I started playing it again. On the Outlands Shard.
A shard is a server. The Outlands Shard is 100 percent free to play. The shard replicates Ultima Online at it's best, in 1998, but perfected. It's a very active community and the fun people are having reminds me of the old times.
I consider this gamer to be the absolute standard in MMO games. No other game has done it was well, and the people who made the Outlands server brought it back to it's early and BEST form.
Ultima Online came out in 1997 and was the very first MM0 - it set the standard for everything to come. It's like The Beatles off MMOs. There are still over 400,000 people playing it today.
What I love about it is the unrestricted PVP world. People are EVERYWHERE. But it's not like you'd think regarding "grievers". The whole system kind of works like a real world. There are not that many Reds (people flagged as murderers. There are balances for everything.
It's a persistent world. There is an economy. It's pretty incredible. It's not easy to learn.
One of the best things is the leveling system. There are no levels. There's just a bunch of skills that you can actively choose to turn off, turn down or lock. You get a maximum of 700 skill points that you allocate to whatever you want to train in. So no player is going to be higher than anyone else in stats, unless someone is new - but you level up very quickly
No player can have more that 700 skill points and 225 stat points (strength, dexterity, and intelligence). Your character will have strengths and weaknesses depending on what skills set you decide to build up. It's incredibly balanced and almost limitless in what you can put togther.
anyway. I loved the game for it's interaction with real players, but there are "monsters" and non-player things that people hunt or mine, or craft or whatever. So people are doing what they want to do. Some people build and sell stuff to make money, some people farm dungeons for loot and other people kill people for their loot.
If you murder people, you will get a murder count and be flagged Red. There are also "gray" flags when people steal from others. there are pickpockets.
So I love that you really have to be on your toes. There's an adrenaline rush when you have to deal with all these things going on.
Here's a fun video of a guy who has stealth, hiding and tinkering skills. So he builds (or buys) trapped boxes . He goes into stealth mode (you stay hidden as long as you step slowly) and plants his traps on monsters that people have just killed. They loot the monster, open the box and go boom. Then he takes their stuff.
I think this is hilarious. People are so funny in the game. Creative and funny.
Look at how much fun this guy is having! And in the end, he gets blown up falling for his own tricks - and he's such a good sport. Laughing the whole time.
He's the guy grayed out and he's waiting for the people to kill something, then he drops the box onto the body and the people think it came on the monster's loot.
