Well, the EU servers have been down all morning so I reckon it's time I gave this blogging thing a shot. I guess the place to start would be my MMO history.
I played a MUD called Wolfenburg around the turn of the century, about the same time that Games Workshop announced a partnership with Climax to make Warhammer Online, way back in 2000. Set in the Warhammer universe and featured in White Dwarf magazine, I admit I can't really remember a lot about it, except that I only played for the trial (14 days I believe) and didn't fancy paying to continue. From what I do remember, it was good fun...
My first MMO was MU Online: Global, a free-to-play Korean MMO by WebZen. A colleague introduced me to this game in 2003, calling it "Diablo 2 but with 3D graphics and more players" and telling me how great it was. Looking back I have no idea why I played this game - there are no quests, it is simply a grind. 700 levels of grind. Open PvP was a good laugh and when I was being ganked by level 300s I enjoyed lurking at hotspots to get some duels going, maybe go red with kills and hope I didn't drop all my gear. On Maya, I managed to get my Dark Knight to 150-ish after playing on-and-off for almost 2 years and although the game itself was rather poor, I met a long-time MMO friend whom I later followed to MMO #3. I never did get my wings...
MMO #2 was City of Heroes by NCSoft. I got it imported shortly after release in the US (29th July 2004 according to my PlayNC account) and had to persuade my dear mother to let me use her credit card as I only had a debit card. The free time I got was great and I loved my Assault Rifle/Devices Technology Blaster. Alas, as the free time expired I thought it best to cancel until I could pay for it on my own card, which would be a rather long time...
MMO #3 was Lineage 2 on 14th September 2005, while studying at university. I joined my pal from MU (let's call him Fender) and started playing on Sieghardt with my female Blade Dancer. The first guild I joined was La Familia and when that crumbled some of us formed Manhattan Project - a guild based around nukers and their support. I convinced some uni mates to start playing and later, we joined Redemption. I believe around the time I stopped playing they joined Inner Circle and I waved goodbye to another MMO. I play every now and then, 26 months total time yet I'm still only level 54. I recently moved my BD, Allba, to Franz where my uni mates started playing but don't enjoy it as much as I used to...
MMO #4 (sort of) was City of Heroes & City of Villains, but the EU version, on 26th March 2006. Not being able to transfer my Blaster from the US servers (and thus denied the prestigious Passport badge) I decided to try something similar, but different. Having recently read quite a few Iron Man comics, it was homage time - enter Indigo Implosion, Energy Blast/Energy Manipulation Technology Blaster! Good times with solo PvE and seeing as much of the CoH content as I could. After getting some old friends from school to give it a go, we formed some supergroups - The Infinites for CoV and The Infinatum for CoH, both on Defiant. Playing with them was Quantum Leaper, a Gravity/Kinetics Science Controller. A side-project on Union was Blue-Jay, a Claws/Super Reflexes Science Scrapper. I met a few nice folks, most notably Knightly, but when my friends and I hit level 50 to make our Kheldians, we took a break and now only play very occasionally. Which brings us to...
MMO #5 WAR, since Open Beta. As I mentioned, I followed the game since its first incarnation by Climax back in 2000 (unless I'm getting my dates wrong) and was disheartened when it was cancelled and the forums shutdown. Thankfully, someone (Garthilk?) made WarhammerOnlineForums.com and it was basically a resurrected version of the official Climax forums. The RP community continued to flourish and I continued with the Black Wolves with friends Korvac, Kosh and Shadders. The forums were taken down again and the community split, half going to WarhammerAlliance and half... somewhere else. My interest in both the game and the RP came and went every now and then and at this point, I no longer RP with The Black Wolves Mercenary Company.
Before launch, I had planned to play a Chosen and Magus for Destruction and a Witch Hunter and Bright Wizard for Order. For the latter, I even did a small amount of RP - brothers Hans (now Haanz in game) and Scy Moon. Hans being the typically sociopathic Witch Hunter with Scy, his older brother, being a simple Bright Wizard with a love of bright colours and things that burn.
Interestingly, during open beta I fancied a go at playing a Marauder. So, off I went with a big stabby arm and I suppose I just fell in love with the class. I named him after a RP character, Braxus Bloodaxe and during head start, created him again on K-Dron, one of the only two servers that weren’t full when I managed to log in. So, that was Destruction on Dron, so where was Order? K-Orrud was the other available server, so that was that.
At level 17, someone from Acta Est Fabula invited me to join them on Dron and I stayed with them for a few weeks, up until the server transfers. Not having heard much from the guild and reading the forums, I decided to move to K-Azgal. My Order characters moved to K-Hirn and recently again to K-Norn.
Meeting an old guild mate from Dron, Switchblade, I joined his guild, Reapers Wraiths and that's where my shirtless mutant lives these days.
Hm, I managed to lose my own train of thought here...
So, as Slayers come into play and they seem good fun, I'll be playing my Marauder a little less and trying out a Slayer on Live - the name I got randomly generated was Gokillin (no, it really was) and it seems appropriate. I hope it can show a comparison of how Slayers level compared to how it was for my Marauder. Are things easier or harder? Is that due to a different sized population, or class abilities? Yada yada yada :p
Here's hoping I make a little more sense next time, eh?
Regards, Jay.
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