Hello
I started playing UO back in 2000 after getting very annoyed at my husband for always being on my computer! Hey back then we were on dial up and he would be on so long I couldn't even chat with my friends on the phone, so he made me a character on his accout to show me how much fun it was. I don't really think he ever intended for me to become more addicted to UO then he was!
Less then 2 weeks after he made me my first charater, Destiny a fencer on GL, I had made several great friends. I did have a few mishaps along the way and learned that sometimes servers would go down and stay down for a long time or completely reset. Somehow I had a couple characters on different shards but never realized that was what happened! I would log out in one place and the next day log in and be wearing different clothes that I thought I had lost the week before, and I was in a completely different town. After explaining my plight to some new friends and getting mocked pretty bad I finally understood I was actually playing on 2 shards! In my defense Great Lakes and Lake Superior had a similar sound! I had just thought my husband was playing tricks because he wanted me off of his account.
Less then a month after my first experience in UO I had gone off the deep end into the UO World. We didn't have any fast speed internet available but that did not stop me from getting a 2nd computer and 2nd phone line put in at our house. Keep in mind we lived in a farm house in the middel of no-where land and even the phone company didn't understand why we needed another line! Finally I had a good setup 2 pc's in the living room both hooked up at the same time and I unwrapped that new box from the game store to get my cd of UO out. As soon as I made that first new "Young" character I met a few other new people who wanted to trade tokens, this led me to find out how to make a quick buck selling good old hair deeds!
As I kept playing during the day while my husband was working I soon surpassed his characters! I even helped him out working some of his. I had found UOA and mastered wedging a piece of paper in a key to make my macros loop it was wonderful! Powerhour for me was more like half the day with 2 accounts worth of characters to get trained and somehow I thought EVERYTHING gained better on a moving boat including crafting skills....
My husband and I joined a guild together and went on several long hunts every week. We had made a few good friends from the Catskills shard and decided to start playing there. Since transfer tokens had not yet been invented everytime you wanted to play a new shard it was a complete restart! One nice thing was that the housing restrictions weren't so bad, At about 1.5 years into playing we had houses on LS, GL, Cats, Chessy, and yes AOL Legends after all we were using AOL to play back then!
Fast forward a few years and life has taken hold of us we have moved at least 3 times IRL and I am now a mom. My son is calmed by the sounds of UO playing in the background and as I look at him I imagine what kind of gamer he will be... Jump to now and I am afraid to let him play. He seems much happier in first person shooting games anyway.
Over the years I have had to take breaks for many reasons, but UO has a hold and I always end up returning. It's like an old friend sometimes we argue but always end up back together again. Catskills is now home, but I can often be found roaming around on GL, Atl, Chessy, LS, and Legends. I do miss the old days of UO sometimes but new changes keep it interesting.
Desi O.
