Alright, let’s get real for a second: Ultima Online was, without a doubt, the best MMORPG experience I’ve ever had. Forget the fancy graphics of today’s MMOs—UO was raw, chaotic, and downright brutal in the best possible way. This was 1997, and the game just threw you into a medieval fantasy world where you could either be a hero, a villain, or that one guy begging for gold at Britain Bank. It didn’t hold your hand, didn’t care about your feelings—just pure freedom and total anarchy.
Ultima Online wasn’t just an MMO—it was the MMO. It laid the groundwork for pretty much everything that came after. Want to slay dragons? Sure. Want to fish all day and sell your catch like a medieval Gordon Ramsay? Knock yourself out. Or maybe you were more like me: trolling other players by pretending to be a noob, only to hit them with a Kal Vas Flam and watch them rage-quit. You could do literally anything in this game.
And then there was the PvP. Absolute savagery. When you died, you dropped everything. All your gear? Gone. So, getting ganked by some random PK (Player Killer) outside Britain Bank? Yeah, it hit different. There was no, “Oh, don’t worry, here’s your stuff back.” It was more like, “Sucks to be you, thanks for the loot!” World of Warcraft's little graveyards and safety nets? That’s for toddlers. In UO, you died for real. It wasn’t just a game—it was a life lesson. You couldn’t trust anyone.
Now, let’s jump back to the late '90s, when my entire world was still centered on shooters. I was deep into Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, and Half-Life, shouting across windows to my friends to social engineer the players and get someone kicked by vote, just so that we can get in. We were running on a 56K dial-up connection, where just picking up the phone would drop the internet—and somehow, we still thought we were living the dream. Latency in the 300ms range? Totally fine. If we had 140ms ping, we felt like we were gaming on alien technology.
But then one day, everything changed.
I was hanging out with my childhood friends—the Yıldız brothers—who were playing this weird-looking, top-down game with swords, shields, constant spell-casting, footstep sounds, cinematic MIDI music, and a bunch of other weird stuff. I had no idea what was going on. The older brother was controlling the character, while the younger one spammed the F keys like a man possessed. It looked terrible—janky animations, low FPS—but they were losing their minds over it, laughing, shouting at the screen, spamming those macros like their life depended on it. I didn’t get it… at first.
So, we’re sitting there, and they’re explaining how the game works. “Bro, this game is huge,” the older brother said. “300 people on one server. You can do whatever you want.” My brain short-circuited. 300 people? In one world? That was mind-blowing for 1999. I was ready to jump in right then and there. But of course, there was a catch—new account registrations were closed. Our local online gaming community, Sanane, had shut down new registrations because the servers couldn’t handle the flood of players and the mountain of crafted/generated items. Absolute buzzkill.
But here’s where things get interesting. The Yıldız brothers weren’t giving up. They had a plan: head to Britain Bank and just ask people if they were quitting the game and willing to hand over their account info. Sounded ridiculous, but we had nothing to lose. So, I spent the next week hanging out at their place, watching them spam, “Anyone leaving the game? I need an account!” while they walk around crowded places.
Then, one day, our persistence paid off. Some dead guy—literally, his character was a ghost—was floating around, spamming “OOOOOOooooOOooo,” as dead players do. After getting him resurrected, he finally says, “I’m leaving the game. I don’t want to play this anymore.” No scams, no tricks—this guy just straight up gave us his account details. He wrote his login info down in a notebook(a game item you can take notes and transfer to someone else), handed it over, and just like that, my Ultima Online journey began.
Here’s the kicker: the account had five characters, all with the same name—“Esposito.” So, for the next few years, that’s who I was. No renaming. No character deletion. It was “Esposito” or bust.
Fast forward a few years: I grinded my way up to become a red-named Grandmaster Mage. That’s right, I was one of those PKs who made your life miserable. I was ambushing people while being invisible, and the only thing they saw on the bottom left of their screens was that ultimate lethal spell–"Kal Vas Flam" If you got hit by that, the chances of you walking away was maybe %5. Then I was a multi-skill, very balanced warlock though—I was a trolling one. Paralyze one guy, toss an explosion potion under, poison his friend with an In Nox spell, and smack them around with my +9 mace until I saw those sweet “OoooOOOoooOOOOs” (you know, when they’re dead and their chat turns into spooky ghost gibberish). I even went full Grandmaster Wrestler-Pickpocket at one point, stealing weapons mid-fight after a successful disarm—and not even killing them, just walking away to watch them cry about it. If trolling was an art, I was Picasso in that game.
And the community? Oh man, we were all just messing with each other constantly. There were legit master thieves who’d sneak into town, throw a stack of explosions under a crowd, and wipe out half the population before the guards even blinked. Every night was a new showdown at Buc’s Den—PK town central—where we’d summon dragons and vortexes, not because we had to, but because why not throw the whole zoo at people?
And then there were the “celebrations” in Sami’s Inn—full-on roleplaying nights where we’d throw around spells, summon creatures, and basically turn the place into a medieval party-slash-battlefield. Every night, it felt like a new adventure. Or, you know, a new disaster.
And then, of course, Lord British—Richard Garriott—and his interesting business decisions. Let’s just say the future of UO never quite lived up to what it could’ve been, but in a way, that’s okay. Some things are better left as sepia-toned memories of a time when games weren’t just about leveling up—they were about breaking the rules, living the freedom of choices, being whoever you wanted, and diving deep into roleplay.
No other MMO hit quite like Ultima Online. And to be honest, I’m not sure they ever will.
This is pure nostalgia,
and this video is the most recent, fps unlocked client gameplay video, but it is just like how I remember playing it. Kindly shared by one of the brothers who got me into this game, both software engineers today—one in Sydney, Australia, and the younger (though now in his mid-30s) working at Siemens TR. And yes, still playing the game over 20 years later!
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