How you found AO (stories from the first days)

[Flameforge]

Perhaps this is a little like Ket's "who are you" thread, but this stuff has been flitting through my mind lately.

How did you hear of AO? What made you choose this MMOG over any of the myriad others? What keeps you there?

[Flameforge]

A couple of years ago, I put together a PC which used an old 33.6K modem from my previous system. The time came when I decided it would be nice to squeeze some additional speed through the copper-pair, so I made a visit to the local games/computer store.

Browsing through the modems available, I chose a 56K model, and on the way to the check-out wandered through the games section. There was a rather large display of one particular game: Anarchy Online. It was probably the word "online" that caught my eye. So I picked up the box, admired the packaging, read the blurb, checked out the screenshots, and bought it along with the modem. I had no idea, really, what this game was. I'd never heard of it before, or read reviews, or anything.

Funnily, I've never seen or heard of anyone else here who bought AO, and a week later all the boxes had gone -- I presume due to bad sales.

When I got home, I installed the hardware and game, connected to the Net and got ready to start playing. Hmm... the log-in told me I needed some patches. The CD had version 11.0, I believe, yet the game had progressed to something like 12.4. It took a couple of days to download the 80-odd MB of updates.

Then there was the patch installation bugs. Files would constantly corrupt themselves, and I spent many hours trying to uncover how it all worked and then discover special file download locations on Funcom's servers.

Eventually I landed on Rubi-Ka and Hejiro was born! That intrepid neutral adventurer who often never had enough cred to even buy medkits, his broken, patchwork armour and blunt axes scrounged from fallen foe.

It was all very new, and rather exciting. My first 3D multiplayer online game. I've been here over a year now, with a "little" break in the middle.

A few minutes ago, I read a few questions to help identify if you are addicted to an online game. I answered "yes" to far too many

[BigSwede]

I started to work at a new place some time back and one of my workbuddies was deep deep into playing a MMPORG. I really didn't know much what a MMPORG was until he told me about it with feverish eyes. Up to then I had played games alot on the net, mainly shooters like the quake series and counterstrike etc. I've allways loved teaming, playing with other "real" people over the network.
I started out playing Doom over my LAN at work with that 3rd party patch someone made. My buddies and me wacked monsters on those rocketing 486-SX machines :p
Anyway, I asked him to show me sometime what kinda game that was. At the time I was bored with Counterstrike due to all the cheaters on the servers. We had very little to do at work at the time and he installed it on his workmachine and showed me. He was a Troll Mage or something, very highlevel and the game was Everquest. I thought it was kinda cool, not jawdropping but cool. So I borrowed his account and made a char, played it a few levels and decided it sucked old bananapeal. Slow, greyish colors, dull timesetting. I asked him if there was any game like that but with a more futuristic setting. He pointed me to the Anarchy Online website. A norwegian company making a MMPORG set in the future. It was on closed beta at the time so I applied to be a tester, but they didnt like my application or I was too late or something.
Finally when beta 4 was released I got the chance to try it. Well, needless to say, I was thrilled. At the end of B4 all players got a bunch of xp making them all level 75. Millions of ip to distribute and a chance to try pvp. Well it was just for one night. The next day it went live.

Actually the first char I had was a neutral solitus NT named Hardin. Yes he's dead and replaced by the fixer Hardin. NT Hardin struggled his way to level 14 using an OT Bomer ql 1 and a few nanos he got hold of. I still got that Boomer somewhere . Frequent deaths and a booked seat at the Borealis Bronto Burger stand made me rethink the way I wanted to play the game. I've allways liked being "good" so I figured I couldn't go Omni. it had to be Clan or Neut again. Wanting to try something new, I went clan and made Felicity, a solitus doc. Back then I dual wielded FA's. Who knew they would be worth so much today? I had like 3-4 pairs of those at various levels. Fel has tried all kinds of weapons like pistols, shotguns, x-3 etc. At one time she was an MA doc actually. BigSwede came on pretty early, enforcer as you know. I started him mainly to book the name as it has allways been my handle online. He was more or less parked at level 15 for a very long time until I grew tired of constantly dying with Felicity. Big was the first to be more serious planned. I focused alot more on preparing him for levelling. But as I am easily bored I parked him recently while waiting for the now released patch. Now I'm having alot more fun again.

