Goblin Squad Member
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I'd love to hear about the kinds of events that have made an impression on you, and about the things that happened during the event that you'll never forget.
For me, I think it was gathering for Gaiscioch's first foray into enemy territory in Rift. I have never seen so many characters in the same place at the same time. There were so many people that the game couldn't even render characters that were practically close enough to touch.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd love to hear about the kinds of events that have made an impression on you, and about the things that happened during the event that you'll never forget.
For me, I think it was gathering for Gaiscioch's first foray into enemy territory in Rift. I have never seen so many characters in the same place at the same time. There were so many people that the game couldn't even render characters that were practically close enough to touch.
While technically not an event. WoW's corrupted blood plague was awesome, even if it was entirely by mistake, and rendered the game nearly unplayable for so many. It created a unique realism with an uncontrolled unintended disease started spreading, and the authorities were struggling with all of their might to quarantine and control it.
At the end ( the final 2-3 hours) of the 2nd WoW beta stress test, everyone on the Alliance side gathered up into 4 massive raid groups (40 folk each). We ran south from Stormwind through Westfall, swam the ocean south to Bootybay and caught the boat over to Ratchet.
From there, we assaulted Crossroads.. and died en masse. It was the beta stresstest, didn't last all that long.. most folks were under 20 with a few over achievers at 25 or so. It was a massacre, and it was completely awesome.
-S
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Goblin Squad Member
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The event highlighted here was one of my favorites. This was actually an official event hosted by what Ryzom calls the "Official Event Team" which is a group of player volunteers who are charged with the task of progressing the storyline of the game.
However, we (the ones in Red) were not following the "official plan" and we crashed the official event. The reason behind this crashing of the official event was in protest for an earlier official event in which the event team sanctioned, and assisted with NPCs, the invasion of another nation (of which, we were all members). The NPC guy getting married was the leader of the invasion force.
Our anger stemmed from their failure to give us recourse for revenge or retaliation. So, when he decided to get married just on the boarder of our two nations, we could not resist the opportunity. The wedding party was instructed to wear all green and included about 30 players...it was suppose to be a "happy fluff event"...just a continuation of a storyline within a single nation. We (about 20-30 of us) all dressed in blood red armor to represent the blood of those who were killed at Thesos (the town they destroyed).
We did not stay to disrupt the event, just showed to make our point and protest...but it caused weeks of argument about the purpose and proper use of RP...especially spontaneous RP in official events. The conclusion was that we added to he flavor of the event...and player driven RP, as long as it is logically within the bounds of the story, is always good.
Read here for an understanding of the impact our event had on the game and the community. (The Event Team apologised later for their heavy handed use of force).
So, I organized and ran the protest and definitely think it was one of the best I have had the privilege to be part of.
Only time I attended a live event was in Matrix Online. GM shows up as Ghost to start explaining things and a couple idiots decide to start acting up to ruin the thing. There are always a few people who think it's fun to be disruptive, so that was the last time I bothered with any live event in any game. No point in letting people ruin it for you, so it's better to just avoid them entirely. Unfortunately, RP for most developers means anything goes. "I'm just playing a character" is a license for poor gamer behavior these days.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Selgard, I've done a few assaults on the Crossroads myself. There's definitely something memorable about them :)
@KitNyx, that's a powerful testimonial to why it's probably best to let the players organize the events themselves rather than relying on admin-powered event moderators.
Anyone else have any fond memories of interesting events?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The event highlighted here was one of my favorites.
I was there too, but gettin drunk in the bar with my guild (GoJ), before the highlevels decided to take me (noob) on a tour of nearby boss mobs.
(KitNyx = subo?? or one of the muted kamis?)
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Goblin Squad Member
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The event highlighted here was one of my favorites.I was there too, but gettin drunk in the bar with my guild (GoJ), before the highlevels decided to take me (noob) on a tour of nearby boss mobs.
(KitNyx = subo?? or one of the muted kamis?)
KitNyx = Loryen
I could go on for ages regarding great in game events, but I'll try and be brief.
