Distressed at seeing the deteriorating condition of Yserbius, and not quite content with the Realm, it became very clear to me that my search for a new home was not over yet. This feeling came to me only when I saw The Realm of Britannia, or Ultima Online. At first, I only saw the application form. After overcoming from joyful hysterics, I managed to fill out the form. Days later, the form dissappeared, and I later found out that I was extremely lucky to have been there when I was. :) The first pre-alpha test was a complete fiasco for me, since I realized that I needed a local internet provider with SLIP/PPP access, though I learned about the huge, expanding world of the internet little by little. After I finally found a competant net provider in my neighborhood, I started my journies in Britian, Britannia's capital city. It was rather difficult for me at first, since I was grossly inexperienced compared to the other players, and I wasn't online as often as most. By the time the test was finished, I ascended to the paltry level of 2. I was also killed during the anarchy of the final day, where many areas were in flames, and was unable to hook back up for the speech by Lord British.
Luckily, for me, the wonderful folk at Origin wanted us to test UO once again, and I was as ecstatic as the last time. With more experience, and more time on my hands, I managed to ascend to the 20's of levels; not the highest when you see the competition, though I was a decently skilled player, and I'm proud to say that I only died twice during this test; once was a suicide via the "Por Flam" spell when I was stuck in a tree and unable to move to a Z-coordinate error, and another time when high ranking officers of the High Mages of Britannia were taking me through the orc camp, and couldn't bring themselves to slay the orc lord that was lurking toward me (well, such ineptitude shall soon be forgotten ... considering that the HMB disbanded, hehe). As the first test, my beginnings were humble. I slew many rabbits the first day, my favorite battle-cry being, "Vultures will pick at thy floppy ears!" Well, I tried to make a funny, and who knows, maybe the others laughed inside, but it became clear to me that most of the players didn't appreciate that kind of humor, or the olde language either, which was fine by me, since I thought that it was grossly unncessary, deep down. One day, I was levelling in the southern wood of Britian, and met a guy named Gramayre, who really should have been named Laa'vaal, but this is an entirely different story. We talked for a bit, and even parted after a minute or so of fighting, but we found that we were running into each other more and more often. We joined up, and we soon found that we were an almost invincible fighting team. Before long, we advanced to orcs, and soon we were hacking at skeletons in the graveyard. First, I could only take out one skeleton before being hurt so bad that I was forced to retreat. This soon changed. Soon, I was able to go deep inside the graveyard, even its underground tunnels, and soon I found myself escorting some real simpactico newbies and even managed to get them out of there alive. Actually, only one died, but I got his stuff for him, and everything was cool. His name was Arthur, AKA "Techmage Dragon". Despite our huge gap in levels, and the fact that I had to monitor his life bar whenever we were in some seedy territory, we got along very well, and despite his level, he managed to harass a few skeletons, and did it well. We later caught wind of news of a tournament to be held at Lord British's castle, and we thought, cool, even if we weren't strong enough to take some of the most notoriously powerful characters there, it would be quite an amazing show. Even the pre-tournament gathering was filled with great chaos. Origin apparently thought that it would be funny to unleash about 20 or so Orc Lords at us, and too be honest, I thought so too! Especially since my friend suggested that we go up to the balcony and watch the crowd from above ...
The Tournament began after only a few minutes of the invasion. The mob scene in the courtyard made it difficult to walk around, so again, I found someplace up high, and watched some of my many aquaintances kick ass. ;) The next day, was the final day of Ultima Online pre-alpha testing. It felt strange, like the day that your vacation was finally over, and it was time to pack up, and go to the airport for the boring journey back home. For the hell of it, I decided to get my levels up in the ole graveyard. To my joy, I met Laa'vaal again, and together we fought literally rows of skeletons, at least 8 a spawn (roughly a minute, give or take a few seconds), and they were spawning fast. After our levels were fairly decent, we agreed to check out the "godlands", where we could find fire maces and multicolored armor. While green is my preferred color in all these games, to have white armor would show great status, so we knew we wanted the armor bad, so we tried to find this "gap" in the northwest fence (I'm not even sure if they had white armor out there, though it was still a dream of mine :p). We felt the place of dreams coming closer and closer, as if it were some weird link to the Force or something, but our dreams were severed as literally a dozen Orc Lords were tailing us. Not wanting to get killed by these huge, drooling things, we split up, and ran off in different directions, without as much as a word to each other. I ran for almost ten minutes ... as 5 of 'em were chasing me and closing in. As one would get bored and leave, another would take its place. By the time I reached these farms, they were almost all gone, but I saw some of em in the distance, but luckily they didn't follow. I was relieved to find the bridge linking the wilderness to Britian, though I saw more Orc Lords spawning nearby, and someone kept casting "Quas An Lor" (darkness) on the bridge, and I barely made it through the crowd of people and orcs to the other side. I was then surprised to find a green knight inside the town, which was usually an unlikely sight, but since the test was about to end, I suppose Origin wanted to see what we'd do. I'll admit that I had a lot of fun that day. Anyway, I took out the green knight easily, though they're the weakest enemy knights in the game so far, which was a stroke of luck for me, since green is my color. It was still a great victory for me, since my first suit of green armor was given to me ... one day I was in the wilderness, in search of a green knight, and I met another character who killed one swiftly. The guy then asked me, "Do you want the armor?" or something to that affect, and I'm like "Sure! Thanks!", and "Thank the F***heads!" (censored for the younger audiences and those who are easily offended :) ) was his reply. It was actually a guild that I heard about on the chat zone, and I was scared of it at first, since I thought that they were evil marauders (the name, after all), but nothing can be further from the truth. You see, I am bored of these guilds where they seem compelled to say "Thou art" and so on, and try to put themselves into some popsicle tree storybook, so I really tried avoiding these guilds like the plague (I'm proud to say that the guilds that I was ever affiliated with were never like this, and were a lot of fun). I've seen the F***heads before, and thought that they were real cool to hang out with. I never met a group that swore so much without restraint, and some people seem to have a problem with that ... oh well, to each his own. Their laid back look at life, in addition to their good hearts, was a breath of fresh air. Besides, you play these games to have fun, right? To escape the stress of real life. Eventually, I met with this group again, but I shall leave this story for later :) .
