Sitting there on my horse at the Brit bank, enjoying the evening as a few friendly faces come & go, a young player approaches me. "Are you a warrior?" he asks me, to which I reply "Why yes, I use swords and magery both." The next question is one which always makes me grin... "Will you hunt with me?"

Sometimes it's difficult for me to help the younger players..or rather, know how to help them. I had the benefit of being shown the game in-person, alongside someone (Balron) in their house. We sat there, each on identical systems of his, and played UO. This is how I learned the basics. While that was a great boost for me getting started, I've never been in the position of many new players who buy the game, install it and then suddenly find themselves in a new game where they know nothing, and have no one there sitting beside them to look over their shoulder and say "Click that, target this." Still, I try to help the younger players as much as I am able. And I do mean help: Showing them the ropes, the tricks of the trade, explaining the world around them and even its history as much as I think they care to hear. What I do not do, is to hand them a 500k gold check, a marty suit, and a runebook for farming gold. That is not UO to me, and there is an entire experience lost when you take someone new and instantly make them "power-up". New players should experience fighting mongbats and headless, and then lizardmen, and then harpies. They should see what it's like to gain better and better equipment. They should think that first 10k gold they ever make is a lot, and for the rest of their time in UO they will remember that first 10k that they made...not a 500k check of instant gratification...

"Will you hunt with me?" That is always one of the easiest things to do for a young character though. But here also, I have a rule: A newbie player can go with a vet player to lizardmen, ratmen, ogres and harpies easily. It's little if any effort to either, BUT it's something that the young player can do on their own, as well. They can go hunt earth elementals on their own time, learn to heal, and feel rewarded at the end of the hunt. With a vet along, it turns into a grind. They won't die, you certainly won't die...yeah it's fun in that they get some quick, easy gold and have interaction with a more experienced player, but there's always the low risk aspect attached to it. They don't learn too much.

So, when a young player asks "Will you hunt with me?", I don't take them to ratmen. I don't take them to earth elementals. I take them to ice fiends.

After a brief explanation of where we were going, to stay close to me, and what orange petals were and how to use them, in we went to the forgotten library in the icy depths of Ice. He wore non-GM dragon scale armor, and had no healing, and yet even with the area cold damage by the ice fiends causing them to turn on him half the time, we had no deaths.

He learned not to run when being healed, no matter how low his health got. He learned to stay close to the person he was hunting with. He gained a huge amount of fame (something which always brings a smile to young players) and took 9k back to his bank box when I gated us out.

The game is not dead & dying, but we must be careful how we treat those who are entering Britannia for the first time. We can either outfit them with "leet pimp gear" and hand them a million gold as they walk onto the streets of Haven for the first time...or we can be generous. Generous with our time, and generous with our consideration to their experience. People do not stay with a game where everything is instantly handed to them. People do stay with a game where they can experience adventure, growth and accomplishment.

Today was a good day, and I hope to take this player on another hunt sometime, as well as any others who may ask, "Will you hunt with me?"

not a lot i can add to that............ i won't even try, you covered the spirit of UO quite well.

nicely done..

Normally when I am helping new players I am on my smith/tailor character and normally give them some GM made armor, and if they are a crafter character I give them some hints and tips.
The other day I got on my smith and met a new carpenter in Haven. So I logged off my smith and logged on my Lumberjack(he needed some skill gain anyways), and chopped boards for him. He asked me at what levels could he get the different woods, I told him 65 for oak and 80 for Ash, the others were much higher and would take some time.

I believe in the same type of help you gave Terrance.
I started almost 7 years ago, I started in Felucca on Drac. The best armor I had was Bone, and I lost that to a reaper/looter.