Easily one of the most memorable events for me took place in EverQuest a long time ago, before Kunark even. There was a GM event in Kithicor forest in which giant undead were spawning and just going crazy, spilling out from the darkness and slaughtering everything.
Our guild was made up of a wide range of levels, so the three highest levels had set up camp in the center of the forest and spent the night making trips to the zone line and escorting new arrivals to our spot. As a Ranger I went along with them despite my low-ish level of 32 as they needed my tracking to get back and forth without getting totally lost in the darkness. Arriving safely back at camp was a huge relief and each trip was an exciting excursion.
After a few hours of this and taking down enough to get some nice upgrades for almost everyone, a GM appeared near the tail end of the event and entertained our gathering for awhile with riddles and small challenges. It was an absolute blast.A few unique titles were even given out (which was huge at the time, you didn't get 10 titles for finding a mailbox or whatever it is now).
On paper this may not sound like an exciting adventure, but the combination of GM interaction, player camaraderie, terror as twelve foot mummies came stomping out of the darkness, new and interesting loot that was actually useful, and people roleplaying as default on 'normal servers' all really made for a very memorable night.
Goblinworks Founder
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I'd love to hear about the kinds of events that have made an impression on you, and about the things that happened during the event that you'll never forget.
This is a fantastic question from Nihimon. I haven’t been able to come up with just one response to the question for a lifetime of gaming. I’ll share a collection gaming highlights:
- Recent Pathfinder Story – The perspective of giving the Pathfinder Beginner Box to my daughter. It was one of those ‘priceless’ moments.
- Eve Online Story – The great collapse of the Imperial Order alliance.
- Library Gaming – A story about D&D at the Lincoln Public Library.
- Warcraft Video – A video of a 40-person vanilla World of Warcraft raid. I hope you enjoy it. The video was put together by a player in the Star Riders raiding community on the Feathermoon Server, one of Blizzard’s founding RP servers. I have very fond memories of my first 18 months playing that MMO. In this video, I played the character, Tevis, one of the two tanking warriors on the BWL boss Razorgore. I was leading this raid and the group of players included my son, my wife, my brother-in-law, and a community of friends established in-game some of whom were playing from places around the globe such as Munich, Brisbane, Bath (England), and Singapore. For me, Warcraft was most fun in the beginning while there remained a sense of exploration of the various experiences possible in the game. It was a time when each Warcraft server was developing its own unique community (prior to paid character transfers, cross-realm battlegrounds, or the dungeon finder). Your actions in-game had meaning for the reputation of your character and guild.
- Frank Mentzer’s Aquaria Campaign - Sometime around 1992, I played 2nd edition D&D in chat rooms on America Online. This group was Dungeon Mastered by Frank Mentzer who used the AOL screen name, TSR Ogre. Apparently, this campaign went on for years after I stopped using the AOL service, but I played my Dwarven Fighter/Cleric, Barin Smithbrand (AOL screen name - Illicit), in this campaign until he was about 6th level. I didn’t know it then but it turns out one of the other players was Erik Mona (AOL screen name – Iquander). Frank included some peculiar content in his campaign set in the World of Greyhawk on a continent far from the Flanaess. I recall an adventure where we were tasked to go collect a load of bat guano from a cave in order to supply fireball spell components for the battle wizards of our patron nation. He called dwarves, Dwur, and halflings, Hobbniz. This was a memorable campaign, but the chat room based format was slow going. AOL as a bulletin board service was fine, but by this time I was interested in using other Internet tools such as UseNet and Mosaic, and so dropped AOL and this campaign.
- PBP Gladiatorial Combat – Using 3rd edition epic rules, I had some good times building epic characters for combat on the old WoTC epic forum threads under the name Summerstar. Min-maxing an epic build was like doing a Sudoku puzzle, a mental exercise without social context. I prefer games where play is fundamentally a group activity, but I also love games with complexity where thoughtful and creative character construction is like a mini game puzzle.
