Post: #1

Hail all and thank you for taking the time to read my post.

I write this post, with lots of feelings, and thoughts of this beloved game and quite honestly I'm not really sure where to start, so not to sound cliche, but I think it's probably best that I start from the beginning. Apologies in advance for the long post, I feel like a lot of you may have come by posts like these, but I feel the need to tell my story.

When I was in the Marines, stationed in Hawaii a friend of mine told me of the game Ultima Online. I had read some magazines about it, but hadn't heard to much. He explained to me that someone could cut down a tree, gather wood, then create a crate and sell that crate to other players in the game who were also real people. The thought of playing a computer game where everyone else in the game was another person on their computer absolutely floored me. I bought the game out of excitement, set up a character on the Pacific server and the first thing I did was try to tame something. I ended up taming a chicken. I was in East Brit, I saw a lady walking to town and I decided to instruct my chicken to attack her. She killed my chicken and asked, "Did you attack me with your chicken"?! I was then guard-wacked, and I did not not know how to resurrect. I stopped playing the game. This was around 1998. At the time, I was more interested in women (I was stationed in Hawaii)....

Fast forward to the end of my military enlistment, my buddy still tried to get me to play, so I gave the game another shot in the year 2000 (or maybe it was 2001, I can't quite remember). By this time Trammel had come around, and the game was a bit easier for a new comer, I fell in love and the rest is history.

..... That is until the dreaded AOS. The game changed just too much and frankly, I couldn't understand it. Weapons looked different, resists in my status bar, what the heck happened to the game?! My friend was still in the military, he was sent to Iraq in 2003, there was much change in the game and the thought of a new MMO called "Star Wars Galaxies" came out, so I ended up dropping UO. But, there was a piece of me that could never get satisfied. No game compared. I never was able to quench my thirst of PvP like I could in Ultima Online.... It was such a player skill based game, I loved it...

I decided to make my own server in the early days of RunUO, the server was named "Mystere", I had a small online playerbase of around 30 players at a time. I created my own dungeon, learned what it was like to be a shard owner.... I ran that server for about a year. I then started a different server called "Revelation", it was not as successful as my first server.

When I was a kid I loved drawing maps. There was no internet at the time so you had to create your own imaginary worlds, had to do something with your time to keep yourself entertained! I've always wanted to be a game developer, if I won the lottery I'd love to open a game studio and hire kids, help them reach their full potential (something I lost when I was younger due to financial reasons and frankly bad parenting).

I have this desire to create. By today's standards, old UO is a bit boring. You get in game, raise your skills, and that's it. It's about the community.... Community created content is a big deal when the game lacking content itself.

I want to revive the feeling of old UO. I don't know enough about new UO. It doesn't "stick" with me, I don't find it entertaining (to each their own, right?). I want to recreate old UO, and I want to do so with a completely new custom map.

My wife has her master's degree, she got her bachelors and majored in English. She is a FANTASTIC writer and has read more books than anyone I know. She will be writing most of the lore in this new world.

Many of you may say that this is ambitious. I don't agree. For me, this fulfills a few things. I enjoy creating worlds, ever since I was a young kid drawing maps.... I've always wanted to be a game developer and the UO platform is that middle ground that will aid in this process.

I have no experience with Sphere. I have much experience with RunUO, and a bit with ServUO (same thing pretty much). What is Sphere like? Can anyone that has experience with RunUO shed some light on Sphere? Are there configurations like there are in RunUO that will let you (for the most part) change to Pre-AOS?

I'm not sure what else I wanted out of this post. If you're still reading, I do appreciate your time. I'd be honestly, sincerely interested in making some authentic friends in this Sphere community. As an adult, you don't have the chance to make friends like you did in your younger years.

Thanks for your time.

~Al'Therian