Spleens UO History

by Spleen, who the hell else?

I thought about making a list of people I'd like to thank over the years before I talk about my history, which is Wheezls too since we started together, but we all know how gay those "thank you" lists are. Therefore, I will limit it to two people, and I'll keep it funny.

1) Mammy Nun : Except for wheez, I owned with you the most. I was already a Master of PVP when I got you into this game, and I held no schooling back. Remember when you'd be sitting around here bitching because at night I would play "that stupid online game"? One night after Mammy made a big speech about how stupid this game is, I forced him to sit down and make a character. I might be wrong, but I THINK this is what solidified his name as Mammy Nun, because I remember that first night, it was a 50/50 chance he might have been called ThingFish! (Also from the same Zappa album Mammy Nun comes from) Well, here is what happened. We made him a char on LS (I had one acct and all 5 Cats chars at that point) and he didnt get up from my computer chair for 72 fucking hours. Ask him, and he will remember. He would sometimes get up to take a piss, and usually had me make food and bring it up. I had to BEG AND BEG just to sit down and check my ICQs and email. And, since the computer was right next to my bed, I had to try and sleep 3 nights in a row with him shouting shit about orcs chasing him and waking me up asking stupid questions like where the tinker is in Minoc. Want to know what finally got his ass out of my chair? We pooled our money (he had a dime) together, had enough, and drove to Best Buy and got him a copy. He wanted to become a tinker/blacksmith, and work his honest trade in the Minoc Mines (I am NOT kidding). He had 70 something tinkering, and I had a GM tinker (Torgo) and I let him come watch me kill people with tinker traps. The first person dies, and he said "JESUS MAN, THATS HORRIBLE! IT'S NOT EVEN FAIR!!" The second person dies, "Hey he had alot of stuff!", the third "haha ok, that was kinda funny". I pointed out that his char already has 70something tinkering, and he could very easily be doing this, but he refused! About a week later, he had added swordsmanship to the skills he wanted (about 30 of them) and had a whopping 35.0 or so. I grew tired of being on the opposite team as him. I remember one time I ran in the mining cave and he warned some guy that was apparently a friend of his, and everyone filed out. It was later that day that I sat him down and changed his life forever. I made the options clear. He can come to the dark side. I can have his swordsmanship GMed TONIGHT! (that blew his fucking mind) and can start teaching him the tricks of the trade, stealing, chestkilling, and combat. Or, he can continue down his road as a good guy, but from then on our paths are seperate. "When I see you in the mines, I will kill you and your friends", I told him. He really didn't know which path to take! I remember he asked for a day to think about it! I said OK. He was living with me at that point I think, and it would have been stupid for him to be playing from the other room, and have us be enemies. "Come to the dark side" I would say at various parts of the day. The next day, he had his answer! He wanted to come to the dark side, BUT he wanted to keep making a living as an honest tinker and smith! I laughed my ass off, and told him to come watch. He grabs a chair and sits down next to me. I went to the Minoc respawn, and killed the first person I saw. He had magic weaps, tons of gold and regs and shit. Again, it blew young Mammys fucking mind! "Mammy", I said, "Here I am this rich and powerful evil man, with tons of money and reagents and weapons. Do you ever see me mining or making a living doing honest work?". "uhhhh no, now that you mention it" he says. OK .."On the flip side, do any of your mining buddies have 8 houses like me, tons of gold in the bank, weapons, armor, and on top of everything, do they have FUN like me?" He thought about it. "Hey, you're right!" No shit! He has since learned that I'm ALWAYS right, but that is another story. He agreed to come to the dark side, and even still he admits it was one of the best decisions he has ever made.

