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I remember my second day of playing UO back in 1998. I'm chopping trees and making bows in the woods on my crafting character to generate gold for my main chara

by ctvo 4y ago

I remember my second day of playing UO back in 1998. I'm chopping trees and making bows in the woods on my crafting character to generate gold for my main character. I'd read to do this in a guide somewhere online. I'm moving along in the woods and I see someone who's obviously disconnected from the game (standing still, not moving) in full golden armor. We're out in the middle of nowhere so I attack them with my hatchet because 11 year old me really wanted that armor set. It takes forever to kill them, and I wasn't aware of how lucky I was since players disappear within 5 minutes of disconnecting. I must have caught the start of the disconnect. They finally die. I loot their corpse: The expected items and a house key! I take that key and for the next few hours I tried to open the door of every single home in the area to finally find it: A small brick house in a clearing about a 10 minute run from where they died. I ICQ my friends who also only started playing and they help me loot it clean and walk back to town to bank the spoils. This was before housing transfer and managed ownership was added so losing your house key meant you lost 45k gold since it was no longer secure. Later that week I make copies of the keys and yell at the bank that I was selling a house for 20k (half off!). I managed to resell it 3 times to 3 different new owners. Once while showing it to a potential buyer, I run into the original owner who was inside the house and very confused. That's a different story though. UO was so good that I still listen to the Stones theme sometimes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mDcGDx4QyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mDcGDx4QyA

ctvo 4y ago
UO had a lot of bugs related to housing: - Large towers in UO were expensive player owned homes that are narrow at the base, but wider on the higher floors. Some players would place them near water and the widest roof area would hang over the water. At that point in UO you could look inside a container if you were close enough to it (3 tiles?) regardless if it was inside of a building. The game does a check to see if you can remove an item from a container based on walls and other rules, so you couldn't get items out of them, only see their contents. For some reason this can-I-take-item check didn't include the Z axis when over water. My friends and I bought a boat and would sail around for hours looking for towers near the water, sail under their wings and loot them. - UO had items that were stackable (you could place one on top of another, and they would stack up along the Z axis). For most items that allowed you to pass through them, when you're on the same tile as the item stacked, nothing happens: Your character is standing inside of a stack of shirts for example but doesn't have their own Z axis changed. Early in the game, there was one item that didn't behave like this: fur. Players found that if you stacked fur in a certain way, you could make a ladder that would move your character's Z axis up higher and higher. They would stack enough fur to allow a character to walk on to the roof of houses and fall through to break in. - When you died in UO you were a ghost. Your screen turned grey and you could walk through doors and other objects, but couldn't interact with anything. When a player resurrects another player, the player being resurrected would get a prompt asking them to confirm. Early in UO, players could walk around with the prompt still on their screen. So! You find a house you wanted to break into, kill yourself, have your friend resurrect you, walk through the front door with the prompt up, once inside, confirm, and you'd be brought back to life inside the house.
- swozey 4y ago
  When I played the UO beta, or maybe release very early on you could enlarge your circle of transparency and literally take things out of peoples houses. Fun times.
forgingahead 4y ago
Reminds me of the Joy of Villainy, a blog site for UO criminal behaviour started by Warik: http://www.wtfman.com/oldjov/ http://www.wtfman.com/oldjov/ - Click "Stories" to get the list of players and their entries. UO in 1998 was a special time - I love seeing threads pop up on HN because there are always interesting stories shared by players of that era.
- ctvo 4y ago
  I remember reading Greybeard’s writing back then. Me and my friends were the idiots the story made fun of. We were as awful as a pack of young men can be.
idiotsecant 4y ago
UO definitely had a certain magic that is impossible to recapture - it forced all kinds of different players into a single environment and made for a very rich world. The scams, random PKing, and numerous bugs were part of the charm.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  I think for a later generation, Runescape captured that same vibe - especially since it was free to play and ran from a browser, so it could be played everywhere.

by ctvo 4y ago

ctvo 4y ago

UO had a lot of bugs related to housing: - Large towers in UO were expensive player owned homes that are narrow at the base, but wider on the higher floors. Some players would place them near water and the widest roof area would hang over the water. At that point in UO you could look inside a container if you were close enough to it (3 tiles?) regardless if it was inside of a building. The game does a check to see if you can remove an item from a container based on walls and other rules, so you couldn't get items out of them, only see their contents. For some reason this can-I-take-item check didn't include the Z axis when over water. My friends and I bought a boat and would sail around for hours looking for towers near the water, sail under their wings and loot them. - UO had items that were stackable (you could place one on top of another, and they would stack up along the Z axis). For most items that allowed you to pass through them, when you're on the same tile as the item stacked, nothing happens: Your character is standing inside of a stack of shirts for example but doesn't have their own Z axis changed. Early in the game, there was one item that didn't behave like this: fur. Players found that if you stacked fur in a certain way, you could make a ladder that would move your character's Z axis up higher and higher. They would stack enough fur to allow a character to walk on to the roof of houses and fall through to break in. - When you died in UO you were a ghost. Your screen turned grey and you could walk through doors and other objects, but couldn't interact with anything. When a player resurrects another player, the player being resurrected would get a prompt asking them to confirm. Early in UO, players could walk around with the prompt still on their screen. So! You find a house you wanted to break into, kill yourself, have your friend resurrect you, walk through the front door with the prompt up, once inside, confirm, and you'd be brought back to life inside the house.

swozey 4y ago
When I played the UO beta, or maybe release very early on you could enlarge your circle of transparency and literally take things out of peoples houses. Fun times.

forgingahead 4y ago

Reminds me of the Joy of Villainy, a blog site for UO criminal behaviour started by Warik: http://www.wtfman.com/oldjov/ http://www.wtfman.com/oldjov/ - Click "Stories" to get the list of players and their entries. UO in 1998 was a special time - I love seeing threads pop up on HN because there are always interesting stories shared by players of that era.

ctvo 4y ago
I remember reading Greybeard’s writing back then. Me and my friends were the idiots the story made fun of. We were as awful as a pack of young men can be.

idiotsecant 4y ago

UO definitely had a certain magic that is impossible to recapture - it forced all kinds of different players into a single environment and made for a very rich world. The scams, random PKing, and numerous bugs were part of the charm.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I think for a later generation, Runescape captured that same vibe - especially since it was free to play and ran from a browser, so it could be played everywhere.