A Long Story

[chumbucket]

The Start

I began playing Ultima Online at the age of fifteen. I was given the game as a gift on the release date. I didn't really know what I was doing, and for the probably the three months I did little more than wander the wilderness, try avoid player killers, and raise my skills painfully, slowly, manually. The day I finally hit ninety swordsmanship was a revelation. I can remember it fairly clearly. A friend and I went to Covetous, as we usually did, in order to raise our skills and make some gold. I had a bardiche, probably of ruin or might, and a newfound confidence. As a newly minted master swordsman, I felt I was finally ready to join the world of player vs player combat rather than fleeing on foot. (I didn't have sufficient magery, or even knowledge of how magery worked, for quite a long time.)

Back then, UO was absolutely bustling with players. Covetous was a series of impromptu hunting parties. We ran room to room, attacking with abandon and viking swords anything we came across. (Viking swords, I was always told back then, were the best weapon for fighting monsters.) As we left to make the run back to Vesper, a red player appeared, attacked one of our number, and began to pick the corpse. We all stood silently inching our way to the door as we always did when I suddenly found my courage. I called out for everyone to attack and ran in with my bardiche. He dropped me in probably two swings of what came to be known and feared a few months later as a "pre-patch" weapon. High end weapons were quite deadly then.

I was shocked. I had worked so hard still to remain powerless, and it was all for naught. I had a number of experiences, some simply informational (including a short free resist training session along the road from Minoc to Covetous bank) but mostly negative, that had lead me think this way, but the mocking words of that player killer in Covetous upon knocking me off my high horse so easily really set my mind to getting better.

I did the only thing I could think to do: I started reading everything could find on the still fairly primitive world wide web. I learned to macro by sticking coins in keyboards, I learned what skills were effective, I learned how to use magery, and I even ended up with one of the first, and very primitive, macroing programs for Ultima Online. I learned a lot, but I still didn't have the gold I needed to make a real go of it.

One feature of Ultima Online that is long gone is the old flagging system. It was a quirky system with many, many failings. Among those failings, if you attacked a player who had stolen from you, the guards could be called on you. A number of enterprising young thieves had figured out how to game the system: Steal near the edge of town. If you get away unscathed, you get to keep what you stole. If you get attacked, run for the guards and feast upon your foolish victims remains. This practice was widespread. The outskirts of most towns required a mad dash to avoid the hordes of thieves that would instantly descend upon you as you left or entered town.

After my run in with the player killer in Covetous, something inside me changed. I saw then and there at the outskirts what I must do. I rolled a thief and began to join the hordes at the end of town. Loot I had never dreamed of was my reward. I was by no means wealthy, even by the standards of the day. But eventually I could afford a small house, and I set my sight of bigger dreams. I needed gold to train, to make the player vs. player character, to take down the red players who had so oppressed me and my friends for months. But something changed. I began to find joy in simply being the bad guy and, in particular, being the thief. I refocused my energy on stealing and began rethinking about what I wanted to do in Ultima Online.

At this time, two more influences washed over me: Xavori and the Insidious Brotherhood. Xavori was a roleplaying thief, and the Insidious Brotherhood was a (sort of) roleplaying band of player killers. I decided to adopt a backstory and make a thief. A kind thief by the name of Ilya Gpat showed me the basics of raising stealing, organizing backpacks, and basically how to play the game in a focused way. Still, I was a kid, and these "famous" players (Xavori wrote for a well-known UO webage called Stratics and the IB had been featured in a very short story in a magazine) didn't pay me much mind. I posted to their forums with no responses. I showed up at their hangouts, only to be killed or laughed at. Eventually, they got used to my appearing and simply ignored me (aside from Ilya Gpat). I eventually tired of roleplaying, rerolled as an archer (using an exploit to GM archery free and in one night), and began an all out assault on the players of Ultima Online. (Archery in those days was insanely overpowered. A state of affairs that lasted for maybe a few months. I became a fencer once it was brought down to Earth.)

