Ultima Online Chronicles, or My Adventures on Pacific in 2000 Year. Игорь Бойко

      The liches are laid out to the sides of the world. The backpack is full; a little more and I won't be able to move. Time to recall to the nearest town

      I consulted with the guildmates and other chatty gamers and decided to implement the following plan. First, it is time to give up those skills that I was unable to live without at the beginning of the game. There is no longer a need for Camping, Cooking and Item Identification. In the first case, you can always get to the guild or inn, in the second – near the bank sometimes appear GM fishermen. From them you can buy thousands of fish steaks for a small sum (and sometimes get on SALE), in the third – in the game there are many multi-charged (up to two hundred charges!) wands and staves of Identification (in particular, these items constantly carry liches).

      Second, it was strongly suggested that I should teach my character a second martial art. There's no arguing – arrows are good until they run out (especially on the bottom floor of the dungeon). And during close combat is not unreasonable to equip the shield. In general, I opted for Fencing, with my 100 Dex (by the way, the characters with such a score in the game are called Dexterity Monkey) to wield a dagger or a short spear should be a pure pleasure. Especially since the dagger stays with the hero even after the meanest murder. Further pumping should be done for Spell Resistance and Anatomy.

      Ultima WANTED list. You can get over 400 thousand for the head of the killer Odysseus. He's put a lot of headhunters to death…

      One day not far from Delucia, I almost automatically "saved" a pretty unarmed girl in full plate armor from a scimitar-armed skeleton knight. The lady was polite, almost silent – it turns out I interfered with her pumping of Wrestling. I was saved from being shot by a barrage of epithets by the fact that another knight was on my tail. When she started to wrestle with him, I stuck close to him and started… That's right, fix her up. We talked at the same time. It turned out that in her second year of play she had decided to "turn" her fighter into a tank-mage, i.e. a heavily armed mage. One of the reasons for this decision was a certain advantage of powerful mages over all other classes, which arose after another patch-up of the game. After hearing about my "crossroads" she told me about one possible option: to become a so-called "townie" – an urban warrior who joined one of the global clans – Chaos or Order. In this case I automatically join the global war, which is conducted throughout the game, including the cities. And the killing and other acts of aggression in this war is not considered criminal. There is just the eternal struggle between good and evil.

Tribal UO – return to the subject

      I got an Email from Gazgolder – the guildmaster of the Russian guild Ice Friends on the Zuluhotel shard, who is also the Game Master there. He told me that the gameplay shortcomings mentioned in the article were largely corrected, and others are not shortcomings, but special features. For example, the guards respond to cries for help only if you can see them on the screen. According to gamemasters, it is more realistic. And ore from the nearest to the main city hill "pumped out" by the grandmaster in ten minutes. And lag will soon become less – with the transition to the new server. And impressive pile of scripts was written, and there appeared two dozen of new colors, and Capture the Flag was made, etc., etc. Everything is great, right?

      It is only unclear what the local players will do, if Origin one day will shut down all these illegal servers.

War in pictures: Black Watch vs. HOK

      Well, I almost forgot about my promise to tell you about our quarrel with the HOK guild. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out exactly what caused all the commotion. But as it turned out, practically the entire HOK is made up of former Black Guards. At one time their guildmaster Vio was kicked out of BW for actions incompatible with the ideals of the guild. He held a grudge and became a nuisance. By hook or by crook.

      War has been declared on us. Guildmaster Koric summoned the fighters and mages you see in this screenshot on the meeting The horses, as usual, were left in the anteroom. At the meeting it was decided not to "accept" the war, since the main purpose of HOK is to take revenge on the guild leaders for past offenses, and to get some booty at the same time. Most of the Black Watch are untrained craftsmen who do not stand a chance in PvP (Player vs. Player) showdowns. As a reminder, guild war kills are not considered player kills by the game.

      Grandmaster-tamer from HOK tries to provoke our Good Doctor mage to attack, "Koric himself admitted that we can slaughter BW". But the doctor likes talking:).

      Here comes the cavalry. The reason for the Tamer's overconfident behavior was only ten paces behind him.

      A full-scale war has not been started. HOK begins to engage in so-called "hit-and-run" attacks. The first to die was Good Doctor, whose horse was also not spared. They started to beat him on his approach to the tower, and when he tried to take cover inside, a trap set on the door went off.

      They want a war, they'll get one. Only by our terms. The Good Doctor stripped down to his underpants and went out to the enemy to be killed again. He kept setting himself up until the HOK remembered the player-killer counter. It was not in their plans to become red PKs or Murderers.

      One of the killers would now have to go 40 hours without hurting anyone to get back to his original state – Doc did his best.

      The killing stopped. My shootout with Ignoble Lifen was a draw. We were both great at taking health points off each other, but we never got to the point of killing each other. The episode ended with a little chitchat. In response to her "I'm so sexy it hurts," I had to point out that Ignoble title somehow doesn't fit that statement well.

      A Willie flew into the guild tower at full throttle. The HOKs liked his blue GM plate armor, so they chased him for about five minutes, and he was lucky enough to come to us. As it turned out, Willie was a seven-time GM, including a blacksmith. The next day Koriс accepted Willie into the guild and made him a Friend of the House, so he could put up his vendor, selling cool armor and weapons at bargain prices.

      Ambush! Somehow the main HOK fighters had been unbanished and given access to the guild. My Sotnik was not prepared for this turn of events. I took the fight in front of the tower, and when it was time to escape, there was nowhere to go. My pursuers came after me in the guild.

      It turns out that there's an undocumented ability to use the Meteor Storm spell to hit characters that are hidden behind walls.

      After reviving Sotnik, I returned to the tower and quickly banned all the attacking HOKs.

      There came a moment when Vio realized that such a war was pointless. To begin with, he told us about the provocateur Willie. It was this "goon" who opened HOK's access to the guild. Moreover, he had hacked our Guild Stone, and as a result the titles of our fighters were changed to something like Chicken Rapist.