The good old days of yore: Ultima Online

UO was the first MMORPG I got into and for eight years it provided the platform for many fantastic adventures and meeting both frustrating and friendly players alike from all across the globe.

Released in 1997 its eagle-eye perspective on the world and graphics are considered subpar against its more modern competitors these days, but in terms of content it had everything. Want to build a house? Ride a horse? Sail a boat and explore the seas? Tame a dragon? Be a humble farmer content at planting crop and shearing sheep? A brigand hiding on the outskirts of civilization? A carpenter who enjoys building tables while in the deepest pits of the earth surrounded by large and dangerous monsters? Sure! You can do all of that and much more!

The interface is also quite easy to use, and combat is not much more difficult. Text appears above the character who spoke it which makes it easy to stay in the action and not have to look down at a chat log that just holds all the conversations happening around you (though that function is available too). As an example, my grandfather who is over 90 years of age still plays it and enjoys his hunting trips into Destard to keep the dragon population in check. Origin was also pretty good at removing various bugs throughout the years, like the silly one below:

Furthermore, the rise of thousands of unofficial "free" shards made the game accessible to even the most peniless of school kids (like me at that time). Some of them added their own twists to the world while others tried to emulate the already numerous official servers. Being a bit of a internet cheapskate scallywag urchin I stayed on the free shards with my brothers and our guild "Dragonarm".

We ventured through lands teeming with people, some mostly filled with scum bags, others filled mostly with noble folk. Other worlds seemed to have been overrun by monsters with rarely another player to be seen. Some worlds used the many large standard maps that come with the game, others restrict it to just one or two sections, while others still do away with it all together and have their own unique landscapes. I found that generally the worlds that enforce RP (roleplaying) have less player scumbags than those that don't, and pretty much across the board death in game is a hassle as you could potentially lose all your stuff (either to looters, monsters, or decay) and ressurection is only available in select places if you don't have team mates with the appropriate skills nearby to aid you.

On one shard with strict RP, death also had the chance of being final. The more you died the more that chance increased where you would never again be among the living and would need to start a new character. That one was a bit too hard core even for my guild! :P

My grandpa, perhaps the oldest UO player at over 90 years of age!

With the client available online for those who look hard enough, there is something in it for everyone and many new friends and maybe some new foes to be met online as well. If you think this is something you'd like to try, here are the free shards that I've visited that are still standing and are good places to start:

Shadowcove - custom map, friendly folk, no PvP, no custom housing but you can buy houses in towns.

Age of Avatars - standard maps (large), lots of custom baddies, rare to run into people though so you need to know what you're doing.

DarkAge 2 - strict RP, custom map, potential for Final Death. Hardcore roleplayers only! :P