Part Two

Neverwinter Nights debuted in 1991, and I wanted to play it so bad, though I never did have the opportunity. I watched someone else play it, though, and was able to see it in action. People quibble about what the first MMO was, and I still think that Neverwinter was it, even if the "Massive" didn't match the later numbers of some developers.

(One of the remarkable things about those "Gold Box" D&D games was that it was eventually released as "Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures", which basically allowed you create your own games. I was not able to buy it at its original price, but a few years later, around 1997, I finally got my hands on it and it was /good/. The limitations were legion, but I did not care. We'll get back to this eventually.)

In 1993 I got into a little text based MUD, Multi-User Dungeon, called Lost Souls. It still exists, believe it or not, at lostsouls.org. For the most part it was a little place with a lot of drama, if you bothered to pay attention, or stuck with it. The admin was drunk on his own power, and would clear out the character list every year or so. Guilds (another name for classes) would just disappear overnight. It had lots of flaws, but it was still fun. I recall a new guild that was introduced, and a character of mine, a sort of lawful stupid almost paladin type, took it upon himself to try to stop this new guild of witches. Evil types. They kept starting a plague and my character's guild was one of two guilds that could cure it. I found their secret lair, which took me a few days to find. I don't even remember exactly how I did it, but with a little luck and persevereance, they had a Justicar sitting outside their cauldron room.

It led to my atman, essentially comparable to my account name, having an alt that was a member of this little band of witches. I had to be reigned in, actually, I had a little too much fun being evil. I have my moments.

When that character was purged, I pretty much gave up Lostsouls.

A related memory is when I worked with the guy that eventually coded the Kazarak guild. He was fixated on "wizzing", or reaching "Wizard" status. It is now known as "Dev" status in other games. You completed all the quests and such and they let you dance in the proverbial playground. We worked as telephone operators at a university, and it was third shift, so I covered the phones while he did his thing. I watched over his shoulder as he hacked his way into the university gateway, and telnetted in. In a way it was sad how easily he was able to do it.

After I finally gave up on Lostsouls, I found myself lost. What do you do to compete with that kind of experience? It was a while before I stumbled across something called "Achaea".

I started playing in 1998, and it was a for-profit, free to play set up. It's all the rage now, but back then, it was revolutionary. I'd actually stumbled across its existence when I asked a guy on the Alternity forums (a now defunct effort by TSR to create a sci-fi counterpart to D&D) with the name "Sarapis" what sort of domain name was "Achaea". He promised me he'd send a note to my email when they went to beta. That email didn't happen. I'm still a little grumpy about that.

It had been live almost a year before I stumbled across it. I started as a paladin, and hooked up with a mentor that got banned from the game about three weeks later. There was a depth to the gameplay you still can't get. I lost myself in that game and its clones for seven years.

http://www.achaea.com/irex/helpview/help.php?id=157 Scavenger Nusiki, that's me. I was there for the first time the Dun valley was opened.

http://scavenger8.tripod.com/cgi-bin/dunvale.txt

That's a log of that night. It was magical. It really was.

I sometimes miss those days. Political intrigue, making a difference. "Dev" teams going out of their way to make things special. You just don't see it any more. Not like that. Flip side of the coin? I obsessed. OMG did I obsess. It wasn't an addiction, not quite, but I really couldn't find a reason to not do it. And then there was Feverfew. I didn't like her much at all, at first. Her first postings were atrocious. They were insanely clumsy. I "met" her for the first time climbing my way out of Dun Valley. I wish I still had that log. We became really good friends. I see a lot of qualities she had in my current wife. Good qualities.

Luerim derives from those days. It's actually Sumerian for "Evil Person". More or less. It's totally weird to find yourself playing a game, but that's where I was. Under the moniker "Luerim" I was able to give into the dark urges in a very positive way. I really like the name, too. Rolls off my tongue nicely. I'm not an evil person, but do tend to be very critical of certain things, and most people don't like my brand of criticism, because it's respectfully accurate, but slices.

In the graphical MMO arena, everything after that is almost a let-down.