Yes, I have spent a good deal of time playing these since my first venture into Asheron's Call back in early 2000. It has been fun, with the kids, wife, and friends (both real life friends playing and game friends who I have never met) contributing to the good times off and on over the years. The story:
I first noticed a game called "Everquest" at Best Buy back in '99 or so. An intriguing concept, playing online with a bunch of people from all over. Being new product averse, I did not take the dive until a few months later and I saw Asheron's Call on the shelf. Why not Everquest? I don't know. There was nothing "wrong" with the game, but for whatever reason I went with AC.
Setting up my 'toons was fun. While giving the game box one last look at the store I had met someone who said he played and so I knew what server to go to and what name to ask for, so I had a bit of help right off the bat in the form of suggestions and the like. Georg Smashskull, an "unarmed warrior", was my first persona, and soon he had befriended a small group of fellow players. Unarmed in this case meant that he had small weapons, such as the kater or hand wraps, not that he went into combat without weapons. The theory, based on the information in game, was that unarmed warriors started off weak but became very powerful at higher levels (much like the Dungeons and Dragons monk), so I bit and went for that. The first group of in game friends, none of whom I have ever met personally, included Barbed Wire, who made pains to note that he was a guy after a few people mistook him for a girl since he played a female character, Skorpio, a cop who tended to be the leader in our little group, Demon Bane an Aussie who was dependable and a good player, SnoMage, about whom I do not remember any details except that he was a good in game friend, and Pigroast who fits in the same category, were constant companions in those early days. My contribution to the group was enthusiastic attacks and a willingness to support whatever crazy adventure the team decided to try, even though I found myself somewhat risk averse (hated to get killed in game, especially since that meant having to go recover corpses or lose valuable items). Eventually the game introduced Allegiances, where groups of friends could gather to better share the game and experience points to increase in levels, and we - or at least most of us - joined Vrumor and his group in the Solar Empire. Ra Rai Fen, Venus Virago, Be Not Afraid are all names from those who made an impression with their fair play and skills. I had a friend from work who played a female character, deciding to try to emulate a female in game to see how girls were treated different. His conclusion was that they are, being given many more benefits than the guy characters by other guys. The adventures were nearly daily, and fun. At first, the top level in game was 60, and as Georg came closer and closer to that I kept expecting that surge of power that had been hinted at, but it never came. Even then, the discrimination in favor of mages became more and more obvious, and to a lesser extent archers as well. Amongst the various types of melee choices the heavier weapons, such as swords, were dominant. So a touch of dissatisfaction set in, and I created a few other characters, including the stalwart Orion Bearsun who was, if memory serves, a mage in the early days and who indeed did better than Georg.
Sharon never wanted to play, and at first the kids were content to sit by or on me and watch the game unfold like a TV drama while occasionally pushing a key when asked to do so. Later Chip asked if he could have a character as well, so Ranger Hunter was summoned forth, and a short time later we bought his account. He fit in well with the group, who protected him from some of the not-nice play that was going on from some, and so for a bit less than 4 years we had fun going on quests, finding houses close together when housing was introduced, and the like.
The computer capability has changed massively since those early days. People today know nothing of the frustrations that we faced every month with slow and sometimes game-stopping patches, overcrowded servers that often led to slow service or even the frustrating "portal storms" that bump random players to random nearby places on the map, and the like.
Fun times. There were certain quests, or areas, that were "better" than most others, and of course those were the places we often wanted to go. So we spent a lot of time in or around Fort Tethana, since the merchants there bought goods at higher returns than anywhere else, and since the ability to level was greatly enhanced by the hordes of high level critters ripe to be hunted. Of course they fought back, so you had to be cautious if you did not like spending time recovering items from your corpse, but with a good group we could usually win without any deaths. The Halls of Methos was another good place, where my very poor jumping ability was displayed by often falling into the acid pit, but once that was crossed a good time was to be had hunting in the various underground areas. A funny incident occurred in the Halls: Two of our cats were very active wanting to be around us, and sometimes liked to be the center of attention when we were playing too. I do not remember if it was Diamond Eyes or Little Foot, but one day I was about to try to jump the acid pit when one of the cats decided to do a "keyboard" walk. I watched the screen as the character I was playing suddenly jumped into the pit. But he never hit the acid! The cat had caused the toon to jump right on top of one of the golems who live in the pit and so for some time "I" rode around like a king.
