I have been an avid member of the Ultima Online Emulation gaming community for a long time. Since the original (buggy as hell) released version of sphere. To the best of my knowledge I was one of the first if not the first to create a shard that hosted more than 200 players online at any given time. It is hard to say for sure however because there was no UOG at that time. Some of you may have played on my shard, it was the original SmokeNET. (that was not an advertisment, it was just a look back through distant memories). In those days, when most people heard of being able to play UO for free, they almost crapped themselves.
I was also a beta tester for Irth online. It is a very accurate statemnet to say that it was a flop. It wa a great idea, it just was not executed properly.
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Just let them know you support them. That's what they really need.
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The point to all of this is that nix and westy opened a door for a completly different and original gaming community in my oppinion. Sphere was not the only emulation program out there, but it was the first one that many found to be very user friendly and customizable. My experience running a shard with sphere was a very posotive one, and it lead me to becoming educated and very interested in server administration. Unfortunatly my server caught fire and was destroyed. By some act of god i was able to salvage the information and re-launch the shard. It was never the same. It all became so large that jealousy and greifing were a common thing. My shard then was hacked and this time I lost it all.
I took a long break from free shards and wasted my hard earned money to play EA's version of UO. When finaly got sick of the crap EA was doing to destroy UO as we know it, I came back to check out the free shard scene again. The memories and experiences and fun that I had using sphere were too great to give up and leave behind. I had to have more. It was like that first orgasm that we all try to have again.
I thank nix and westy for helping make that all possible, and helping me acheive years of entertainment, education, and new experiences. Remember guys bad things happen to good people, but they are rewarded greatly in the long run, good things happen to bad people, but they are severely punished at the time when it all matters.