Three Orc Lords tailed me all the way to the gates of Lord British's castle, and luckily, some high level friends that I knew took em out quite well. :) There was a crowd of people, getting real bored, waiting for some action. Well, they got their wish. First, some notorious Player Killer comes out of nowhere, I can't remember whether it was Lenny or Lolita, but we went after both of them that day. While some of the more successful knights went after their stat-editing hides, I cast heal spells my friends who were after the Pkillers, and even got in a few good hits on 'em myself. Unfortunately, I lost the lynch mob due to heavy lag, but I instantly found action at the temple. Apparently, some jerkboy PKiller was after my friend Arthur, he seemed to be at a lower level than me, since he wasn't wearing colored armor, but he wasn't listening to anyone, so I whacked him swiftly with my great axe. The end of the test 30 minutes away, I decided to move back to the castle, in case something interesting happened. Sure enough, they told us that Lord British would give another speech. I was overjoyed, since I missed the last one. I also met Laa'vaal again, and we grabbed some spots by the building where the speech would be given, and watched ...
The initial chaos which was bound to take place, came, and nobody was disappointed, I guess. ;) As the Lord British look-a-like walked forth ... we were suddenly faced with a whole bunch of Orc Lords, I was almost getting tired of looking at them, their initial "shock affect" had long worn off on me.
I'm the green guy, topmost, and Laa'vaal's right next to me, fighting some massive Orc Lord. In the meantime, I couldn't help him, since I was cornered. The orc ultimately killed him, as he screamed his final goodbye. Death wasn't important at the time, since we were going to be permenantly disconnected at any moment, so I just saw this as a chance to avenge my friend and take out all that pent up agression on some weird AI thing. ;) Finally, the orc died, and I knew that we were together victorious. The moment was short-lived, as the server was finally shut down.
The end? Nope. :) I travelled to Atlanta, Georgia to see Dragon*Con, initially to see some Star Wars celebrities, but when I found out that Richard Garriot would be there, I now had two reasons to go. :) Unfortunately, I arrived late, and was unable to meet Brewmeister and Ruziska as planned, though I met Brewmeister, as well as Riva Dragon, during an appearance made by Garriot in the Origin Room. We heard much about Ultima IX, Ultima Online, and we even got to play UO again, and I had almost forgotten how much I was addicted to it. During a lunch sponsored by Origin for members of the Ultima Dragons, we told many stories about what we did during pre-alpha, and of course I had to bore Garriot which my story about how I had to Por Flam myself just to get out of a tree. Riva was talking about how a whole bunch of his friends killed all the NPC's in Lord British's castle and took it for themselves, and I was thinking, "That's pretty cool ... who would actually do something like that?" I wasn't too familiar with the guilds of everyone, so I asked him what guild he was in, and not to my surprise, it was the F***heads. By mid-late summer, it was clear that none of the guilds which I was affiliated with wanted to move or set up a chapter in Ultima Online, so I knew that I'd be guildless there ... I knew that I liked what the F***heads were up to; how they defended the underdog from PKillers, their defience against evil, their benevolence, and most of all, their free-spiritedness, so I joined them. I, with my bretheren, cannot wait for the upcoming beta test.
Of course, all good things must come to an end ... and after countless battles and adventures, the guildmaster Reverend Brucifer reformed his guild, and all members were thrown out, and some choice members who held his every opinion to be true were readmitted. My brother-in-cyberspace Mocker objected to this, and I objected as well, as many a friend of mine were no longer welcome. Thus my adventures in Britannia have drawn to a close. May we soon find a new land to explore.