Long before EverQuest’s Karnor’s Castle garnered infamy, the art of training was in its infancy in a little zone called Solusek B (Sol B, sister zone to the lower level Sol A). Sol B was one of the higher end zones in the original EQ, with tiered levels of mobs providing experience from the upper 30’s well into the 50’s. Mobs were generally in larger packs than previous zones, spaced closer together, and had a decent respawn speed. Add in clueless noobs and the fact that most paths invariably crossed, pure chaos would ensue.

Upon zoning into Sol B (there was one main zone-in and multiple side zone-ins from Sol A), you were greeted by some form of Kobold. They hit rather hard for their level (when the zone was new, nobody had much in the way of gear) and occasionally had a healer packed in with them. They would also flee, and, god forbid you didn’t snare them or you could be sure many new friends would be racing to properly greet (kill) you.

If you were the only group there, this wouldn’t seem like a problem, since you could easily set up near the zone out and simply pull there and run 10 feet to the zone out if something went wrong. However, unlike World of Warcraft, there were no private instances at this time. Twenty hours of the day you could be sure there would be at least 30 others in Sol B and during peak hours there would be well over 70 people in the zone.

Mobs in Everquest were very social, meaning they would attack other groups if you hadn’t generated enough hate or someone zoned out and they were wandering back to their spawn spot (no evade+sprint back as in WoW). They would also chase until either they died or all aggro players were dead (unless you were a Monk, Necro, or Shadowknight with feign death). One bad pull from the back of the zone could easily make its way to the front and wipe out anyone caught in its path. This was known as training, and usually nobody bothered to warn anyone that one was incoming.

I can recall many 20+ Kobold trains wiping out half of the zone as you’d notice the zone’s population go from 70 to 40, and 5 minutes later the yelling would begin. The higher level mobs in Sol B (Bats, Lava Spiders) were also close to the lower level Kobolds making it that much easier for some moron to go wandering and bring the house down on you.

The biggest train I’d ever seen was one of about 10 Lava Spiders, 15 or so bats, and about 30 Kobolds. They even managed to pull the rare spawn Noxious Spider ensuring that everyone was poisoned and would die even after zoning out. Truly, it was one of those rare sights you just had to sit back and laugh.

To think some of these trains were not malicious would be naive. Hell, being a Monk myself, I purposely wiped many groups who dared to invade my group’s camp spot and pull our mobs, or to just kill off some asshat I didn’t like. Since I had feign death, there was little reason to worry about reprisal — if they did try something, I’d simply wipe them again. Scenarios like this lead to another phrase in Everquest, “Never fuck with a monk”.

Karnor’s Castle may have later claimed status as the largest and most frequent zone of trains, but everything has a beginning, and it was quite a bit of fun being part of it. I had some amazing trains in Karnor’s Castle as well, but that’s another story.

And he’ll say something like: Do you wanna hear about the first time we killed The Froglok King in EQ? – Foton)

The good old days. Cliche? Probably. However, still quite accurate. For all I felt went wrong in the later days of EverQuest, I truly enjoyed the beginning. The vast majority of content was solo or group based and there was a more direct relationship between effort and reward. Most zones were setup to hold multiple groups with multiple named areas available to drop various equipment. Groups would go on for hours, leveling took time and while gear was nice, skill was still important. I may be in the minority, but I always preferred to work a little rather than the instant gratification approach World of Warcraft (WoW) has taken.

I still remember our server’s first attempt at The Froglok King, boss of the live side of Lower Guk. There were no online guides, no maps of the dungeon, just a few groups exploring reaches we’d never seen and with no idea of what was to come.

If you never played EverQuest, you may be wondering why this would be exciting to anyone. Lower Guk was a rather large zone split into a live and dead side (similiar to WoW’s Stratholme). However, unlike WoW instances, Lower Guk was not nearly as streamlined to lead you towards any boss. There were numerous tunnels intertwined and leading nowhere in particular, loaded with roaming mobs on top of the regular spawns, none of which would reset until you were dead … no matter where you ran. There were invisible walls, holes in floors, you name it, you probably wandered into it…and paid the price.