That same day I sat him down at HIS puter on HIS character, and showed him how to trapkill people. Soon, he was doing it like fucking mad, macroing his tinkering up, and powergaming in various ways. I showed him how to use the bears for skillgain, and he moved in to one of my guest houses. This new "Evil Mammy Nun" was pretty much the laughingstock of the Minoc mines. I remember me and some GK guys would be sitting around, dropping guys as they walked by, and a naked Mammy with a halberd would come running by our screen, trying to evade an angry miner with a pickaxe. "Boy, am I glad I found you guys!" as he looted the guys pickaxe, then bolts off for more action. This was a few months after archery had become super powerful, and he was ALWAYS getting killed by archers. He was a swordsman through and through (Mammy still has never had a char with fencing or mace!) and refused to get archery. One man changed all that. Sir Whitey. At the time, we all hated him because of his gay potion antics. He used to kill Wheezls and Mammy Nuns all over the mines, and they would always call me in to come kill him. After the first time I owned him, he knew Mammy and Wheez were my boys, and he would purposefully wack them and dissapear before I could even show up! While I did kill him a couple times, he usually escaped. He was the first guy really to break the tankmage mold, looking back. Here we are when Archery had just become powerful (feb 98?) and he had no magery! He instead used Alchemy, and made potions as he fought. Looking back, we all admit he had huge balls, and was a great fighter. This was before healskill worked, too, so the ONLY way he could heal was by drinking potions he carried or made. Mammy challenged him to a duel, and of course he accepted and killed Mammy without getting hurt. Mammy then demanded that Whitey not use archery. Whitey calmly accepted, then killed Mammy with archery as soon as he attacked, again without getting scratched. Mammy comes into my room furious as hell, demanding I do something. "Learn archery, dumbass", I told him. I had been trying to get him to get archery for awhile now, and he would always say archery was gay, and would refuse. Back then with a +25 arch bow it was free! You really could go from 0 to 100 in an hour. He finally agreed, and a couple hours later he fought Whitey to a standstill with archery! I am pretty sure he killed Whitey, too, because he ran out of potions, or maybe he escaped. Either way, Mammy was ALL ABOUT archery from then on. He is the biggest archery nut, and ALL of his chars since then have had it, even after it was chumped, even after Med and Eval came, naming the pure 7x mage as the most powerful char. Wheez and I adopted pretty fast, and both made chars without archery when that patch came. Not Mammy, he always has been and always will be an archer. Mammy didn't come to Hokuto until the mid to late hokuto age, after Wheez and I were already gods. He played Catskills for a long time after we had left, and here he really did get good at PvP. He represented the j00 stone on Catskills for close to a year after we had left, and was a welcome member on the Hokuto j00 stone when he finally did get some sense and come play Hokuto. Mammy, like Wheez and maybe 2 or 3 others, is in my "inner circle" of really close gaming and real life friends.

