Anarchy Online and Everquest
You know, I should write to this thing more often. But most of the time when I set out to maintain a blog, I get to where you enter something and it's like errr...
I consider myself a competent and able writer, but not when it comes to blogging. I have this innate aversion to journaling.
Lately I've had an attack of the nostalgia for MMORPGs I played years and years ago. Namely Anarchy Online and Everquest 1. I played both off-and-on for about four years, Everquest between 2000 and 2004 and AO between 2001 and 2005. Everquest was definitely more on than off, and like most who played it, I was hooked on it pathologically. AO, not so much. Unlike Everquest, there was this cool and remote feel to Anarchy Online that I never quite got over. For all of its team and guild options, there's a real sense of detachment about it.
Everquest was/is certainly a teaming/guilding affair and many was the cynic that referred to it as 3D AIM. A lot of the time you logged in just to meet and greet people. I can't say the same about AO - it's no that sort of game, at least not to me.
In the case of AO, this nostalgia took a further step. I actually downloaded the free client (the basic game and its first expansion are free to play) and started up a new account. Nothing's changed really. It's funny. Back in the day it first came out, I thought it so advanced graphically. After five years of being away, it now looks the vintage game it is. The sounds, the music, the sky, the gameplay, it's still the same.
I'm going to keep at it for a while. I'll renew my old account soon and get back into it fully. As for Everquest, I'm not going near it again, though I do like studying screenshots and maps of the game, and specifically, the newer expansions that came out after I quit. (I played up to the Ykesha mini-expansion). Having played Everquest 2 for years, the franchise no longer holds any actual gaming interest for me, and I'm getting jaded with fantasy MMOs.
More to come later.