My favorite game was EQ, and I have tons of fantastic memories there, but my best memory is of an encounter in Darkfall.
Our side was a coalition of small guilds, their side was a huge guild based out of one of the southern islands. At stake was a Mine that looked like nothing special. We had just over a 100 and they did too, but we got there first and set up positions well.
100 vs 100 and when they came it looked like 300 with arrows darkening the sky. Then the magic started mixing in and it was awesome. The first fight took probably 30 minutes as we smashed face to face. Totally brutal, totally awesome. Lag was there, but it wasn't so awful you couldn't play.
We won that first battle pretty well pushing them back all the way south. The problem was that half the alliance followed and half didn't. The ground was covered in bodies all of them with good loot for the taking. The crows(non-combatant people looking to ninja-loot bodies) were thick and the people that stayed at the mine were busy looting and killing crows.
We should have been preparing for the 2nd wave. The group that chased the attackers south got strung out, then crushed by the respawned guild who then came back north. With our force scattered to the wind and many offline for the night we got smoked, but not before a great fight.
All told the fight lasted over 3 hours. I ended up with some great gear in the bank, but lost 3 sets of my normal everyday gear in the fighting.
Best memory of any MMO for me. The arrow shower at the start is the image I remember. There was no flashy effects, but that solid wall of just plain arrows is still the coolest thing I've seen in an MMO.
________________________ Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
Back in vanilla WoW, I was in a raid guild with all my swg friends. Most of the raid was comprised of carebears who would yell at you if you tried to pvp with them around. Never could fathom why they would be on a pvp server, but ah well. It was our first nite of week for the raid rotation, we were going in BWL, an instance we had beaten, not quite on farm yet. Typical for our server, anybody who had connection issues would crash upon loading into BWL. This nite was particularly bad, as most of the raid was crashing after trying to enter. Most of us were able to get out, while about a third were stuck. We all huddled around the portal waiting for them to load back in. At this time, a horde raid was forming at the UBRS/LBRS entrance. Being the sole alliance group there, we decided, if we can't pve, we sure as hell can pvp! The horde raid can at us, we proceeded to turn the hallway into the portal to the nine hells, fears, traps, aoe's of all kinds. Rogues slicing horde throats, pali"s smiting them, druids ripping their guts out, warriors smashing them, pets nipping on their ankles. It was a glorious sight. Even the carebears were out for blood. What we did not see, was the second horde raid coming in. Just as we thought we won and could relax, the 2 raids zerged us. By this time, all 40 of us were present. Small groups of alliance spectating as ghosts as they got caught up in the carnage. As we were holding and smashing these 2 hordes raids, a third came in! The hell we unleashed, the sheer rage we had boiling up due to frustration, had caused us to have a blood lust that would make a klingon blush. After the three raids got wiped by us, we recovered and rez'd our dead, skellies lined the hallways. Cheers rang out from the spectators, somebody quietly joined our ventrillo whilst we were dispacting the horde filth. It was another alliance friend of ours, apparently, the horde were so butt hurt about the asswhooping they had been given by us, they were asking people to tell us to stand down or else. At this point, we could see the horde were finally learning, instead of trying to come at us in small groups, they were about to bring a 120 man zerg at us. It was a awesome time that night. We wiped 3 horde raids, and killed Nef that night. It was about this time, my guild was voted most hated by the horde and alliance. We had earned a rep and were proud of it. That night in black rock mountain, my guild, me and my friends won at WoW.
Roses are red Violets are blue The reviewer has a mishapen head Which means his opinion is skewed ...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
A necro from two years ago but well worth it, good to hear these two additions. Might I venture that the reason no one has any more stories to tell is that all the really good stories were in the old MMOs? But that's tangential to the thread which is a great read: Give them a volley! Fire!
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
My favorite game was EQ, and I have tons of fantastic memories there, but my best memory is of an encounter in Darkfall.