2) Elysium : I met him through really wierd channels, friend of a friend of a friend sorta deal. At first he seemed wierd, because he would ONLY play female characters. We soon got to talking, mostly in IRC, and became close friends. I don't think I even met him until I had already started playing Hokuto, but he had a very similar career, going from Beta to Atlantic to Chesapeake to Great lakes, or something like that. Had we ever actually played the same server, there's no doubt we would have met earlier. Oddly enough, one night we were reminiscing about the last day of beta, where EVERYONE died, we both told stories of how we lived through beta! (that was pretty rare, Daemons covered the entire landmass, every inch of every forest and city) I had been in Vesper and killed 3 people and stolen their boat, then sailed out into the ocean, where I could easily avoid the Daemons flying after me. Ely had also been in Vesper, and had wisely used other people as lures, and would move from building to building when it was safe. He ended up in the top story of this 2story building right outside the city limits. Out on my boat, I figured I was kinda missing the fun of the end of beta, and sailed back to Vesper, abandoning my boat. On the beach I dodged tons of Daemons, and fuckers were dropping like flies all around me, I also ran around town a bit, but it was a hellhole and easy to get trapped and killed. I retraced my steps outside of town, and found solace in this lone 2story building, where I camped out on the ground floor. I wasn't there for very long, because that is right when the servers went down. I vaguely remember another guy being in that house too. Guess who it was? Elysium!!! When the beta servers went down, we were within a couple squares of eachother, each of us wondering if he should go try and kill the other guy! He and his good pal Kurtz (his Wheez, if you will) came to Hokuto at my insistance, and absolutely loved it. Ely made two chars, a very powerful dexfag, and later a very powerful mage. Ely was like me, had PvPed for years, got sick of it, and was retiring on Hokuto to just have fun. Killing people, sure, but having fun with it, no duels, no fags, no unneeded stresses like guild reputation. We fought together sometimes, before he had his mage char. Since our chars were completely different, (I was a 7xGM pure mage, he was Sword/Tac/Arch/Anat/Heal with good mage and resist) we had some awesome fights. We found we could both support eachother very well with our chars being opposites, and this made for some cool fights. He would get a ton of guys on him, and would just deal dexfag death while I kept him healed, RA'd, and protected, with virtually unlimited mana because of my 100 medit and INT. On the other hand, I would get in gangbangs, and he could support me VERY easily with his 100 healing an anatomy! I would just stand still getting 70 point heals every second, meditating and dealing death on a whim. I recall shortly after he finished his mage guy (he was lazy with the char creation, he had like all 85-95s haha) we got into a fight with a couple of REALLY good PvP japs. This story is documented, too, it was "new.kye and friends", I think. It was just he and I against 5 or 6 REALLY good japanese players; some mages, some dexfags. Normally, I would just not fight that fight unless I had a Wheez, but Ely didn't even consider not fighting. We were a few screens away, and I was wondering if there was any way we could get them with daemons or just get their horses or something, and Ely puts up an An Mani, saying "I'll get reflect, you dump them" and just started running! I went with him, and as it turns out we absolutely decimated them. Each and every one of them died several times, and we barely got scratched. It was then that I realized he really is a BAD motherfucker, just like me, but all we really did was run around handing Peach Pies to japanese girls in cute outfits. That sums up alot of what we did the last few months on Hokuto. We would hang out with the URUTOWN people, who are without question the nicest group of people on the planet, and other assorted japanese people. We really had a blast, and my last couple of updates are with Ely, like our Monet adventures. Every now and then, we would get in a fight with some dumbasses (or even really good players), and absolutely rock their world. It was like these japs would get upset in a bar, and pick a fight with what turned out to be two Navy SEALs, and would just get cut to ribbons, thinking "damn, that was stupid" right afterwards.

Mein Fucking Kampf

I have no regrets from my long UO career, and that is because of one guy, Wheezl. We found the ad that UO was being developed in some gaming magazine, and being HARDCORE U7 fans, we awaited it for almost 2 years. We would sit and think up all the things we would do once we could play. I remember one scheme where Wheez was the mage, I was the warrior (that was usually the case) and I would stand by a road, asking for someone to heal me. As soon as someone would heal me, Wheez would use his "offensive magic" from the cover of trees, and I would hack the guy up. Then we could have his shit!! This is LONG before we ever heard anything about what UO would be like, even before pre-alpha, but it solidified our intent at its MOST BASIC level : to kill people via shady tactics. When beta came (and we got in the VERY first phase of like 1000 people), I was a warrior who made a living killing guys with red names right after I had buddied up to them (I know, gay, I should have been a red guy) and made my equipment by ORE STEALS! I swear, My first few days in beta, I would go to where everyone mined (Covetous, the Minoc Mines had no ore then) and yank their stacks of 42342 ore (you could mine even the corners of the screen then!) and run off with it on my mouse cursor. Then I'd stand at the smith until someone I trusted would smelt it, and WHAM, 62323 ingots. I wasn't one of those fuckers everyone saw with full plate, either. I would only wear as much as I could hide under my robe (even then!!). In beta, Wheez did only ONE fucking thing : steal. As far as I know, he never fought anyone, but killed plenty via guards. Stealing was the FIRST macro I made (alt - W for WHEEZ!!) and it was because Wheez needed it so damn bad. He was having hell stealing newbie hundreds as soon as they made their char when he had to keep that skill window open. I also remember Wheez made an alchemist char in Trinsic, and sold his warez while he never left the screen his char got made on. That is, until someone actually TRIED his potions. Then he ran like hell, got lost, and started his operation again. He guaranteed Greater Heals (before we even knew what they looked like) and would sell "a yellow potion" for a ton of cash to all the XtReMe players that hung around Trinsic in beta. Some things never change... Final came. We had both ordered the Charter Edition, the early ones we got the first weekend it came up. We holed up in my office downtown playing from there for what seemed like weeks. I remember Wheez would have to take off because people started showing up for work at like 6am! Things didn't change much a year or two into final. I had learned my basic PvP ways on Atlantic, and killed tons of fuckers. Wheez took up magery after awhile, and it was funny as hell as his 20 STR thief char ran around killing people with lightning bolts.