I like naming my chars with some thought, Felicity obviously is piked from that series on TV. I haven't ever seen one episode of it, but I liked the name. BigSwede - my handle online. Hardin is named from a fictious character in one of Isaac Asimovs stories about the Foundation. Salvor Hardin was one of the great Mayors of the foundation. Hatshepsu was one of Egypts most known queens, murdered ofcourse in a mysterious way. Direttore, well that's Director, or CEO in Italian. He's a crat :p

I guess thats more or less my history. Sorry if it was long..

[Flameforge]

Hehe, that was great! I enjoyed the story, thanks for sharing

[Wirecutter]

Hmm let me see..where to start..

Well i can fairly say that if it had'nt been for me meeting Wire i prolly never would have set my foot in Ao or any other type of games.The reason for that is because i were not that interessted in Computers or any sort of games at all before i meet him..

But anyways..Wire came home one day and told me that there was coming a new game out..a online game that he wanted to check out.
I was rather like..ohh ya..how nice..
Before AO came along i had mostly used the Computer to check my email or doing other things..
But he finally told me more and i got intriqued..maybe i should try it out.
In those days we had only Wire's old comp and he spent many hours infornt of it

After sitting and looking at Wire starting his Char on ao i got more interested and got to start my own little one..The evil enf called Evillela:)
had much fun and must say im suprised how addicted im am both to computers and Ao..hehe..
If it had'nt been for Christina i prolly would have lived in here all day all week..

[Wirecutter]

shoot..that post was suppose to be form evillela not Wire..ack..ohh well

[Cogs]

Where did I haer of AO? Hmm....
Well, Ive always been a fan of games...games in almost any form. When I was young, I played a lot of Monopoly with my friends, card games, Battle of Britain (table top aerial reenactment of the BoB), stock exchange games, and what have you. Always with friends, and also, my family were big on using saturday nights for mam's homemade pizza and after we used to play cards....often till long into te night.
Then, one day, my father came home with a Commodore 64...hot dang, what fun we had. My dad also bought some games for it, so him and my brother and I used to play together....how simple games where back then, but what fun we had
From there it evolved....I moved out, and got my own place..the first things I bought were a new stereo system and an Amstrad CPC 464. Was even better than the C64, better sound, and a more advanced system for sprite layers. Then, enter the Commodore Amiga....wow...I had to get one, and did. I always seemed to favor fantasy games, like Shadow of the beast, Gauntlet, Rising Dragon, etc. Played those games to death and back...
Of course, at this time the Intel based pc was really rearing its head as a games machine, so I eventually took the step and moved into the pc arena, bought me a 100mhz pentium machine, and was in heaven.
I played a whole lot of different games on this, but...my firends and I also played tabletop pen and paper rpg's...d&d stuff, and that is where my real interest lay....the roleplaying, and not necessarily the medeival/mythical setting ala Tolkien, but much more the social aspect of interacting with my friends, and others. So, after my best friend died, and our rp group more or less split up, I looked elsewhere. I was sure there must be an rpg out there that could be played interactively on the internet...and frankly, ahving played DukeNuekem, etc, over lan, I wasnt to impressed, though it was a lot of fun
So, I dabbled some in Ultima Online....bah..what a drag it became, and quickly for me. Then a friend at work, started talking about these ppl he knew, that were working for Funcom, and that they were working on this great new sci-fi based mmorpg. Dang....I had by then heard of both Evercrack and AC, but this one really caught my interest. So, I guess my first aquaintance with AO was thru a friend who had friends on the inside.
I never got to play the beta, but was onworld within days of its realease, and have more or less stayed here since. I dabbled with DAoC for a few days, but found it utterly not pleasing...
And, you ask, what keeps me in game....well, the answer to that is: you guys. Couldnt have a better group of ppl to play with, so thank you all for that

[Flameforge]

Nice story, Cogs.

I always seemed to favor fantasy games, like Shadow of the beast, Gauntlet, Rising Dragon, etc. Played those games to death and back...

Haha, Gauntlet! "Red elf is about to die!"

[Wirecutter]

well I don't know where to start other than from the start.

All I can say is SPACE INVADERS on a 186 system ( think this was even before my C64) , but since then I was an addict to gaming and playing, only interupted by the late teenage years and what problems follows there
I never tried any MMORPG with gfx before, but I used to play some planetarion and and couple of other none grafical MORPs some not too good and some kinda annoying when resetted bit too often.
AO was first heard of when I bought a PC game that caught my eye when passing it, think it was a picture of a game i was waiting for on cover that distracted me. Anyhow inside there was a story bout AO and lotsa screenies. and I talked to Auro bout it, but like she said she wasn't exactly thrilled bout the idea, but I managed to persuade her.

