I checked 2, but I wasn't in middle school. Gonna watch vid, and thanks for it.
I'm reminded about actually looking at the services on uo.com from years ago, before there weren't advanced character tokens you actually had to call a hotline, and request that service you gave them your account name server character name and email and a game master would meet you in game to give your advanced character (I got a tamer that way), and I remember also they noticed I hadn't played at all that month well I think they said I had only a few hours in game so he gave me the month free.
I haven't watched the whole video but I remembered some of that listening to Vogel talking for a bit. You know, I think there won't ever be another story like this in the game industry, and reminds me about the origins of the game. I started playing around AoS, and the game had taken a pretty stern change by the time Samurai Empire came out.. I didn't really like that expansion so much, but hiryus were pretty beefy so it was ok.
I was not in middle school, but I thought - "Wow, what a rip off! Who would pay money every month to play the same game. This will fail fast."
I think I may have been wrong in my assessment.
I actually started because a friend at Toys R' Us told me about this crazy game he was playing online where you could craft and own a house, not to mention join a guild and PVP. I was already pretty heavily into these little, unknown games called Diablo 1 & 2 and needing something new. Everquest days had passed already for me also.
Lo and behold when my friend told me it was Ultima, I was surprised. Not only had I heard about UO from its launch, but I remember watching the nerds play it at my local hobby shop where everyone played Doom and tabletop games like Warcraft.
I remember the day Lord British was killed. Everyone in the shop was laughing their asses off. I even remember the owner being pissed because of the long lines he had to wait in to buy gear.
I had played Ultima 3 and Exodus on the PC and on the NES when I was in middle school. I was already obsessed with those games because of the character classes, the virtue system, and the old school RP.
I took to UO like a duck to water and played from 2000-2004 every day lol. I still have my Blackthorn state here somewhere.........
The whole phenomena is very interesting. What's even more interesting is how the game is treated to this day; the spirit of how it works and the light-hearted but quite serious feud between dev vs player ( or rather, everyone vs EA.) lol
It was a good video but holy crap did everyone know Koster was such a douche ? Is douche an ok word to use here ? :-)
The funniest thing about British dying is, there were probably 75 people there I would think, but 500 people all claim to have been there.
I still have my beta CD. UO was a hot mess back then. One could argue if it was playable or not. I was totally content playing Legends of Kesmai on Gamestorm so I checked out UO but didn't really get into it. EA bought Gamestorm and in typical fashion ran it straight into the ground destroying several communities and shut down Gamestorm. Gamestorm was the coolest gaming center that ever existed with a bunch of online games for only 10 bucks a month. Before that you normally spent like 3 bucks an hour to play somewhere like AOL. So a year or so later with no where to go my guild and family moved to UO. I think EA gave us a free month of UO for shutting down Legends of Kesmai. Just in time to discover there was zero housing left on Great Lakes. It was a struggle but it worked out 🙂 Coming to the party a year late I did find the game much more playable and in general stable. UO was the craziest place ever back in the day though.