We eventually moved to Sonoma where we really set the ground rules for what we would do later on. Diabolique, an amazing player I spent alot of time with on Atlantic, had moved to Sonoma and gone full on red. She had a house and demanded that we come play there. Oh, we did! We wore orchelms and d-robes, and killed fuckers that attacked us. But back then, we could only use autocombat. It's pretty funny that we had to stand next to them and swing with autocombat, and NOONE ever lived or killed us really. It's fucked up, I guess it was just back before recall was widely used. We still laugh about our chars, we had like 60 str, 70 swords, and thats really about it. And we were UNBEATABLE! Late in my Sonoma career, when I was GM sword/tac/mace with like 40 magery and 60/40/30 stats (and thats IT!!) I was known all over the shard as a badass. Dia had a very similar char. Wheez and I eventually went red and just started pimping dumbasses. Somehow Dia made friends with a GM, named DuskDragon, who was a really cool guy. He would stop by our house when she paged him, and he would answer questions noone else would ever answer. One time he told us both how many kills/deaths we had! She was  354 and ONE, I will never forget those numbers. I was 250s and three. The funny thing is, her one death? the only person who could beat her? I think we know who that was.

We were wooed to Catskills by various people. Diabolique had moved there, and invited us to check it out, and also Guys we knew from Atlantic, Ninja Resolute, Rian Garn, Salina, Elanor, and that GK crew told us they were doing some funny shit, and we'd exchange stories on ICQ. Finally Wheez and I made chars on Cats just to show them our act, and it blew their mind. When we came to Catskills, everything changed. Ninja and Rian Garn had all sorts of neat ways of provoking pack horses, and I remember Ninja had one cool trick to stay 1 point Dishonorable (back in Noto days) where he could be getting chased by a guy, and drop a coin on an NPC, and turn blue during a fight! Wheez and I showed them our fake thief, autocombat act, and soon all of us had an IRON FUCKING GRIP on Minoc/Catskills. We had a blast regulating Minoc for months. Townkilling came around, and it was great. I believe it started with this guy Ras, who attacked a packhorse in town and killed it without the guards coming when people called them, because the guard message had worn off. That same day, after much deliberation by the three of us about how exactly it worked, Rian Garn successfully killed some newbie a screen or two away from the bank, and history was changed. Really only Rian and I were any good at it, and came up with all sorts of tricks and uo.cfg options that helped us. Mammy and Wheezl both learned this skill later, and they were pretty good at it. Hundreds of people would die around town every day. As most of you know, in UO around this time I met Salina, who later became my girlfriend. That lasted over two years, and I still love her to death. She was an excellent PK (dread lady, too), and was really the poster child for Catskills PvP style of the time.  Rian and I were undoubtedly the best fighters of the GK group and did alot to develop the long range bow fighting. But Salina somehow took it a step further. Rian and I used to stand there and watch her run her ass off, running circles around people, dodging and juking like a featherweight boxer. She killed nonstop for months as a Dread Lady, and only died twice, both times to ISP hangups. (I can confirm this, I always had to go res her and re-equip her) At this time on cats, we had a really distinctive method of PvP there, using autocombat and plain bows and long range spell / archery tactics.

