People would line up for hours for their turn. I knew this because the spot we farmed to level me was a popular spot. We didn’t have voice chat, so our friendships were based on typing interactions like on Twitter, but without Musk. While they were my real-life friends, I met many amazing people in the game. There was something about how brutal MMOs were back then that made you need to be with people and bond with them. My fondest memories of DAoC were not the game itself but my friends. I think I made it to level 48 before SWG came out, before I even bought DAoC. I didn’t play the game long enough to get to level 50. We spent hours and hours a day in that one spot, helping me get to level 50. He was a bit of an odd guy and only liked to play hunters. Nobody really likes hunters except the weird ones. My friend used her level 50 Spiritmaster, while her husband used a bow-type character. I have fond memories of standing in this field as waves upon waves of enemies kept respawning on top of us. My friends told me about the importance of crafting and special spots to power-level me. I remember how challenging the game was and how long it took to level up. As a new Bonedancer, you don’t have many spells, and I assume I only had one skeleton minion to help me. My wife, at the time, made me put my computer in a closet so that I might have been lightheaded and imagining things. I ramble…where did I put my keys? Oh, on my head next to my glasses.Īhh, yes, DAoC! I remember the smell of the grass and the trees as I killed baby trolls in the starting area. I also found a few tips about the game on this thing called paper that was bound and placed in a store, like a real store, not one of those magic online stores. It blows my mind how many years this has been around. This was indeed the first website I found about MMOs. For real, I’m not just plugging this website. I do remember scouring the internet, and that is when I first found. Back in those days, we didn’t have Wikis to help us, only our friends and bottles of tears. I remember loading into the game for the first time. I tried a few other classes, like a Skald, Spiritmaster, Ruinmaster, and Shadowblade, but none stuck, like the Bonedancer. Talking to my friends, they confirmed I should join them as a Midgardian. I can’t count how many times I saw a mouth engage with the wall-phone mouthpiece. Parents have it easy these days they just need to wipe the moist molecules off the slick screen. The great thing about having young kids and a wall-phone, was the juicy particles that clogged those holes. They had little holes in the plastic cover so your voice could be carried to the speaker. The great thing about wall-phones was the mouthpieces. I went home with my future copy of DAoC and called my friends on the phone connected to a wall. It doesn’t matter, though it happened the way I wanted it to happen. My discussion with the elfin bookie in Europe wouldn’t occur until after February 2004. I just noticed that my timeline is a bit warped, seeing how SWG came out in July of 2003 and Trials of Atlantis didn’t release until October 2003 in the US. After a couple of pints of this black tar liquid, I decided to buy a copy of DAoC that included the best expansion ever, Trials of Atlantis. The bartender/football bookie sat me down to discuss what DAoC was and why Midgard was in peril. I remember walking into the British equivalent of GameStop, which was also a bar and a Spice Girls emporium, to preorder SWG. My friends were all playing this old MMO called Dark Age of Camelot while I was taking time off Everquest, waiting for the release of Star Wars Galaxies (SWG). Other than that, I don’t remember much of real life at the time. I remember diapers flying and babies barfing. I was living in England, and my wife had my third kid. It was the year 2003, and I had just put down the Everquest pipe. Hold on because it is going to get a bit bumpy! I’m taking you on a journey through a braintap in time. The memory is more of what DAoC is to me. What DAoC was might not actually be what DAoC was. I’m old, and my mind has warped reality and added a false sense of grandeur. I want to warn you, though, these are my memories, and they are not accurate. There is always hope, but one memory is not the same as another, no matter how well the stage is set to capture it again. You can’t just turn back the clock of an MMO and expect the same experience to be recreated. Something that will never be able to be recreated even if a “classic” server was introduced. I know Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) was not the first MMO, and it wasn’t my first either, but something about it has stuck with me all these years. I want to take you back to the beginning of MMO time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |