A World Lost To Me...
EDIT: Man, I had no idea when I posted this late last night that Keith Parkinson - the brilliant artist who did the poster I mentioned below (not to mention all of the box covers for EverQuest, as well as countless fantasy book covers) passed away on Wednesday. Suddenly that poster is going to be a heck of a lot more sad to look at than the simple reasons I posted below. This is sad news indeed. You can read more here currently - it's the front page of Dark Sword Miniatures, no permalink yet.
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Man. So I'm digging around looking for a disc for an old game tonight, and I keep stumbling over Everquest discs from the original game and various expansions. In their jewel-box packages. The original EverQuest - the one I anxiously awaited the day I heard it announced in something like 1997. I still have the big EverQuest promotional poster by Keith Parkinson from 1998 hanging over my computer. I also found the Kunark disc, my registration code still stuck to it. Ah, Kunark. The first expansion. That one revived my interest in the year-old game. And Velious. And Luclin. And Planes of Power. The expansion after that was an online download only, but I got that one too. Fond memories all.

And I thought to myself, "Holy crap, I spent a heck of a lot of money on this game that I can't even play anymore."

Okay, TECHNICALLY I might still be able to play it. They've not shut EQ down yet. I cancelled my account around September 2003, after four-and-a-half years of playing. My characters might still be there, if I renewed my account. Maybe. But it's sad realizing my rogue isn't really MINE, he's sitting on a server at Sony if he's not been erased forever. I started him just after midnight on April 2nd, 1999 - my birthday. I'd started a couple of characters on Veeshan prior to that, but I ended up staying on Tunare.

I played a rogue because I love playing rogues in ANY game. And rogues were so incredibly freaking useless and busted in EQ the first six months or so it wasn't even funny. But I love rogues. I love playing them in any game. I thought the "Thief" games rocked because they captured the experience I wanted in playing a rogue so perfectly that they really WERE like a roleplaying game to me. One of my finest nights in EverQuest during those early months were when a bunch of us rogues got together in the temple of Cazic-Thule in a group because nobody else would have us. So it was almost an all-rogue group (plus a shaman) - the MISFIT group. And we found a way to make the game WORK for us.

It really sucked - we'd log in, right there in the temple, and try to find a group for 2-3 hours. While there were groups forming and re-forming all around us. We'd try and start a group, but the first person we invited would see we were a rogue and would immediately disband. After a couple of hours of this, we'd get sick of it, log out, and go play a secondary character or quit the game for the night. (And yet I'm remembering this whole thing FONDLY?!?!? The game SUCKED!!!! Well, keep going).

See, the problem with rogues in those days was that they didn't really have any abilities at ALL except for backstab - which would often hit for only 2 points of damage. But even those little 2 point hits would raise aggro to the point that no warrior could possibly taunt the monster away from you - he turned to you and proceeded to beat you to a pulp. And since he was facing you, you couldn't backstab any more. There was no "evasion" ability until after Kunark was old news. So you did no real damage after getting that first backstab or two in, and you died because you folded only slightly faster than the enchanter. The clerics eventually quit worrying about healing the rogue because there just WAS no way they could keep up, and they'd just figure they got a breather before having to heal up the party tank again. Rogues died a lot, and contributed virtually nothing to a party.

So anyway, we misfit rogues all got together, and discovered that - woah - with FOUR of us all backstabbing, the monsters would whirl around in a circle as the last person to backstab them would get the aggro. The shaman would haste us and keep us healed fairly well. With four hasted rogues going at full-tilt, we were clearing through monsters in RECORD time. Someone would yell "Add" - which meant another monster spotted us and was rushing to join the fight - and by the time the monster attacked we'd already dispatched our foe and were ready for the next one. The shaman commented on how AMAZED he was by the progress we made. We'd beaten the system.

Of course, we were afraid to announce our success TOO loudly, for fear that Verant would use that as evidence that the rogue class was "just fine." Fortunately, they didn't, and they did things like letting us hide and sneak at the same time (so we could actually move while hidden - what a concept), gave us better equipment, and gave us the evasion skill, and just ultimately turned the class into a powerhouse when played well. And that was all fun too.

But that night in the party of rejects, managing to find amazing success by working the system like that ... wow. That was just one of those moments in time you wish you could relive.

Unfortunately, the big benefit of Massively Multiplayer games is also the bane - you can't get those moments back. They aren't frozen on a CD somewhere, they just spontaneously come into being with the right mix of people and situations. So while I feel a few pangs of nostalgia flipping through those old discs, remembering this and so many other wonderful, lost moments, I'm not actually tempted (much) to re-enable my account. That world from that night ceased to exist weeks later, with so many changes within the game. The world I logged out from the last time --- I don't even know if I realized it was the last time when I typed "/camp" (I can't even remember if I logged out in a safe place or in the middle of a dungeon somewhere) - that world just doesn't exist anymore. That world was made up of people, and those people are probably not there anymore.

Dang, I spent a lot of money on that game. But I can't really say I regret it.

Labels: Mainstream Games, Roleplaying Games

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