- Other games - Traveler, Boot Hill, Top Secret, Gamma World, Diplomacy, Squad Leader, 1830, Magic: The Gathering, Champions, etc --- Learning each new game and achieving an understanding of the game’s intricacies, strengths, and weakness is like learning to appreciate various tastes of wine. Regardless of the wine’s acidity, tannins, balance, or body, it’s still wine. Games of all kinds are fun, but some experiences are more memorable than others.
I am confident that Pathfinder Online will be a superb game and a memorable experience. Keep up the great posts!
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Goblinworks Founder
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WoW - Southshore vs Terran Mills PvP
Ultima Online - Was when they were doing the early in-game events of fighting undead with GM's controlling liches. I was in Trinsic with 3 other friends and we were on the rooftop of a building. When a named lich showed up and started to fight us, we though we had a chance till he cracked out lightning but it was fun just to try. Then going into Yew with screen filled with monsters attacking and you're not sure where you were.
Asherons Call - the final days of beta when the meteor was coming it was fun with the events going on, shame there wasn't anything to the meteor actually hitting.
Meridian 59 - setting up guards at leveling spots to fight off pk's, even though I messed up and let a pk past me (watched the green dot walk up to another green dot and then pfft one green dot no more but now a red one)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Definitely Warforged Nights
Start off by doing a bunch of raids with everyone playing their warforged characters. This was at the time where it was still relatively unpopular to play warforged, due to their 50% healing penalty, but before they got their big boost in popularity from the power attack enhancement rework.
After the raids we'd finish things off with a rousing game of "Kick the Midget". Everyone would go to the market place and set up boundaries for goal posts. The referee would call out a target as some unwitting halfling or dorf entered the marketplace and the whole group of warforged would go tearing after the poor little bugger and through their movements try to coerce that player to go through their respective goal posts.
I got in trouble on the DDO forums for introducing that little gem of a game. Oh memories...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I played a MUD in the mid 1990s called Gemstone. Coincidentally, it was made by Simutronics - the company that made the HeroEngine. At this point I was new to online gaming. To this day, I've never been in an online world that felt as real as that text based game did.
This was a different age, where computer gaming was still for gamers, but it was quickly getting more mainstream. Still, it was more common to see roleplaying than it was to see someone speaking out of character. I remember the GMs would stage special events. There might be a goblin invasion attacking an outpost town and the players had to band together to repel the attack. These attacks might start out as small encounters early in the week and then culminate to a full-on assault after several days. The whole server would be on edge worried about when the next invasion might happen. You just didn't know what to expect! Contrast this to the modern MMO and I can tell you exactly what is gonna happen, because I know the meta-game. In Gemstone, the GMs themselves would control the most powerful beings and they would interact with you. There might be RP interactions of a truce between the player base and some orc leader, for example.
And there was real danger if you died! You would drop whatever you were holding and sometimes worse, if you left your body after death any passer-by could loot your goods! I had gear that I spent one year's worth of gold on, so that was a real risk. You had to rely on your friends to rescue you and protect you. All these people worried about partial loot - bah! You don't know what a thrill it is to risk it!
If I had to pick one specific event:
One day, a ship had arrived from an unknown land requesting help. Only the Lords and Ladys (over level 20) were strong enough to answer this plea. At this point, my character was experienced enough to go, but just barely. I remember loading on board the ship with several of the well-known characters of the realm. Many showed concern that I was "too young" to be able to handle what lay ahead, but I persisted on going. I remember the ship itself had a travel time that felt like an hour to reach the island... Yep, that's my most epic time in a game - waiting for what felt like an hour full of dread and anticipation of reaching an unknown land to fight unknown foes with characters (not people) that I recognized from the world my character inhabited. I can replay it in my mind right now like a movie. Yeah, this was from a text based game.
Come anywhere close to this, Goblinworks and I will speak fondly of you too 15 years from now!
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Goblin Squad Member
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... I've never been in an online world that felt as real as that text based game did.
This reminds me of one of the three or four most vivid dreams I've ever had in my entire life.