I had nobody to help me learn UO, so I quit. A few months later I started up again. I did have something the second time around I didn't have the first or if I started brand new now I wouldn't have.
Councilors.
I can not remember his name, but if I could I would give him a lot of praise.
I Paged a Councy and asked him where magic weapons came from.
And unlike now where if I hit the Help button I would be routed to "Your issue does not require a GM please read this very inpersonal site", this councy sat down with me(I had made him a stool), he actually sat on a log(this is how I fould out you could sit on logs). He explained ALL about the Might/Power/Surpassingly Accurate properties. It honestly didn't make much sense when I listened to it, but he explained they could only be gotten from Treasure Maps or Monsters.
Then someone(I am guessing a friend of the Councy) ran past us and dropped a Ruin Broadsword, which I promptly picked up.

He said goodbye as did I(making sure to ask me if I had anymore questions). Then he left, I really do wish I had written down his name.

But I look at UO now, and I see "young" players sitting at the bank begging for 100s of ks, which obviously points out to me that they are not actually new, just returns.
I have tried to help all young players in Haven, but it turns out 99% of the ones I talk to are returning vets, who only need help with the newer systems nothing basic.

But even I am guilty of the "lets go hunt ratmen" mentality.
I think next time I will take them to go fight Cyclops and Titans, maybe even elder gazers.

What a great post,such an inspiring attitude to have to the game.I really enjoyed reading that. Thankyou.

Would you mind if I posted that on F4g ( all credit to yourself of course ) There is a thread there called 'Is UO dying' Id like to show folks there what you wrote

Certainly, please feel free!

I like Terrance learned by having someone in the same room with me teaching me how to play, which made it much simpler, trying to teach someone while in game is a little complicated at best... I have had a few people ask for help which I would gladly do, but for the most part I have had way to many "young" people come up to me asking for this or that instead of trying to earn it the same way the majority of us did by learning how to play the game and going out and getting what you want by hard work... wow like RL.. go figure... A little goes a long way and the "young" people need to learn to love the game and its components.. not the items....

Very inspiring Terrance

Great post Terrance. I've only been playing uo a short time, and I learned the basics playing beside my boyfriend. It was great because it was easy to communicate with each other what I need to do. But I was so scared when I had to start playing on my own.

One of his good friends took me under his wings and taught me about group hunting... how to crossheal, how not to run from your healer, how not to be too scared of the monsters, etc. He took me to fight balrons and succis. And to this day I still remember all the lessons he taught me.

When I started playing UO, it was right before AOS came out, and me and my best friend started playing at the same time, so we kinda learned together, but didnt explore out much AT ALL.. Our hunts entailed of orc camps and Despise dungeon. It got sooooo boring that we quit after about 6 or 7months, but mostly due to us deploying. We had nothing to lose, our characters sucked and had nothing worth a dime on em. We discovered Stratics while over there and realized there was 1000000000 times more to the game than what we knew of, and read up on all of it while gone. When I got home I re activated the account and have been playing for 28 months straight now. Funny thing was the first day we came back, we didnt think about the insurance on our stuff and died in that pyramid in Umbra, and couldnt figure out how to get out, and lost everything we came back with. It really sucked.. hehe..

2 years ago we started up a guild that was mostly dedicated towards helping newer players that were in our shoes when we began. We all learned together and became a pretty big alliance of about 80 or so people. There are alot of people that would have quit had we not done what we did in our guild. We had no gold or items to give out and all did it from scratch. I heard of an event that Siohban(sp?) ran on Legends, Helping Hands in Haven, and we did one on Baja, with the help of a rather large guild, and helped alot of people, it was alot of fun, The first arty I ever got was a heart of the lion, on accident while running into a paragon LL. The friends we made during the time of that guild was the best time I had in UO. It was just a bunch of newbs hunting in npc and enhanced loot armor with similar swords dying ALOT!!

I agree with the topic of this post.

I am one of those people who joined without anyone showing me the game (actually, all I had were a few vague and distorted descriptions from my brother who had played it for a few minutes himself), and in many cases had a hard time getting through the initial stages of the game (some of this, I'll admit, I brought upon myself) and when I hear about a newbie getting a gold-encrusted start in UO, it's kind of frustrating to me since all that I had built was on my virtual blood and sweat, but on a less selfish, cold-hearted side, it's also sad because I had a heckuva lot of fun in the process.