In those days, Ultima Online was a game with endless possibilities. It is a game that could never be recreated. The game's rules were wide open. It was a Wild West atmosphere and everyone who wanted to play an online game had to be there. Everquest and its kin eventually sapped the numbers, and Trammel sapped its spirit, but the early days of Ultima Online were perhaps the greatest time in the history of video games. But things died down. I focused on my burgeoning career as an absolutely awful guitarist in a punk rock band. I played Everquest. I probably even touched a lady part or two. Life caught up with me, and one day I shipped off to college. Ultima Online was but a distant and happy memory.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.05/ultima_pr.html


The Freeshard Experience

Somewhere in the haze of college, word got to me of a rebirth of Ultima Online. Players were creating their own shards, with their own rules, and EA was not shutting them down. I heard stories of IPY: the chaos, the intensity, the challenge. I began to hope to play again. But years passed and I had a busy life. After college, I checked into it again. I found a shard that seemed to suit me: Metropolis. With the wisdom of hindsight, I set out to do everything I always wanted to do in Ultima Online but never tried: I made crafters, I joined a large guild (C^M), I bought large houses, I became fairly proficient in player vs player combat. The best thing about Metropolis for me was the guild. I made friends there. I had experiences with them. We went on hunts. We had enemies. We fought and laughed and we discussed our personal lives. I still keep in contact with two players from that guild to this day. (I bet you're reading this, Syllums.) Eventually, the shard imploded. The shard owner didn't want to keep it going, and he passed on it on to a man who renamed it Project X and ran it into the ground with absurd rules and constant giveaways. I drifted away from Ultima Online again with only a few days spent briefly as Oprah on Angel Island.

Months passed when Syllums contacted me: He knew of a new shard that he thought I might like. It would be a recreation of the pre-Trammel era. It was called Ultima Online: The Second Age. It was perfect. I started with a clear plan. I had tried all the things Ultima Online had to offer on Metropolis. I wanted return to my true love: stealing. I rolled a bard to get me started and the first chumbucket, a macer thief, to get my adventures on their way. I had always been one for getting out and doing things. I never liked collecting and I never liked taking myself very seriously. On Metropolis, I was mostly known for constantly looking for fights and for constantly seeming to be somewhat touched in the head. It was put on, but it was fun. I took to the same on UOSA, but as a near full-time thief. I was, for short while, the only serious thief on the shard.

One day, after a rather hilarious altercation with an angry young man named Hemperor, I decided to share the events with the shard. The response was, to my great surprise, incredibly positive. Even Hemperor came around to laughing at himself. I had already wanted to rob the shard blind, but this story really gave me focus. I wanted to rob the shard blind and have everyone enjoy it.

Ultima Online, for me, has always been at its best when it is a no holds barred game. The element of danger that you can only get from a player makes the game something entirely different from any other game I have ever played. You can lose your loot to a monster in some games. You can lose your loot to a player in a few games. But in Ultima Online, I can take everything you have ever worked for over the course of months and months in a matter of thirty minutes. Some times less. I recall once stealing a house deed from a player who screamed at me as I fled to West Britiain bank, only to immediately hop a gate into a house that I proceeded to loot of everything. My IRC private chats were aflame with angry players.

I enjoyed the challenge of stealing from players, of concocting elaborate plans, of improvising to get things when my plans went awry, and always trying to do it in the sort of chumbucket persona I was developing: a free-wheeling, well-meaning, but absolutely ruthless thief. Not everyone laughed. The wise laughed later. The unwise never. The bystanders almost always. But what I enjoyed most was simply being a part of things: having crazy adventures, posting them on the forums, and talking back and forth. The forums became more important to me than the game itself.