About this time an old friend of mine Lomax said he was gonna join this guild on Atlantic called The Mercs, and that I should come check these guys out. I got on my dusty old Atlantic char and what I saw amazed me. I had kinda grown into this Catskills PvP style, and all these Atlantic Merc guys (and their enemies) used a very different approach. They all used Heavy crossbows and stood right next to eachother. Very blunt, 'in your face, do as much damage as fast as possible and hope they dont kill you in the process' style of fighting. It was here I learned all sorts of wonderful tricks. Stonemann introduced me to putting Wrestling on a char, back then only 4 or 5 people did it, and oddly enough, some people just didn't believe him! It made perfect sense to me, and I added it immediately. Since that time, years ago, every PvP char of mine (and my friends) has had 100 wrestle. Around a year, year and a half later, most everyone on every server had wrestling. I had a really wierd stlyle of fighting, and never ever lost a single duel. Of course, I think I only had 5, maybe 6, but I was batting 1000. I died a couple times in group fights, to our various homosexual enemies, but these things happen. I remember fighting someone once (I think it was Arlington or Stilgar, when they were trying to join TM, I could be wrong though) where they stood still doing the normal act with a Heavy crossbow, and I ran around with "a bow" outranging and outshooting him. He bitched and bitched, calling me a pussy, etc, and I nailed him with a Corp Por while he was typing, killing him. I played the entire duel without getting 1hp of damage done to me. I remember Ezrem (then Ariana) was watching, and thought that whole deal was just splendid, and started playing with a vanq bow that same day. I brought alot of wierd things to the TM crew on Atlantic, plainbows, noto tricks, autocombat, shady things like that. The best was townkilling. Every night, I would hit Minoc and townkill people, and various friends from TM would come and watch. Nija, Christina, and SunTzu just fucking loved it. They would follow me around laughing at people as I killed them while they banked and looting them and having a great time. I really liked all those people, then and now. Virtually all of my close friends left TM after about year, maybe a little more, of me being in it. (That became the original #japan crew, which I was happily a part of, which later became the r33t.org crew, which was also a blast.) I don't even remember why, I just know we went from close to 40 people, to none over the course of a week. All the Mercs that were still Mercs (maybe 7, including me)  had all quit UO and played EQ (which sucked ASS), and I had kept playing on Catskills. It didn't work out and I eventually just left. But, I have absolutely no regrets. I had a fucking BLAST during my time in TM, and most everyone I met there is still, and always will be a great friend to me. Jachyra, Nija, Seros, Grimster, Ezrem, Aga, Penn, and plenty of others are still considered my brothers. Even people I haven't seen since then, like Thyrm, Teldrin and LadyChina, I still consider great friends of mine, even if I havent talked to them in ages. For all of you who are unclear, back then TM was undoubtedly the best. We won all the duels, killed all the fags, and there is no shadow of a doubt in my mind that TM on Atlantic back then was the most powerful UO guild at any time in history. The entire shards events revolved around which of us was playing on a certain night, and where we were hanging out. If we decided to kick back in Wrong, EVERY pussy from EVERY guild would be all over wrong that night, trying to get a piece of us. It made for really exciting times having every person on the oldest and most populated shard HATING you. I'll never forget the fight where Me, Nija, and 2 or 3 others who were D-ROBED at the time  (I believe Meth and Osiris?) DECIMATED a group of 16 LoC in a 5 (three d-robes!) vs 16 fight. They camped out near our Tower, and after a little recon, Nija did some cute act with a bag of purples, nailing 2 or 3 right off the bat, and I was waiting from under a tree, and polished off all 3 with one Corp Por each. The D-robed mercs then went and looted what they could from those bodies, and faded into the forest to equip, while Nija and I played some guerilla warfare with the 12ish guys left. The 5 of us met up, and fought them head on, and whacked EVERY one of them except for their guildmaster, who I chased halfway across the globe before he finally recalled. 0 Casualties. That is a good example of how much BETTER we were than the rest.