Still wondering? When you died in Everquest, all of your gear and gold stayed on your corpse exactly where you died. You went back to wherever you were bound (much like a hearthstone however not restricted to certain locations) no matter how far away that may have been. Sometimes you could spend more time getting your body back when you were logged on than actually killing things.

This may not have been the most player-friendly method, but it sure as hell added a risk/reward factor that does not really exist in WoW. Try to imagine three groups of players (15 total) blindly roaming through a zone none of us had ever been in and knew nothing about, looking for a boss we didn’t know existed.

We slaughtered the entrance Frogloks and plowed through the Minotaurs behind them. Through much trial and error we made our way through the winding tunnels and emerged in a water filled room with three planks to allow passage. Halfway through the room I noticed something out of the corner of my screen making a beeline for us. Holy shit, it’s a huge eye and it’s nuking us! People frantically scurried about, some taking a swim, as we tried to group up and engage it. Once it was downed, we were rewarded with the server’s first Manastone (no-cooldown right-click health-for-mana item, unlimited use. Oh yes, imagine the power).

Continuing on, we passed the Froglok Fort (we later learned the Froglok Crusader spawned inside) followed the path down some terrain (Froglok Noble spawn) and came to a room with a seemingly well-guarded dead end. Oh shit, it was actually an invisible wall and the Frogloks came pouring through to greet us, along with the Huge Water Elemental (which was ironically quite tiny). Splat.

A few hours, and many dead Frogloks later, we returned to the spot of our quick, bloody demise to try again (respawn was 20ish minutes — you mess up, you redo it all). Our friendly water elemental was turned into a puddle in short order and in the next room we met a few Frogloks and their gargoyle buddies, who were also dispatched of. Finally, after all of this time, we came upon the King’s chamber complete with throne and what do we see other than a Froglok Guk Knight. Fuck! (In Everquest, bosses did not always spawn and often had placeholders you had to continually clear until the boss finally spawned.)

It took 7 spawns for The Froglok King to appear and two of his guards respawned during the battle, healing him back to full quite a few times. Our Clerics and Paladins tried to stun, tanks tried to keep the adds under control and our casters unloaded their wads. One guard died, then the second and the King was alone again. When he was finally getting low on health what else happens but he uses Lay of Hands on himself (similiar to paladin ability in WoW, massive paladin-only heal). Undaunted, we pressed on and six of us fell before he finally keeled over at our feet. For all of our time and effort we were rewarded with the first Mithril Two-Handed Sword (best 2h sword to date at the time on our realm) as well as it being the first server kill.

Here’s to hoping developers start innovating and making things new and fun again instead of following the same old, and quickly tiring, formula.

To do a comic strip you need to be: A. funny, and B. a good artist, and most are C. neither.

I didn’t even get past the first strip, y’know to see if he was usually funny and a good artist, because his main character had the exact same name as this crazy fuck I knew in EverQuest-Classic. Let’s say his name was Venus, although it wasn’t, so don’t ask any Venuses you run across if they’re crazy fucks. (Even though they probably are, that would be rude.)

Now Venus, the character, was a half-elf chick, but Venus, the player, was a dude. (Ya, one of those shemales you’ve heard so much about.) Apparently it was Venus’ aim to roleplay a lesbian slut because he spent the latter portion of his EQ career trying to cyber the pants off of every pixelated female on the server.

At least he was carving out his own niche in the cyber game.

Venus bounced around from endgame guild to endgame guild, there were various rumors of it being an ebay toon, and I can personally verify that Venus had a nasty habit of getting his Planes of Power flags then guildquitting to join the next guild higher up on the EQ food chain.

(An aside for the cheap seats: In EQ, just because you paid for the additional content in an expansion pack didn’t mean you would have access to that content any time soon. Planes of Power — PoP — was a tiered expansion whereby your character had to complete various encounters — i.e. get flagged — to gain access to the next set. Evil genius.)

Eventually, Venus slept his way to the top, in a manner of speaking, and was guilded in the Uberest of Uber guilds. They were aware of his reputation, no doubt, but when a guild is starving for a particular class, ethics and standards can go to Hell. Once Venus was in the uberest, he had more time on his hands (heh), as his cybering antics began to get a lot of airplay in our own /guildchat and on the server boards as well.