Our side was a coalition of small guilds, their side was a huge guild based out of one of the southern islands. At stake was a Mine that looked like nothing special. We had just over a 100 and they did too, but we got there first and set up positions well.
100 vs 100 and when they came it looked like 300 with arrows darkening the sky. Then the magic started mixing in and it was awesome. The first fight took probably 30 minutes as we smashed face to face. Totally brutal, totally awesome. Lag was there, but it wasn't so awful you couldn't play.
We won that first battle pretty well pushing them back all the way south. The problem was that half the alliance followed and half didn't. The ground was covered in bodies all of them with good loot for the taking. The crows(non-combatant people looking to ninja-loot bodies) were thick and the people that stayed at the mine were busy looting and killing crows.
We should have been preparing for the 2nd wave. The group that chased the attackers south got strung out, then crushed by the respawned guild who then came back north. With our force scattered to the wind and many offline for the night we got smoked, but not before a great fight.
All told the fight lasted over 3 hours. I ended up with some great gear in the bank, but lost 3 sets of my normal everyday gear in the fighting.
Best memory of any MMO for me. The arrow shower at the start is the image I remember. There was no flashy effects, but that solid wall of just plain arrows is still the coolest thing I've seen in an MMO.
OP, I know you are looking for a specific mmorpg type of thing but for me the best times have been playing with friends regardless of the title of the mmorpg.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
My favorite memory is probably the absolute anarchy that we lived in Phantasy Star Online
Phantasy Star Online was a little MMO for both the Sega Dreamcast and the Nintendo Gamecube (later xbox) that was abandoned by Sega as soon as they published it, leaving the servers on, but offering 0 support or maintenance.
This abandonment, combined with the fact that all the data (including characters) for the game was both in the disk and the player´s memory cards (Due to the obvious technological limitations of a console mmo of that time) made it so that within a couple months, hackers and modders had taken control over the game to the level of being able to add content, ban people, delete characters, modify the stats and parameters of the game items and even control the functions of the servers.
At first it was major chaos as hackers and evil people completely destroyed everyone´s experiences, banning anyone who would dare say a word against them, deleting their characters, messing with people´s games and worse.
But soon after, other hackers, coders and positively inclined individuals started countering the attackers, creating codes that prevented the evil hackers to inject their own and keep at least a couple servers up and running without risk of infection, crashes and other abuses, and what not.
The hackers still managed to screw things up from time to time, but the positive community was so tight, friendly and cooperative, that anyone who would get their stuff deleted would have dozens of people helping to farm their progress back in just a matter of days.
The risk of losing EVERYTHING was real, the friendships were real, and your reputation mattered A LOT because if you were a douchebag, people would simply stop helping you and that was the end of your gaming.
I was actually lucky enough to be able to enjoy both sides of the conflict, because, even though i was often using positive codes and programs (given to me by the good hackers to use, i am no programmer) to help the server stable and thus i was fairly appreciated by the "positive" community, i also happened to have a romantic story with the sister of one of the main "evil" hackers, so i was allowed and protected to go around both "worlds" without being attacked..
I found that many "good hackers" were actually the very same guys that had created the destructive codes and now played nice to save their face within the community or just to troll, and i found out that many of the "evil hackers" did not really mean to cause harm, but were unable to oppose it because they had family members or loved ones on that side.
During the years i played that game, i got to learn a lot about humanity and i got to see what it would be like to play in a game completely controlled by the community, and that will, forever, be my favorite mmorpg memory.
Mine is a simple one from Dark Age of Camelot. It can't happen in modern MMOs for several reasons.