After TM I made a return to catskills, and what a return it was. Mammy had started Catskills before I left it for my stint with TM, and was already part of the GK crew when I returned. So was Dev, an OLD friend of me and Wheezs who played with us in beta, all the way up to fucking today! I was [Bastard, GK] which I still think is the coolest guild title of all time, (Tied with mammys [Count Blackula, GK]). It summed me up clearly and simple. I was a bastard. I didn't talk much, but I sure wouldn' t mind killing you. After I came back to Cats from Atlantic, I was truly fucking Elite. I had trained and excelled and fought with the best of the best over on the Atlantic server, and adopted their style into mine. This combination of 'instant domination' PvP from TM, and 'long range hit and run' PvP from catskills came together in a wonderful way. I could instantly change fighting styles mid fight, depending on how it was going. I died three times after my return to Catskills, a period of 6-8 months of fighting every day, all to GIANT gangbangs (the least was a 5v1 near cov, the most was well over 20 SangDragons, a stupid Euro guild). Once back, I immediately started training the GK crew. On my first day back, I explained wrestling to Rian Garn, and he GMed it as soon as the conversation was over. Within THREE DAYS, every GK person had 100 wrestling. Rian, Ras, Guido, Mammy, Wheez, Elanor, Salina, EVERYone. Also I learned how to pre-cast on Atlantic (from Ezrem, I think) which just blew people away. Not only was I elite in PvP style, but I had learned all sorts of great new ways to build chars, and soon had a 6xGM with 94 resist, back when even 3 GMs was really impressive to everyone. That character is actually still completely intact, except I GMed his resist about 2 months later. Resist back then was awesome, It was basically a percentage thing, and with 94% of the spells hitting me doing 0 damage, I walked the land unmolested. With Mammy, Wheez, and some GK boys I used to just rush off ahead into big fights, because everyone would dump on me, then wear a big fucking frown as the rest of the guys (mostly archers, then) came and started owning them. That really made a huge difference back then, if you remember how slow mana came back. This is the same time prepatch weaps came about, and naturally my giant magic weapon collection suddenly became the best prepatch weapon collection on the shard. There was a museum in the "war room" of my large forge, that all my friends, even my "wife" Salina, knew not to touch. YOU DONT FUCK WITH SPLEENS WEAPS! Between being invulnerable to magic, having 3 hit prepatch weaps at all times, and the roughest PvP fighting background, there was no question the last 3/4th of my Catskills career I was the best player on the shard. I would go find the "PvP badasses" hanging out in their little groups talking about how kewl they were, and go wack them all 4 on 1. Any of you remember those "Fight Nites" they used to have? It might have been a Catskills only thing, but they probably did it on other shards. Basically it was this stupid thing where everyone got the best equip they could, and went and stood next to eachother seeing who died first. The ring was tiny, and I refused to participate. However, I did lend some vanq weaps and invuln armor to Ras, who came in second one time, and also to Elanor, who actually won one once! Anyway, some shithead on the Nu'Jelm bank roof one time was telling these other guys he was a 2 time Fight Nite champion, and they were of course in awe. I stepped up and informed him that he was a dumbass. He, and the other guys, couldn't believe this jackass with only a robe and headband would step up to him! He said something like "Oh so u think we can go outside of town and u can kill me?" I calmly said "No, I think we can go outside of town, I can polymorph into a chicken, and I can kill you." Needless to say, everyone laughed and wanted to come watch. I have never had a bigger group of people line up begging to kiss my ass, as I had that day after I wacked that guy as a chicken. It was timed pretty well, seconds after he died and I was looting him, my Polymorph wore off. I thanked him for his stuff, I thanked the crowd for their lack of support, then I went home and added his nice invuln suit to my collection. I was pretty well known for my prepatch weap and armor collection (which I still have) and towards the end of my career, I would just item hunt. I had gotten bored with the game, and that became my goal. (Similar to the end of my Hokuto career, when I just killed people just to see how much money I could make that day selling their stuff to the provis)  I would guess there were maybe 200-300 prepatch weapons (really good magic ones, three hitters) on the shard. About 6 months after they were made, they were super rare. Any newbie that had one had died and lost it, and I theorized that because of the trickle-down effect, only badasses would be USING prepatch weaps. Plenty of people had them secreted away in banks, but they never carried them. I was sorta famous for this, as I would ALWAYS have a badass weapon on me, and always wore fort/invuln chain. It was common knowledge at the time that if you killed Spleen, you got close to 100k worth of stuff, because a good prepatch weap would sell for 40k, and fort/invuln was rare as hell by then, worth 5-10k a piece. I would tell Mammy and Wheez that if they got in a fight with some guy that had a prepatch weap, let me know and I'll come take it. They can have anything else, but if he has any rare weapons or armor, I would take them. That is how my collection started, and by the time prepatch weapons were nerfed, I couldn't find anyone using them, and I had well over 100 in my collection. I estimate probably about half the shards premier weapons were resting in my war room at that time.

