This post about MMO culture and how it shifted in Ultima Online reminded me of my time playing UO, specifically my very first day in the game. This was before the Trammel/Felucca split, when you couldn't play UO without being at risk of attack by PKs at pretty much any moment. The Ultima series had been one of my all-time favorites for years, so the idea of playing a new online game set in Britannia was amazing to me. A friend of mine had played previously and already had an account, but didn't have a computer capable of running it at the time, so he ended up installing it on my PC. I played way more than him, and ended up taking over the account before very long. But I digress.
I started out in Ultima Online in the town of Moonglow. I ran around a bit, killed some rabbits, harvested some reagents and so forth. Eventually, my character started getting hungry. Okay, I thought, I have rabbit meat, I have wood. I will build a campfire and cook the meat so I can eat. I sat down to cook my meat, and a few seconds later another player rode up and killed me. I found at later that campfires exercised the camping skill of anyone near them, which meant their camping skill would go up, removing points from the skills they had maxed. So build campfires was a common griefing tactic. I didn't know this, though. I was a total noob just trying to cook some dinner.
Despite that, I kept playing. When the Trammel/Felucca split happened, not too long later, I got out of PvP land immediately and never came back. Not only did I no longer have to worry about PKs, all the new land opened up in the new world meant I could find a decent place to put a house. If the split hadn't happened when it did, I probably wouldn't have played much longer. Instead I stuck around for about a year.
Thinking back, I found myself wondering if I would keep playing now in the same situation of getting murdered so early in a game. I'm not sure if I would. Back then, UO was this amazing new thing, and pretty much the only game in town. Now, I have more games available than I know what to do with. I'm not likely to invest much time in a game that unfriendly to new players. Better to find a place where I can learn and grow as a player without someone waiting to kill me and take my stuff at any moment.
Showing posts with label Memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memories. Show all posts
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Friday, August 8, 2014
By Any Other Name
When I went to college, suddenly I had unrestricted access to the Internet. This was not the internet of today, keep in mind. We're talking the early days, when Netscape Navigator was the hot new browser, and Lycos was the greatest of search engines. My college computer lab had a few dozen UNIX terminals, and some brand new PowerPCs. Here I was introduced to the world of MUDs.
MUDs were pretty much early text based MMOs. There were a few different code bases, but most of them worked very similarly to the typical MMO you're used to today; you chose a race and class for your character and entered a fantasy world where you wandered about killing creatures and taking their stuff. Find better gear, level up, repeat. The MUD I joined was called Avatar, a MUD using the Merc code base.
Avatar had a number of race options for characters. Most of the standard fantasy races were available along with some more out of the ordinary options. One of those options was Kzin. I hadn't read any of Niven's Known Space stories at this point, but on reading the race description I saw that these were Wing Commander's Kilrathi by another name. My choice was made.
Warlock wasn't an available name, though. Names couldn't be shared with other players or with any NPC in the game, and somewhere there was a creature identified as a warlock. So I needed a name. A Kilrathi name. I settled on Frelghra.
MUDs were pretty much early text based MMOs. There were a few different code bases, but most of them worked very similarly to the typical MMO you're used to today; you chose a race and class for your character and entered a fantasy world where you wandered about killing creatures and taking their stuff. Find better gear, level up, repeat. The MUD I joined was called Avatar, a MUD using the Merc code base.
Avatar had a number of race options for characters. Most of the standard fantasy races were available along with some more out of the ordinary options. One of those options was Kzin. I hadn't read any of Niven's Known Space stories at this point, but on reading the race description I saw that these were Wing Commander's Kilrathi by another name. My choice was made.
Warlock wasn't an available name, though. Names couldn't be shared with other players or with any NPC in the game, and somewhere there was a creature identified as a warlock. So I needed a name. A Kilrathi name. I settled on Frelghra.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
What's in a Name?
Of all things, the recent announcement that Wing Commander 3 is free on Origin got me thinking of my online identity and the names I've used in the past. Incidentally Wing Commander 3 is a great space sim, and if you have Origin anyway, why not grab it? Mark Hammill, Malcom McDowell, and life size cat-person Muppets in space. How can you go wrong?
Adventure games are my favorite, but they're hardly the only sort of game I play. When I was young, I remember playing Might & Magic and Ultima VI with my cousin. One of us would control the game while the other mapped and made suggestions. We never got very far while I was visiting, but it was fun. Eventually, when I had my own PC, Ultima was high on my list of games to continue playing. That led me to other Origin games, particularly Wing Commander.
I love Wing Commander. I can't properly convey how much I love Wing Commander. The gameplay, the setting, the whole package. I'm sure nostalgia plays a part, but that game was fantastic. It also was the first game I played that asked me to provide not just a name, but a callsign. A callsign! Top Gun style, like Iceman, or Maverick! So I needed something punchy, something badass.
I had also recently been introduced to Marvel comics by a classmate; he brought comics to school and would let me read them. The comic he brought the most issues of was the New Mutants, a book about a new class of teenage mutants at the Xavier School. Most of the team were normal human-looking kids, but one was way out there. Warlock.
Warlock was awesome. A techno-organic alien who had fled to Earth to avoid having to fight his father to the death. And his name was perfect. Short, hard k sound at the end. Ideal for a fighter pilot callsign. So that's what I picked. When I later joined the local BBS scene, I needed a screenname. So I went back to that callsign, and my online identity became Warlock.
Of course, as you can see, I don't go by Warlock anymore. When the World Wide Web, online gaming, and so forth became a thing, I found that Warlock wasn't a unique enough name. I would have to be Warlock2734 or some such. I never cared for numbers on the end of screennames; I wanted an identity that was mine alone. So I had to find a new handle. My new handle, oddly enough, also connected back to Wing Commander. And also to Street Fighter II. I'll explain how that happened tomorrow.
Adventure games are my favorite, but they're hardly the only sort of game I play. When I was young, I remember playing Might & Magic and Ultima VI with my cousin. One of us would control the game while the other mapped and made suggestions. We never got very far while I was visiting, but it was fun. Eventually, when I had my own PC, Ultima was high on my list of games to continue playing. That led me to other Origin games, particularly Wing Commander.
I love Wing Commander. I can't properly convey how much I love Wing Commander. The gameplay, the setting, the whole package. I'm sure nostalgia plays a part, but that game was fantastic. It also was the first game I played that asked me to provide not just a name, but a callsign. A callsign! Top Gun style, like Iceman, or Maverick! So I needed something punchy, something badass.
I had also recently been introduced to Marvel comics by a classmate; he brought comics to school and would let me read them. The comic he brought the most issues of was the New Mutants, a book about a new class of teenage mutants at the Xavier School. Most of the team were normal human-looking kids, but one was way out there. Warlock.
Warlock was awesome. A techno-organic alien who had fled to Earth to avoid having to fight his father to the death. And his name was perfect. Short, hard k sound at the end. Ideal for a fighter pilot callsign. So that's what I picked. When I later joined the local BBS scene, I needed a screenname. So I went back to that callsign, and my online identity became Warlock.
Of course, as you can see, I don't go by Warlock anymore. When the World Wide Web, online gaming, and so forth became a thing, I found that Warlock wasn't a unique enough name. I would have to be Warlock2734 or some such. I never cared for numbers on the end of screennames; I wanted an identity that was mine alone. So I had to find a new handle. My new handle, oddly enough, also connected back to Wing Commander. And also to Street Fighter II. I'll explain how that happened tomorrow.
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