- First off: This is not a happy-go-happy story, only read this if you don't have anything else to do :- ) -

I remember I first saw this game in a Norwegian gaming magazine, it told me of a huge game, where you could become everything from a politician to a bus driver, and it was going to be huge! The first real Sci-Fi online game. I volunteered for the beta as fast as I could. A friend of mine was going to start a transporter company. It sounded like a dream-come-true game. (ultima online with graphics :-).

As I first launched the beta, I got amazed by the giant buildings, (the little I could see of them, before I got disconnected). I started up in omni-trade, but could not venture further. So I uninstalled the beta. A couple of months passed, and most of my friends was playing Everquest (They still do). Everyone that had played ao had quitted only a month after release. I wanted to give ao another chance. So I signed up in October 2001. I launched my first character; Frakk, a small martial artist. I was teaming up with a friend of mine, to make the game more social, an enforcer named Gaaarg. It was fun. I got disconnected all the time, but I kept playing.

We hunted minibulls and did missions. But as I soon would find out, he did way more damage than me, and people liked enforcers in their teams, not martial artists. I was stuck many levels below him, doing solo missions.

It got very repetitive, missions all day long, and an occasional level or two. And I did not know what armor to use, or if I should use weapons or anything. So I used whatever I could find. And I scraped the missions for loot, to make money. If I could only make enough to buy some better armor in the store..

I leveled slow. And after a while, I quitted.

Some months later I rejoined with ao. It was easier this time. I quickly leveled to 50, reaching that level was a goal for me, but I had no friends playing omni anymore, so I had to change to clan first. I lost all my tokens. I minor setback. I knew that I could just run missions, like I did before. It worked a while, but after some time, I realized how slow this was going. I halted at level 72.

So I started a new doctor instead, as I knew doctors easily gets teams (wich they still do :-) Sunye. I hooked up with a friend of mine who was role-playing, and soon I was too. I got hooked, and met lots of new friends. But as time went on, more and more left. Soon I was all alone, it was time to level. And level I did. Hunting still works in Lush fields. Crowded, but it works. But after a while, you run out of places to hunt. So I changed to clan with her too.

Some of the most positive things I have expirienced ingame, was some of the Social events. Not FC events, but player events. I was attending parties, contests, lots of other small events. And people still do, with the little tools avalible for doing social things.

But ao was not meant to be a visual IRC. It was a game. (or it is).

--

Back in the days, when no one knew what ncu did, before people knew what tarasque was, and before they knew what levels really meant, we did what they want us to do once more now.

Outdoor fun was fun back then.

You could run down the road, and find a hunting team in the middle of nowhere. Who ever walks about in the woods anymore?

If you /list outside rome, you will only find some bored high level people, camping the dodga quest robot.

Nowadays this is what people do:

- They try to get the best armor/weapons/nanos/whatever ingame. (There is of course one set of weapons that are uber, and so on, so everyone want's that.)
- They try to hit level 200 before they quit.
- Some try to arrange partys and other activities.
- Some try to make their own storyline.

Next patch promises outdoor hunting again, and even more questing.

But would it make any differ? Won't everyone get the new uba items? And won't everyone look the same? Mk2 and albrechts is the big hit nowadays, blended with some dragon armor.

And people use the same guns. Nano Techies, use soldier guns, and doctors use agent guns, and soldiers use the one soldier only gun ingame.

Okay, all this text, and it sums up to this : Hey, it sucks? senseless, and im whining cuz I have spent 50days ingame for nothing. I can't even get my name in the Voice of Freedom, cuz im not uber enough to do uber storyline events.

No matter how much I role-play whenever I see people with green names, nothing happens.

I cannot even put my ass down on a chair in my own apartment. I gotta sit on the damn floor. (And it is a solid concrete floor, im freezing my bum off. That lazy engineer have yet to come by my apartment and fix my heater.)

What happened? Want to do something really funny? Reset all the accounts, and try again.

And when I am first off whining anyways, I might say a couple of words about pvp.

- No skill required
- Level 180+ please
- Please gray **** and group gank me

Where are the player-vs-player arenas? Where noone can mess things up?

And I would not step into a warzone. Id get ganked on sight. There are no teams with doctors healing the soldiers ganking the other teams.

Pvp is broken. No silly titles are gonna fix it.

You don't need skills.

You need 250M to buy that uber equippment.

Or just buy a level 200 ready to go character off ebay if you want. Im sure you can find one.

Im just waiting for the next patch.

Untill then.. Im gonna go see if I can get my name in the paper.

If im gonna have to kill someone, so be it.

*dumdidum*

[after-match]:

Some might say, screw you, you are just whineing because someone was more uba than you in pvp. But that is the issue. It was not because of luck. Not because of skill. It was because of uber equippment. (or some uber class :- )

Some might say, hey ao still works as a game! I say, go ahead, do 50 missions in a row. Bored? No? Do 24 hrs of constant shade hunting. For what? Levels? Equippment? Does it make any differ?

Some might say, "Hey, why don't you just quit?". I might.. I might.. Or perhaps the next patch really does change everything..?