Todays guest is Karen Karpenter. She has been around a long time and shares some of her UO history from the younger years.



Karen Karpenter is a familar name with an unusual spelling.
Did you create this character in memory of the late singer Karen
Carpenter that died from anorexia? If not what was your inspiration for this name?
It was fairly impulsive actually. I started playing UO almost 8 years ago and hadn't really considered the long-term impression of a name. I love "creating" things in real life and the notion of a crafting profession was a big draw for me. What to name a carpenter? Hm. Karen Carpenter popped into my head and thought it was funny. Just Karen? People wouldn't get it. So I had to use the full name. Unfortunately, "carpenter" was one of the forbidden names back then (not sure if that's still true) so I was forced to use the unusual spelling. I then added music to her skill set to be faithful to her identity which proved useful later when crafting music related items. I also made her a chef cause the girl needs to make a sandwhich!

How long have you been playing UO and how did you get turned onto
this game?
I have to say that I loved the idea of UO the second I heard of it. I was once obsessed with MUDs (multi-user dungeons) back in college. When I was in the computer room all night people thought I was working on papers. Little did they know I was just frantically typing "E" for east. And "Open Chest". After college, I only decided to buy a computer because I missed playing MUDs. Now I'm a professional graphic designer and pretty adept at using computers just because of this obsession!

I loved RPG's. A graphic multi-user dungeon? Could this be the best
idea ever? Yes. I went to Egghead software across the street from where I was working tech support for Andersen Consulting. I asked the salesperson what he thought of UO and he said it was terrible. Lots of bugs and lots of lag. So I didn't buy it. But it nagged my conscience for a few months and I just had to try it. After the idea of "vet" accounts came out, I curse that Egghead rep for turning me away. I still feel like my very old account is just slightly a few months too young. Even 8 years later. LOL.

Karen was one of my favorite characters but all she could do was make chairs really. Not much use. Then they came out with craftables add-ons like anvils, forges, and pentagrams. You had to be GM magery to make a pentagram so I was a rare find. I could charge 10k for a pentagram. Wow! I was instantly rich! By this time, T2A had come out and I my favorite spots for getting 100 logs a tree. Unheard of back then. No one knew of these trees and the rush of carpenters to the scene were jealous of my spots. When I told my good friends that I found some amazing trees, they were like "oh, that's nice". Then craftable add-ons came out and they came rushing with interest. LOL.

My vendor just outside of the Moonglow entrance was quite popular. I
had a vendor there that within a week made about 300k. Let me tell you. Back then, this was unreal and you were pretty upper-class. There were no checks for bank boxes, and my bank was just full of piles of gold. Then, something dreaded happened. I went away to Japan and Thailand for a 3 week vacation. I stocked up my vendor as much as possible and regretted not having a way to check it while I was away. The internet still wasn't big, and laptops weren't really common. Internet cafe's didn't even exist. I got back from my vacation expecting it to be chock full of cash. Oddly, the vendor was empty of goods (except for my bags), and there was no money on the vendor. I was so confused. And discouraged. And angry. I was fed up and decided to quit the game. After I worked so hard to be something that wasn't even popular, to suddenly become popular,
then lose everything and miss out on the "crafting gold rush". More
than anything, I hated the feeling I got from playing a game and thought I better quit if I got this emotional over a game. I went to a private bank and transfered the piles of gold I did have to one of the popular players at the time, Grim. He was the "godly" GM smith at Moonglow bank then since there weren't many GM smiths around at that time. Also, Moonglow was the popular social hang out and not Brit Brank. It also wasn't really about bank sitting, since there wasn't anything really all that visually unique to show off. Anway, I transferred each pile of 60k one by one by dropping it on the ground between us (no trade windows). I said my goodbyes and quit the game.

Two years later, I really missed it. Thank goodness selling accounts
wasn't really an idea back then because when I came back, my old user name was still "on file" and maintained its vet status. I didn't know what a vet reward was, but I seemed to have a bunch of them at my disposal. I had to rebuild my characters from scratch, and I rebuilt 3 of them out of nostalgia, Karen Karpenter being one of them.
Let me tell you, I will never quit again.

You have a very stylish themed vendor house in Luna called Savage
Goods. How long have you owned that Luna plot and how did you obtain
it?
Stylish? Thanks for the compliment. I always thought it was more
savage, personally. :)
Luna. Oh Luna. I was one of the lucky few that was actually able to
sign on at the beginning of the Malas expansion. I just had it in my head that I wanted a spot inside the Luna walls. I remember running around the entire Luna square and there were only a few others that were able to sign in and we were were just running around laughing having our way with the place. It was pretty much empty since only a few of us actually got in before their login servers ground to a halt. I was disappointed to find that you couldn't place an 18x18 inside the walls (or so I thought). Tons of people wanted an 18x18 instead so they placed a plot outside the walls. I bet they're kicking themselves now.