I'm sure most of us have had the experience where we dream something from a game we've been playing. I remember dreaming of being Ken doing those massive uppercuts from Street Fighter, and a couple of less memorable things from EQ, but all of those were always dominated by the graphics from the game.
Before all of those, I was playing Arctic MUD, a text-only MUD that I really, really enjoyed. My dream was based on Arctic MUD, with places and characters from that game, but because the game didn't give me a picture of the place other than the words they used to describe it, my mind built an incredibly life-like room with utterly realistic characters. It was really amazing, and I can still remember the way the room looked to this day.
Thanks, Buzzo, for awakening this memory :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have two memories involving Star Wars Galaxies, pre-CU, and one involving Warhammer Online:
1) A few days into playing SWG, I had my first run-in with group PvP. (A quick aside: In SWG, you could have group duels, not just 1v1 dueling; similar rules: last man standing on either side wins the duel for his group) I was hanging out in Theed, checking the bazaar and asking if anyone could teach me Unarmed Fighting 2 (maybe 3, my memory gets fuzzy there), when I saw that most of the players outside the starport had gathered into two groups. I didn't realize how odd that was, though the fact that most of them had powerful equipment did make me think something was up, so I wandered over. They were just standing around, and for a moment I thought that there was a server disconnect. Suddenly, at the same time, the entire courtyard erupted in blaster fire! Everyone was shooting at everyone else, there were several rancor pets rampaging around, and grenades going off like fireworks! I panicked and ran around in the square, sometimes asking in /say, "What the hell is going on?!" I wasn't taking damage, which only made me more nervous; had I found some disastrous glitch? After a few minutes, things died down, and my heart rate finally slowed back to normal. It was only later that I learned what group dueling was. To this day, I hope that a few of those guys got a chuckle out of the newb who wandered into their firefight.
2) In SWG, exploring player-made cities. Mind you, SWG housing was pretty open-ended: Inside your house, you could place almost any object in your inventory, and move/rotate it, but only a few pixels at a time. Decorating was tedious, but could be worth it, as I found out. The lack of gravity on objects helped; if you moved a table straight up, it would float in midair. Also, all decorations are nonstatic, so you can run through them. That broke immersion a bit, but added to practicality: Your huge artwork wouldn't cause too many problems in the guildhall. Exploring SWG player-made cities was almost like going through Minecraft screenshots nowadays; it was amazing what people could do with such a simple mechanic. In one guildhall, someone had put several fish in midair, put cinderblocks above and below them, and added four quarterstaves placed vertically, one in each corner. Bam! Instant aquarium! In another, some practical joker made a wall of cinderblocks in his hallway, so that the corridor looked walled-off... until you ran straight through it. I almost fell for it if it wasn't that I knew that the housing type he used had several rooms past his "wall". Some people put a whole bunch of furniture in midair as abstract art, put a battleaxe behind each chair, put a whole bunch of weapons on a table... the possibilities were endless. I knew a few merchants who had paid other players to help them make their vendor houses more interesting and decorative, helping them get and keep player customers.
3) The PvP in Warhammer Online, namely keep capturing. In each zone past the newbie ones, there are two keeps; one starts in the hands of Order, the other in Destruction. Most of the rewards in the game come from capturing the enemy's keep, which can take anywhere from half an hour to all day, depending on how many players are on each side. Plus, you should defend your keep, including the one you just captured; a classic tactic is, after capturing the enemy keep, to stay in it for at least a few minutes to hold off the inevitable enemy player counterattack. Those were some of my favorite moments of the game: Having just taken the keep, instead of just rolling for loot and leaving, most of the group would stay. I always liked wandering around the keep, or just sitting on the roof and taking in the view. I loved that group play in that game has at least a little impact on the map; instead of "we took down 3 bosses and got 5 pieces of gear", it's more like "we just captured a keep! Check it out!" We'd also start some crazy topic in chat, or just make bad jokes. (Back when I was playing, you needed wood bought from NPCs to build siege engines, for both attack and defense; after a siege, jokes about "getting wood" were almost a tradition.)
