Foremost among my hobbies are MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games). I've played a few of them as you can see on the left hand side of the page. I have fun playing all of them but the one I've been spending mos of my time on is WWII Online. I grew up playing mostly war games with my big brother and I guess that genre has stuck with me as my favorite. The picture on the left is from the game and was one of my first Panzer kills using a French AT gun that I had set up hidden inside a church. The game was created by Cornered Rat Software and I'll freely admit that I'm one of their biggest fanbois. I've played this game since a week before it was released to the public about two years ago and I still love to play just as much. They've gone through a lot of changes since then including this latest patch which added the "Speedtree" technology. What does this mean? It means that gaming landscape just got a facelift and it looks 100% better than it did before. BTW...the shot to the left is BEFORE the new patch and it still looks pretty good. Click on the image for a larger view. I could go on and on about this game but instead I'll just point you to this link if you want to know more. Trust me...it's worth the trip.

In the Beginning .....there was UO.

And it was good. Back when I was playing around online about 10 years ago or so I was hanging with some friends on an IRC channel. They kept telling me about this awesome game they both played together online and how great it was since they were dating and lived in different cities. Without being too dramatic about it....this game changed my life. It opened up a whole new world of fun and I jumped right in with both feet. The first few months I was playing I must have spent on average about 7 to 8 hours a day playing...and that was while I was working 40 hours a week as well. Time was a blur for a while...it was go to work, come home and play and if I could shove some meals in and get a few hours of sleep then that was a bonus. Eventually the newness wore off and I got back to some semblance of a normal life but for a while there I was totally catass.

By today's standards Ultima Online is like the Space Invaders of the arcade games yet it still supports a very active playerbase and by the looks of it will continue to do so for many years to follow. The graphics are old and even the 3D client didn't do much to help. But the great thing about UO was that the gameplay was so immersing that it allowed you to see beyond the cheesy graphics and still have fun. Like In the early months of the game it was a wild open frontier and we were all just cowboys and settlers looking to stake out a place to call our own. It was open PvP and you never knew what awaited you when you left the city gates or just stepped outside your door. There were Dread Lords and gangs of PK's roaming the land as well as gank squads who preyed on the weak and unarmed. Sound bad? Well actually it wasn't. It was damned exciting is what it was. It added an element of danger and trepidation that I have never experienced in any other game since. Sure I was killed unmercifully many times and I lost countess items and gold to PK's but to this day I still remember the times when I got away and even the time I decided to fight back and ended killing my would be assassin. Nothing can describe that feeling you get after something like that with your heart pumping a mile a minute and you're pumped with adrenaline and you've completely forgotten that you're just playing a game. Actually there is one game that still gets me going like that...WWII Online...but it's a different experience that's equally as good.

I ended up using all 5 of my character slots trying out different templates. I had a 7 x GM crafter which was nothing to sneeze about. My main tank was kind of gimped as when I started out I really didn't know what I wanted him to be. I won't go on about game play as I'm sure there are better pages than mine that can explain the Ultima Online experience. What was cool about the game was the community that grew up around it. There were so many fan sites, rant sites and other related gaming sites that you sometimes spent more time reading rants and game forums than you did playing the actual game.

Moving on....

I quit UO eventually because I felt I had had enough and it was time to move on to something new. I had just met a new group of friends who were all playing Asheron's Call but after trying out the beta for a little bit I just couldn't get into it. We had all seen advertisements on the web for a new game coming out called The Dark Age of Camelot and it looked pretty good so when the game was released most of us subscribed and played as a group. DAoC is a great game. The graphics are amazing and they keep getting better with every expansion. It's basically a level treadmill like most of the other games but it's a lot better looking and it's really fun when you are in a good guild. There is PvP but it is only allowed in special zones so it's not really open PvP which I tend to prefer. I got really into it for the first year it was out but by the time my character had reached level 40 it just didn't seem that much fun to me anymore. I still have an active account because I'm trying to get my main character to 50th level which is at high as you can go. I still like to play now and then but mostly because it's still where most of my old friends are still playing and it's fun to hang out with them.