In my frenetic state I placed a smallish house in the spot I'm at right now. Suddenly, I saw houses that utilized a larger space popping up around me. I panicked. Miraculously, I was able to log in another character from a different account. I demolished the first one and placed the one you see today. I have 2 other accounts and couldn't log those in for the life of me so I wasted that second plot for nothing. Yes, Lady Lava, that plot of land you have in front of me was actually clear at the time. I had no idea an 18x18 would fit there. I chose my location because I wanted an open south facing plot that had the widest area and closest to the gate. Everyone else seemed to have this idea too because up north is where everyone was placing first. I thought I had the best spot because it was the biggest house with the best "wide" vendor view by the gate. Of course, Ultima had to place his house on the west side, so
that's the power area. Hehe. I still like my area better. I guess I'm
more "right-brained".

After I placed that spot, I just ran around because my other characters couldn't log in. The house right by the gate was still available. I was just standing there chatting with him the whole time not jealous at all. Thinking mine was going to be bigger and I was happy where it was. Later, he demolished his house and was able to place what's up right now. The same size as mine! Only long instead of wide. Now I'm jealous! LOL.
Still, I can't complain. I was able to place in Luna square which to
this day is the most prime real estate in the game.

Your savage theme to your plot is done very and true to the
subject matter. What made you decide to do this style/theme?
After quitting for 2 years and returning to the game, I was fascinated by a new spawn of nasties called "savages" west of destard. Wow! You can paint yourself white? Cool! So, I created a character called Savage Lord. I got it in my head that I would create a savage themed vendor just for the hell of it. I ebayed a log cabin in Yew, since it was the most savage looking house I could get. I bought a ton of fishing nets and covered the entire bottom floor to imitate the grass. You couldn't dress your vendors, so what people saw when they first walked in was a bunch of naked vendors with spears. I would get a lot of laughs. People thought I was perverted! I'd always say, "Hey! They're not naked! They're
savage!"

Of course, I had to sell paint. This was Savage Goods. Guess what. I
was in the right place at the right time. After a while, Champ spawns were all the rage. Eventually, it was discovered that having paint on wouldn't turn you into a rat at Barracoon. Where tribal spears (a powerful weapon back then) used to be the rage at my shop, suddenly paint was flying off my naked vendors. Cha. Ching. LOL. People used to be jealous back in the day when I enjoyed being a carpenter before the add-on days. Now they were jealous that I had an established paint vendor before it was "fashionable". Goes to prove, that just doing what you love really does pay off in the end. It's funny. Everyone is racing to do fish tanks because they think it's the next big thing. I don't feel it. I could be wrong. But the fact that everyone is doing it isn't going to have much pay off. Just do what you love to do.

Then Malas came out. Customizable housing? You've got to be kidding me! Wow! And you can dress your vendors. Holy cripes! I was so ready to make my Savage Goods really savage! I borrowed themes from the savage lands in Ilshenar. I also decided to make it more practical and "modern" since it was in the bustling metropolis of Luna. Thus, the stone bedroom.
LOL. Now that the Elf expansion came out, I'm even more excited.
There's an elf vendor you can make with white skin. Unfortunately, some of the older vendors don't go elf for some reason. I'll have to manually re-place those one day. You just hit "Human/Elf/Human/Elf" over and over again until you get the color you want. I used to destroy a vendor and place a new one to get the lightest possible skin tone. No, I'm not racist. I was just trying to get as close to savage white as possible. I used to always post on the boards that I wanted to be able to apply paint to my vendors. Now I don't have to. I'm totally psyched.

Each floor is a different savage theme. The first floor is hard
crafting, public area, with a private stone bedroom. Savage Lord prefers the familiar comfort of the earth and prefers the bedroll to the more modern themed beds. It also sports one of the original brown masks (without mods). It used to look pretty rare until they re-introduced the brown masks with mods back into the game.


Private stone bedroom. Books next to the bed are, "A Lovers Book" and "A Savage Tale"

The second floor is the savage tailoring room. You'll find an area for making bone armor, masks, and bola.

The third floor is the savage kitchen. As you can see from the
ingredients on my table, we at Savage Goods blend a special ingredient of fine bone powder into every batch of savage paint for higher quality application. It also has a small third floor mini-garden with a prized orcish helm from one of our Savage-Orc Great Battles.



The roof-top garden is our home-away-from-home. We can't live in the
city without recreating that cool feeling of grass and swamp on your
feet.
Savage Goods also serves loosely as a Savage Consulate, therefore our ambassadors needed to dress it up a bit with benches, a Sosaria
painting, and a stone pond with fine pixie statues for entertaining guests.