I was a lowbie level 7 or so Armsman (which meant I'd been playing for a few days, rather than the few minutes it takes to hit 7 nowadays) and I was looking for adventure. I had heard about a dungeon called the Tomb of Mithra, so I wandered over. It was way too dangerous for my low level character. I was just barely killing the things on the first floor. I got myself killed, and a friendly cleric came by to rez me. "Follow me" he says. So, he takes me deeper into the dungeon and brings me to a large group of people. I get invited into the group and make introductions, and had a grand time. Those monsters I was struggling to kill before fell by the dozens. We burned through the dungeon, wandering deeper and deeper, no one being too familiar with the MANY twists and turns. (No map, thankfully). We'd pass other groups as we went, stopping to talk sometimes, picking up new people on the way. Eventually we keep getting swarmed by these things called Bleeders. We'd heard rumors they're attracted to silver so we all drop our silver lined map cases. A fun bit of paranoia.
We push deeper until we find this kind of safe camp near the bottom. The roaming mobs outside wouldn't agro us from there. We stayed in this spot for a while, killing until the clerics were out of power, we laughed and told stories, and just socialized with eachother. Something you don't get nowadays (don't even get PUGs anymore). But, then disaster struck. At around 2 in the morning, the bleeders returned, deciding we'd had enough. Three hatchlings tore down the stairs and started attacking us while we were resting. We dispatched them, but their cry attracked the brood mother. Then the room repopped. Skeletons, bleeders, hatchlings, everywhere. I tried to get as many on me as I could, not wanting anyone to suffer the death penalty, but the leader shouted to retreat. As we ran someone said he thought he knew a secret passage. We split up to look for it. The running was TENSE knowing that death actually meant something. Some of the group ran all the way to the entrance with the mobs behind them, others fell through the invisible gateway. I hit the invisible escape route and was teleported into an upside down house with demons outside it, back out in the overworld. I had no idea where I was and I was too afraid to move. A few more group mates popped in behind me and together we took down the demon and followed landmarks until we realized where we were. We all met up later at the bridge to sell our goods and laugh about it. We added eachother to our friends lists and met up the next day, and every day for the next week.
Now, because of instanced dungeons and quest grinding, that kind of group would never form. That kind of tense situation would never take place because there's no death penalty. That kind of lost exploration won't happen because there's always an in game map. I miss those days.
I have one more exceptional memory about a relic raid, but I'll save it for another time.
I absolutely LOVE this story! I miss the good-ole days....
Comments
My favorite game was EQ, and I have tons of fantastic memories there, but my best memory is of an encounter in Darkfall.
Our side was a coalition of small guilds, their side was a huge guild based out of one of the southern islands. At stake was a Mine that looked like nothing special. We had just over a 100 and they did too, but we got there first and set up positions well.
100 vs 100 and when they came it looked like 300 with arrows darkening the sky. Then the magic started mixing in and it was awesome. The first fight took probably 30 minutes as we smashed face to face. Totally brutal, totally awesome. Lag was there, but it wasn't so awful you couldn't play.
We won that first battle pretty well pushing them back all the way south. The problem was that half the alliance followed and half didn't. The ground was covered in bodies all of them with good loot for the taking. The crows(non-combatant people looking to ninja-loot bodies) were thick and the people that stayed at the mine were busy looting and killing crows.
We should have been preparing for the 2nd wave. The group that chased the attackers south got strung out, then crushed by the respawned guild who then came back north. With our force scattered to the wind and many offline for the night we got smoked, but not before a great fight.
All told the fight lasted over 3 hours. I ended up with some great gear in the bank, but lost 3 sets of my normal everyday gear in the fighting.
Best memory of any MMO for me. The arrow shower at the start is the image I remember. There was no flashy effects, but that solid wall of just plain arrows is still the coolest thing I've seen in an MMO.
Asdar
________________________
Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
It was our first nite of week for the raid rotation, we were going in BWL, an instance we had beaten, not quite on farm yet. Typical for our server, anybody who had connection issues would crash upon loading into BWL. This nite was particularly bad, as most of the raid was crashing after trying to enter.
