So, I’ve been plopped into the world, tutorial over — looking for adventure. The first tip you get is to head to a skill trainer that fits you — in my case the necromancer trainer. A short run later I’m standing in a large, evil looking temple talking to my necromancy master and getting my first quest! Raise my Necromancy skill to 50. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? I think my skill started out at 30 — that’s only 20 skill points to grind!
Before heading off to complete the task I had to stock up on reagents for my spells, these could be bought directly from the necromancy and spirit speak trainers in the temple, each had 20 of each reagent you’d need, roughly 400+ gold per trainer for all the reagents… spell casting is fairly expensive at the start. With reagents in hand, quest in book and some song in mind I headed off to the old city nearby — it is said to be infested with nasty undead! As a necromancer, this should prove no problem, right?
A short run later I’m staring down my first zombie. The first primary necromancer damage spell is Pain Spike and was recommended use for this exercise, so I began the incantation for it. It seems all spells only take a second or two to cast and before I know it I had finished the incantation and was ready to behold some magical beat-down on the zombie! *The spell fizzles.* OK, I’m still a newbie — try that again… *The spell fizzles.* Once more… *The spell fizzles.* Dammit… *The spell fizzles.* The spell DOESN’T fizzle! *The spell fizzles.* My trusty rusty scythe slew the foul zombie instead. It should be noted that you do not skill up for spell fizzles, the only way to get better is to constantly use them, and your reagents, till you manage to get lucky enough to cast successfully enough to raise the skills. After a while, however, you do become proficient enough to cast on a regular basis. One further note — monsters regenerate health very quickly if they do not receive damage, easily resetting their full health bar once or twice during a fight in the lower skill levels. This can be a real challenge to a newbie. I had the pleasure of not dying since the tutorial, but I did have to run away a few times — something I recommend practicing.
Battling an undead.
After a couple hours of skilling up my necromancy spells, I decided to try some of the other skills in my spell book. Starting with: Summon Familiar. I had tried this skill early on, but couldn’t get it to stop fizzling — now I was confident in its success. A couple fizzles later and I got the option of choosing a pet! None of the cool ones were available to me yet so I went with the lowest skill pet available — a sort of demon/orc thing. While not immediately impressive, it was an additional form of damage which was greatly needed. Pet AI in UO isn’t the best, it’s pretty similar to other NPC AI and will only follow basic commands. Attacking the next skeleton I told my new beastie to attack and a few moments later it started, adding a nice bit of DPS to my spell fizzles and scythe slashes.
Having scored a pet I decided to try out another spell — a transformation one. Necromancers get a few transformation spells, once they have the full book of spells, and this one turned my character into a fancy banshee — giving me some buffs and debuffs to stats. Very pleased with this spell, it adds some physical resistance which is needed — I’m only in leather armor — and I think it adds some mana regen, as well. More important than all, it looked pretty cool.
After trying out the different spells I went back to doing what I did best — fizzle spells and slash mobs to death. It took most of the afternoon, but I managed to get to 50 Necromancy and turn in the quest — it got me the full necromancy spell book with some fun new spells to fizzle. So, how is UO now — compared to more modern MMOs?
The graphics: Mostly 2D with some 3D elements. Some will probably laugh at them now, but I think they’re still quite nice. A good 2D will always trump poor 3D to me — and if the performance is awesome, the game play good — why not use it?
The sound: Good. I always have a hard time commenting on sound, unless it really sucks. (Rune of Magic’s sound effects, for example)
Game play: Different from what we’re use to now, but not bad. Movement is done with the right mouse button, interacting with things is done with the left mouse button — the cursor changes depending on what it is, kinda like an adventure game. Combat was pretty fun, challenging because of the spell fizzles, but it seems to be pretty simplistic too. Certainly not bad for the time it released though, now I doubt it really cuts it.
Overall: For a newbie entering UO for the first time, getting their first taste of the game after coming from a more modern MMO (say, WoW) — I’m not sure if most would like it. UO has always been a niche game. It has a dedicated following and solid, stable community. It is a good game, but times have changed in the MMO genre and improvements and additions have been made.