It's wierd that 2 out of my 3 really strong memories involve PvP, even though I hate PvP. Maybe it's because that every MMO I've played didn't do PvP in a way I liked. (Except Warhammer Online, where all the good rewards came from PvP; the game's only problem was that getting a group together depended entirely on what time it was, therefore how many people were online in that zone) WoW and most other themeparks don't have good rewards, or good mechanics for that matter; in EvE, the only place to PvP properly was in nullsec, and that required way more time than I had (and money, both ingame and in real life). Ah well, now I'm getting off topic.
EDIT: Wait, I got one more, another from SWG.
4) My first run-ins with exploration and healing. It was a week or two into the game when I figured out what an Exploration Badge was: You find one of the 15 or so significant landmarks on that planet, you get exploration badges. They were everything from Ben Kenobi's house on Tatooine to the Falls of Naboo. I was out wandering around Tatooine, getting a few exploration badges; my last one that day was the exploration badge for the Sarlaac. There he was, a big toothy hole in the ground. For some reason, I decided to get real close to him; I wondered what horrible thing might happen, and I wanted to test and see if the dev team had bothered to code anything for him. I didn't instantly die, as I would expect, but instead he gave me a horrific health disease. (Another aside: In SWG, disease was very serious, as it gave you Wounds, which decrease one of your three health bars. Wounds could only be cured in town, in a medical clinic, by a player with the Medic profession; if you let wounds stack up, at some point your maximum health would be so low that almost any creature could one-shot you.) Anyway, while suffering from this disease, watching my health bar slowly get replaced with black Wounds, I ran back to the nearest town and stopped by the medical clinic. There was one other player there; he was a Medic looking for some Medical Healing exp, which could only be gotten by healing other players. He needed exp, I needed healing; perfect. However, healing me drained most of his Action and Mind, which took a few minutes to come back; it took him at least an hour (yes, one real-time hour) to finish getting all my health wounds out. During that time, we chatted about various things; what other characters he had, what he was planning on doing with this one, how I had gotten wounded so bad, etc. A few other players wandered in and out of the clinic, and they joined in. After all that, I tipped him for his time and went back on my way. It was surprisingly fun getting diseased; it let me meet a few players I never would have otherwise, and it helped one medic train his profession quite a bit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Arbalester, thanks for sharing those stories. I think one of the most important things in really creating memories and becoming connected to a game is, counter-intuitively, having some time with nothing to do. It's going to be a tricky balance, but the game can't be all "Kill! Kill! Kill! Rush! Rush! Rush!" nor can it be 1 hour of downtime after every 3 minutes of action.
There are so many. This one was related to me by another player in one of my Savage Tide campaigns.
If memory servess, this took place in Asheron's Call. A particular area had the vorpal rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Some one had managed to kite the rabbit all the way back to the town square rez point before eating a fatal "bunny smite".
The trick was that rez point is heavily trafficked. And unlike most monsters the Bunny would hang around for a while before hopping back whence it game. Each time fresh meat came into the rabbit's not-inconsiderable aggression radius, "Bunny Smite!, dead character, character rez'd ... right near the wee vicious rodent with sharp cruel fangs. Dozens, maybe a hundred or more died repeatedly and often to the Vorpal Rabbit in the span of an hour or two before the bodies stopped hitting the ground. The little bugger even decapitated alll the NPCs within range.
It made me laugh.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Opening of the gates of AQ in WoW. The server repeatedly crashed, but it was so much fun knowing this was a once ever type of event. There were creatures even the top guilds couldn't kill. So entire guilds formed lines to chain-aggro these things into NPC guards to kill them.
I joined too late to be part of the corrupted blood incident, but I think plague style events are probably one of the coolest events you could do. AP #8 is highly rated for a reason.
Edit: Combine the escalation mechanic with plagues to make the player base have to find a cure ... please?
