Time Out for Biography: Part 1

 

Isabel’s roots are in Ilyana, a character I tried my best to role-play on an old Ultima Online free-shard called Krilldonia. My mistake on Krilldonia was making Ilyana a warrior instead of a rogue. Rogues on old UO can walk a seemingly infinite amounts of steps before being forced to hide again.

Warriors, at their best, could only hide.

But why does that matter?

Because this shard was a power gamer’s delight (counting all the bugs and exploits you could abuse), anyone and everyone was a target especially noobs like me.

Krilldonia had its strengths, and OMG it the weaknesses I discussed above– by the drove. To my knowledge, it began as a regular T2A shard with PvP going full strength. However, in order to add spice, the shard came up with the idea of joining levels with custom races (demon, vampire, ophidian, terathan), which in hindsight, was a genius idea. I have not seen the like except for places like Oblivion, and Dragons Shadow. Where Krilldonia was different was the inclusion of PVP in its RP; however, that was the flawed part of the formula. For example, I remember taking Ilyana into a dungeon Deceit, going in deep, but stop when I saw a dragon leaning against the opposite dungeon wall in order to see me better. Remember, UO had that odd top-down perspective where you could glimpse what was in the room next to you by edging the wall.

Anyway, this particular dragon had been awarded the “Best RPer of the Shard” just a week before, and here he was metagaming. Moments later, as I tried to exit the dungeon, I was greeted by a hasty terathan.

“Hey, are you a vampire?” it asked.

Stupidly, and with a bit of pride, I answered, “Yes.”

Boom!

Game over!

Done.

The high level terathan one-shotted me, took my stuff, and hie-thee-hithered. So much for RP on a PVP shard. This is how they did it people….Krilldonia had much flavor. This is how he did it. End of music meme. However, I was approached by a cloaked GM moments afterward (probably the player himself) who gave me back my stuff, except for my head. My head, it seems, was all the spider wanted. I believe it was used in a guild to award players status and favors. Vampires were hated on that shard. I was the lowbie. And to my knowledge, only three to four more existed, yet none of them too far above my level (seems as though the vampires were hunted so well that they were driven off the shard. This motif will come again in the next shard memory below).

Bugs? Exploits?

They had them, or so I heard. Take the demon for example. You started as an imp, and as you leveled, a GM would change  your shape to gargoyle, and last, demon (probably reserving the Balron body for the grand master level). So, it once fell upon me to defend the vampire crypt against an imp since nobody else was on. I gathered my courage, and sent Ilyana, the warrior, headlong into the fight.

Boom!

Game Over!

Done.

Somehow the imp had found a bug that would enhance their strength far beyond the normal range. This reminds me of a bug on Oblivion where you could jack your strength way up by mining, mining, mining with the use of a spell. Most people on Oblivion did it, so it is probably the insane secret these “RPers” were using to put their alts on steroids. So said, but that’s what the RP factor came down to on that shard.

The last problem, and its a frequent problem on most UO free-play shards, happened to be GM metagamers. It was pitiful. I remember one GM on the forum advising a player to hit them up on ICQ in order to learn how to play a specific race: “You should be burning up ICQ to reach me.” However fond that GM may have been of a specific race, when you force a player to conform, that’s called creating a stereotype. Can you imagine having to contact a GM about how to play a human? Imagine the varied opinions and answers, LOL!

After it got so bad that I considered leaving, a friend of mine on the shard, who shall be known as Steve, talked me into trying out a “new” UO shard named Sanctuary. What a great place that was for like a day.  More on that next time.