I was indestructable back then, and Mammy and Wheez would call me in when they would get in a fight with someone they couldn't beat. This is how my nickname "The Wolf" came about (from pulp fiction). If there was a problem, I fucking solved it. Mammy would be running from 4 Dreads, tell me what point on what road to intercept, and The Wolf would be waiting. Usually 2 were dead before they even knew what was happening. I never ceased to amaze people back then, including myself. Late in my Catskills career is when Wheez started getting good. He never really cared much about his char, he would just run around doing funny kamikaze shit in a bear hat. Late catskills, with my atlantic teachings, he really became a hardass (Mammy too, for that matter) This is when we started j00, our own thing, and this is also when Bastard Island was first named. I had lived there for awhile, and didn't think much of it. Eventually Mammy and Wheez and even some other people moved there, and it became our home. It STILL is, even on Hokuto. (My houses are in the same spot!) Wheez and I did ALOT of killing defending Bastard Island. We had always fought well together in the past, but it usually worked out like this : he would pick a fight with some guys, I would show up and ask what order they needed to die in (I was famous for that, when people asked for my help, I had them prioritize targets, getting the strongest down first), then I'd start killing them. Wheez would catch the runners with paras, nail the newbies, and heal me sometimes, but It wasn't anything like it was later. Back then experience meant everything. I used to switch characters with Salina when I fought her, she would use my invincible guy and my weapons, and I would fight with her archer or whatever, and I would always win. On that same token, Mammy and Wheez one time had a famous duel. Mammy had been playing for a good while now and thought he was at the top of his game, and had the perfect character. Wheez had just started his second account (after his first ban) and dueled him with a 2 day old char. It should have been a knockout, but Wheez is too crafty for that shit, and back then Mammy hated resist, he had 0. He manadrained Mammy, then whacked him with the greatest of ease. Calling a foul, once we wiped the tears of laughter away, they did it again, and Wheez still won without the manadrain, althought it was a long and close fight. I think this is about the time Wheez realized he could be alot more than a naked guerilla warfare guy, and his game improved tenfold almost overnight. I had killed everyone on Catskills, and won every duel, against every fucker that challenged me, TWICE! The one duel I lost I got disconnected in. Wheez and Talahad (a good friend I made on cats) were watching and told the guy (YoDaLoT YM, what a name) I had CLed. He stood there for awhile and wrestled me, then just killed me. I imagine he just wanted the fame of killing the unkillable Spleen, and I would have done the same thing in his shoes. Of course, he was paid back tenfold, because after that I started a collection of screenshots of me killing that guy. I even wacked him once in a 3vs1. He knew I was his master. I would wear his outfit back to the bank, and made his life hell. He quit UO shortly after. My style at that time was geared towards me fighting alone, against 1 or two people. After awhile, Catskills had just lost its edge, I'm not really sure why, but Wheez and I just both kinda felt the need to move on. I wanted to get away from the gay macho scene of duels and PvP guilds and all the faggotry that was taking place on catskills at that time. I had been doing that for about 2 years to that point, being in TM and being extremely competitive the entire time on both servers, I wanted to RETIRE, basically. Boy did I. we moved to Hokuto! My entire Hokuto experience is looked on MUCH fonder than any other times in UO. For Wheez and I both, it was the best server, at the best time, and nothing will ever come close to being that cool.