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Goblin Squad Member
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At the end ( the final 2-3 hours) of the 2nd WoW beta stress test, everyone on the Alliance side gathered up into 4 massive raid groups (40 folk each). We ran south from Stormwind through Westfall, swam the ocean south to Bootybay and caught the boat over to Ratchet.
From there, we assaulted Crossroads.. and died en masse. It was the beta stresstest, didn't last all that long.. most folks were under 20 with a few over achievers at 25 or so. It was a massacre, and it was completely awesome.
-S
I remember that. Heh. Yeah we were massacred.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While not a player driven event, the recent Guild Wars 2 Lost Shores event was fantastic. It had more than a month of buildup, several days worth of actual event content (including a mounted attack on a brand new island, where players and NPCs pushed in from the shore and set up camps one by one while fighting their way to the center of the island), and culminating in a massive boss event that lasted around three hours.
The boss event started with discovering the crab monsters (called Karka) lair, breaking through the wall of the lair, planting explosives in the center, top and bottom of the cave (which spiraled up and down from the entrance), and then luring the massive Karka leader monster out into the open. From that point, we had to fight off its minions, break its armor off with rockslides from attacking mountains and firing boulders at it out of large geysers, igniting natural gas vents to blow more chunks off of the armor, and eventually push it into the booby trapped lair, where we collapsed the cavern on its head.
The chest we found in the cave afterwards was about as big as my guild.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In Dragonrealms the main town Crossing and smaller towns would periodically be invaded by various high level monsters that really could only be fought by similarly high level characters. The monsters would ride mammoths or be dismounted and the mammoths would rampage as well.
Those of us who were low level could hardly even hit such high level creatures, and if we got lucky could barely do any damage at all. The less bright of us would wear our strongest armor and wield our most powerful weapons, even though our best armor was nearly as ineffectual as being naked, the monsters were so powerful.
In Dragonrealms if you died and /released your corpse would magically be buried with a tombstone and all your weapons and gear would be inside the grave. Within a certain timeframe only you could /dig your grave and recover your loot but gradually, if you did not get there soon enough, your grave would begin spewing your weapons and armor and fluff onto the ground where anyone could pick it up. Some who were greedy would sneak around and pick up all that loot to either use or sell (even though individual weapons and armor were so distinctive it could be identified, leading to many an incident of vengeance later). But many would pick up the weapons not to steal, but to preserve, and would return the weapons to their owners if they could be found later.
So the role of low level characters during such an invasion would be to dart into the area of combat and drag the corpses of the fallen out of the immediate danger and then drag them to the Empath's guild, where the empaths waited to resurrect them. Naturally the heaviest player defenses were arrayed around the empath's guildhouse, because if we lost that all would be lost.
And naturally we who had to drag our heroes to resurrection would often ourselves be trampled, or one-shotted.
The monsters invariably pushed our defensive line back, and as we fell our defensive line would thin and have to fall back in a fighting retreat. Those we couldn't then reach would have to release, to be respawned at the temples.
We could sometimes 'sprint' through an embattled square to reach the fallen behind enemy lines, but dragging a corpse slowed the dragging character and usually as soon as we dragged someone back into the combat square we also would be killed to fall next to the corpse we had dragged there.
Those were good times. I had very many good times in Dragonrealms. I hope to have such good times in Pathfinder Online.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As far as MMO's go, I've only ever played SWTOR and I have two favorite "events" as it were from that game. Being a novice player in a casual guild I was just happy as could be to be able to finish Eternity Vault the first time--first op/raid ever with the evil "gravity boss" and then later on running with the same guild and taking down Nightmare EV in 54 minutes for the Infernal title. I know it's not much of an achievement to a lot of players that are far more experienced and "hardcore" than me, but it was still one heck of personal achievement moment.
