So there we “were”. My girlfriend and I doing the same old thing on a Friday night. Hanging out in greater faydark killing orcs in Everquest. We had 2 low-level players and weren’t really advancing in the game. She got bored (as she often did) and suggested we make human characters.
We decided on Freeport as our home city and she made a Bard and I made a Cleric. I figured these characters would last maybe a week before she got bored and deleted the new character (I was right in her case). I was playing and watching Adult swim on the cartoon network at the same time and the “Brack show” was on. So I called my new character Brackie since I figured this was going to be a short-term character and that the name wouldn’t be important.
As I had some money and some experience I was able to outfit the new character better than most and he was soon zooming up the levels. What’s more I found that healers were in wide demand. In a game that’s very proactive and promotes aggressive playing, players that are willing to sit back and play support roles are extremely sought after. I could get into any group I wanted and I soon was accepted into a guild (a player club).
I was soon raiding. Raids are large encounters where sometimes as many as 72 people gather together to do a multi hour adventure. These raids require special tactics and planning. I was the senior most healer in the guild and got assigned the task of developing our healing strategies. I turned to the healing chain.
In the ultimate encounter of a raid the toughest meanest fighter takes on the boss monster. All the other warriors take up supporting roles while the healers in the raid form the chain. A single healer would be overwhelmed by the encounter but a whole host of healers working in concert could sustain that one lone fighter. So I organized our chain of healers. One healer would heal and then the next and the next. We kept the chain going on a nice steady pace. Casting spells with machine like precision. Usually it might last 5 or 10 minutes. One encounter lasted a full hour. Over time we got to be pretty good at this and we attracted players due to our reputation.
Still amazes me how much time and effort I invested into all of this. How involved the community was in the whole game. I mean we had online worldwide rankings! Items in the game (computer files) could be sold in the real world for real world money. People would dress up as their characters. We had our own language of online terms that we could use easily and freely with each other.
Eventually all good things come to an end. That character that I was going to throw away in a week lasted me nearly five years. I had reached the ultimate level (at that time) that was allowed in the game. His equipment was the best and we had beaten all the boss monsters available. New expansions were coming out and new content and adventures but I felt that I had accomplished what I set out to do with that character.
Reluctantly I pulled the plug on that chapter of my online life. I had a wonderful time but I felt that I had new places to visit and new experiences to be explored.
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