One incident in particular unleashed a shitstorm on the boards, and that’s what got me chuckling this morning.

Venus had struck up a friendship with a (real) female in a rival guild, just a minor “hey, how ya doing” type thing … a relationship that any NORMAL person wouldn’t consider very close … and late one night, when all the guilds are finishing up their raids, he tried to press her into cyber service. Maybe some hawt lesbian cyber action, who knows. The (real) female declined, and declined, and declined, and eventually logged for the night after her guild’s raid was complete.

No big deal so far, has happened every day in every game around the world ever since that first cyber dude /tell “I’m touching myself” and the chick /reply “eww”.

The next night, Venus got started early with his cyber propositions, after all, maybe she was just rushed for time but otherwise was willing. Again, declined and declined and declined. Next night, Venus changed his approach and started sending her /tells with a simple “meow”, about every 30 minutes or so, “meow”.

Was he going for the obscure reference there? Was he breaking new cyber ground? Interesting technique at any rate.

He continued with the meows (and only meows) for a couple of days and the (real) chick finally had enough and complained to Venus’ guild leader. Through the gossip chain, we learned the GL’s response was something like, “err, what?” and then “what the hell am I going to do about that?” He had a talk with Venus anyways and probably hoped the whole thing would go away.

Days later, Venus was still meowing so the (real) chick took it to the server boards to complain and to ask if others had been similarly bothered by the crazy fuck. Goddamn, they all started popping out of the woodwork then; there were dozens of meow victims and they were plenty angry about it, too. We even had a few victims in our own guild, although our guildies had mastered the /ignore command long before, and had moved on with their lives.

Venus’ guildleader had to step in again and make apologies on his guild’s behalf, which I enjoyed witnessing a great deal. From what I heard, Venus playacted a NORMAL person for a few days, then relapsed into his meowing again. I do know that he was kicked out of the Uberest later that week and Venus, the character, was back on the ebay auction block soon thereafter.

Sadly, Venus version 2 (or was it 3?) was operated by a normal human with no feline proclivities. I imagine that was a hard rep to step into, even by ebay toon standards.

Think of all the catcalls. *rimshot*

OMG, noob.

There’s a lot of information in online gaming that I’ve had to sift through and, in the old days, we didn’t have your fancy shmancy quest logs and your hoity toity User Interface Quest Cheat Sheets and all that nonsense. We played MMOGs like manly men and took notes.

Yes, you can feel free to make fun of me at this point. My god, I needed therapy and no one noticed this?!?!?!

Anyways, towards the end of my EQ career, I had spent some time organizing my End Game Information System into two huge binders: one for all the zone maps with little penciled notations of zone borders, camps (no one noticed that cry for help?!?!) and the other for all my quest printouts with detailed locs, spawns, timers, assbags that might be camping the same, etc.

And, there’s a lot of good comedy material in those two binders, but the best stuff is in the little spiral notebooks from the first few months of EverQuest.

The Very First EQ Spiral Notebook contains such tidbits like this:
Kelethin merchant pricing (I guess my first character must have been a woodelf; ffs, I don’t even remember that character.)

Torch — 1 silver 3 copper (ooooo, expensive!)
Water — 1 s 3 c (hey, I figured out a shorthand method to record prices … and what the hell was I doing buying water when I could forage it?)
Fishing pole — 2 g 5 s 4 c (I recorded the weight as 1.0 also. WHY??? WHY???)

I also recorded the selling prices of mob loot. The biggest seller was the ROYAL JELLY off the wasps … 3 s 9 c. Hot damn, a noob could get rich off that.

I drew my own sketches of some noob zones and I’m not sure why. The sketch of Crushbone has a big coffee stain on it — that must have been an early morning jaunt into CB.

WTF, I recorded my bank balances each day. (No one saw THAT as a cry for help either?!?!) It looks like I kept the log for almost 3 weeks and I never got up to one platinum. God, I sucked.

