Everquest

A few months ago Everquest went free to play. It's 13 years old with 18 expansions. My guess is that they made it free to play to try and get more money out of it before shutting it down. Everyone's doing FTP so why not? I don't blame them. I logged on to see if my level 49 monk was still there (he was), and wandered around the once densely populated zones that are now eerily empty of any life except for NPCs and spiders. Maybe enough people do play it to warrant another expansion (which also came out a few months ago). If they do, there weren't where I was.

When I started writing this post, which has sat in my blog drafts for a few weeks, I thought I'd play more. I didn't. That was pretty much it. But I do have really fond memories of this behemoth of the MMO world (until World of Warcraft destroyed it). I played a lot of Everquest. A ton actually. I would spend entire weekends, when my life was devoid of...well, anything really...playing this game. I would wake up Saturdays at 10am, play until lunch, go to Wendy's to get some lunch, eat in front of the computer while camped in Befallen or some place, then stop again to get dinner, and play until 1am or 2am Sunday morning. Then rinse and repeat on Sunday (unless I went to church, then I didn't start until after 12pm).

One of my best memories (and why it stands out I have no idea) I was nearing the end of a play session. I was easily after midnight. I was in Freeport, and having never been across the Ocean of Tears I decided to check it out. So I waited for the boat that would take me there (this was long before they introduced all the teleport/warp stones). I took the "long" 10 minute trip to the Butcherblock Mountains on Faydwer. Since it was uncharted territory for me, I stuck mainly to the path (which was usually safe). I wandered around until I eventually reached Greater Faydark. This had the home of the Wood Elves (Kelethin), and led to the Orc fortress of Crushbone.

Now for some stupid reason I forgot to bind myself somewhere when I arrived on Faydwer. For those who don't remember, when you died in Everquest, you went back to the city you were bound to. But you could change that by casting a simple spell. But I didn't bind myself to the new continent I was on. I'm not sure why. I could have bound myself to the dwarf city of Kaladim (I'm looking all these names up online btw. I'm not THAT big of a dork.). But I didn't. But for some other, more stupid reason, once I reached the elf town (which was up in the trees) I left the main path which had kept me mostly safe up to this point. It wasn't long before I came face to face with an orc from Crushbone (it was closer than I realized). I really didn't stand a chance.

The next thing I knew I was back in Freeport, with all my gear gone. You see back in those days the Everquest folks thought it would be awesome to make it so when you died all your stuff stayed with your corpse. And you had 7 days to get it before POOF. It would just disappear. So I had 7 days. And it was 1am. But I couldn't leave my stuff out there. So I went back to the Freeport dock, waited 15 minutes for the next boat, took the 10 minute boat ride, then walked 20-30 more minutes back to where I died (hoping the orc wasn't still there). It wasn't. I got my stuff, and high tailed it outta there. I finally got to bed after 2am.

That was Everquest. And it was a blast.

Currently playing: Diablo III

I'm currently playing Diablo III. I don't have much to say about it right now except that it's awesome and you should play it. I've heard people who weren't particularly taken with Diablo I and II are loving this game. So take that into consideration if you're doubting a purchase. It's great fun.

I started with a barbarian and it's been a total blast. There's just something satisfying about getting surrounded by 20+ monsters, slamming the ground and stunning all of them, then sending out a shock wave across half the screen that obliterates nearly all of them into a cloud of monster parts. I don't like gore, but it's pretty satisfying.

Oh, and the game is gorgeous. I started Act II over the weekend, which is in a desert. You can't really tell from this screenshot but there is a constant flow of sand moving around on screen here. And it looks amazing, even with my 6 year old Dell (but I did put a decent video card in it a few years ago). My barbarian is below (as of 5/21).

Doomed

First off, I promise I'm not going to cleverly title every post based on the game I talk about.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way. In 93 or 94 I felt like I was late to the PC game (no pun intended). They were gaining popularity but were still outrageously expensive. I think our AT&T Globalyst (for its stunning specs, see Myst-ified post) cost around $2200. For that price nowadays you better be buying 3 laptops. Or one Macbook Pro.

Still, I wasn't new to gaming. I had the NES for years then picked up the SNES at the toy store in the mall (I didn't even know it was out). But I was new to PC gaming, especially playing against other people via dial-up. But I was at a huge disadvantage. For all its high tech wizardry, our computer's modem was also its sound card. And for some reason, according to AT&T tech support, sound wouldn't work if I was "online". Who plays online anyway though right?

So my aforementioned friend Chris, the one who introduced me to Myst, introduced me to Doom. And not only Doom, but multiplayer Doom. So here I was creeped out by the atmosphere and all the 2D blood and guts (which was awesome), but I had no sound. That actually made the game more terrifying. Not only that, I liked to hide in a mass of barrels. The kind that (unbeknownst to me) exploded when you shot them.

So there I was in my first multiplayer game, backed into a corner because I couldn't hear a thing and was trying to see as much of my surroundings as possible. I thought I was hiding in a great spot. I had barrels all around me! So along comes my friend. He can't see me. Haha! I've got you! I start shooting. He turns and starts shooting. Then BOOM! The screen goes red as I die in a blaze of 20 exploding barrels.

Lets play again.

Myst-ified

I had a hard time trying to figure out where to start with this blog. I could go back to my Atari 2600 days playing Demon Attack until I finished the last level and it took me back to level one with different colored "demons". Or I could tell some tales of fighting the first racing level in Battletoads on the NES (I think I only got passed it once). But the first two games that come to mind were played when my childhood friend Chris got his first PC. It was a powerhouse 486/66 with a mindboggling 16MB of RAM. Yes, I'm not joking, 16MB. Fear that suckers. This was sometime in 1993. We had both graduated high school the year before.

So anyway, he invited me over to see this amazing game he had just bought to play on his new fangled CD-ROM drive thing. A little game called Myst. For the next week I sat at his desk, staring at the most amazing slideshow I had ever seen. For my 2 hour play sessions he simply sat on the couch behind me silently, reading some gaming magazine I think, occasionally asking me, "Need a hint?" I took him up on that offer about half the time. I had never seen anything like it and it changed me forever. A game with an actual story and puzzles that really tested your wits. It was amazing. Eventually I reached the end, which ironically was right where you started. It was amazing to me that with the information I now had I could start up a new game and beat it in about 5 minutes. But without that information you had to go through multiple "ages", picking up clues to this mystery along the way.

Shortly after that experience my family bought our first computer. An AT&T Globalyst Pentium 100 with 8MB of RAM (I begged for 16MB but it was far too expensive). That was the first time I experienced multiplayer over dial-up. The game: Doom.

But I'll save that story for another day.