Also, have you ever noticed that the ledges in the savage lands have no railings? How savage! So my free-fall ledges are intentional. People love running off them. Sadistic I guess. My savages aren't so cavalier. We're just more adept at traversing the precarious walk-ways.

Though we are neighbors and have been for over a year now we only
started having verbal exchanges a few weeks ago. Often you are at your house busy filling your vendors, sawing wood, smithing and various other tasks. How many of the vendors at Savage Goods are actually yours?
All except the BOD vendors are mine. Actually, two more vendors just
recently popped up that are rented, but renters usually abandon them
after a week or so for some reason. I'm a pretty busy vendor. I actually like stocking and checking items more than the actual fighting. Maybe that's why people dont like to stock vendors that much. They realize it's a commitment and a completely different play style. Also, despite the Luna reputation for being extremely expensive, that's not my main objective.

There are lots of higher priced items I could be setting out to do, but I like to create convenience for my customers more than anything. I think I was one of the first to really set up a consistent Jeweler. I only charged 300 a ring or bracelet, but I thought it was fun to organize and sell them. Wouldn't you know it, the theme took off and now I have 3 of them to keep the wide variety fully stocked and had to increase the price to about 1k each and higher for the fast selling items. To be honest, I don't increase the price out of greed, that's never my intention. I also don't comparitively make much money on those. It's more about balancing an afordable price while keeping it stocked at a comfortable pace so people can rely on something being there when they're really looking for it. If everything was still 300 gold each like I originally
set out to do, it just would never be stocked and people would stop
coming because an empty vendor is a useless vendor. Of course a pricey vendoris a useless vendor, too. I only raise prices to slow the sales of stuff a bit because it can get a little stressful keeping things stocked. Trust me, I keep a close eye on stock and lower prices if something gets stale and doesn't sell for a week or two. So for those that complain about Luna, I assure you, that it's demand that drives my prices and not greed. Why would I have sold paint when it wasn't popular after all?

Also, I have to remain committed to my original paint scheme. No longer a very profitable venture (compared to other things), but I enjoy keeping it stocked, just like everything else I sell.

Many players in the realm collect certain items. I myself collect
yellow bells, oh and footwear, lol. Do you collect anything and if so what?
Wow. That's a tough question for some reason. I of course have hoards of tribal masks. I usually keep them to sort and sell complete color sets of masks. I remember almost quitting once and my friends and I covered all around Moonglow bank with masks. I have a screen grab of it somewhere. Was pretty hysterical. I also have a lot of plants (again when it wasn't popular...until thorns came out...then BOOM...). We covered all of Vesper bank with every plant and color you can think of. I really can't think of anything at the moment. To be honest, I'm more happy crafting and vending than collecting.

What new item that ML has brought upon us that excites you the
most?
Everything is still so new, but I'm going to have to go with my gut
here. I think it's the new wood colors. Since I do some woodworking in real life, I'm pretty psyched about the new woods. I am a little
disappointed in the variety of colors, though. Ebony would have been a clear choice. In real life it's very expensive, so that would have been a great rare wood. Shadow furniture? Sounds perfect. Especially when you consider there's shadow ingots. Also, I'm surprised there's no purple heart. People would go nuts over purple heart. I know my woodworking instructor loves it. He makes a lot of his commissioned pieces using it. It's really purple! And not stained at all! I call it his Grimace collection.

The talismans and recipes are pretty nifty, too. I think the new
carpentry runics are great, but I haven't gotten one yet. I mostly want it to make a super cool spell channeling/no penalty frostwood fishing pole with some nice magery mods for my sea-blue elven fisherman. I made one of the frostwod spell channeling pole (with a standard -1 casting penalty) and he can fish and cast spells without interruption! Love that.

You are a vet player. What do you think has kept you interested in this game for so long and how many players that you knew when you first started are still with us?
I'm an obsessed RPG computer gamer. Add community on top of that and it almost justifies the long hours. Diablo was only fun until you got to the end. The idea of sharing, adventuring with, and a little showing off really makes it fun.

To be honest, no one from way back when are still around that I know
of. I've never seen Grim or anyone that knew him around. There was also someone that showed me around when I first logged in over 7 years ago by the name of Drizzt Do' Urden. Turns out, there are tons of those now. My heart used to jump when I'd see that name, but it turns out it's a popular fantasy fiction name and none of them are the original. When I did first sign back on and was starting from scratch again, I met a great friend that I trust with anything to this day. He still plays regularly. I met Ion Blade when he and I were practicing on the skeletons in the Moonglow cemetary on our warriors. I remember asking him, "What's powerhour". He was like, "I don't know". I also asked him, "What's the veteran reward thing that keeps popping up". He was like, "I don't know." Haha. Was so cool. We were both such newbs together. The game changes so much that it really is new without us really realizing it unless we step
away from the game. Ion and I own a tower together and started a guild for a while. He's more warrior focused, though, and I wish I had more of a chance to hang with him and his new guild, but I seem to be too busy stocking vendors to do any real adventuring.