The next few pages have notes about good hunting zones at the various levels. Other than the obvious comedic value of THAT, the funniest part is “Level 35 – Sol B! Sol B! Sol B!” I guess someone gave me that advice and emphasized its importance by repeating it many times, cuz I was that noob. And he was right … Sol B at level 35 was key and I was that noob.

At this point, I believe I remade the woodelf who I can’t even remember, because I started a new bank and merchant pricing log and different hunting zone recommendations.

OMG, I sketched a map of East Commonlands; I should be shot.

There’s a few pages of Asheron’s Call notes. I must have tired of the grind as a level 10 EQ character. I returned to my Dark Mistress soon, however, as there are only 5 pages of AC notes.

The second EQ spiral notebook has some notes on my first raiding guild and our planned raids, which look like this: Fear (Plane of Fear), Fear, Fear, Hate (Plane of Hate), Fear, Fear, Fear, Nag (Lord Nagafen, one of the dragons in EQ-Original), Hate, Fear, Fear. What in the hell? How did our druids talk us into doing Fear so often?

The third EQ spiral begins with the release of the first EQ expansion, The Ruins of Kunark. Good lord, I have a written draft of my guild’s refusal to follow any player-mandated scheduling system. Wow, I was a real ass too. Not a surprise, but what is shocking is that my guild put me in charge of public relations. I probably missed a guild meeting and there were no volunteers for the position, but really, they could not have made a worse choice.

I probably should pitch all this paper into the trash, but there’s something very special about a list of kill-stealing assholes players that regularly camped the jboots camp … MORE THAN FIVE YEARS AGO.

You heard me. I could name names!

We had an hour, plus or minus, before their expected arrival so we were cranking out a level or two, as a level or two never hurts when night elves are pouring out of the woodwork. I was also thinking a short grind session might keep my noob ass out of the graveyard for a few extra minutes. I was wrong, but hell, live and learn.

Grinding exp is grinding exp no matter what world or game it takes place in, so my groupmates asked for a story to pass the time. They’re not asking for epic tales of holy knights and damsels in distress; they’re looking for the dirt, usually involving skanks or jagbags, but probably they’d enjoy a lesbian story also. If I had any lesbian stories. Which I don’t.

Almost ten years in online gaming, you’d think I’d have at least one lesbian story. Odd.

I wasn’t in the mood to recount YET ANOTHER loot mishap, or the classic “my brother was playing my character and logged off with your ebay-able items in my backpacks” type tale, so I told them this one:

Few years back, in EverQuest (natch), around the time of the Velious expansion, there was a new guild on the horizon. Not my guild, but we were keeping our eyes on them nonetheless as they were quickly moving up the food chain, so to speak.

For the MMOG noobies that have grown up in an instanced world, this may not mean much. Back in the old days, grasshoppers, we had to race like bats outta hell to get to the “good” mobs first. No boss mobs = no loot tonight.

It was no coincidence that the best equipped guilds were the guilds that assembled quickly, and were willing to … let’s just say … “do what was necessary” to arrive first. Accordingly, more competition was not good news and this particular NewGuild had demonstrated a willingness to expand their ranks quickly, even picking up those of questionable reputations if their profession was a desirable one (read: warrior, cleric or enchanter).

NewGuild’s leader was actually a respected member of the server: good rep, had spent a year or two in a role-playing type guild, mature behavior and attitude, and, as we learned later, (and will be important to the story), in real life he owned and operated an internet cafe from which he and a few of his guildmates played EQ … seemingly all day and night.

His right-hand man was a real life friend of his that played from the cafe — maybe he was NewGuild’s raid leader (my memory has fogged on this point) — but his rep was considerably different from the leader (read: incredible asshole, ebayer, loot ninja … younameit, he was it.)

No one really understood the friendship, except that they knew each other in real life, and we just assumed that RightHandMan was an okay guy when he was out and about in the world … but come login time, he morphed into The Server Jagbag.

NewGuild had experienced quite a bit of success in equipping their members and their recruiting started to take off of its own volition. (damn!) We even lost some of our members to NewGuild (double damn!) and though they expressed regret at having to put up with Server Jagbag every night, NewGuild Leader’s calming presence was enough to keep them in the guild and happy, too.

