I ever did was cast on myself in town in order to raise magery and resist... which took forever. I was happy to gain .1 per day, it was taxing and took a very long time. Potentially losing all my gear via PVP put the fear of God in me, it made the game feel so real. Back then the only way I could train PVP was just before server down message; this way I was able to use my vanq weapons and not worry about losing them if I died.
I have toons on all North America shards and play actively to this day, and will continue to do so until they pull the plug. Hope to see you on the field!