"Listening" to other's was sometimes fun as well. One day selling some cheap armor and weapons gathered from a nearby battle in Holtsburg I heard a male character talking to some female character. Suddenly he had a startling thought, and asked "How do I even know you are a girl?" which boiled down the whole feeling of near total anonymity that these games offer, but also the sense of detachment that the wise player adopts for some aspects of the social interactions. Because you really do not know who you are playing with - girl, boy, young, old, nice, bad. And there was no way to "prove" you were of one gender or the other. So what if you sent a picture outside of the game, how did the other player know it was a picture of you? Our allegiance contributed to this certain knowledge of uncertainty: We had a web-site with a section where people could send pictures, one player chose to post a picture of him or herself that was of an attractive woman. Soon thereafter one of our other allegiance members identified the picture as one of the leading porn stars of the time.
After about 3 years the gang started to break up. This was a sad time, as without a group these games are a lot less fun. I forget who left first, we kept playing but after some time the day came when Skopio was not on; while he came back on a day or so later his play became less and less frequent, and in a short time he simply stopped playing at all. Over the next few months I paid the rent on his cottage hoping he would be back while still playing every day with the ever-shrinking group and having less and less fun as there were fewer and fewer quests we could do. Several of us had exchanged email addresses, and Skorpio told me that his real world issues (religion among them) were needing more time. I kept thinking that maybe the group just needed a break and would soon be back to having fun, but sadly that never happened Eventually, I stopped paying his rent, in bitterness at his leaving, and went on playing though less and less often with those few who kept going, but the spell was broken and I did not even care to try and find new friends.
Sometime later I heard about Dark Age of Camelot, which offered a new and better graphics package and some new and exciting concepts in game. It was a strong contender to move on to, but I resisted, since a few of the old friends still played AC (Pigroast, Lycentia, some of the Vrumor group). But soon after Chip, who was 12 or 13, had a run in with one of the kids we played with who was a jerk but who he had for some reason befriended in game. He responded by breaking from the guy, who was his patron, and the poorly designed game broke his ownership of his house which was quickly snatched up by another player. Since having those two homes close together had become a Chip and Dad "thing" it was easy to move into DAoC and leave AC behind.
DAoC had some nice improvements, but also some of the old problems with frustrating game design and some new issues as well. All of these games feature two distinct aspects that players often either love or hate: Player vs. Environment (PvE) or Player vs. Player (PvP) as the "reason" for a given character's very existence. PvE players do quests, desire to "beat" the game. PvP players do quests mostly to get better (uber) gear so they can beat other players. The PvP aspect was given greater prominence in DAoC than in AC, with huge areas of game map and character development devoted to it, whereas in AC PvP was a "by choice" part of the game. In DAoC it seemed that so much of the game was PvP that not joining that aspect was to miss out, so I tried it and did not always do horribly bad. Of course I never did wonderfully good either, at best helping the good players from our little war bands, but it was sort of fun. I had tried PvP a bit in AC, and found that I neither liked it nor was that good. The problem I think was that I was at a disadvantage, having spent the first 30 or so years of my life never having held a game controller, nor used a keyboard for anything other than work related or the relatively simple non-simulated combat related pursuits. So the kids who had grown up gaming, who knew almost instinctively what keyboard buttons produced what response, who could move and fight without having to think, had a great advantage. Losing almost every time was not fun, so the response was to not join in the activity that resulted in losing.
Anyhow, Kristi got her own account, and Chip eventually started playing some futuristic first person shoot 'em up with great success. Daughter met husband - though they got married only recently - in game, son became a very good gamer, including PvP, and soon the kids who I had introduced to gaming far surpassed me and moved on, and sadly we did not play much together. So, though I had in game friends it was in this way not as fun as AC. And the DAoC friends never took on the same level of comradeship as the old group in AC had. Looking back, I cannot recall any of their names, nor can I recall many quests or adventures with them.
World of Warcraft started out a huge success and kept going from there. The kids shifted over first, if I recall, and then I did and even Sharon decided to play. Again, for a while we had a lot of fun. Even though the kids soon wanted to do their own thing Sharon and I found some others who wanted to concentrate on the non-PvP aspects of the game to make up for the familial neglect. But slowly, as we reached higher character levels, the game goal started to turn more to the concept that if you wanted the best gear you should play with massive groups for immense amounts of time, neither of which fit my requirements. As a working guy I did not have endless amounts of time to spend playing, and that, along with not wanting to spend a lot of time in PvP (although WoW PvP was a little better than in DAoC) meant that I seldom was able to get any "uber" gear. Drama occurred in a new guild that I tried after the first group fizzled, and with that fewer groups got together. Which inevitably meant less fun which meant that sooner or later I would be leaving the game. Still, WoW was good for a few years.