One day, my guild was logging in for another night of primetime racing raiding — our raid leader was going over his spawn algorithms (or however he used to track that), our public relations guy was preparing his excuses for whatever misdeeds we might commit on our way to BossMob45 — you know, the typical machinations of an endgame guild with 50 mouths to feed, metaphorically.

As we were about to begin the “race to BossMob45” routine, we heard through chat some rumblings about NewGuild’s leadership changing hands in the equivalent of a MMOG coup d’etat. I was disappointed to learn it was a bloodless coup and that they weren’t disbanding (damn!), but I’m a jackass like that.

Apparently, the coup had gone down the night before like this.

After finishing a successful night of raiding, NewGuild leader tells the guild he has to go afk quick to take a piss. A few minutes pass and he gets back to keyboard only to discover he isn’t guildleader anymore.

The guild was confused, as was the former leader. A game bug? Server burp perhaps?

His good ole buddy, Server Jagbag, finally fesses up that while former leader was off taking his piss, Jag had transferred guild leadership over to his own account, and, by the way, he wasn’t giving it back. Ever.

Now catch this. Instead of ripping off the Jag’s arm and beating him with his own severed limb (as you would do), the former leader starts typing wildly to various guildmembers to try and organize a coalition of sorts to restore him to power. Meanwhile, Jag is typing wildly to the guild over guildchat, shoring up his own tenuous authority by pronouncing this a new era for NewGuild, an era of loot richness and phatness, probably l33tness too!

Seriously. In his bud’s internet cafe, Jag is ripping his bud a new one. (oh, the irony!)

To his credit, he did explain to the guild that he’d probably be offline for a few days while he made arrangements for internet access. (oh, the irony!)

Now, which do you think won in this little powerplay? Loot or Loyalty?

Hey, avarice isn’t one of the deadly sins for no reason. You know very well that loot won.

I’ve heard many tales of MMOG coups over the years — hell, I’ve even participated in a few — but that’s the only coup I’ve ever heard that was planned around a guy taking a piss.

Let that be a lesson to you guildleaders out there. An empty Snapple bottle is your friend.

Here’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

About three or so years ago, I was an EverQuest guide. Hard to believe, I know: how in the world did he get through Sony’s rigorous screening? and, why in the world would he want to get through Sony’s rigorous screening?

Short answers. The screening was mostly: can you type and have you printed out the 149-page Guide Manual? As to the why … I was in between hardc0re raiding guilds, I was burned out and I thought it might be interesting.

It wasn’t interesting, other than the great comedy material I pharmed, but hell, live and learn.

Now here’s the thing: Sony had a hardon for making absolutely, positively, no doubt about it, certain that the petitioning player had a legitimate claim before the guides could reimburse or rectify the situation. This was drilled into our candidate heads ad nauseum. Because, as it was explained to us (in so many words), we all know most of the players will lie to get “ahead” in EverQuest.

So I toed the line while I was just a pretend guide-in-training, but once I got my own Guide resurrection stick, it was mayhem.

Sony’s rule: player death due to a documented game bug could be Guide rezzed; otherwise, give them some roleplay song and dance and (CHEERFULLY!) invite them to enjoy the corpse run. Where are these documented game bugs? Where is said documentation? Nobody knew.

Foton’s rule: If Foton has run into the same shit in his play that you just did during your raid, rezzes all around, no thank you’s necessary! Foton will even /kill the aggro mobs nearby while your raid recovers. If I hadn’t run into that particular brand of shit that just mowed down your guild raid, give me a good story on why it sucked ass and you’ll get the same remedy.

I’m no idiot and have been around the EQ raiding block about 1,209 times, so don’t even think of telling me the Plane of Fear is bugged when I know damn well your dumass guild can’t follow the raid leaders’ instructions. (Those people always got my roleplay song and dance.)

Needless to say, I was more popular with the players than I was with my Sony GM superiors. But I ask you, just as I asked my Sony GM Overlords, do the players deserve any less? They spent their evening for just that moment, killing InnoryuckGodOfHowWeHateFarmingThisZoneAgain, and because of some fucked-up pathing, the entire zone just dropped on their heads from the sky.