I remember we started there 2 or 3 months after it had first come up, and Wheezl, god bless his crazy ass, paid for EVERYTHING via ingot scamming. He was the unquestioned master of scamming. I was really fucking good, but I could'nt do even HALF the business he could. For some reason, Old Lomax had a miner char on hokuto, and gave us 1500 ingots. 8 Hours later I had placed my first house, and Wheez and I powergamed like the gods we were. At this point, Most everything had been neutered. Resist was different, and while I had 100, it still wasn't as good as it used to be, there was no good magic weapons, and magic armor was pointless because they came out with GM made exceptional stuff, which was at LEAST as good as hardening. So, my Hokuto career I was not the indestructable guy I was on cats, but I still had a blast. The rest is history, and alot of it is documented here on my wonderful website.

There was NEVER a more effective killing team than Wheezl and I together, period. Argue all you want, but those of you who know us know that Wheez and I were absolute top notch in PvP skill and experience. Combine that with a great ISP to the japanese servers (Earthlink) and our ability to communicate in real life, PLUS our years of experience fighting and communicating together. We were UO's Navy SEALs in the truest sense of the word. Target aquired, we would talk very quickly, using our own terminology while fighting. We did this awesome thing where we would Corp Por in tandem, meaning his spells hit right between mine, and fuckers just had NO CHANCE of surviving that. We would also call out targets, dropping people in the correct order. We always fought outnumbered as hell. Our late catskills fighting style of complete domination rapidly changed into a whole new Hokuto style. When he and I were alone, the BEST odds we could hope for were a 1:4 or 1:5. When we were operating together, the sky was the limit. I remember a time when Wheez and I fought seventeen people, most of them really good, and because we would unapara and heal eachother, then suddenly just DROP one, we killed most of them before they finally just dispersed! We were standing outside the Delucia gates after 2 hours of constant fighting, all limited to about a 2 screen area of open land, and we were like "Did we really just pull that off??".  People would be over here at my house watching us, and understood none of it.  The people out there who got to watch us in real life and knew how to play UO saw miracles happen. You pick any 2 people in UO history, choose any point in the games history, we would kill them and more than likely both of us would be fine. They would claim we cheat, we would be wearing their clothes. It's just that simple. Of all the people who have come and gone in UO, our experience and skills and overall kills place us both easily in the top 50 players ever to play the game, and as most of you know, probably alot higher than that. There is no question that on the servers we have owned, Wheez and I were the most hated people in our area (Minoc / Vesper) for god DAMN sure, and more than likely the most hated people on the Shard. I KNOW that is true of Hokuto, and probably Catskills for awhile as well. When I die, I will ask God how many times someone died on my weapon or spell in the game Ultima Online. If you consider how long I played, how many servers, and how much I fought, that number will be well over 100,000, undoubtedly the person with the most kills, ever.

- Spleen