It all started with a short article in a gaming magazine, in which the author came to the delight of the fact that in the game, he just stood on the shore of the pond and watched frolicking dolphins. It took place in the world of Ultima Online. I also found this moment extremely interesting. In the vast fantasy world of the game the player found something beautiful, which, perhaps, was not intentionally arranged. There was something Japanese about it – the ability to admire simple things. And I decided I had to see it with my own eyes. And not only that.

In the end, I settled on Pacific, which was the server I had the least lag. And the connection speed with the 14,400 modem wasn't great. In the game any character could outrun me (if he had time, of course), I was just a little bit slower. But these were the little things in life, the very virtual life in a fairy-tale world, where the struggle between good and evil was in the first place. I realized this a bit later, but on the first day I was happy about the most trivial things. For example, that a bird shot with a bow could be gutted, and you can obtain the meat and feathers that can be used to make arrows.

And then I understood that one short article in the magazine where I was (and still am) the Editor-in-Chief would not be enough for this world. I realized that I had a unique chance to tell the story of a traveler who finds himself in an unknown country. Who every day discovers something new, meets and makes friends with different good people and opposes Evil to the best of his ability. For that was my choice, my philosophy.

As a result, I hovered in the game for 12 months, giving away an article in each successive issue. That's how the Ultima Online Chronicles came to be. A lot of water has flowed since then. Veterans of the game may say that the author is a noob and remains one. And in some ways I agree with them. But let them remember their first steps in UO. That excitement of exploring and learning a new world. This is what I have tried to convey to readers.

At E3 2003, I met the creator of Ultima Online – Richard Garriott. I gave him a dagger as a present, and thanked him for the great pleasure I had.

Later we met a few more times, both in America and in Russia, where he came to fly into space. He is a very active and busy man. That's probably why he didn't respond in any way to my friendly request to write a few lines about his vision for Ultima Online that I could quote in this book.

Hey, Richard, if you're reading these lines, know that the offer still stands.

Part I

What was going to happen happened. I'd had a taste of online role-playing before, and yet I was virtually unprepared for what awaited me in online Ultima. Just as you'll be unprepared when you first get there. It's one thing to read about it in a magazine, while looking at screenshots of graphics squeezed out of a not-so-fresh engine. And it's quite another to feel yourself a part of a beautifully designed fantasy world.

I won't try to tell you about UO all-in-all, I can't compare it with other online giants for the simple reason that I'm making my first, rather shy steps on this field, supported by my offline RPG experience. Therefore, consider the following material as a kind of report, a report on a trip to an exotic far away.

There was a time when, while visiting all kinds of computer expos, I was involuntarily seized by the urge to take a double-edged sword and smash it heartily on the so fascinating and at the same time inaccessible wonders of the computer industry. Without elaborating on the topic, I will immediately state that these days the home PC has become quite an ordinary phenomenon. A similar trend can now be seen in the field of paid online games. Judge for yourself: the cost of the boxed edition of Ultima Online: the Second Age – $30. It includes payment for a month of playing time. In the future, those who "get hooked", will have to pay for the pleasure around $10 a month. A lot? Same amount that the peddlers will ask for five pirated CDs. No comment.

Of course, all this trouble is worth making if you have decent access to the Internet. The system requirements of the game claim a connection of 28.800 and, as practice has shown, this speed is really enough to feel like a master of your own destiny.

I sell iron ingots. Such luck is rare – on the body of slaughtered troll there were as many as 1325 of them!

We live! And not only twice!

After registering an account on the corresponding site, the player gets access to a couple of dozen game servers, geographically scattered around the world. The closest to us – Europa, but do not hurry to create a "char" there – the program allows you to sort servers by the communication quality. Choose the one that took the top line, connect and proceed to create a character. In my particular case, Pacific was the best option, which turned out to be played by Europeans, Americans and New Zealanders.

Think carefully before endowing your character with the three "innate" skills, as your choice will determine how he lives his life. If you are inclined to wander around, exploring the unknown wilderness, measuring by steps the valleys, mountains, dungeons, wondering what it is behind the turn of the road, then do not become a blacksmith or a carpenter. For the latter it is better to stay close to the city, getting the source materials and cautiously listening to the rustles of the surrounding nature, ready at the first sign of aggression from any enemy to run away with shouts of "Guards! Guards!" This is true of any newbie.

