Woah! I had almost completely forgotten about UO. I never played it myself, but a family member was obsessed with it at one point so I saw a lot of it (this must have been about 2001!).
I had heard great things, however there was another MMO I played a while ago (I really can't remember what it was called) and I felt like I was joining about 10 years too late - everyone knew everything, everyone had everything, and I basically felt like I was just messing about whilst everyone else had already done it all. I didn't really enjoy that at all - part of the great thing about an MMO is exploring stuff with others.
What are your thoughts Vendayn?
Well, some people have played a long time and know a lot. But like my guild leader has played a while, and does have a lot of stuff. But very few people actually have EVERYTHING, especially the higher end items (artifacts). And since its sorta a sandbox kind of game, there is still lots to do, like crafting/housing etc. It isn't like some others I played where even though people know everything...in UO they still help out just as much.
But...you probably will definitely get the feeling you are in a very old, "settled" world. That is the feeling I get. Everywhere has been pretty much touched. Especially in that houses are everywhere and its kinda hard to find a spot (though there are still areas for housing). And the gold economy is pretty wacky, in that some items are very expensive and a lot of people have a lot of gold.
With that said, I always see completely new players (at least trying it out) and people returning that don't have much or had to make new characters. But, like I said, its a very old, settled game world. Not really likely to go around discovering things or exploring places no one else has been. And you'll see people with really good armor/weapons, with a bunch of gold. Pretty settled. I haven't really felt like I discovered anything at all in my week of playing.
Though granted, pretty much any MMO past 3 months old everything is pretty much discovered in most of them. Then there is a wiki or fansites with all the info on them lol. Not like how MMOs used to be, before sites like WoWhead or whatever has an encyclopedia of information shortly after release. I remember playing Everquest for years and still didn't know that much about it. These days, all that info is right online.
But yeah, sadly UO probably not a good fit for exploring/discovering things. Even though there is a steady wave of new players/returnees, the game is pretty old to discover anything. You could maybe try a free shard, I don't have any recommendations...but some of them might be good for that if you wanted to try some version of UO.