Several games followed. In no particular order, since I do not remember, came Warhammer, Aion, and Rift. Spent a few weeks in a game that was undergoing beta testing. Unfortunately it had complex key combinations and almost 100% PvP as the default; the resulting victimization game play made it totally unfit for my tastes. Perhaps there was one other game that made the grade for a while that did not make a big enough impact on me to remember. None were great, all were fun for a while and had their own good-game aspects. All had similar problems as WoW plus their own which were the result of poor planning and failure to learn from the mistakes of other games. The worst offense for all of them was that none of them are suitable for high level solo play, and by this time I had been cured of the idea of making a lot of friends in game. After WoW, where I had been in a couple of decent guilds, I found all future games to be populated by mostly unreliable and fairly self centered people. So as the desire for solo play increased and the games offered nothing to support I tossed them aside fairly quickly. Part of the lack of fun was not the fault of the games, rather it was the continuing distance that the kids kept. But I can not blame them, after all who wants to play with the old dinosaur who can't play PvP effectively? Who wants their private time intruded on by that same old dinosaur? Understandable, but still a bit sad. To borrow an idea from one of the really good movies: It was my first experience of "The Circle of Life" as the old lion, only this time from the aspect of massive multiplayer games.
At some point daughter and boyfriend invited me to play DAoC with them again, and I jumped at the chance. Finally back to playing with family members! And they had a few friends who tolerated even my lack of skills. For several months it was fun, we even had some success in the PvP area due to their high level skills. Good times for me, though since it only lasted a short time I guess it was not good times for them. Soon they moved to another game, while I did not want to go through the learning new keystroke combinations and game basics. Once again DAoC began to be more drudgery than fun, and I tried WoW again. And a most welcome surprise happened when the family all decided to try it together! Again the kids, and wife, and I played together a few hours on the weekends, and that was some of the best time online I had had. Our group started fresh, new characters on a new server, and we rocked! But, after a few months the wife and I would log on and play, expecting the kids to come on sooner or later, which happened less and less often. And eventually the old dinosaurs were left behind, and soon neither of us wanted to play anymore. Phil and his family had been playing for some time, and Sharon and I spent some time in their guild, but by then we were already leaving the game mentally so unfortunately this did not last long, through no fault of theirs. I think that was it for Sharon in MMRPGs, as in the last several years she has not responded to my offering to play again, though she did say that she had a lot of fun back when we used to play.
And now back to the game that started it all, to the beginning. Chip started playing AC again a few years ago, and after some months convinced me to reactivate my old account. It was fun, and we played together like in the old days, and we had some decent friends in the new allegiance to do cool quests. It brought a touch of melancholy seeing some of the names of our old patrons and friends never light up indicating that they were on line, but after a short time hoping they would rejoin us, and even putting out calls to them on various forums, and getting no response, I moved on. You who have any kind of pattern recognition already know what happened next. Chip realized he had to study hard in order to get the grades he thrives on, and quit playing. And now he is off to Japan to teach, gone I think forever from this, and perhaps all such games. Good that he puts what is more important ahead of games, but even so when, a couple of weeks ago, I heard him tell Brandon - his friend from our early days here - that he had traded the gaming craze for school and (I think he added) work, it touched a momentary sadness that our fun on the computer together was now gone probably forever. But with the current group of on-line friends there is still fun.
So I have carried on in AC, with the few constant players like Ygg, Nythak and Neo, and even including a very very few from the old days like Berek and Icedancer making the occasional appearance. But even now I start to think at times about leaving, only this time I may be ready to give up altogether on the multiplayer games rather than try another one. Several reasons: There are to few people on that want to do the quests I need in order to get the gear that allows one to even live in the advanced areas of the game much less succeed. And except for a little time during the weekends there are to few people on to do much questing at all. Solo playability has not been improved, therefor there is limited time to do the really fun things. I was excited about the next version of Everquest, where the players will impact the environment in ways I have wanted for years (build a tower and it stays in game, treat non player characters well and they will reciprocate, non player characters have lives and are going to change over time etc.) but it seems delayed, and somehow it does not excite me as I thought it would. I conclude that I am tired. Tired of disappointment in non-friendly and illogical game aspects (No real solo path to greatness, aspects like "How does a fierce beast with low intelligence and no hands carry gems, money, and items that it cannot use to be taken as treasure after you win the battle?" and "How is it that dozens of raptors do not have hearts to be taken after battles when you need to collect a number of them for a quest?" Etc, etc, ad infinitum) but even more tired of the endless stream of disappointments in having loved ones and in game friends stop playing.
And so it is today. Not sure how long I want to continue, but I have one goal: To get all of my original AC toons to the highest level, 275, some even strong enough to play in the advanced areas. Perhaps after that occurs I will take all of my and Chip's original toons back to Hebian-To, jump them onto the big rock where the old gang used to gather to plan our next great adventure, and afterwards to chat a bit before logging out until the next time, and say goodbye to what has been a big part of my life for so many years.
And another stray concept: Imagine if the toons, which represent us real people, meet up with their friends in some alternate universes and continue the adventuring, the questing, the comradeship that make this genre so much fun. But perhaps I will offer more on this some other time.
Good gaming!
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