Somewhere along the way, I concocted the idea of running a guild. It was originally named chumbucket and Associates. But recruitment was poor, and no grand adventures were had. I renamed it Bards of the Second Age, in accordance with the still running joke that I am a bard and not a thief. The name change didn't help. I had thought the cA name immodest and off-putting but I eventually opted return to it. It was around that time that I met one Joan Jett, an absolutely hell-raising player who shared my love of actually going on adventures and was clearly a more skilled player than myself. As I recall, our first adventure together consisted in throwing EVs into the middle of a player-ran tournament followed by suicide bombing the crowd. It was fabulous. She eventually changed her name to (or began playing as a character I was unaware of named) Matron de Winter. I managed to convince her to join my guild. We were, in effect, a two person guild for a short period, but with her know how our recruitments went through the roof. We turned down more players than we accepted. I wrote up rules for recruitment and rank that, more or less, stand to this day. (A lesson for those who want to start a guild: Do something that attracts people, know precisely what kind of people you want, and then be selective. You'll do better in the long run than growing huge, fast by taking a lot of people.)

I enjoyed being in C^M back in the Metropolis days, but cA is the best experience I have had--and continue to have--in gaming. I enjoy talking to all the members. I know a fair amount about a lot of them. I talk almost daily to someone in the guild in our private IRC channel--even when I am not actively playing UO. I think in this is contained an important lesson: A game like this is most rewarding in a group of likeminded and well-intentioned people. We all play with intent of simply having fun in typical cA-style. The sort of to my mind strange drama that erupts in guilds is almost entirely foreign to cA. I can only think of one case where we had interpersonal tensions that results in a cA member being removed. (And that still bothers me to this day that it went down that way.)

Over time, I became less and less the leader of cA and more and more the figurehead. For years, cA has just been a loose association in which everyone who has put in their time has become an equal. We still have ranks, but everyone but Franz is now a Senior Associate. (Franz is not from God's country, and so shall always remain Jr. Assistant to Pristiq.)

But slowly, ever so slowly, UOSA lost its luster to me. Indeed, it lost its luster several times. Never because of UOSA itself, mind you, but because a game can only keep my attention so long. Even one as startlingly open as Ultima Online gets old. cA extended its life no doubt by years. Our ability to plan and execute intricate plots became the stuff of nightmares among the playerbase. It wasn't uncommon for me to log into IRC simply to work out the details of whatever scheme we were, as a group, plotting that month. We have private messages boards. We wrestle ideas in IRC. We hop on test servers and make sure the mechanics allow us to do what we intend. This activity--the plotting, testing, replotting, and eventually executing and writing it up--became my loved activity. Operation Red Hemperor, the infiltration of $$$, and like plots were the highlight of my gaming experience.

But eventually, years and years later, UOSA lost its appeal. It continues to be the best Ultima Online shard. But I simply ran out of things to do. Derrick, Maahes, and all the rest deserve all the praise in the world for tirelessly and often thanklessly running the most stable, honest, and fun Ultima Online experience I have ever had. I simply did everything I could possibly think to do---and each a hundred times. Life also has a way of catching up to you, and your time for games gets less and less. So I left UOSA for the last time. I maintained contact with cA, but no longer felt the call to play.

Post-UOSA: UOR

Matron de Winter later approached me with what seemed to be the craziest idea I had ever heard: She was playing on Renaissance--a shard founded by one of our bitterest enemies from UOSA (a drama I never fully understood, having been away, and will not even attempt to recount here)--and was having a fairly good time of it. She had a keep in a week, as I understand it, and all from stealing. Admittedly, the shard looked polished and professionally ran, but I was still skeptical. This was the very same shard on which staff had created a cA stone to try to discourage us from playing there. But Matron assured me that staff and she has mended fences enough that we could safely (e.g., without fear of causeless bans weeks into playing) and that a new set of mechanics along with a new community might be just the thing to breath life back into my Ultima Online experience.

And for a while she was right. I had some fun on a few adventures, but it never quite stuck. It wasn't due to the shard itself, which is indeed run well and professionally, but the community never felt right. In the old days of Ultima Online and also of UOSA, I was energized by the spirit of adventure, by the shared sense that the game was a game to be played--no doubt at cross purposes in game--in a spirit of adventure and fun. I certainly didn't always live up to that sense myself. More than a few times, even before UOR, I fell into the trap of taking the game too serious, of getting too angry with this or that person, in engaging in absurd forum drama, of losing sight of what made Ultima Online so much fun for me for so long. And yet the community was always worse. There was, and probably still is, so much vitriol, so much seriousness, so much genuine dislike--maybe even hatred--of other human beings simply because of how they play on their computer that I never really relaxed and had a good time. I spent too much time caught up in that mess--occasionally in the spirit of stirring it up for fun (which was not wasted time for me)--but more often in a serious, decidedly non-fun way.

