Different Reasons Abound

[Dinbin]

History:

I picked up the original EQ when it launched in 1999. I putzed around with a WE Ranger for a few months, getting almost nowhere, before, on a whim, a bunch of us at EQ Stratics forums (anyone remember it?) started a guild we, in a complete pique of irony, named "The Hand of Evil" on Rallos Zek. If there ever was a hive of scum and villainy, that was the server. I still, in hindsight, had no idea why we went there; we were, almost to a man/woman, TERRIBLE PvPers lacking any measurable amount of aggression and no blood-lust at all. A couple of years later, having gone planar, most of our casual bunch had either retired or moved into more "serious" raiding guilds. (Raiding politics on a red is an entirely separate discussion deserving a volume of writing that I won't get into at this time...)

Fast forward to winter 2015... Having gone through the usual mess of other MMOs over the years, I started plinking with Project 1999, to see if it could recapture the old magic that I've never experienced in the time between 2001 and the present day. And it was... really quite good. I was surprised. I don't know if it was a few months of Minecraft that convinced me that the dated graphics were satisfactory, or just the aforementioned impressive recapturing of the essence of "the original first-person MMORPG" that did it, but I was hooked, again.

A few months later, my "main" is still no more than level 35, but I'm still having a blast. That there ever might be something to pop the bubble of my lollypops-and-bubblegum fascination with this project still barely exists; I read forums about conflicts between raiding guilds, and the min-maxing that goes on with items going for prices I never DREAMED of seeing in original EQ (I don't think I ever saw something go for 20-30,000 PP then!). It registers... on the horizon, but I'm not worried about it for now... and might never be... this walk down memory lane is just so positive for me right now, I don't want to think about the politics of "later".

Case in point is my shaman's current set of missions to "twink" my newbie L4 cleric... but not with the "best of the best" you can buy in EC...

I was sitting on the dock in EFP last night, decked out in my glorious set of hard-fought totemic and self-smithed banded when an epic shaman pulled up alongside to wait for the boat with me. He examined me and asked me what I was going to OOT for. I told him I was working on the cleric armour quests for my alt. He seemed a bit surprised... OK... a LOT surprised... he was incredulous that I would bother working for that (effectively) junk gear when I could get much better, much easier, just with some PP... Was it for fashion? I just wanted the look, was that it?

The boat came before I could completely explain it to him. We zoned to OOT and he levitated and took off (I presume towards the Seafuries or AC). He sent me a tell a minute later, "Gull Skytalon is up! Just head northeast! You have levitate, right? Good luck!"

I thanked him and started off. A few minutes later I'd looted my quest piece from Gull Skytalon and started scouring the island for Soarin Brightfeather for a spear I wanted. It then occurred to me that maybe that other shaman "got me", after all, even if just a bit.

Know what I mean?

Bruuk Iceflinger