I’m not actually sure where it started, but I noticed the “I grew up here” trend after seeing @Mightykeef‘s tweet about it. I’m not really sure where it started but it did make me go Hmmm. Honestly, I would like to put Shadowbane as where I grew up, and maybe I’ll do something about that later, but I would have to pick Ultima Online (UO). There are a lot of reasons for this.
To begin with, it was my first massively multiplayer online (MMO) game to play. I want to say I started playing in early 1998 on the Pacific Shard and played the game for 3+ years. I gamed before this but, honestly, UO was the game that turned me into a gamer. I can somewhat remember my first days playing creating my first character, Crypt Vengelord, running around a world seeing tons of other players, getting player killed (PK’d) for the first time, and joining my first guild, KMA (Knights, Mages, and Archers). In fact, it is here I met one of my long-last friendships with Cave (aka Chris Mancil). He, his brother, and I went on to create our own guild called Spirits of Vengeance (SOV) — yes, I was a huge Ghost Rider fan at the time.
I can’t quite remember why but after a bit, I started my own “shard newspaper” called the Pacific Shard Times. I want to say it was because I really enjoyed The KGB Sentinel (a full list of the historical archives can be found here). The KGB was (and still is) a player guild and the name stands for “Knights of Glory and Beer“. Unlike the KGB’s version, I wanted to create one that was a bit more impartial and talked about the entire server’s community. I believe Pacific was the second server launched and had a rich history and active community due to a lot of guildwars and PKing. And I really enjoyed not just writing about things occurring on the server, but bringing players together. We set up a variety of events and tournaments and had a lot of fun. And eventually, I took the Pacific Shard Times from a personal website to joining the XRgamging (Crossroads) network. As you can tell, this is where I first started to work unofficially in community management. At this time, though, it was all a passion of mine and I didn’t even realize it could become a career.
Playing UO for 3 years, I racked up a lot of memories. As the guild leader (at the time) of SOV, we fought often against The Mafia (TM), PoA, Fallen Lords (FL), and Nightmare Clan (NC)… and a lot of other guilds. Unlike guilds like the KGB who were more like the knights of the realm, the SOV was more of dark or anti-heroes. But it was great because when I ran events and tournaments as the Pacific Shard Times editor, most of this conflict would be set aside… except for that time that Nightmare Clan crashed the PST Free For All tournament, but even then, it was quite memorable!
Ultima Online 1998, Pacific Shard
We (as in the SOV) were given the opportunity to join the KGB which, as you can tell, was a guild I held in high esteem. We did join as a probationary unit and had some great times. In fact, the feature image is from back in August 1998 when I was the “General” of the SOV division of the KGB and we scored a major victory over The Mafia (TM) at the East Britain Bank. In fact, I remember Ranker, TM’s guildleader; We dueled and fought fairly often and had a sort of frenemy kind of relationship. But, back to being a part of the KGB, that did not end as well. There were challenges between SOV and KGB member playtimes. Members of SOV were more active in the late afternoon, general KGB membership was in the late evening. Due to the number of enemies the KGB had accumulated and the limited number of SOV members, it was quite, shall we say, hectic. And I recall Cave also getting upset about something but I don’t remember the circumstances. Ultimately, the SOV left the KGB and reformed its own guild under Cave’s leadership as part of the Vengeance Alliance. But, I stayed a short while longer with KGB and obtained the rank of Supreme Knight before going to the side of “evil”.
It was somewhere around April of 1999 that I remember reading about another shard that was doing a “War of the Worlds” kind of player-run even scenario. Reading the forums, it looked like a ton of fun and something I thought would be great to do on Pacific. The challenge was while we had a lot of “good” and honorable guilds, the other guilds and alliances were mainly chaotic (PKing and guildwars) vs “evil”. So, I decided to start up my own evil faction with a new character called Ldy Death (yes, I was also a fan of the Lady Death comics by Chaos! Comics back in the day).
I am pretty sure I have the old website for this somewhere on an old hard drive that I should dig up someday. But essentially I created Ldy Death and build a coalition around “The Endless Graveyard” (TEL) and had a variety of other guilds form up around it. We took over the Yew Crypts and received an “official blessing” from a Guide or Counselor (I don’t recall which). The biggest difference here as compared to what I did with KMA, SOV, and the KGB is this was definitely more of a roleplaying scenario. Sure, I got to play “evil” and PK some folks, but now I got to do it with more flair and I generally only killed those who were actively aligned against us (aka I didn’t go around pwning newbies).
Looking back, though, I can see how playing Ultima Online led me to where I am today. UO gave me my love of MMOs and player communities. It showed me that you could have combat for a reason and that roleplaying wasn’t just talking fun. That you could form lasting relationships with people you may never actually meet in person. So while Shadowbane is the game I grew up professionally in (more on that in another blahg), Ultima Online is the game that started it all. It is the friendships there that led me to the Rallos Zek server on Everquest and, from there, to Wolfpack Studios and Ubisoft.
Fond memories and good times!
Wow, brings me back. I used to play this while bench testing new images to roll out at USWest. Got lots of time in during a strike. The good ol’ KGB (Knights Guild Battalion if I remember correctly.) UO made me rage quit one evening when some other player attacked me while I was carrying half of the contents of my bank vault to a friend’s house. I thought I was outside of the city, so I went into attack mode as well, I knew I could wipe the floor with this noob, but evidently we were within city limits still, he called guards, and I was DRT. He looted my original season weapons, and loads of irreplaceable items. I was so mad I actually punched a hole in my wall at home, and then I logged out, never to play again. Now I just play FPS games.