That's right, Grandewd... A few years ago, my daughter asked me what I wanted my (at that point unborn, but on the way) grandchild to call me. Since I hadn't thought about it, I said something like... uh, grandad... ? Well, if you knew my daughter you'd know that that was WAY too normal, so we set about deciding on something different. And she came up with Grandewd, since I'm of the age where the "dude" term was coined, back in the 60's... So that's what my grandkids (2 of em now) call me... Kinda catchy, eh?
Anyway... I AM OLD, but - I do love my UO and just can't seem to quit. Started playing back in '98 while I was working for a company called Micro Center in Cleveland, Ohio. I was senior tech support for them and one of my friends, the service manager, had been playing UO since it's inception and he was addicted. Every freekin lunch hour he and the senior technician and I would go across the street to Wendy's and he'd start in on how much fun it was... until finally one day I looked at my friend Dave and said "Ah sh*t, we might as well try it so Jim will shut up".
Well, that was the spring of '98 and I've been addicted ever since. Of course back then, things UO were WAY different. All felucia ruleset, no Trammel, no Doom, no Ish, no Tokono, none of that. Just us and the pk's that loved to ride up and place a few well-directed arrows and kal vas whatevers on our poor, underarmored selves. But it was fun, and it still is.
Probably the funniest thing that's happened to me ingame was not long after starting. We knew that if we were to survive, we needed to be able to withstand the lightning bolts and flamestrikes and get our magic resist up. To do that, we would walk thru fire fields. Well, one day - while Jim and Dave were working up their swords skills on each other, I was walkin thru one of the fields and wasn't paying any attention to my health... You know what's next... Greyscale... WTF... Oops... Hell, Dave and Jim and I played together for about 2 more years every night and I don't think a single night went by that one of them didn't cast a fire field and just start crackin-up. (I did get even on many occasions tho... forgetting to heal them from time to time and then fire fielding them and apologizing for getting my icons confused... hehehehe)
Well, that's about 12 years ago now and Jim and Dave have long gone. Jim to a divorce (probably caused by UO) and Dave off to freekin EQ... But here I am, still lovin UO and all the changes that have taken place. I will say that, if it weren't for Stratics for information and EasyUO for scripts that I'd have been gone long ago. It's the community outside UO that keeps many of us going.
And it was in an EasyUO PM that I found this site, and I think I'm glad I did. I'm NOT a great scripter, but I do try hard and I agree with another member's introduction here that EasyUO isn't what it used to be. There's still a good following, but not like it used to be. Most of the scripts are old and many of the really good scripters have moved on to other things. But then again, some are coming back and some have come here.
As long as UO is around, I'll probably continue to play to some degree... That is, as long as I can script. There's no way I'm gonna get carpel tunnel playing UO if they ever manage to stop scripting or seriously crack down on it. I think that if they did, they'd lose most of their best players and all their accounts... (I have 4 that I've kept alive, good grief, that's a lot of cash)..
Anyway, that's who I am.... Howdy folks
