I agree with you in part, but I respectfully disagree with you in part too.
It's true that we'll never be newbies like we were, so we'll never quite be able to capture that feeling again. Maybe it's because it also coincided with my adolescence, but whatever the case, it was magical. And you're right that the magic is gone - innocence has become experience.
But you know what? I came damn close to recapturing it not long ago, shortly before Divinity 2.0 was released. When I logged in on that shard, and saw the grey system messages, and the [pratice weapon]'s, and went out to raise my strength by herding and eventually started dropping exp-eb-hally combos in some old school PvP, I was 14 again for a little while. The only thing different was that now I knew the game inside and out - I knew how to make money, train up my chars, and get in the game quickly. The magic had returned, however briefly, and I thank you for that. It's unfortunate that it faded away again as I became disenchanted with the new disrupt-happy PvP crowd that basically did nothing but spam magic arrows in between too-fast halberd swings.
Then I came back here. And you know what else? This place is still magical too. Here, I'm not a newbie. I've been playing this shard, admittedly on and off, for around 5 years now. And I've been playing this game, also on and off, for twice that. So have quite a few of the players on these forums. But UOG is not without its newbies. I solo PK, so I usually target areas where I can find lone players or small groups that I can overpower. I find that a lot in certain dungeons, as well as overworld areas. In fact, I'm so damn resistant to change that I still PK, with my tank mage, at the X-roads.
And every now and then in my travels, I find a total newbie. They're not hard to recognize - the guy wearing an orc helm and thigh boots becomes a corpse full of carrots and arrow shafts. These guys aren't just new to Hybrid - they're new to UO. They're new to MMORPG's. Hell, they're new to gaming. And it's true that this is a different generation - they've got broadband and Ventrilo and Razor, not to mention XBox Live and the PlayStation Network with all the features we dreamt about when we grew up with Atari and NES. But the magic of UO is the same. The game is just immersive for them now as it was for us a decade ago.
And then I realized, I get to be a part of that in a whole new way.
I remember the first time I got PK'ed. Some real life friends of mine, who got me into this game in the first place, friended me to their house north of Minoc. We went west through that little patch of woods, past the mountain with the t2a entrance, to the peninsula that's now covered in reapers but then was full of orc captains and ettins. They helped me fight the monsters there for a while, and I got my fencing up a few points... then we headed back to that little house. One of my friends had a pretty good tank mage, and I watched him duel a few times with a neighbor before we called it a night. My friends logged off, but I was hooked. After they were gone, I made my way back toward that peninsula alone. I was about halfway through the woods when I saw the red name. I didn't know much about UO, but I knew red names were bad, so I ran back toward the house. Before I knew what was happening my character exploded, burst into flames, and then was run down by a guy on horseback wielding a halberd. I didn't get upset. I just pushed my chair back from my desk, sat back and let the adrenaline be filtered out of my veins for a minute, and thought... THAT. WAS. AWESOME.
I knew right then what I wanted to be. I started working on my tank mage character the very next day, and I've never looked back. I hit the bone knight wall and GM'ed swords and tactics, stole some of my friends' regs to work magery (and ended up banned from their house), and went red as soon as I could ebolt. I spent the next several months wandering around as a homeless murderer, fighting any blues I saw and being helped out by lots of red sympathizers along the way. With the exception of the period where it was impossible (between UO:R and Pub 14), I've always played tanks. I expect I always will. And I'll probably always PK, too.
But I digress. The point is this - At the most fundamental level, the game hasn't changed... I'm just on the other end of the halberd.
The magic isn't gone, Ryan. We just need to accept that we're seeing it from a different perspective. It might not look as mysterious through experienced eyes, but there are still newbies out there seeing it for the very first time. I thank you on their behalf, and on my own, for giving me a chance to realize that.
. Those where the days.