Life, as it does, gets busy. It did this to me yet again. I wandered away maybe a month and half ago and then life recently cleared up again. But I found I simply did not want to log in, that I have absolutely no desire to play UOR. It was just a chore to get caught up in the drama and stupidity of it all. More shocking to me, though, is the lack of desire to play Ultima Online entirely. I have played and played. I have done everything I set out to do, and I have done things I never imagined. I made great friends and I made exciting enemies. I hope some day, maybe even this year, I will get the itch and enjoy Ultima Online again. I want to want to play. Nothing can beat a good session of it. But few games are worse than Ultima Online when you don't want to play it, when those around you make it unpleasant, when you yourself make it unpleasant.

So kudos to you all, UOSA and UOR players. I hope you all--and both servers--prosper for years to come. And especially I hope staff at both shards continue to do outstanding jobs. For now, I am off to explore new games and new life experiences. I'll still be around, certainly chatting with cA in our IRC room, maybe even helping out here and there with cA shenanigans, and certainly making the occasional post, but I'm done for now. And probably for a long time. It's been a good ride.

[Capitalist]

Can I have your stuff?

[chumbucket]

Can I have your stuff?

I don't think I have anything left!!!

[Capitalist]

Can I have your stuff?

I don't think I have anything left!!!

I believe in you.

[Mulahey]

Thank you chumbucket for sharing your UO (hi)story. I salute you and hope you will find new inspiration and motivation to make a glorious return to UOSA soon. You are an absolute hero to many of us.

[inkognito]

Much of what I do ingame in Uosa was inspired back in 09' watching you guys pvp adventurers without swinging a weapon or casting a spell. It broadened my whole perspective and limits of player interaction. I thieved on Lake Superior for years, but never was straight up criminal like the origins of cA.
Thanks for the good times.
A legendary tale indeed.

[Pac]

I can't imagine that playing on a shard made purely out of spite would be very enjoyable.

[Whitley]

Great post, your adventures are missed. I too hope you want to play again someday.

Best,
Whitley

[Vega/Delo]

Great post, i like the part "using coins to hold down keys to macro", did the same thing with those POG metal things that you would use when playing POG. Great memories, thanks for sharing and good luck to you in the future!

[Robbbb]

Pics or it didn't happen...

[Boondock_Saint]

All the cA adventures really happened after I joined... I enjoy the cA game play, as it is how I play this game as well.

I don't understand the people who take this game too seriously, or the pvpers who get mad if you don't pvp.

Best of luck.

[Jakob]

The Start
We still have ranks, but everyone but Franz is now a Senior Associate. (Franz is not from God's country, and so shall always remain Jr. Assistant to Pristiq.)

And what about Populus!? We're from the same country!

We sure do have guild drama! Especially about the ranks since you titled me "non-Associate member". I was not a full associate, and not a member, just non-Associate member. How degrading! Poor Franz... :'(

[dan---]

i so miss metropolis.... i ran with fear.. our guild ran all the huses outside of east brit. i belive i had two story of some sort. ( maybe a log ) cant remember tbh... loved the ability where reds could be on boats at the bank and not have the worry of being guard wacked.

[chumbucket]

The Start
We still have ranks, but everyone but Franz is now a Senior Associate. (Franz is not from God's country, and so shall always remain Jr. Assistant to Pristiq.)

And what about Populus!? We're from the same country!

We sure do have guild drama! Especially about the ranks since you titled me "non-Associate member". I was not a full associate, and not a member, just non-Associate member. How degrading! Poor Franz... :'(

No Swedes Club: We're allowed to have one!

[Populus]

In this case the Swede is acceptable because, frankly, anyone can do a better job at running cA than chumbucket can. But noone can run it better than I can.
Also, looks like I didn't reply to this magnificent post. Best read 2014!