I started my first engie Evilbender ( little futurama fan )
he got to lvl 35 I think and died for good. I was hoping it was any point in beeing an engie and build stuff for people but in the beginning that wasn't the deal, no point in building things that was more expencive than selling and no demand for whatso ever, and most tradskillz wasn't working. so after 2 other engies I got annoyed and started an NT u know as wirecutter. He met cogs and a Very good guild and from here u know the story bout me.

[Vixentrox]

My co-workers harrassed me till I agreed to play this game with them. I never played an online game before or anything like this. It was hard for me at first becuase they all went off and were using all these exploits and and finding holes in the game and basically left me alone and didn't tell me anything. After about 2-3 months they all quit and I was alone. I almost quit too but that was when I heard about guilds (yes, I never really heard of a guild before). So...I joined CAS and resty is history.

[Flameforge]

More interesting stories! Thanks for sharing.

[Flameforge]

This one makes nice downtime reading too

[Jpegg]

hmmm, where can I begin....

I got myself onto the internet after splitting with my ex in the hope to find a multiplayer game to play. Halflife was a game I already played so I immediately tried out CS. Cos I was on dial up, the patching was a total nightmare so I gave up. Few weeks later, I walked into the store near my house and there was ao on the shelf. I purchased it, never looked back and after a few weeks, upgraded my PC to 256 meg and Jpegg was born.......

I spawned in BY1 Tir and it was absolutely crammed full of people and I had no idea how it all worked. I remember asking a guy what I should do and he told me to kill as many little critters I could so away I went. I loved thoe training grounds and met so many people. Used to sit on the floor in circles telling stories to everyone. It took three weeks of playing every night and day to reach level 10 so thats a lot of chatting.

I met two girls in the BY during those first weeks. One, Chikitaa was to become my real life girlfriend although I had no idea for a long time that she liked me, I was so gullable. The other friend I met had a few alts, all low level... Nerra, Jerra, Neralin, Jeralin, Allurie and Skylin. She had played DAoC for a long time so knew how things worked. It was her who first took me out of the BY when I was level 10. My god, it's literally something else to see Tir and the rest of Rubi-Ka for the first time. The sheer size is breathtaking and I had no idea it would become so familiair to me. Nerra took me all the way to the basic store in West Athen and we sat and talked for hours that night.

The coming weeks saw my friend bring me armour she'd picked up and items and so on. I found a kodiak in a mission and was so happy. Jpegg was crappy though because I was a n00b, no twinking, basic armour, basic rifle. I struggled soloing, met up with Chikitaa as and when she logged in but time was short for her so she gave up in the end but we kept in touch on the phone.

One weekend, Nerra took me to Reets etreat and I couldnt beleive my eyes. LOL, a nightclub in a game !!! YAY. We chatted and I logged in there. The next night, I logged back in and was immediately invited to a guild. Prophets Of Rubi-Ka. I accepted but found it so difficult getting to know ppl there.

Then one night, I went back to Tir BY1. I hadnt been back since I left and wanted to find it for myself. Was quite hard though cos in the old days, you had to walk right round the bottom end of the streets to get to it before FC took the wall out on the row of buildings. As I walked in there, there sat a level 125 martial artist on the lava lamp table. Order Of The Storm was her guild and I say hello. Monrakashi is the oldest friend I have in Rubi-Ka and as you've all seen by her recent post on here, she's still in touch. We became friends that night and it was Mon who taught me to twink, told me what powerlevelling was, used to steal weapons and items from her guild to give to me. It's at this point, Rubi-Ka started to change for me. I left Prophets and joined Lords Of Tor where I found myself in a guild where I started making true friends within a guild. The adventure started there.....

