| SvennoJ said: Everquest is all about team work. The game is very hard to play on your own and not much fun. Together you decide where to go, creating your own story of adventure, exploration and conquest. As most open worlds you can go (nearly) anywhere right from the start. Starting location makes a big difference as well. The best game of all time? For me it is. It is the game I have played the most and the game that has had the biggest impact on my life. The short story: I met my beautiful wife while playing Everquest. I had been playing Everquest for a couple months already, not really getting anywhere. Life past lvl 10 was hard and unforgiving in Norrath back in 2000. I was on my fourth character, an enchanter named Gazzook, this time carefully planned out from the beginning. At lvl 10 I decided to move to Freeport, a dangerous 40 minute journey on foot from Qeynos. In west commons I met up with a high elf wizard, recently moved to Freeport from the greater Feydark. From there I started to see her more often in groups in east and west commons killing orcs and bears trying to get a grip on the early teens. Christmas time was there and I didn't see her for a while. In the new year we met up again in North Ro desert and Oasis of Marr while dodging deadly giants. From there we occasionally took the boat to set foot on the continents of Velious and Kunark. Although the tower of frozen shadow looked very intriguing Velious was still out of our league. Kunark quickly became our favorite place to spend the early 20's. Lake of ill omen was the perfect zone with plenty of places to explore and hang out. There was lots of downtime in Everquest, plenty of time for good conversation. Often we would simply sit around chatting instead of actively looking for a group. After mastering the Saenak fort in Lake of Ill Omen we moved on to the giant fort in Frontier mountains and after that to the Overthere. By the time we got to the 40's and moved on to the dreadlands I decided to come over to visit for a week. After a 7 hour plane ride I arrived at 1 in the morning in a rental car in a foreign country in the middle of a snow storm, having never driven in snow before. Nerves aside it was one of the best weeks of my life and gutwrenching to have to go back. A couple of months later she visited me in Amsterdam and from there we kept going back and forth every couple of months. Obviously this was not an ideal situation, so by summer I was looking into immigration. The whole immigation process from Holland to Canada took about a year requiring tons of paperwork, physical tests, and documents going through 3 countries. In july of 2002 all planning came to fruition and we were finally united forever. My life changed completely, it was the best decision I have ever made. Not long after we got settled in we started playing Everquest again, this time side by side. This allowed for some interesting tactics, closely timing spells together. Our enchanter wizard duo became an unstoppable force, lag permitting. Shadows of Luclin had come out by then with some interesting zones, a hub to make it a lot faster to get around and a new graphical make over of the game. Yet Lower guk in old Norrath and Sebilis in Kunark became our favorite zones. Sebilis was the best. There we could round up and defeat up to 30 targets at the time by keeping them stunned with 2 enchanters while wizards blast them with area effect spells. A risky business but great fun. Planes of power was another good expansion, however Lost dungeons of norrath turned out to be our best. The random generated instanced 45-60 min dungeons were great for a few rounds each night to earn points for weapon and armor augments. After the next expansion, Gates of discord, we finally got married. We wanted to do it sooner but getting family together from a different continent takes a while. In good tradition we decided to visit some of our other long time Everquest friends during our honeymoon on the west coast. Omens of war was to be our last expansion. We were in the upper 60's by then and the game kept getting harder without raid equipment. We never did many raids since they tend to take anywhere from 6 to 12 hours at a time. Friends started leaving to Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft and by lvl 68, after 4 years and 8 expansions, we also made the switch to WoW. WoW was great but never reached the same heights (and lows) that Everquest has. We met many great friends on Everquest, the forced grouping to get forward makes it a real social game. Everquest also has way more spells, alternate advancement abilies, augments, all allowing for a wide variety of tactics. With plenty of odd spells and items to have fun too. My wife still hasn't forgiven me for dispelling her floatation spell causing her to drop out of the sky after jumping off the spiral tower in greater Faydark. Everquest is still going with its 18th expansion just released. It will be a while before we have raised our 2 gold farmers to high enough age to get back to it. |
Boah, what a response. Very cool that you met your future wife in the game and created storys with her in it.
You mentioned storys of conquest, exploration and adventure. I think you could have those also in many other games. But what seems to separate Everquest, or other MMORPGs, from those other games, is the ability (and almost necessity) of going about those adventures together. Perhaps this is a whole different way of experiencing games. When I play God of War, there is no time for introspection of my own. I do not explore my inner demons and wishes, but those of Kratos. And that also mostly through cutscenes. Deciding where to go woth another person and than constantly exchanging about what you experience together seems huge to me. It seems like a game mechanic (online multiplayer and chat) used to really write your own storys: to talk to people about the adventure, discuss battle tactics, ask why they play a certain way, complain about them doing, or not doing a certain thing, growing together over a battle, or appriciation of some lore, or growing apart because of how you respond to the games input.
I will say this: there are clear limitations to what story you can tell, since your tools of interaction are still walking, fighting, collecting and sharing. But honestly, this is the case in most games, minus the sharing and talking. ... I don't know. I sort of feel other limitations here, but I can't articulate it. Perhaps it is the broad nature of MMORPGs that might hinder certain expression of delivery. Or maybe it is this: in an MMORPG you are a small part of a big world and therefore it never truly feels as if the story is really about you but just something you participate in. Whereas God of War is the story about Kratos. And DMC is the story about Dante. And Faust is the story about Faust. Everquest is the story about nobody in particular. And for that something might be lost. ... Mhhh, I don't know. Not really satisfied with this either.
But thank you for sharing this cool story. Also the one with this space game you linked. I read some bits of it like your experience in the black hole. Wild stuff. Maybe it is good for a game to just provide "basic" building blocks for you to tell your own story, as long as you have the fortitude, willingness and creativity to tell them. .... Ah, maybe that's what bugs me: the game provides so little in your examples, that your storys would almost seem independent of those games and you could tell them in any other setting provided you can talk to other people while doing so. I mean sure, Everquest is not WoW and the lore of those worlds is very different. But the story you specifically tell through interacting with the game, those storys of conquest and adventure shared with another person seem applicable to many worlds.
