Aw, how you've grown up!

I think I'm the oldest person here that no one knows.

Just as planned

Well, mentally...

I joined second day of Open beta. I also lurked in the MSN group prior to opening. I was most active the first 2 years then fell back to mostly just mapping, although I have had alts



Yeah, the mapping contest was very early on. According to the news archives the winners were announced on December 19th 2004. I actually started the map on paper the day I joined (and I still have the odd zmud room with no name or desc because I created them manually from the paper map), had half of it done before the contest was even announced Although, I still can't believe I won it, you people must really suck at mapping.

EDIT: Also, my favourite person from that time was Soll

Last Login was Feb. 14 2008.

I remember the first few weeks of open beta, raiding with visaeris (macro when visaeris says target %1, cosmicfire %1) not knowing where we were. I started life as a nihilist but when bashing sucked too bad, switched to bonecrusher. Had some flails made (flails back then needed perishable reagents, so I made a flail out of spectre corpses from spectre isle, took a few forges but finally got good ones). Valek and Daevos were emerging as some ass-kicking mags so I hung out with them mostly (until valek went insane), getting better at combat, writing a system and whatnot. Few more weeks passed and I finally got some elemental runes, man did they kick some ass. They used to turn weapon damage to 50%, so naturally I got lightning ones to fry merian scum. Other awesome mags during this time and later on during my playing time were Revan, Ixion, Alger, Kaervas, Arilyon, Athena, Aajen, Nepthysia, Daevos (mentioned twice, much love bro), Thorgal, Chade, Ethelon (although he was a celestine for a long time, had an epic rivalry) and Lyco (awesome apprentice Dreadlord). Big shoutouts also go to clan members from the Dark Carnival and DoK. DoK especially was fun for all the taunting, tail twisting, sabre rattling and general trolling in an OOC manner and the ragequits were especially hilarious.

My best rivals were Geb, Amaru, Thoros, Ethelon, Narsrim, Tuek, Malicia, Shamarah, Rhysus, Rafael, Ceres and Vesar.

It was around this time that narsrim and tuek were pains to deal with, so naturally I spent a lot of time in the arena with narsrim learning his dirty filthy tricks, and working on my own offence. The first big events I recall was the tainting of the fae and trying to raise mother night to piss off serenwile. There were times of raiding for 18 hour stints, or sleeping by the computer with an alarm on so when it was raid time, daevos would send me an aim message and trigger me into wakefulness. When we tainted the fae, all hell broke loose.

We used to raid properly too, not so much hit and run (although hitting the dwarves was totally adrenaline pumping because of the possible massive losses) but we'd often take over a village, write all sorts of nasty things about celest on the walls, and generally pillage the place.

The best duel I ever had was with the demigod Aesyra, being the first demigod to ever exist, naturally I challenged her. I'm pretty sure all the gods were in attendance at the top of mount avechna, and she almost got me mana wise once or twice but getting that kill in front of such an audience was pure awesomeness for me, that included with killing Hajamin as a god when he appeared before me at the Megalith gave my character reason to develop a god complex, which was much fun to roleplay.

For the younger players, here's a list of awful stuff that was changed.

1. Wisp used to work from any forest room to any other forest room, regardless of monolith. This included forested by demesne users. Often during village revolts, narsrim and co would wisp mags from a forest demesne type of room, into a forested room with only 1 door. The door would be locked and stonewalled with a monolith, then it'd be death by 20 serens at once. - For those interested, I would often take all the names of serens and hunt them down one by one later, slap them around a bit and tell 'em not to pull that rubbish, then kill them.

2. Spores used to be able to be snorted regardless of monolith or any other condition, allowing narsrim to easily escape whenever he so chose. He and the better seren fighters triggered the death message and vitae to snort spores, so we'd have someone illusion it during group combat, and watch him and the stronger serens depart, leaving their underlings to a grissly demise.

3. Avenger was toothless compared to now, no karma existed. I would have a suspect list of 40 or so guys, and never cared for the consequences.

4. Necromancy lich would revive you instantly, with no XP loss or power loss. It was triggered to darkchant ghost, allowing mags to raid freely and die often with no consequence.

5. Elemental flails and 23+ str I would have at some stages would mean pulps went for 2.2k to a target with 2.8-3k health. Knockdown would balance stack with itself also, allowing a severe beating to the unlucky.

6. The healing skillset used to offer unlimited spammed heals, so wound stacking on a moondancer was impossible.

7. Mages/druids could meld planes, we would often hold a total demesne on celestia/water, and other mages had 300+ rooms demesne, looping around and back through itself including 4 or so villages.

8. Dilute - aquamancers could cast 1 spell and wreck every potion in your posession, causing all sips to be halved. The vials had to be destroyed because even after emptying them, they were still 'diluted'.

9. Only serenwilde had potions, so when they embargoed us during the war, we were totally screwed for potions, and most people couldn't cure aeon. Narsrim and co would force people to empty the potion, unable to replace you would often die. I was able to provide potions because I had a friend or two inside serenwilde (Ialie and Titiana) who would get me potions on the quiet to supply all the decent fighters with. Glad this one was nerfed, nothing worse than not having a cure for aeon.



Things that still need nerfing (if not already done so):

Champion pets - The handmaiden of shakiniel, honestly passive blackout? also that bloody cat of the serenwilers, passive aeon? leave me alone.

You missed that wisp worked crossarea, so we could summon people out of (non-commune, just regular taint forest) Glomdoring into Serenwilde. Also, it was instant, so either you monolithed wherever you walked (they got in this habit since we had no way to disenchant) or you hoped for summon resist. Demesne summon was also atrocious because even though it didn't work from wherever the hell you wanted it to, you couldn't monolith it, so walking within a 200 room radius of a mage (demesnes were that big) was a death sentence.

Also lich provided grace, although that one got fixed fast...

And I don't remember the healing thing...wasn't it more that deepheal took eq but also ate a couple thousand wounds at once off an area (and doesn't it still do that?)

Deepheal seemed to be spammable, but you could do it while prone with broken limbs etc, grr. And any forest room to any other forest room covers cross area, and there was a stage where monolith didn't affect it at all.

We had to call a meeting IC with estarra over the spore issue, we all threatened to give up and stop fighting altogether because nothing we could do would stop the constant raids haha. Took all the players to a room in mag, and called for estarra. It was sorted out but wow, this was before a working decent envoy system was put into place.

Somehow, someway, my vials were never diluted. I still have no idea how given how much I griefed back then.

Reading through old public news posts. Oh, the memories.

Those were the days.

One word: Visaeris.

Though I don't agree that I was on your level, I'm honored to make the list.

One of my most vivid memories of open beta was fighting you on day one when you came to the Pool and slaughtered everyone (myself included).. we had no idea where we were or who was who.. it was awesome!



Aaaaand this is why I switched out of Mage... do you have any idea how BORING it is to hold a meld like this? Geez... I really hated that...

Yeah Ravin was my alt - I held a MASSIVE demesne for AGES. Only a few people knew that actually, haha, one of the better kept secrets. Geocast summon into statues and stonewalls was my favourite bitch move.

Wow, I actually think I remember that name.

Do I count as an oldtimer yet?