[Smacdevil]

Hmm, where to start ;p

I guess it all began back when I was 10, and I heard my Scottish cousin brag about a 'personal computer' that he and his brother had bought. The following summer, my familiy went across from Norway to visit the old clan, and I discovered the wonderful world of Sinclair ZX Spectrum (16k but with 32k rampack upgrade) gaming My cousin was using an ordinary compact cassette recorder to LOAD "" games into the machine, a process that could take up to 5+ minutes(!) We all sat intently in front of the TV, watching the loading screens slowly get rendered, line by line, lol

We played games like Scramble, Horace goes skiing, Horace kicks Omni Ass, Manic Miner, Tornado Low Level, Horace gets ganked in teh Arena, Avenger, Frankenstein, Skool Daze, Gauntlet... and The Hobbit.. I was hooked on Tolkien at the time, having recently read The Hobbit, and was reading LOTR...

So, instead of buying a guitar or drumkit, I bought a brand new Spectrum 48K with Kempston Quickshot II joystick and what have you, brought it home to Norway and spent too many childhood evenings indoors, alone or with friends who got equally addicted ;p Soon most of them had VIC20's or C64s, which dominated our little gaming scene until the 286 PC platform became available to me through my father's business. Got totally immersed into Sierra's Space Quest and King's Quest! I made some cash after school in a grocery store, so the big upgrade race was started. 286, 386, 486DX2, Cyrix 586, and beyond.. now using a boring box from work with Pentium4 2Ghz. Apart from the huge 3d 1st person shooter hits like Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Halflife and UT, I really preferred the graphic adventures, and Ultima Underworld was a personal favourite for ages.

Then, one day after work, I went to see my friend who had been talking about AO for some weeks. This was during beta, and after a character wipe, so what I saw wasnt that impressive... an armorless Opifex MA hunting Failed Shades and Rollerats outside Tir ;p I did, however, grasp that there was alot more to the game than met the eye, and I was intrigued by the level of detail that had gone into it... from the supberb 3d graphics to all the curious little items one could buy or find. So on account of this, and my friend's recommendation, I bought a copy of AO back in July 2001. Need I say more?

My first char was Smacdevil, whom I made Nanomage for the evil looks, and Fixer for the cool class description. I wanted to be bad So I basically spent a few months trying to learn the game, soloing all the time (this was before team missions worked), blitzing armor sets for cash, and joined my first org 'Sterling Warriors of the Red Desert' (aka SWORD). Met some cool ppl there, and was dragged further into the game We were quite militaristic (although newb) and had alot of fun in Meetmedere, ganking the gridcamping Omnis and picking fights with any one we could (got some funny screenshots from those days, will try to post later). This is when I started my first PvP twink, Macevil, with the meager knowledge and funding available to me - I was actually quite satisfied with ql 30 implants at lvl 8, lol ;p Macevil's finest hour was when he dualed another Fixer twink in the Arena - whose name was Wydowmaker. We were self buffed, and the battle lasted more than 5 minutes due to our HoTs and 1st aid kits, hehe. Health bars were extremely even to the end, but my burst refreshed before his so I emerged victorious and put Macevil to rest. Those were the days!

After the horrible 12.6 patch alot of people quit, including our pres., so we were ripe for merging with Order of the Storm (OOTS) whom we had some contact with (Shiriken and Stinkyfish). Being the only senior member remaining SWORD, I brought all I could with me to OOTS. It was a great guild, and we prospered for quite some time. When OOTS merged with Tribe of Judah and Digital Gunfire to became Lions Den, we were a force to be reckoned with and set up 3 bases including a ql 150 one in Mort. There was fighting almost every day, and in the end we lost the bases through general fatigue. After some bad leadership the whole thing went pretty rotten, and most ppl left. Jpegg, whom I had met in OOTS, told me about this nice little guild called Excalibur where he knew some people, and if I wanted to follow him I would probably be welcome. I have never regretted that day The rest is history.

Oh, that friend who introduced me to AO was Suchysuchy, at the time playing an NT called Kjellolsen. I made an Engi called Bennyolsen and my other friend who played AO made his Enfo called Egonolsen - none of these chars are played anymore, sadly :/

[Jpegg]

/me still has his 48K ZX Spectrum with rubber keys and I still gots my Skool Daze game, Manic Miner, Sabrewulf, Atticattak, all the old classics.

Ah, the good old days.....

Not meaning to sound disrespectful though above Smac, I do apologise cos I hadnt arrived at the point where I left Lords Of Tor to finally join Order Of The Storm with you and Monrakashi. Thought my story was goin on too long hehe. But yeah, Ive come through 4 guilds with you, my friend and I'm happy we've stuck together.

This has been one hell of an adventure during the last two years and something tells me that the best is yet to happen.