Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

The World of EverQuest before the Planes of Power

Random Thoughts

This was originally posted in a thread on the Monkly-Business message board, so forgive the places where it refers to another post:

Before the books, because the world was “larger” and travel time existed, people would go to a zone, and stay there or near there for a while.

I went to Unrest at level 23. Thankfully I had killed enough goblins in my younger days to earn the respect of the dwarves of Kaladim. I fought in Unrest on most days I logged in. Sometimes I would travel out to the Ocean of Tears and play on the islands, but most it was Unrest. There were up to 60 people in that zone in prime time, mostly the same people. We got to know each other, grouped in the various rooms of the house, met on early Sunday mornings to “break” the house. When the Ghost was on the lawn, it was a good day in Unrest. I finally left Unrest for good at level 34.

Like with my fishing trip story above, many of the people I met in Unrest, I still talk to. I show up at a public PoP raid and I’ll get a tell, “Hey man, been back to Unrest lately?”. A couple of us are even going to meet up in the next couple of days and go kill the Fabled version of the Ghost for old times sake.

Unrest isn’t a special place though… I have friends from my days in the Oasis as well… and the people I met in Frontier Mountains… and the Dreadlands. The reason we grouped so often was because travel time was non-trivial. People stuck around an area longer.

And most importantly though, there are people who were levelling up at the same time I was that I never met, because they chose a different path… they chose different zones to hang around in. Some of the oldest uber guilds on most servers were born out of Lower Guk and SolB and the times people spent together day after day, and the stories they share…

I feel for the people who only started EQ after PoP… they may enjoy the game, they may love it, but in the game we have now, its just not possible to have the same find of experience that people had before PoP. Travel is bordering trivial… its so easy to get to so many places, any zone not within 2 or 3 of a PoK book is empty… People don’t hang around a zone anymore… zip zip, they are off to the other side of the world… the guys you group with today are gone tomorrow… You can follow them, but its just not the same.

LDoN is bringing a little of that back… not the travel, but with people wanting to adventure in the same places over and over, you can meet the same folks again and again… there is a warrior I met doing Tak dungeons… 4 or 5 times he happened to be LFG when I was making a Tak group… since then we’ve done 30 or so adventures together, I’ve taken him with me to BoT groups and other places… and there are others as well… the spirit of the old dungeons is there… but it is a ghost.. a shadow of its former self.

This is what I want in Vanguard… I want a world thats big, where travel is non-trivial, where you stay in the places you know, and every now and then adventure off to the places you don’t… The world of EQ was different a long time ago. And every game that has come out since has in one way or another tried to “improve” on it by making things less non-trivial, easier. As much as people complain about the grind in EQ, people come back because most other games are so non-grinding that there is no real sense of accomplishment. In EQ, going through 59 was a trial by fire… it took forever… when you got 60, everyone in the zone cheered! Other games don’t have that, and that’s why EQ stays so popular.

Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

Anyway… enough of a ramble from me… I’m sure the people who don’t get it, won’t read it anyway…

A Work In Progress…

Random Thoughts

I’m not really looking for work. The company I work for is doing okay… and by okay I mean that on any given day we could either go bankrupt or close the deal on a project that would leave us all set for life. But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking. I’m always looking, its the nature of the IT beast.

So here is my resume. I recently reworked it because I needed to send a copy off to a posted position, so I figured I’d slap it in a news bit as well.

If Real Life Was Like The Movies…

Random Thoughts

… a 13 year old genius deliquent son of a corporate big wig who is forced to move with his father to the Middle East after his parents’ divorce would take his pre-teen angst out on terrorists and bring Osama Bin Ladin to justice by accident causing his parents to reunite.

2004

Random Thoughts

So, another year ends.

In 2001 I had a pretty horrible year. I got caught in the downturn of the economy for IT professionals and what should have been 1 or 2 weeks between jobs turned into 5 months. Then some shitheads flew a couple of planes into the World Trade Center, and what should have been 5 months turned into 8. I actually had 3 interviews lined up for the few days after 9/11, but by 9/12 every one of them closed their doors in a hiring freeze. I think the tragedy of 9/11 is exactly that. It was the worst single day in the lives of lots of people, but more than 2 years away from the shock and awe of that event, I mostly only recall that it extended my unemployment for 3 months, and added in excess of two thousand dollars to my already mountainous pile of debt.