First the harpy fell into this trap, and a few minutes later the orc managed to be lured into it as well

When selecting skills, your eyes are simply scattered – there are almost five dozen of them. Some are quite standard, while others seem to be too complicated and superfluous, such as Forensic Evaluation. If you apply this skill to a corpse, you will know the circumstances of the deceased's death.

I've decided that my char should feel like a fish in water in the wild. So I made him an archer/fletcher. On the one hand I can hunt all sorts of wildlife, on the other I can make money quite quickly by selling manufactured bows and crossbows. Not the least factor in choosing this combination was being able to defeat significantly stronger but slower critters.

And if you decide to change, all avenues are open to you. You can learn any specialty from scratch. If you want to become a tamer, just try, then try again, then again. See at what speed you began to grow the corresponding skill. In just a few minutes you'll be able to charm the rabbit! After a while you can tame a dog, after a sleepless night you can tame a wolf, after a few days you can tame a bear, but how long will it take to learn how to tame dragons, I can't say – I only know that it's a long time.

I'm afraid I'm in danger of some mutual misunderstanding on the Japanese server

Commodity-money relations

If you're playing for the first time, choose the main city – Britain – as the place where your hero appears. Here there are all the conditions for the initial "char" pumping – stores and shops of all types, training castle with mannequins on which anyone can hone their skills, and the people in the city hangs out a lot, if you stand around the bank, you can get on the "distribution of elephants" – from time to time there are characters who just stick to the right and left all sorts of things, sometimes – magical. Some simply have nowhere to put the stuff, and to go to the store – a bummer, while others do it from altruistic motives, simultaneously advertising their own guild. Here also come those who need something to sell/buy.

The local banking system allows the player to store not only money, but also items. And your bank chest can be accessed from a bank in any city. Funds are also taken from the bank at the time of purchase of any items in stores organized by the players. Likewise, payment is made for real estate. All of this makes life much easier, allowing you to do without large sums of cash, which can easily be stolen.

The gold armor is as if designed for the archer, with +30 protection and only a -3 loss in mobility

The initial capital of the player is only 100 coins, and he is also given production tools and weapons according to the chosen specialization. The latter will be of low, "training" quality, you will not even be able to sell them.

From this moment life begins, without the carefree childhood and adolescence, but you can do whatever you want. It's logical to develop the abilities that you have thought of when generating your character. The more often and more successfully you will perform some operation, the faster the corresponding skill will grow. Over time the quantity will pass into quality, blacksmiths, for example, will learn to forge magical weapons and armor, whose value is comparable to the cost of real estate.

Buying your own house is one of the player's first goals. This is a completely safe haven, and a warehouse, and, if desired, your own business. The price of the simplest house is approximately 12 thousand coins, for comparison: a simple bow carved with a dagger you can take to a store for 25–30 GP.

It's a shame: there's an unclaimed chest right on the road, but it's locked, and you can't open it

Man to man

In online Ultima, depending on how well the player behaves towards his neighbors, his name will be written in blue, gray or red. True, if the sneaky PK, I mean player-killer, will in between the killings of innocent travelers or workers to deal with all sorts of demons, skeletons, evil-mages, and negative NPC, then he may well return to the blue coloring. "Gray" character becomes such as a result of some initial evil deeds, for example, he might try to see what's in the neighbor's backpack, or killed a couple or three pets – cats, dogs or cows.

If the crime is committed in the city, the victim can call on the help of the city guards, who, sometimes appearing just out of nowhere, kill the offender with a single blow.

A "gray" or "red" character can be killed by anyone who wishes to test the sharpness of his blade on their neck, without affecting his reputation or karma. If he manage, of course.

And here is the first quest I have to give up as I have no bolts for the crossbow

In general, the PK'illerism is worth a special discussion. The possibility of becoming a "bad guy" is in the game itself, and at different levels. For example, you can become a thief and stealing on a grand scale. Play the role of scoundrel, which you will never be in life. Can you imagine how difficult it is to reach the top level of thievery skill in a game like this? After all, it is enough for someone in the crowd to notice that the thief is trying to examine the insides of someone else's backpack, and one can start killing him immediately.

It seems that the most competent PKs are ours, the Russian ones. I assert this, having experienced on my own skin how they and their overseas counterparts operate. Our guys will first process you with a couple of spells, depriving you of the ability not only to cast in response, but also to move in general. Only then they kill you. Professionals at their job:). Not ours – stupidly apply brute force and attacking spells usually.

