I’ve been sitting on this story for a while, but now seems like an excellent time to share it, since the events leading up to the happy outcome started almost a year ago.

Some of you may recall this post from last November, in which a young lady who goes by the handle Sarah WireZ rather earnestly asked:

I would like to know how and where I apply to be a Ultima Online gamemaster for either EA UO or a freeserver UO.

I actually had the opportunity to correspond with Calvin Crowner, then the producer for Ultima Online, about this visitor to Aiera and her question. At the time, UO wasn’t looking for GMs, so the possibility of Sarah landing an official job seemed bleak. However, someone named James dropped by with an offer:

Hello My name is james and I see you are looking for a Gm pos I may be able to help you I own Black Dragon Production’s Gaming and we are working on a shard starting from the ground up and we are hiring if you would like to apply got to http://www.bdpgaming.com click on join our staff and fill out the app and we will get back to you.

Evidently, Sarah went and applied as James had directed. In April of this year, she sent me an update:

Hello there,

I thought I’d give you a quick update and thank you for the link and enquiry you made on the forums, I started working for BDPGaming after applying to the app form you found me, I was first off looking to be a GM, which Iam definatly doing for their new uo freeserver Ossus. I then spoke of my experience and skills upon the interview and I landed a job of games developer, where I’ve been working with a team and my self, building cities and villages, player housing etc, I just build a whole elven city by myself which they are very pleased with. I show a lot of initiative and they have just given me the position that someone stepped down from for rl issues, “lead advertising” too which I am blowing up for them. So thanks so much for the link that sparked my fire on this, I’m very pleased with the outcome!

I was clearing out my inbox (for my Aiera-related email account) this week, and I found this reply from her again. I shot her a quick email, just to see how things were going; she had alluded in a short follow-up message (which I’ve since archived and so don’t have handy to quote) that the BDP Gaming team were in the process of sorting a few web-facing and marketing details out. She replied that they had made some progress, with a few screenshots and Ossus-related content on their website, plus more media on their Facebook page.

So, there it is…one site visitor’s success story. If you have time and are interested in Ultima Online freeshards, consider checking out Ossus and BDP Gaming; it looks like they’ve built a pretty interesting world.