Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, people playing all games, but especially MMOs, had a willingness to learn that isn't there anymore. There's no hand-holding. No quests to follow. You're given a character to play, and this world to explore, and that's it. If you need help, you ask a fellow player - if neither of you know, you figure it out together. Probably because it was my first MMO, I'd find myself amazed at every new discovery or piece of information I came upon.
I was stunned by the generosity of a player giving me my first Ebony Sword, free of charge. I remember seeing the first player wearing level 11 armour and I decided to follow him, to see what incredible beasts he would be fighting - surely not the deers and scarecrows I'd been slaying for the last few hours. I ended up inside a dark cave - the first one I'd ever been in - and I immediately died to what I think was a giant scorpion.
(I'm sorry, you'll have to indulge me. I've found being nostalgic is kind of fun, and I can't seem to stop typing.)
I remember going back to that cave 5 or 6 levels later, myself now equipped in my new shiny light armour, and I come upon a group of people fighting a big red skeleton: we form a team; a few of us die, but then so does it; they ask me if I want to join their guild, and so I do (I had no idea what a guild was at the time). I make new friends, one of whom informs us that he is leaving this small guild to join one of his friends in True Family, one of the top guilds on the server. I ask if I can go with him, and he gets me in contact with their leader (Abelar, I think - I'm not too good at remembering all the names).
My first day in True Family we go on a guild hunt to Wooma Temple. I'm told stories of the Kings Room, of how it is deadly in there, how I should stay away from the walls or I could get cornered, how if I died that was the run over for me, because none of the higher levels would come and hold my hand back there again. After a very long run there (my first time past the first floor of WT), we make it into the KR. Another guild is already there, one I'd not yet heard of. The guild is Apex, who've gone on to be quite famous within the MMORPG scene. I'm told how their leader Wayne is the best player in the game (probably rubbish but I swallow it up). I'm told they have a strict level 33+ policy, a level I'm still way off, and that they have the most level 40s on the server (but we had more Dragon Slayer Swords, FWIW). Predictably, they get the Woomataurus, and we settle for a Wooma Guardian - he drops a ruby ring and I'm given my first rare item. I was over the moon.
Fast forward a long time, after killing all the bosses in the game, holding Sabuk Wall, making loads of money, and befriending many of the best players in the game, True Family disbands. Most of their top players join a guild called Divinity. Divinity is short-lived, partly because one of the founders fell out with most of us, and partly because we had found a better name: Revival.
Immediately I was considered a relatively prominent member of this new guild (the leader Zorin / Opel liked me). We had different principles to True Family, which by their name were predictably fairly friendly. We quickly became the strongest guild on the server, and we were going to flex our muscles. I'm sure if you played Dragon Server at the time and you weren't in the guild, you probably hated us. We'd go to every Kings Room, and get every boss. If there was anybody there, we wouldn't do the civilized thing and "join the queue" - we'd kill them. If we were there, the boss was ours. We'd gatecrash Sabuk Wars. We held it for a record number of days before a big alliance of other guilds took it off us. We'd relish being at war with as many guilds as possible, because PvP was what we were good at.
I'd log in and there'd be 5 different things to do. We'd have people in ZT KR, people waiting for Evil Centipede, people fighting a war. I think one night we managed to kill every boss on the server as well as hold Sabuk Wall in the space of a few hours. I'd gotten really good at the game. I had good gear, and the guild recognised me as a good player so invested in giving me some of the best loot that dropped. I believe I was the first Wizard with both Flame Field and Mirroring (the two strongest and rarest wizard skills) on either server. I had a Protection Ring. I was trusted to hang on to the guild's first Heaven Armour drop, and one of the first on the server. I had millions in gold. The guy who was amazed at being given an Ebony Sword.
I could go on all night. I won't. I doubt anybody's even going to read all this, though I don't mind. I'm just happy to reminisce.
/Olorin
