Object of This Site
he Ultima Online
Travelogues and Adventurer's Guide give players a broad overview of what they can
do in Ultima Online. the Travelogues contain stories and in-game screenshots of my adventures
which all really happened. These stories will give you a very detailed impression about what was
going on in Britannia during the first years, what the highlights and the downsides of the game were.
They also show how the game has evolved over the years, what content was added, and
what adventures you could experience. These stories are a rather unique documentation of UO,
the first popular MMORPG on the market.
The Adventurer's Guide describes every city, dungeon and point of interest in the game, showing
how to find them and giving you a lot of incentives for future adventures. Detailed maps have
been added as well, which you can interactively view online, or print out for offline use.
If you want to contact me, send an email to:
How I Played UO
started playing
Ultima Online in December 1997, shortly after the Beta Phase ended. A friend
of mine (known in-game as "Kugelblitz" and "Krys Wyn") told me about UO, and it
sounded interesting. He helped me with my first steps in the game. At that time,
I didn't know or care anything about skills, stats and game mechanics. I just
played for fun and did whatever I liked. My charakter (which I had awkwardly named
"Mad Biker") wasn't balanced at all, and always was the one being killed first in player
vs. player combat. I didn't know what a mule was; I had no idea about how to train
skills; I never had heard about skill caps. Mad Biker was my first and only character.
Although it took me almost a year before I even started to care about how a powerful character had to be built, I enjoyed the game most during those "months of naivety". My second character "McBykar" was planned more thoroughly (but still had an awful name). He became a rather powerful fighting character with the common skill combination of Magery and Archery. His abilities opened new doors of adventuring, and finally I was able to reach the deepest dungeon levels without instantly dying.
It took me a long time to explore the big world of Britannia to the most remote corner. When I literally knew every place, I had to think of something new to have some fun. This is when I created the character "Hawkeye Pike".
awkeye Pike was meant
to be a roleplaying pirate character. Thus he consequently avoided magery, and he was
one of the first and very rare grandmaster fencers in Britannia. Fencing was a pretty useless
fighting skill back then; the skills weren't very well balanced, and fencing was
extremely underpowered. But I did not care, I purely roleplayed this character.
I must say that playing this character was most fun, as I represented
one of the few people in Britannia who didn't follow the Virtues, and played a
scoundrel without being a player killer. I ganged up with some friends, and
together we founded the first pirates guild in Britannia, the United Pirates.
One day the developers fixed the weapon balance and suddenly the fencing skill
was a very powerful fighting skill. Besides, it was very fast. Suddenly Hawkeye
defeated player killers and other aggressors, until the rest of
Britannia figured out that fencing had become a cool skill.
fter re-joining the UO community in December 2007,
I had to learn the game from scratch. During my 6-year break, the world of Britannia had changed a lot! Several
new skills had been added. Old skills had been changed and re-balanced. The weapon
and armor system had been completely revamped. Now, picking the right armor and weapon
had become a huge challenge. New unique items called "artifacts" had been added to the game.
The landmasses Malas and Tokuno had been added, and Ilshenar was completely overhauled.
Tons of new monsters and items had been introduced, not to speak of new crafting abilities.
Items could be insured, and good stuff from player vendors had become incredibly expensive.
During my first steps with Hawkeye Pike in the changed world of Sosoria, I thought that I'd
never figure out all those changes. Everything had become a lot more complex. Today, I know
that these changes added a lot to the gaming experience. The versatility had been increased
enormously. In the Early Days, almost every good fighter had the same equipment and the same
skill template. Today, nobody equals another player. Selecting a good armor can take weeks
and is challenging and fun. Due to the random magic properties and the massive quality
differences, each piece of armor has to be selected individually and needs to be attuned
to the rest of your equipment. Same for weapons, jewelry and clothing.
I continued to explore the game anew, and I probably never will reach the point where I have
seen everything and know everything. Sounds promising, doesn't it?
f course, I also tried the Kingdom Reborn
client, which had improved a lot by the middle of 2008. It still had a few bugs and graphical glitches,
but it was playable and the graphics were better than in the 10-year-old legacy client.
However, especially when it came to quick reactions and dangerous battles, I died more often
than when using the old client. My problem always was that it was difficult to distinguish
creatures or players on the screen, you couldn't see their alignment, and it was difficult to
time attacks correctly.
ith the Stygian Abyss expansion in 2009, there finally came a new Ultima Online client that was able to really replace the 10-year-old Legacy Client: The Enhanced Client. It was technically advanced and had lots of benefits, compared to the old one. It took some time to configure the interface, but when all the macros and client settings were set up, the client offered much more functionality than the Legacy Client. There still were some graphical glitches, but the technical features outweighed these issues by far.