My favorite tabletop event had to be my first real campaign. It was my first time playing EVER and my GM was a bit on the "girls aren't any good at D&D" sort of fellow. It was 2nd Ed and a VERY HIGH level campaign (one the original group had started, paused, then picked back up again) and so I came in with an 18/16 Fighter/Wizard. Everyone else already had their equipment but I had to fully equip that monstrosity. He gave me the 4 set Encyclopedia Magica and basically said "You can have a +4 weapon with a couple of quirks". So... I said "okay, I want a light crossbow +4 of Speed II and Doubling" His reaction was sorta... "eh, are you sure that's all you want" He never read the abilities... and then decided that it was too weak compared to the other characters' weapons so he added special bolts per day. He later seriously regretted it when we were fighting some Red Wizards in Thay and I said... "Okay, I'll take the one on the left for 32 shots and I need a 2 or better to hit." Best WTF?! moment later when he realized that with all my racial/class bonuses I had 4 shots a round standard, was hasted, speed II doubled my shots and then Doubling doubled those shots. Suffice to say he never underestimated me again.
I'm sure somewhere in all of that tangled mess it might not have supposed to have been able to work that way, but it was priceless nonetheless.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My favorite MMO Event was during the Rakghoul plague in SW: TOR. Moving from a regular world boss fight to a speeder bike race to the next one, ending in a full scale PVP battle in Tatooine with approx. 60 people on each side while simultaneously battling a diseased Bantha was just an awesome gameplay moment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My favorite MMO Event was during the Rakghoul plague in SW:TOR. Moving from a regualr world boss fight to a speeder bick race to the next one, ending in a full scale PVP battle in Tatooine with approx 60 people on each side while simetanously battleing a diseased Bantha was just an awesome gameplay moment.
Watching people accidentally summon World Bosses was always hilarious too, especially the ones on Taris and Voss.
I guess one of the more memorable events for me took place on the Genevieve <sp?> server on DAOC. A secret plan was hatched to take down all 5 Midgard Frontier keeps At the Same Time. A huge alliance of Albion guilds planned to meet up at either 3 or 4 am. To get a jump on the sleeping Midgard players. There were so many people that the game couldn't render them. We all set up and struck at near the same time. The keeps fell like dominos, it was amazing. The battle dissolved into a slideshow and at one point the assault leaders all got booted and I was in charge of the assault. The few Mids tried to defend their keep, but our numbers were too strong. That event was talked about for quite some time on the server. It was a blast.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ah, DAoC! Days of Glory.
On Kay server in the early days, before the developers decided they had to change the frontiers so radically, I was a Troll Shaman (see I was a troll before Trolls were cool) in a fairly small, tight guild. The server was pretty well dominated in those days by a big, well run war machine of a guild called Fury.
Shamans had some ranged damage spells that were diseases as well as ranged healing, and I was fairly new to the levels that were viable in the frontiers. I was specced for healing.
I believe it was the Albions who were assaulting the frontiers that day and Fury and a few guilds including ours was running around retaking keeps. Our guild had the honor of claiming this one for ourselves after it was taken by our makeshift alliance.
Well I was called away during all this and returned to find myself alone in our guild's new keep. The doors were repaired and I was working on defensive upgrades when th Albs showed up. The owning guild gets a message when NPC guards were killed, especially if you were maintaining a buff on that guard. I notified the alliance in chat and started racing around inside the walls buffing the NPC defenders, trying to heal the keep guards that were being attacked, and scrambling alert for infiltrators who could climb the walls and get inside to pick off defenders one by one.
And the RvR points poured in on me like a deluge. It was glorious. I eventually fell before the alliance arrived to relieve the seige, but I was bursting with pride at my last man defense.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I never really had any good events.
The only one that I enjoyed was in Mabinogi, where there were falling stars, and collecting enough would net you a event robe.
I got a bunch of them, and made a lot of money.
Then there was a gacha with several items, and I made a lot of money from it.*
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Sadly, no memorable events. Although field bosses are crazy (in the fact that they can one hit kill EVERYONE, but then people revive on the spot. For high level chars, that's a lot of lost experience.)
*Edit: Not really an event. I seriously hope there is no "gachapons" in PFO. I hate them with a passion. Either that, or sell the items in it as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mr. Being, I agree the Dragon Realms Crossing invasions. Those were the good ole days.