At first, it pissed me off that some bastards, instead of going to crush the monsters, stand on the high road and bully everyone to the right and left. But as time passed, I realized I was wrong. Without PK, the game would have lost the lion's share of its appeal. After all, PK is Evil personified, and it's good that it exists, that you can fight it, serve justice, protect the weak, etc. The "good" characters have a constant opponent, and it is not dumb monsters, but often an enemy superior to you in many ways.

These good people will soon finish killing earth elementals and bring my ghost back to life

The most important thing here is role-playing. The game is an environment, and if players don't behave the way fantasy characters are supposed to, the integrity of the world is destroyed.

Here's an incident that happened to me shortly after I pumped up my skills slightly and decided to go outside the city – to chop wood and make bows for sale. I was walking through the woods, along the road that leads to Minoc – you can't chop wood quickly enough near the town, you need to go a bit farther away. My attention was caught by some well-equipped characters who were running toward the town. When they stopped, they told me not to go any farther – there were PKs out there, so I could get killed. Soon it became clear that there was only one PK, but there were quite a few of us, so I had the idea of attacking the villain with the whole gang and killing him. In the end a final "GO!" appeared on the screen, and we went east to establish justice and restore the self-respect of those chars.

As it turned out, PK by the time of our arrival also managed to get a company – next to him settled four blue players in the same, almost uniform clothes – black robes, thrown on full bone armor. My character automatically began firing arrow after arrow at the gold-clad red Herbalot, and my companions went at him with swords and axes. But the "blacks" covered the assassin with themselves, leaving only one side of him accessible. Moreover, they began to heal him with spells!

This dungeon can be accessed without leaving the Britain

After a few minutes, it was all over. All of "ours" went down rather quickly, and Herbalot chased me four times before my connection failed. The lag did its black work, and I continued to watch the scene in black and white as a ghost.

And then the black-horns acted in such a way that if I had been there I would have shaken hands with them and bought them a beer. In one voice they started saying things like "Sir, you're the greatest, you are the best…" To which he replied that it was a pity he couldn't be "blue" because he liked killing so much…

That's it – the Evil you believe in, which makes you resent, worry and enjoy the game to the fullest.

Nevertheless, I took them all on my pencil. Perhaps we'll get some more fighting. I'll sentence them without malice, or at least I'll try.

Some players put a sentence-command on the macro that covers all cases

Monster to monster

As you can easily guess, game monsters are also differentiated by the color of the name or title. Even the most undeveloped character will always be able to find a creature that he can kill. You start with rabbits, small feathered creatures, and I have yet to see the limit of perfection. I watched the dragons from a distance and with due reverence. Fauna is constantly respawning, just as the flora. It's impossible to turn trees completely into usable logs, it's just that after a certain stroke they cease to give out wood. Of course, you can't make a lot of logs within the city or its nearest suburbs. However, the concept of "wilderness" in Ultima can be considered abolished. The most "wild" places are recognized by the toughness of the local monsters, but often we have to fight with the trolls and ettins in the vicinity of private property of some rich players.

What got me absolutely thrilled was the NPC's hitmen! My first encounter with them ended sadly: the character was already exhausted and hungry, and then as if by chance there was a lag. A trio of red-named PKs rushed after me and, alas, after half a minute the screen went black and white. And then my assassin comments appear on it like, "Okay, look, what kind of armor do we have here? Bone armor?! And what's in here? Magic reagents! Wow!". Only at that moment did I realize that I was in the company of NPC, the inscriptions on the screen were changing each other too quickly, people don't print on the keyboard at that speed.

To this lady blacksmith I promised that I would only buy armor from her

The density of monsters per square pixel is not constant, sometimes you can stomp through the forest for a ten or twenty minutes before something worthy of wasting arrows appears. But the game seems to sense when you are low on ammo: trolls, two-headed ettins, all sorts of orcs, and snakes immediately pick up your trail. Once I saw a fighter get chased through the woods by 5 or 6 orcs supported by a troll. Lucky for him there weren't any mages among them.

Each creature has its own intelligence, its own habits. If big "game" can be easily lured into a dead end formed by good mutual arrangement of trees, hills and other obstacles, then, for example, orc-mages or Dire Wolves will get to you in any case. And if you're not wearing any decent armor, all you can do is maneuver and shoot arrow after arrow at the pursuer (in archers' way).

Another curious thing – monsters don't always coexist peacefully, I witnessed myself a panther fighting with a living magic tree.

