Ultima Online came out in September 1997, I remember bugging my dad about getting it while playing Diablo 1 on Battle.NET as people online were talking about this new game. I got a gamer magazine with an article about UO in it and I was hooked before I even had a chance to play. The idea of an open world where you can turn your character into anything by using the skills was mesmerizing. The fact you could adventure out to slay dragons, chop trees to make furniture, bows and arrows, mine for ore to make weapons and armor was overwhelmingly appealing - but even more so was the fact you steal from and kill other players. The twelve year old me was an unstoppable a-hole!
UO is actually the game that got me my career I have today in web development. It wasn't long after playing that I asked my dad for a book about HTML as I wanted to make a web page so I could post pictures of the players I killed and show them how they got "owned" - I would have loved to say this is where jaseowns.com was born, however it was a Geocities webpage at first.
What server did you play?
The main ones I played were: Napa Valley, Chesapeake, Baja, Pacific.
Being a young kid and not understanding how the internet worked, when you logged in to Ultima via dial up - you choose a "shard" to play. I didn't know the names related to location so I actually played on multiple servers. I also didn't know for a long time that you could log out in an inn to automatically log out, so I would log out and hop on to another server to play a different character without waiting.
I don't have a lot of screen shots saved from the old days but here is one from my vendor house!
December 2004
Do you still play?
I sure do! However, now I play Ultima Online on multiple servers - both retail and free shards. My "main" server these days is UO Outlands but I'm always on the look out for a new UO Experience. I stream on YouTube and Twitch when I play and I also have some passion projects related to UO that you can check out.
Jaseowns.com is the online dumping ground of Jason Ramsey and includes ramblings of an internet ⭐ star. He's a streamer, dreamer, developer, gamer, husband and father who has been a nerd owning people on the internet since dial up 🖥️☎️
