Internet

                 An article by Bill Commons

About 12 years ago I joined Micronet and I remember that I used to
spend hours on the phone looking at all the different areas and
discussions. When BT closed that down I went on to Silicon Village
along with many other ex-Micronet users. It was sad to see it
become smaller and smaller over the years, and just before I left
recently, I could log on and read a week's updates on all areas in
about three quarters of an hour. I had heard a lot about the Net
but did not fancy paying long distance phone calls to London to
look at it. I was quite pleased when a local access was available
and I enrolled straight away. That was last November and I spent
two months trawling through the pages that were recommended by the
various magazines and was thoroughly bored by it.

A couple of weeks ago Sue sent me a postcard to say that George
Smith would help me find my way around and following an email to
him he showed me how to enter search words to find groups of
people with interests similar to mine. The word Ultima led me to a
fantastic news group called Ultima dragons on
Alt.games.Ultima.Dragons. This area contains all sorts of things
mostly to do with the Ultima series.  There are discussions on
cheat modes, and help with all the games, pointers to other areas
that contain walkthroughs and pictures. Dozens of people send in
methods to run U7 and Serpent Isle with Windows 95, none of these
work with my system though.

Then there are long winded arguments about the possibility that
the Guardian and the Avatar are two sides of the same person, and
the advantages of following the virtues, the question of stealing
and killing and many more. I was pleased to see that the places
that I had got stuck in were known bugs, but the length that some
of the players had delved into the games was amazing. One message
said 'Ok, for all those fans of perversion and chaos, I've
completely wiped out the Serpent Isle, and got them all together
for a group photo!  Look at this on
HTTP://WWW.CEI.NET/~BOB/INDEX.HTML.' On this page is a pic that
covers three screens full of bodies of the characters in Serpent
Isle and a photo of the Avatar looking on and saying 'Well they
were -er- allergic to arrows and things.' Another group talk about
how to kill Lord British and Cellia the banker in U7.

There is a secret room in Trinsic, but how did anyone find it?
When I started the game I was told to look for clues as to who
committed the murder and I would get a password to leave town, not
these people though, they went down to the SW corner and piled up
crates and barrels to allow them to clamber on the roof and walk
behind the chimney to get into it.  The mind boggles, did they
know the programmers or did they carry crates around and search
every roof in this and all the other towns, the same went for some
stumps of trees. More thoughts go on the hidden meanings in
Ultima 2, I thought that this was a game of moving pin men around
to fight other pin men but no, it has a deep following of fans.
There is another thread talking about Ultima 9 and how the
Avatar will finally be killed, they obviously haven't watched me
play. My Avatar was killed every second step in some games,
especially U8.

Another good area is Comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg. Here they talk
about lots of other games like DM2 and Stonekeep and others. In
the same news group is a market place for second hand games but
mostly in America this made me very envious but it costs too much
to buy them from there. I tried to buy the Ultima 1 to 6 CD from
Canada but the postage and exchange rate doubled its price.  So
far I have rationed myself to reading these pages only at the
weekend but it still takes me five hours and I skip lots of
letters if I don't recognize the adventure.  Roll on the rumour of
free local calls on BT.









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