In all honestly, when 2002 rolled around, I figured that I had just survived the worst year of my life. And as 2002 progressed, I felt that was accurate… until December 31st, 2002. That was the day my mother called me to let me know that she had cancer.

2003, as it turns out, would wind up dwarfing 2001 in personal pain and hardship. From day 1 life started to spiral downward as my mother started her chemo treatments. In February, we found out that the cancer was terminal, but that she had 2 years or more left because she was responding well to the treatment. In March, due to complications of a prior surgery, chemo had to be stopped and my mother entered the hospital. On March 17th, my mother came home from the hospital. Because the treatments had been stopped, and because of the prior surgery, the cancer had spread quickly. On March 26th, my mother passed away.

The rest of the year followed as many might expect. My mother was very important to me, and the loss of her darkened everything. Everyone in my family had to go through their first birthday without her around… first Halloween, first Thanksgiving, and first Christmas. 9 months later and everyone in my family is outwardly okay, but I know for myself that inside it still hurts.

So what does 2004 promise to bring?

More of the same unfortunately… Everyone keeps telling me it will get easier, but so far, the only person I believe is the one who said, “My father has been dead for 13 years, and it still hurts.” Hopefully though, there will be more to this year, and in some ways, after even only 2 days into it, there already is as I’ve been (sort of) given a promotion at work. No extra pay, but more responsibility. We’ll have to wait and see how that all works out…

2004… one day at a time…

December and Christmas…

Random Thoughts

As December decends upon us, it is clear that the time is nigh to draw close the books on 2003.

I’m not feeling particularly jolly this year. In March my mother died, and from all I ever saw, the holidays from Halloween to Christmas was her favorite time of year. So as a result, this being the first year without her, I’m stuck in a funk. I just can’t seem to get happy.

Add in to that the fact that my job is… well… unsatisfying, and that finding a new one isn’t going too good… add to that that I’m still mostly broke with the same pile of debt I had last year (though it seems bigger)…

In all of this though, I have become decidedly clear on one thing. If I had a million dollars, do you know what I would do?

I’d buy the rights to the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Sure, that sounds to be a horribly poor choice of where to spend the money, but I want to bring back something that I miss from my youth. See, a long time ago, Republic, the company that owned the rights to the movie wasn’t enforcing them, so, every TV station would show “It’s a Wonderful Life” about ten or a thousand times from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

The movie itself isn’t the most fabulous thing in the world, in fact, when it opened in the theater, it bombed. The story isn’t terribly fantastic, and these days you’d almost consider it a “cookie cutter” Christmas tale. But as I was growing up, there was something magical about it. I’d be waking up for school and while eating breakfast I’d flip on the TV, and George would be yelling about finding Zuzu’s pettles… then I’d come home, and sure enough, George was getting boxed in the ear for not delivering the pills… on Saturday, George would be jumping into the lake to save his brother and messing up his ear… Wednesday, they’d be singing “Buffalo Gals won’t you come out tonight”… Every time you had a few minutes before getting lost in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, you’d catch a minute here or a minute there… you’d be flipping the channels looking for something to watch for 10 minutes until the show you wanted to see came on… it was there, in the background, blending in and hiding away, sometimes you wouldn’t even realize that you’d actually watched the movie three or four times, although never at a single sitting… until finally, you’d pick a time and set your mind to settling down and watching it… but even if you didn’t, it didn’t matter, because you’d seen it, it was there….

Then through the legalities of the business world, someone found out they owned the rights and pulled in their strings. It only airs once or twice a year now. I bought it on video (and then on DVD), but its just not the same… there’s something missing, something less about it now…

So that’s what I would do… If I had a million dollars, I’d buy the rights to “It’s a Wonderful Life”…

And then I’d let everyone who wanted to to show it as often as they wanted to, for free.

The Past is Past

Random Thoughts

Thank God.

However, in my youth I was a roleplayer. Occasionally now while playing EverQuest I’ll mess around a bit, speaking in character, but as with Roger Rabbit “only when it is funny”. Years ago, I would sit at a table covered in books and dice, and 5 or 6 of us would play Dungeons & Dragons, or Top Secret, or Star Frontiers, or any of a plethora of games that we owned.

This is too funny not to link.

Was I ever like this?

Probably. And know, that as I write this, my head hangs in shame.

Enjoy!