Saturday 22 October 2011

An Everquest Journey

One of the most famous and influential online multiplayer games of all time was Everquest (EQ), released in early 1999. I started playing in mid 1999, and I was there for the first invasion of Qeynos by Varsoon the Undying over the Halloween weekend of '99. EQ was a ground-breaker, it was huge, it was great fun, although part of the fun came in the form of over-coming bugs, and problems and weaknesses of all sorts. The first time a lion chased me, I found a hut close by, and made it inside safely - but the lion simply came straight through the wall and killed me. Aargh.

Indeed the difficulty (and frustration) level of EQ was extremely high - e.g. the famous corpse runs which were required after you died and re-spawned back at your home base without your items - they remained on our dead corpse, so you had to go back to your corpse and loot it to get all your money and items back. If you died in a really bad place, e.g. the bottom of 'The Hole', the difficulty of getting to the corpse was such that on some occasions players would simply abandon the character and start another. Permadeath. But also friendly aid - one day I died when lost deep in the Minotaur cave, and feared I'd lost everything. But a friendly wolf druid offered to help, so I gave him loot rights to my corpse. I didn't log on for some days - when I did, he found me and gave me my stuff, and some extra cash besides. I made sure to say a good word for him out loud - reputation mattered in EQ.

There were no instances, just one copy of each monster, so the ones who dropped important items were camped continuously - and typically a 'list' would be held by some player - the list of whose turn it was to fight that monster. That was the key to Everquest's success - it was SO hard, that people banded together against the common enemy. People really did help one another because it was so impossible otherwise. And the sheer emotional investment in your character was huge - sometimes you had to camp a monster for 2 or 3 days. No joke - for the really important items, players stayed at the keyboard for days on end, with occasional breaks at best. But by Karana, when you finally GOT that damned sword, it had extremely high emotional value and the happy character would sometimes stand outside the town gate just to show off his new sword, and a crowd of admirers would form and tell horror stories about their failed camps. Days! Can you imagine players now spending 3 days at the keyboard?

But it really was so much fun - e.g. October 1999 saw the invasion of Qeynos by a huge skeleton called Varsoon. He was a very high level monster in a newbie zone, and would simply one-shot any lowbies. The safe place was just inside the 'zone-line', the change from one zone to the next that EQ was in-famous for. As Varsoon rampaged outside, a group of characters huddled inside the zone line, swapping stories and food, while contacting any high levels to come and help. Every time someone came through the zone-line from outside, we'd ask for the latest news - "where is Varsoon now?", "can I make it to Qeynos safely?". As the heroes of the land started to arrive to deal with Varsoon, I snuck outside and climbed way up above the gate to Surefall Glade, and found a safe spot from where I could see Varsoon stomping around, with corpses littering the landscape, and occasional groups of heroes attacking, and mostly dying. I spent my time shouting out curses and abuse to Varsoon. Some of the best fun I've had in a game, so much so that I posted a poem "There was movement at the zone-line for the word had passed around / that the need at Surefall Glade was very dire...". Indeed I even received an email one day from Brad McQuaid thanking me for my comments about EQ. Fun times.

In the early days, there were few teleports, it was mostly about running. And jumping. It turned out that jumping while running gave a small leap forward, getting you further from the chasing monster. So it became standard to run and jump over and over to evade a chase. So they added stamina loss when jumping so that tactic didn't last. One oddity that was never nerfed was the odd sideways running bug. When running foward, you get a certain speed, but if you also run sideways at the same time, the speed vectors ADD together, so your actual speed becomes maybe 1/3 faster. I've spent many an hour running across the Karanas in a sideways run, because EQ was huge, and there were few easy travel options, especially in the early days.

One of the strengths of EQ was it's 'sense-of-place' - the feeling of being somewhere, of places connected together in certain ways - High Pass is up in the mountains, Freeport is by the sea. EQ often required a journey for important quests, and EQ journeys could be hard, and take much time. I recall early one when a friend joined us in EQ, and he had a dwarf from Kaladim, far from my home town of Qeynos. We agreed to meet in Freeport, and my perilous journey from Qeynos to Freeport was an adventure of a whole day. At tough spots, I had to wait for heroes passing by to clear the way of monsters, and rush through to safety of the zone-line. In EQ it's all about the zone-lines - because passing through from one zone to t'other, although taking some time (minutes on a slow PC,) it shook off any monsters who were 'agro' on you (attacking you.) Monsters in EQ, once agro on you, would follow you all the way across a zone, until you crossed the zone-line.