Oh, and I have to give a shout out to Innanna! We've known each other for about 4 years now, too, I think. Love her to death! She plays with her real life husband, too! How cute is that! Man, I wish I could meet someone that was equally addicted to UO. That'd rock!

Karen is an elf now. What do you like most about being an elf?
I like the new skin colors. At first I hated it. But now I think it's great. Karen is green because she's from the woods. Falon is sea-blue. Looks so cool when I'm out in the water. I really do feel like I'm a part of nature when I'm in my element. Ion Blade and I used to be in a elfen role playing guild, LoR (Lord of the Rings)...way before the movie came out. Our guild was even going to study the elven language to speak it in-game. I wish the guild was still around. We could have really made a cool impact on the community if we actually did speak elven and were a notable force.

Do any of your real life family or friends play UO? What does
your family think of you being so involved in this realm?
I wish. None of my friends are obsessive gamers like I am. They're very social and tend to find gaming too isolated and weird. Like one of my best friends says..."How boring is that? Chop, chop. Put it in a chest. Chop, chop. Put it in a chest." LOL. Never thought of it that way until I heard that. Even my one gaming enthusiast friend won't play it because he's a die-hard first-person shooter fan. He turned me onto PlanetSide which I play on occassion, but I love UO too much.

What was the last movie you saw?
Red Eye. I think that's what it was called. With the psycopathic
stalker on a plane. Lame movie. My friend talked me into it. Right before that, I saw a screening of "The Baxter" through a national social group I belong to called GenArt. They tend to screen really cool artsy and quirky movies and showcase up-and-coming artists, fashion-designers, musicians, etc. A great blend of social, entertainment arts, and creative networking. 2 of my other friends just joined so there's usually 6 of us that go (we can get someone else in for free with us to all the events and movie screenings). If it's anyone cup of tea, you should check them out at www.genart.org.

If you could go to dinner with any famous person ( living or dead
) whom would it be?
Da Vinci. Wow. Inventor, artist, socialite. He's my idol. Did you know he only painted 7 paintings in his lifetime. All masterpieces! Why do think that Mona Lisa is so played out? There's not much to pick from!
He discovered and documented aeronautic principals that are used in
aviation to this day. His medical drawings were THE medical text for over 200 years. He was so fascinated by life and discovery, he was noted as talking to a patient to the moment of his death. He then disected him right away to find out what the body was like at that moment. Pretty morbid, yes, but his passion and curiosity fascinates me. He wrote with his left hand backward that you can only read with a mirror. Apparently, this is actually more intuitive for left-handed people (am I right, leftys?).

He studied the archeological paths of worms (which were used for
scientific research even then). He worked on the invention of a flying machine. He invented a music machine on wheels that would play a tune as you rolled it. He was an architect and city planner.

You'd think he was a fanatic recluse, but he was documented as being
surpassingly good-looking and very witty and entertaining. He only did a self portrait when he was nearly 100 years old which is why the only time he's portrayed is as an old, long-haired man.

I can go on and on. It's no wonder that my smith, tinker's name is Da Vinci. I just wish there was more reason to use him. I'm obviously drawn to him as a personality more-so than Karen Carpenter. I've considered transfering all of Karen's skills to Da Vinci once soul-stones came out. I might one day. Just seems classier to have a armoir made by Da Vinci instead of Karen Karpenter. I sometimes ask people if they want it marked by Karen or not, but no-one seems to really care who it's made by. If anyone cares, let me know.

If you could change one thing about your real life physical
appearance what would it be?
Hmm. I'm 33 and am more comfortable with my appearance more than ever. I used to hate being tall and lean, but now I love not having to work out necessarily. I guess it's all about perspective. Oh wait. My hair is thinning and I just got a huge scar down my stomach from some exploratory surgery from a nasty almost-fatal appendicitis 5 months ago. If I had a magic wand, I'd probably fix those.


If you were stranded on a desert island and had only one CD which
would you want it to be?
I hope I get a CD player too. And lots of batteries. But just one?
That's cruel. Probably something by Tori Amos. Wait. No. Ray of Light. Definitely. Has the right amount of dance, lyrics, folk/alternative and a little more uplifting considering, I'm alone and suicidal on this desert island. I still listen to that album and never get tired of it.

What is your motto?
Do what you love and life will follow.



Karen, It is a true treat having such a great neighbor and we are all blessed to have such a commited vet player here on Great Lakes.
Thank you for all your help over the past few weeks and for taking the time to be my guest today.

---