I think 99 percent of the playerbase could cook up better schemes than pretending to wipe a raid due to a game bug for (maybe) three pieces of loot. To share. Among the 40 of them.

Another situation that used to piss the hell out of me was the Play Nice Policy violations: you know, when Billy Necrophunker would zone his badass into an experience zone and start stomping on all the spawns just cuz he could or cuz he wanted. My first few weeks as an SOE-sanctioned guide (hehe, fools!), I would try to appeal to Mr. Necrophunker’s sense of fairplay.

Life Lesson #2690: The soulless have no sense of fairplay. So I would cut to the chase: “Hail, good fellow, this experience group here would appreciate if you left the experience monsters so they could improve their skills. Perhaps there’s another zone more worthy of your particular brand of death and destruction.” (like on another server).

Life Lesson #2691: The Necrophunkers of the world aren’t terribly ambitious. Billy would demand a random, no doubt banking on the 50/50 chance to get guide-sanctioned peace and quiet in a level 30 zone with ebay potential.

Life Lesson #2692: Roleplay typing takes too much time. “Listen Billy, you have two choices here. You can leave now or you can leave later after I fill in all the blanks on my guide incident report.” For crissakes, there’s only about 50 zones where he can pharm his bullshit, $5 a piece ebay crap, why this one? And c’mon Billy, who is Sony going to believe? You and your spotty record, or me and my guide incident report with several polysyllabic descriptors?

Life Lesson #2693: Randoming PNP disputes is for lower primates.

I think it was about this time that I was put on Double Secret Probation … or something. There were UNDOCUMENTED guide rezzes flying out the door, PNP shit was solved through compromise and coercion, and I was generating far too much paperwork for actual Sony employees with my item and quest reimbursement requests.

I’m such an ass. I thought players that got ripped by broken quests should get their reward anyways. I would even followup on reimbursement requests by checking on the status. The balls on me!

I’m not certain, but I believe I got caught one day in a Double Secret Sting when I lectured some jagscratcher on the errors of his way while he lay in wait for an epic mob that some poor sap had been camping for several hours. The sap assumed (correctly, I would guess) that said jagscratcher was going to KS the mob for his twink and had requested assistance. Ever the champion of the underdog, I arrived in the zone and gave the jagscratcher my usual PNP choice: Leave now or leave in 30 seconds.

I was summoned to the Qeynos Catacombs (the l337 guide hangout zone) to explain myself (as if), and subsequently to turn in my battleworn rezz stick. There would be no more free EQ account for me! (Ya, that $10 a month was so worth it). I don’t (and didn’t) harbor any ill will for getting shitcanned — if I was SOE, I would have canned my ass, too. Their house, their rules.

At first, I didn’t understand why most of the other guides didn’t share my perspective or rebellious nature on player petitions. I did come to realize that the other guides didn’t have nearly the quantity of game time or character levels as me … and by that I mean, their mains were level 30 paladins and rangers roleplaying their way to the endgame whereas I was max level taking a break from several months of hardc0re raiding.

I had been fucked by EverQuest so regularly, I didn’t even entertain thoughts of petitioning on my own behalf anymore. Why waste the time and mental energy to do so? Obviously, my roleplaying colleagues had plenty of time and mental energy to waste before they would reach my upper echelon of lost hope. Ding! Level Lost Hope!

Congrats.

An argument has begun regarding the level of effort invested in the high-end EQ game. To defend his/her/its skeelz and l33tness, this lazyeyed fat chick from a midwestern state that excels in football and basketball person outlines his/her/its qualifications.

“My current /played on this character is 380 days, 20 hours, 10 minutes. I have also levelled up a 65 *class* and a 55+ *class*. My *main char* is Level 70 with 570 aa’s, and is currently ranked *#XX* out of all *main char class* on every server.”

Listen, normally I don’t pay attention to what people do with their time, and I’m certain there are scarier stats than this, but for crissakes, this is NUTS. EQ’s been around 5.5+ years … that’s 20 percent of someone’s life that’s been spent on a virtual life. No fucking wonder people get so attached to their characters.

