I think you have a one sided view to what exactly some people really loved. You have taken the one view that you have and exptrapolated it out to everyone.

What I personally liked about UO and personally believe killed it had to do with the introduction of portals and instant anywhere travel. When OU was big, open, and took a good bit of time to get from one corner of the world to the other it had a vastly different feel. In the beta and the first year it was the wild fucking west. I could stay out in the woods in the far north east corner of the map and not see someone for days.

It also at later levels became very interesting to battle. You talk of griefers and I would suggest that you did not fully understand how to deal with them. I would say stealing was a problem only if you did not have the understanding that the best gear was easy to get and made it very easy to have a level playing field.

I would also point out that a grandmaster with a dex of 100 and a str of 100 could kill a fully armored plate master with a barduchie(spelling?) with little to no problem ass naked with a dagger. The skill was more important than the gear! I could hit you 100 times before you could get a swing off because of the fighting mech would make you start your swing over every time you got hit.

Just because you did did not understand the mech of the game well enough to hand yourself does not make the game bad. I found that not having forced policies onto your game style to control the wild west part of the world does not mean that it was not fun as shit to have your ass handed to you every now and then.

People liked the idea of loosing things if you got to far away from the city without protection.

People in that game where stupid, if you carried more than you needed and die you lost it. Who carries eveyrthing they own. It was stupid people being stupid.

People liked the danger of running from town to town alone and the smartest mob out there was someone else.

People liked to hunt others down for being ass hats.

People liked playing in a group of five guys that knew how to handle the game, did not get griefed by anyone because they got there asses handed to them.

People disliked the game because it did not coddle the idea of the less common denominator. It was, dare I say it, a little more difficult.

You see, the people that did not like OU just did not like the game play. They wanted to be protected from the harshness. They wanted to be able to die without loosing anything. They wanted to play solo and not actually act like they where all alone.

I call bullshit on anyone that says UO was not fun and point to thier own lack of knowledge toward how they should have been playing instead of how they figured it should have been played.

I loved the game when it was in the first 2 years. I was not a griefer, I was the anti griefer. I was the guy that stood at the Fork glowing Red and never starting a fight. Just waiting and giving you the chance for glory.

What you do not smell is called Iocanesoline. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more vaporious gasses known to man.

The_neck