good luck

Lag isn't THAT bad from the UK
I'm on Bulldog broadband here in the UK and it's ok to East coast shards, but it's pretty poor to the west coast ones
Lake Austin, is on the west coast, but, it might be different for you depending on the ISP you use.
I used to play on Baja, which is west coast, using AOL Dialup....did that for years before broadband finally came to my town, hehe

Lake Austin is located in california. Adam can probably most accurately describe lag issues, but Europa seems the best bet for you, connection wise.
UO has a ping utlity ( not very accurate, but helpful) that displays the pings to the various servers. YOu want the lowest possible ping to connect to.

Well. I tried Lake Austin. And, after getting an annoying message about IPG Time outs (something along those lines) I was finally able to log in. My character kept pausing as he moved, and when I went through the introduction (The guy teleports you to different locations in Britannia) various other players were exhibiting the same problem. This leads me to believe it is lag related on my part. My university internet isn't very good and it is also prone to packet loss.

I will try Europa now, but the connection sorting feature didnt seem to want to report the ping/packet loss of those shards. Maybe thats a good thing.

Ill give it a shot.

Regards.
And thank god uni is nearlly over, and I can go back home to proper internet. Im not staying in this accommodation next year, I tell you!

Ok so I started on Europa!

I've been playing a Warrior template class, because I did not want to risk messing about designing my own class in the Advanced setup section.

Anyway it has been fun so far, whacking away at monsters and what not. However, my Warrior does tend to miss a lot. Literally 60% of the time anyway. Hopefully this gets better?

Also can I ask if the bank is shared? Can I swap things from one character to another?

Regards!

Yes you will miss alot at first, even on easier monsters, but hang in there it does get better with skill gain, or even items you find.

warrior class is a great one to start off with also, at least till you get the feel of the game

sadly you cant share items thru bank boxes between chars. Until you get a house (which you do share a house with all chars on account)you will need someone to transfer items for you or alot of people will drop a bag in a spot in an inn where they have their other char logged out at, then rush to log in on the other char to grab the bag, i wouldn't suggest this with any great items but i am sure most of the items you have accuired so far would be ok to try.......

welcome to europa Riiyachan If you need a hand finding a small housing spot I can help you out. just send me a pm with your icq and well meet up.

Europa's a good choice
My top three shards of choice would be LA (for UO:F), Europa for the amazing RP community we have on the boards and Legends

If you decide to try other shards, try Legends
It's not as busy as most and there's probably quite a few small to medium areas of land for housing, maybe even large areas.

Welcome Riiyachan!

If you need any help starting out on europa you can give me a PM and we can hook up in game some time.

Thanks for all the offers and advise!

I've just got to get a few assignments out of the way before University is over, then I can go back home and play a lot more.

At the moment the internet here isn't very good, and I tend to lag about because of packet loss. Well, I mean I basically pause all the time and it would get annoying!

Next years accommodation won't have crap internet, so from March 29th I should be fine and dandy.

Regards.
Riiyachan - Warrior Europa

Welcome to UO Forums Katsumi . Hope to hear more from you!

Vepl

Thanks Vepl