When travelling through a particularly nasty zone such as the famous Kithicor Forest, the safest strategy was to hug the edge of the zone, in this case it was a mountainous edge, so you would run along the literal edge of the zone, pushing against the invisible wall.  The edges and corners of EQ zones were like highways, everyone knew them and used them, and most zones were rectangles.

Finally I made it to the commons - but it was night-time, too dangerous for me and my hobbit friend I'd joined up with. So we camped way up high in the far corner of the zone and munched on Thunderhoof Mushrooms while waiting for dawn for the worst monsters to go to bed. Meanwhile, my Dwarven friend had made it to the other end of the zone from our corner, and we shouted out greetings and chatted in text as we waited for the sun to rise, eventually meeting at the Toll Gate for a round of /salutes and more adventure.

A great EQ journey.

The Brown's Ovation

It was 1974 when I went to live at Swanleigh - a residential college in Midland where country children lived to attend high school in the city. In those days there were no mobile phones, and no personal computers. But it was the year of the original Pong game and calculators were just starting to replace slide-rules. The era of black and white TV was just ending, as Countdown with Molly Meldrum was just starting. Musicians of the day included The Beach Boys, David Bowie, Queen, and Supertramp. The Sting, The Exorcist, and American Graffiti were playing at the movies. Gough Whitlam was briefly Prime Minister. Darwin was devastated by cyclone Tracy.

I stayed there for five years while attending Lockridge Senior Highschool, a newly built school with no entrenched animosities. The times, like the school and pupils, were new and optimistic and open-minded. Swanleigh however, somehow retained an atmosphere of the old era, of British tradition, where children were to be 'seen and not heard' as they would say. It's several buildings snaked along a road on the Swan river, ending at the main complex which included the central boy's houses, and the office block which had a lovely old ivy-covered stone entrance-way, and the little church of St Mary's nearby. It was a significant place and time in my life. I still visit there on night-time astral journeys to this day.

The Director then was recently arrived Richard Stowell, previously a Manx Scoutmaster. He had a small stature and little hair, but a big ego and a big puffed out chest. We variously viewed him with fear or respect, or ridiculed him in secret as "Poon". His voice could have the power of Hitler, his look could dominate a room of 300 people. But he clearly cared for we children, even if we rarely saw his softer side. On one occasion I had to ask him for a reference for an attempt to enter Duntroon, but silly me had left it till literally the last day. He tore strips off me - "oh yes, I'll tell them you're a stupid scatterbrain who can't tell the date or remember anything important etc." Oh dear. But later that day I had a magnificent full-page reference with glowing praise signed with a triple-barrelled name and a fancy signature "Richard LaMothe Stowell".

As a child I remember the years on the "Other Side" as a time of control, even oppression, with every person and every minute accounted for in every way. Now as an adult I look back and I see that very tight control was effective and strong leadership, under which certain sins did not flourish. As far as I know Swanleigh was never stained like some other religious institutions who failed morally in the care of their children. Good job.

But for the first year I had a more free life. The 1st year boys (now called 8th year) lived separately in Cornwall House which was across Jane Brook (hence the "Other Side") from the main Swanleigh site. At the year they turned 13 boys were considered immature and they were molly-coddled away from the others. Cornwall house was run by a Mr and Mrs Brown - no-one ever used their first names. They were a conservative older couple whose children had grown up, and now they served by caring for the young boys. Mrs Brown was a lovely old duck - plump and warm, with a bung knee that made her walk with a pronounced waddle. Mr Brown was a big-bellied avuncular diamond in the rough. He smoked a pipe and had a crooked brown grin that only over-rode his stern look on special occasions.

Mrs Brown especially treated us with love and care - every day as we left for school she would tell us jokes - but the joke book, like her, was from a galaxy far far away (e.g. "she got a new dress for the party, but her heart wasn't in it" - which meant absolutely nothing to 13 year old boys.) Australia was changing in the early 70s, and I could see that the Browns and the Stowells of this world were from a prior era - an era that was ending. Like the old miner I heard in far outback Laverton in the year man walked on the moon. He recited "Old Man River" to a party of drunken adults who yet quietened to listen. I sat in the corner, a little boy entranced, while this bearded and gravel-voiced cobber of the outback proclaimed a classic poem. I realised this was a vestige of the old era, and that I'd never experience such a thing again. Of course I haven't.

