Specially for Qom, who -will- be required to return to UO to repay:
1. My first day
My first character and most renowned one was called Rainbow King. Sort of a combination of Rainbow (totally kickarse rockband from the seventies) and one of their later songs called Hall of the Mountain King (Based upon Grieg's version). Being 16-17 years old and growing up in rural Belgium little did I know 'Rainbow King' might be seen as a gay statement. I'd live to regret it till I changed the name.
Anyhow, I entered the world of Atlantic in Britain and immediately acqainted myself with the niceties of the wonderous world of UO. I very quickly learned I was not able to kill a deer and when fleeing from the animal towards the WBB I suffered the humiliation of falling to a deer right at the bank. Owned!
I distinctly remember feeling UO was the ultimate 'Internet reality' as I was able to tame a Britain dog and rename it to my real life dog
I found the solution to UO on the very first day. I had finished the game. I was going to amass all the gold I ever needed because I found an endless supply of easy access gold. I had learned that if you fish and carve the fish into 4 raw fish steaks you could sell those for 1 gold piece to the provisioner. I was now well on my way to becomming an UO Billionnaire
2. My first months
I was now a bit better prepared and started to get acqainted with the game mechanics. As everyone back in those days I was a Swordsman/Archer/Mage/Miner (I quickly learned there was slightly more gold to be gained with mining then fishing)
The honest truth is I was gathering my wealth to purchase a house mining (mostly dieing to miner PK's) and doing dungeoncrawling to actually spend the money I made. The thrill of leapfrogging 500 ore to a 'nearby' forge without a PK intercepting you or simply a stranger battling to 'leapfrog' your ore away from you was limitless.
My dungeoncrawling in the first months was limited to purchasing the most expensive armour I could on my budget, running around in your average dungeon for about 20 minutes, getting killed and having to go mine again to purchase new armour....rince repeat at infinitum. Gotta love pre-trammel!
Around this time I purchased my first house near Vesper. I can still walk to the spot by heart now. Neadless to say after one week I was killed by a houselooter. Which meant disaster then since anyone with a key could enter the house and nothing inside was locked down. You could also not change keys back in those days so your house was never truly secure again.
My favourite dungeonspot at the time and has remained so till this day was Hythlot. And more so for it's legendary rescuemissions. Nobody understood the way the teleporter from level one to level two worked back then (and now perhaps few still remember). You can basicly end up in two locations. One being easy, one dropping you into 8-9 hellhounds who would immediately target you and virtually kill any character before you could respond. Heroic battles were faught there to recover the items (no insurance ofcourse) you had on your character trying to recover the items from an earlier recovery attempt if you can still follow. It was a humourous location where you lost a lot more then you were trying to recover before your bones decayed but lots of fun was had. Up till today I can honestly say what I miss the most about PvM is those rescuemissions. Boo for insurance!
I met friends in Hythlot like Sir Virdevier and Painkiller who'll later form the guild GH - Green Hell with me. Dispite never being allowed to grow beyond 5 members it was quite known until late in Atlantic's history due to Sir Virdevier in the PvP world and myself in the RP world.
3. My first steps in RP
My first steps into RP were done when I stumbled across the Serpent's Cross Tavern. -The- RP hotspot on Atlantic at the time. It was among if not -the- first area to receive GM decoration. Outside we had a fountain, hedges , benches and furniture for the tavern all locked down by the GM's.
I quickly rose in the RP scene of Atlantic to become quite the 'known' figure and was a key element in the capture of the Followers of Armageddon. (The event leading up to the launch of The Second Age) Back in those days Seer events were mostly RP events, not the monsterslagfests done now. We posted weeklong protection around Black-rock sites and had the wildest conspiracytheories. Some of them still make me chuckle today. Me and three others were personally responsible for capturing Martoo Saul, one of the followers. A feat which resulted in a 'Are you with us?' ORIGIN, yeah baby! pre-EA!, Tshirt. I also received an ingame note from Lord British naming the bearer Hero of the Realm. I still use the deed on Evinyatar to this day.
I rose to Mayor of Yew which was the most active RP town at the time (much larger then todays) and co-founded the Heralds of Virtue. A communitywide RP organisation for the promotion of Virtue. One of the more succesful organisations in Atlantic History if I do say so myself.
Oh before I forgot. I met Order, the last surviving TAMED Ancient Wyrm in the SCT as well. An event which prompted me to become one of the few GM Tamers on Atlantic at the time. Achieving GM Taming was a work of 3-4 hours daily for weeks on end at the time. The end result was that you could tame dragons. But they were notoriously unstable and would randomly attack blues guardkilling you in the process should you be in town. Also a bummer was the fact when they crossed serverboundaries or after gating they retained their ability to firebreath but were reduced to doing 1-2 damage per hit. That 'feature' remained ingame for atleast two years after launching the game and accounts for the lack of GM tamers
I continued to play Atlantic due to the accumulated history there and didn't switch to Europa when it launched. I played frequently up till the time I started to work and given the time difference I couldn't play peak hours anymore.
4. My Europa days
I logged on to Europa around June 2005 after finding a recruitment leaflet in Cove Atlantic. I stumbled into a negotiation between Cove and Minoc, both fielding 15 armoured and uniformed soldiers. I was hooked from that moment on.
I joined BoC and quickly rose in it's ranks. I believe I joined command 2-3 months afterwards and later I took over as GM when a large part of command including Octi joined Grd. When Octi and the others returned I gave the GM-ship back to it's rightful owner. I have until this day remained a loyal servant of the best interest of BoC.
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