OTHER people, that is.

I disgust even myself.

I reenter to a brave new world of strange acronyms (MU, omg, wtf, MU NOW); a world of maps (ok, not all of them work); a world where some content is free to whoever has paid for it (emphasis on “some”). I hope no one noticed what a world of wonder it was for me.

HOWEVER, I did reenter on my terms this time — meaningless for dev’s, a rude awakening for players. The way I figure, I’m max level, I have reasonable equipment, I’ve been around the block about 349 times, the rest of youse better know your “S”, or we’re going to have problems.

Example: In an adventure group, not difficult, but if we F it up, it’s two hours wasted. The monk continues to pull after the cleric (ok, me) screams for mana. Fine, thinks me, he can run around at 20 percent health. Monk: I can mend (heal himself with a long-reuse, no mana skill). Me: Ok, mend yourself out of that one, then. (Four tough mobs)

After resurrecting the monk … and to his great credit, he didn’t train his group (us) with his dumass pull … the rogue decides that he is bored AND a hero. Foton does not heal rogues. It’s education. (for the rogue) After resurrecting the rogue, I explained the facts of EverCrack to these “old schoolers”. And by “old schoolers”, I mean characters created about three years after EQ went live.

Here’s the facts of life:

I am waiting for World of Warcraft but I was bored tonight.

I heal no one but the warrior; if you need a heal, I hope there’s a druid nearby, because we all know they have nothing else to do.

Not to belabor this, but in the old days, we actually did kill Kunark content with level 50s and without elemental armor. Trust me when I explain that you suck and it has nothing to do with equipment or level.

If you want a buff, open up that trade window with a donation, because this ain’t charity.

As a member of EverCrack’s holy trinity, I can have you booted from the group without cause. You give me cause, you can be damn sure that you’ll be gone.

If something fails, it doesn’t suck. There was a time when failure meant HOURS, sometimes DAYS, of recovery. That was called “immersion” and, alternatively, “The Vision”. Do not make an even bigger jackass of yourself by whining.

But, most importantly, I’ve been banging around in this game too long to put up with subpar play. You have five minutes to figure out your job, or I’m moving on to something far more productive. Like hailing random mobs that may, or may not, give a quest.

Good news though, we finished the adventure and got nothing of real value our reward.

When the group left me afterwards, the druid asked, “jeezus, what kind of a cleric are you?”

I’m your worst fucking nightmare. Any other questions?

After the monkey tried to crawl on my back and I toyed with the crack pipe in my mouth, I wondered “WHAT COULD I HAVE BEEN THINKING?” For crissakes, I wasn’t even DRUNK.

Now, I realize that I’ve missed two expansions (I haven’t actually *missed* them), and I didn’t complete a lot of the content on EQ_Char03 that I should have, but jfc, I’m so woefully behind even the noobs, it’s as if I never played at all. If I had waited to take a peek after Omens of War is released, I’d be five levels of grinding yumminess behind too.

Just a sample of the problems re:  a year-long EQ vacation:

A.  I don’t even know what some of these spells are that noobs are begging for nowadays.  They think I’m being an ass, which I usually am, but in this rare instance, I am innocent.

B.  I’m broke.  EQ’s economy has always been vastly different from other MMOGs that have manufactured money, vis-a-vis mission payouts, but EQ_Char03 seriously could use some social services for the destitute (me).  EQ_Char03 has needs, man!

C.  I’ve spent two hours “looking around” and so far, all I’ve done is set up my hotkeys again, redid my interface to something not quite so mid-1990s, and somewhat relearned my current spell set.  Do you see killing mobs or making money in there anywhere?  Exactly.

D.  New acronyms that have been invented in my absence.  LDoN, LFA, Trib this ya shiatz mahn, need temp, etc.  WHAT IN THE HELL IS ALL THAT?  And, who could I possibly ask without looking like a hot-off-the-blocks eBay noob?  (Which I kinda am … only without the eBay.)

The next time I’m not drunk and wishing I was, maybe I’ll have five hours to read up on all the content I missed. 

Not that I really “missed” it.