I'm not quite ready to show off the greenhouse yet, so instead here's a very old screenshot from TC, four and a half years ago. This was during my obsession with water and waterfalls. Nowadays I feel that they take up too much space in my design and I leave them out.
Side note: I did the series of quests that were added in as a way for Mesanna to give house spots in the Stygian Abyss. I ended up 'winning' on TC. I never claimed the house spot, though. Instead I just displayed my winning item (I don't even remember what it was you got that signified you won) on the steps of this house spot proudly.
Now for some more memories!
Do you see how busy this place is? This is, yes, on TC during a cross-shard treasure hunt challenge. I remember they held two or three of these on Test Center before the monthly competition died off. Pity, because it was really fun to watch! Mesanna spawned a bunch of cream pies on the floor for us onlookers to use for our own shenanigans while we waited for the treasure hunt to complete.
This isn't my screenshot. I was feeling nostalgic the other day and Googled "Ultima Online 2002," the year I started playing. This was one of the first things that popped up and I couldn't help but laugh. This very much fits my first memories of UO - the absolute chaos that was West Brit Bank. While I wasn't personally a banksitter, I loved how alive the world felt whenever I stopped off here to do various things. WBB was actually my home bank even after AoS came out and continued to be my home until early 2009, when I'd returned after a short break due to computer issues.
The game has changed a lot since then, and if anybody wants population levels even remotely similar to these days they're forced to migrate to Atlantic. Even then it's not the same if your last memories of UO are of much higher population times.
I hope the recent announcement of a new expansion pack is good news. On one hand that
should mean that the future of UO (ie: closing down the servers) isn't in jeopardy. On the other, the Stratics forums have some worries about how vague they were in their recent Dev video. My experience with any MMO forum is that the really big complainers will always be there to find the negative side of something, so I take these concerns with a grain of salt. I choose to see the positive side - that UO is going strong enough that there is still new content.
Ahh, Brit bank days. I had played for quite sometime without ever realizing that hotspot existed. Our in-game neighbor showed me one night and my son, quite young at that time, was walking by the computer and said "Whoa! Is the mayor in town?!" I laughed so freakin' hard because I don't know where he'd gotten that phrase.
ReplyDeleteI miss those days.
I'm excited about the expansion. I never even got the pirate booster (High Seas, or whatever it's called) but I think if I find I'm committed to playing for a while this time around I will go ahead and get that.
~Deb
Back when Brit Bank was that bad I would go to Skara Brae with my Dad just to get away from all the lag. I remember showing off my first nightmare in Brit Bank - well after everyone else on Lake Austin had already gotten one! I could never commit to taming for hours on end to train my skill. The addition of skill jewelry helped me get a lot of pets before I would have normally gotten them LOL
DeleteI loved High Seas when it first came out! I was never in any groups or guilds big enough to do any of the bosses, but the rest of the content was perfect for me! I loved doing SOS's and taking on pirate ships on my own.