Mr Brown was liked and respected for his firm and friendly guiding hand - but also feared - because this was back in the age of corporal punishment. It was considered acceptable to beat children with a stick, called "the cane", on the hands or legs or buttocks. I was caned several times, and frankly don't feel I suffered badly, but society grows - and now children are being brought up by people who were not beaten as children - wonderful. Nonetheless this was a happy time, weekends exploring the creek, new friends, sports and excursions and books and hobbies and girls and purple flaired trousers.

Mr and Mrs Brown usually took Monday and Tuesday off, when they retired to their own home and other staff cared for us. But one Monday it was different and we saw another side to Mr Brown. This day they had decided to stay to themselves at Cornwall inside their rooms, and Mr Brown had left a message on a blackboard for us, warning us they were in their bedroom, and asking us to be quiet. But - the sign was literally written in strine. Strine is the strine word for 'Australian'. It means a broad aussie slang transliterated by sound (e.g. "Jareedna piper wairtsed abat the bushfires?" is "Did you read in the paper where it said about the bushfires.") So 30 schoolboys bubbled off the bus after school and tried to read the sign - a noisy gaggle repeating it and interpreting it, and then loudly and repeatedly telling each other to "be quiet!" I saw and decoded it in five seconds, and went quietly inside to get dressed, with the others following along in noisy clumps.

A minute or 2 later, as we are all getting dressed into normal clothes, Mr Brown suddenly came storming into the room in his gown, with eyes a-flash, the cane in his hand, and shouting furiously at us like "you selfish little bastards, can't you read a simple sign, I'll show you some consideration for your elders". It was a long thin room, with boys on either side, and he rampaged down the centre as he shouted, wildly swinging the cane, hitting any boy's legs and buttocks in reach, left and right, whack, whack, whack-whack. He turned at the end, and started his second pass back up the room towards me - whack whack whack ! But his steam had vented and he wound down to a halt in the centre of the room - a room full of boys hugging the walls, tears in their eyes, trying desperately not to show their pain. All except me. He had not seen me, standing quietly in the hidden corner behind the door, a small, gentle, polite and studious sort of boy. I stood wide-eyed in my underpants, facing a huge angry man with a stick in his hand and rage in his eyes.

He glared at me with an angry "I didn't get you, did I?" and I squeaked "no sir". But his blood was cooling, he just gave a parting snort, and stormed out again. Phew. A karmic reward which made up for many an injustice. They never spent Monday and Tuesday there again. The incident was never discussed.

A few years passed, we sometimes saw the Browns and chatted, and over time they were even more liked and respected by all. And then one day there came an announcement at tea, with all 300 of us gathered in the dining hall - Mr and Mrs Brown were to retire. And the most amazing thing then happened. As the realisation that the Browns were leaving us struck home, it brought their goodness to mind, their years of good work, and how they would be missed. These feelings were not mine alone - we started to clap and cheer and whistle and stomp. This outpouring grew and grew, and we stood up for a standing ovation, with cries of "good on ya" filling the room. The cheers and clapping and praise of hundreds swelled to a crescendo, the air sparkled with gold. It was the most wonderful spontaneous and genuine outpouring of love I have ever experienced. I have no idea if Mr Stowell planned or expected anything such, or even what he was doing - for the only moment in 5 years, Mr Stowell at the High Table was not the focus.

In the midst of this tsunami of feelings for the Browns I twisted and turned to find them amongst the cheering throng - I caught a glimpse of Mrs Brown, still seated because of her knee. Her face was a-glow with pure joy, her eyes were sparkling, and tears streamed down her face. Her aura was shining with a well-deserved glowing crown for a good life full of care and giving for others. Thank you.

I looked too for Mr Brown but could not see him. It was some time before I realised why - he was not there ! This sea of emotion was too much for someone of such stiff upper-lip, and he had had to step out of the door. While hundreds of children noisily poured out their hearts to this beloved 'uncle' - he stood outside, in the dark, all alone. I imagine his face contorted with unfamiliar tears, overwhelmed with a confusion of happiness and embarrassment, his ears ringing with that cacophony of respect – but with his pride preventing him from being present for that climactic reward for his years of good work. Men didn't cry.

We love you Mr and Mrs Brown.