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).