The dragon is taken from the stable, where he was during the absence of the owner

Professional growth

There is no point in trying to become a multi-tasker, the more often you apply a skill, the higher the corresponding skill becomes. At the beginning of the game, it is better to spend the night (in real time) in the training room, practicing basic combat skills on dummies. Or, for example, your character can try to talk to spirits on each cycle (which also increases Intellect) and strike the dummy with the weapon of his choice. Other times, put him on the sidewalk and let him play the lute. In addition to the art of music-making this way is pumped up Dexterity. Just do not forget about the food. With available macros system (adjustable for each game session) and unsophisticated software UOLoop! which can be downloaded from the Internet, you can automate the training process and do in parallel other things. And do not be tormented with reproaches of conscience, in this case it's just a time saver.

Almost every NPC is able to train people in several ways. If only there was money. Pay the requested amount in cash (or as much as you have in your pocket at the moment) and your abilities instantly increase by the corresponding sum.

One "but" – it's impossible to get above a certain level in this way. All serious achievements are based on the constant practice of skills in the field. That's why I'm no longer surprised at the sight of a mage who casts a wall of fire, then walks into it himself, stands and grunts, and increases Spell Resistance. Or materializes polar bears one by one with a few memorized gestures.

UO is fashioned in the best fantasy tradition – all the female characters are beautiful

What is good and what is bad

Like it or not, but you can't avoid communicating with other players in Ultima. And you play, by and large, to establish yourself in the society that has developed in the game, to gain a certain influence in it, to change it in some way to your liking. Of course, without knowledge of English, the pleasure of the game shrinks.

Like any social system, Ultima has its own ethics, which most players honor. So, if you become a witness to the player's fight with monsters, you do not need to rush to the rescue, most likely he can handle it without you. Another thing is when a player is trying to get away from some creature, and it does not work. In such a situation, you can first get involved in the course of events, and then ask if anyone will be against it. The fact is that for ridding the world of any monster characters get an increase in Fame and Karma. I, for example, was hurt when a couple of gawkers finished off the ettin I'd mauled. Only the blow that puts an end to the monster's life counts. And when I said what I thought of them, one of them threw back, "This is life".

Maybe that's how the first PK appeared?

Who wants red dragons? Cash payment only, only 8 thousand a piece…

During the last "immersion" in the game I was offered to join a guild. I thought it over and over, and I didn't refuse. Now my character's name consist of "two lines" and is drawn in green. The objectives of the guild are quite noble: to do good, to earn good and not to give our own in offense. With time I will gain experience, accumulate gold, secure a site with a log cabin and create my own primary organization. This goal, from the looks of it, is not hard. And I also want to buy a ship because I am curious to sail around the sea, fighting sea monsters.

And what of this endeavor has turned out, I'll tell you next time. Only at once I warn, the next time will not be born quickly. After all, as one bastard remarked, this is life.

Part II

What was supposed to happen happened. A month flashed by, and the game time I had paid for when I bought the box came to an end. Naturally, I was not happy with this turn of events, so I tried to get things back on track. To begin with I checked a few retail outlets that sold UO, asking the same question everywhere about the availability of 90 game days special coupons. Everywhere I was turned away. True, in one place I ran into an old trail – in March they were sold for 1250 rubles. A simple recalculation disappointed me: this method of payment was twice as "painful" as using a credit card. The final call to Soft Club confirmed that I should not look for coupons, it was not worthwhile. Selling games – yes, selling game time – no. Do not blame them for that, who knows what kind of difficulties in this business.

Looking ahead, I should say that I got a credit card in one of the Moscow banks. VISA Classic. I had to pay two hundred green portraits, but the reanimation of the account went off without a hitch.

Illegal UO

It so happened that the credit card issuance was delayed for a couple of days, the cashier forgot to do some operations. But I had time to poke around the Internet "Ultima" resources. And then I found out some pretty amazing things.

And the world is quite three-dimensional!

It turns out that there is an Ultima Online emulator in nature, or rather, on the Internet. It's called The Ultimate Server, which, according to the FAQ posted on the site, is very clearly denying any connection to Origin Systems or Electronic Arts. And it seems they are pretty good at it. Judge for yourself, currently this emulator is installed on almost a hundred servers around the world.

Searching through Russian-language resources (starting point was http://www.ultima.ru/) also yielded results. For a start, I realized that, despite the newly appeared prefix "Respectable Master Warrior" to my character's name, I still look at the Ultima world with my eyes wide open. It also turned out that a lot of my compatriots use those very emulator servers. Naturally, curiosity got the better of me, and soon I got free logins on Zuluhotel (http://zuluhotel.dynip.com/uo) and the local The Lost Fort (http://www.lostfort.ru/).

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