Most of us were able to get out, while about a third were stuck. We all huddled around the portal waiting for them to load back in. At this time, a horde raid was forming at the UBRS/LBRS entrance. Being the sole alliance group there, we decided, if we can't pve, we sure as hell can pvp! The horde raid can at us, we proceeded to turn the hallway into the portal to the nine hells, fears, traps, aoe's of all kinds. Rogues slicing horde throats, pali"s smiting them, druids ripping their guts out, warriors smashing them, pets nipping on their ankles. It was a glorious sight. Even the carebears were out for blood.
What we did not see, was the second horde raid coming in. Just as we thought we won and could relax, the 2 raids zerged us. By this time, all 40 of us were present. Small groups of alliance spectating as ghosts as they got caught up in the carnage. As we were holding and smashing these 2 hordes raids, a third came in! The hell we unleashed, the sheer rage we had boiling up due to frustration, had caused us to have a blood lust that would make a klingon blush.
After the three raids got wiped by us, we recovered and rez'd our dead, skellies lined the hallways. Cheers rang out from the spectators, somebody quietly joined our ventrillo whilst we were dispacting the horde filth. It was another alliance friend of ours, apparently, the horde were so butt hurt about the asswhooping they had been given by us, they were asking people to tell us to stand down or else. At this point, we could see the horde were finally learning, instead of trying to come at us in small groups, they were about to bring a 120 man zerg at us.
It was a awesome time that night. We wiped 3 horde raids, and killed Nef that night.
It was about this time, my guild was voted most hated by the horde and alliance. We had earned a rep and were proud of it. That night in black rock mountain, my guild, me and my friends won at WoW.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The reviewer has a mishapen head
Which means his opinion is skewed
...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Savage Eden and ShadowBane are my favorite games way back then.
I'm a Gamer not a Player!
Great Story!! Wish I had seen it!
.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
.
My favorite memory is probably the absolute anarchy that we lived in Phantasy Star Online
Phantasy Star Online was a little MMO for both the Sega Dreamcast and the Nintendo Gamecube (later xbox) that was abandoned by Sega as soon as they published it, leaving the servers on, but offering 0 support or maintenance.
This abandonment, combined with the fact that all the data (including characters) for the game was both in the disk and the player´s memory cards (Due to the obvious technological limitations of a console mmo of that time) made it so that within a couple months, hackers and modders had taken control over the game to the level of being able to add content, ban people, delete characters, modify the stats and parameters of the game items and even control the functions of the servers.
At first it was major chaos as hackers and evil people completely destroyed everyone´s experiences, banning anyone who would dare say a word against them, deleting their characters, messing with people´s games and worse.
But soon after, other hackers, coders and positively inclined individuals started countering the attackers, creating codes that prevented the evil hackers to inject their own and keep at least a couple servers up and running without risk of infection, crashes and other abuses, and what not.
The hackers still managed to screw things up from time to time, but the positive community was so tight, friendly and cooperative, that anyone who would get their stuff deleted would have dozens of people helping to farm their progress back in just a matter of days.
The risk of losing EVERYTHING was real, the friendships were real, and your reputation mattered A LOT because if you were a douchebag, people would simply stop helping you and that was the end of your gaming.
I was actually lucky enough to be able to enjoy both sides of the conflict, because, even though i was often using positive codes and programs (given to me by the good hackers to use, i am no programmer) to help the server stable and thus i was fairly appreciated by the "positive" community, i also happened to have a romantic story with the sister of one of the main "evil" hackers, so i was allowed and protected to go around both "worlds" without being attacked..
I found that many "good hackers" were actually the very same guys that had created the destructive codes and now played nice to save their face within the community or just to troll, and i found out that many of the "evil hackers" did not really mean to cause harm, but were unable to oppose it because they had family members or loved ones on that side.
During the years i played that game, i got to learn a lot about humanity and i got to see what it would be like to play in a game completely controlled by the community, and that will, forever, be my favorite mmorpg memory.