I was lucky enough to be mid level, I was actually able to help in the offense, until the higher level invaders appeared. Then I just ran back to the guild hall to stay safe. I did pick up one of the best bows I had ever seen in game off of the invader I killed. But those were the most confusing and fun events I have ever had privy to an any online game I had played.
My next favorite memory was of Ever Quest. When a GM RPed Firiona Vie. It was great to see a Demi God walking through the woods talking to normal players and having them to follow her to help her with a quest she was partaking in.
My third was in WOW with the Ringing of the Gong for the opening of Ahn'Qiraj. Our server worked hard to be the 3rd server in the world to be able to open that dungeon. That was the first and only time I have seen a zone crash from the amount of PC's in a zone. I had heard there were 1000 or more people in the zone for that.
TF
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Goblin Squad Member
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I guess one of the more memorable events for me took place on the Genevieve <sp?> server on DAOC. ...
Val: did you see this item? New Camelot Kickstarter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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SWG was my first (unhealthy) MMO obsession, mostly because it spawned so many memorable stories, most of them player based. If I had to pick one...
An alliance of Rebel guilds on my server came together, pooled their cash and built a 'base'. They spent weeks scouting locations until they found an area on Corellia that would support a large number of small player houses all lined up side-to-side, and used 20+ houses to wall off the area, with one narrow opening called 'the gauntlet'. They then put a clone facility, cantina and a few shops inside, as well as three of the destroyable bases.
Now the Empire had a target. The gall of the Rebel Alliance to build a base right under their noses! Some of the most amazing fights took place here with up to a hundred players on each side, duking it out over 20 feet of open space. It started with just attrition wars as the empire went through the meat grinder to get inside, but they eventually started finding smarter ways to attack, as we had to adapt. It was a constant push and shove, and there was never a dull moment.
What made this fun wasn't the fighting itself, but the fact that WE had created something that brought players together. Not the developers - the players did it. It wasn't just a fight breaking out here or there, or some instanced warzone. The call went out and everyone showed up to fight in one place. Your allies and enemies stopped being just red or green blips on the radar, and became people you interacted with regularly. It was our home, and we wanted to defend it. It was a blight on their pride, and they wanted it gone.
No scripted story could offer this level of dedication.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Taking a sick day at work to place a house in Ultima Online. It was a complete disaster. Felt terrible about calling in, but I'd be damned if I wasn't gonna get a house placed before the land was completely full (good argument against played placed housing). Finally found a place in the swamp south of Britannia. Horrible location but better than nothing. Always surrounded by Lizardmen, and even when they had mass (player collision) they could trap me outside by surrounding me....I was doomed. Ah, but what memories.
Also, public dungeons in UO. Not sure why but one night there were hundreds of PVPers in the favorite lich dungeon my brother would go into. I mean hundreds of us...it was total madness. LAg was awful, could tell where you were going, guys flashiung red all over. Suddenly I was dead and running back to try to get my "Silver Warhammer of Vanquishing"....best lich-killing hammer you could get. Missed it, saw a red run off with my loot. Bad night, but great fun.
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Goblin Squad Member
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FFXI - First let me preface this by saying SE did little to nothing about the Large RMT problem for years. They finally started doing something about it about 4 or so years ago, but the damage was already done. Some servers were worse than others.
Anyways my Linkshell (guild) started building a reputation for killing RMTs. But FFXI is PvE only! So we would exploit the system in order to get monsters to kill RMTs (lovingly known as MPKs).
We continued this for quite some time and thus helped police our server. The End.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Star Wars Galaxies, and the Intrepid "All Galaxy Swoop Racing Circuit". All it was was setting up a series of waypoints to hit in order, as fast as possible. The trick was knowing how to handle terrain, the various enemies, what vehicle to use on what planets, and so on. It was quite simple, but extremely fun.
Also in SWG, the decorations. There were so many *incredibly* decorated buildings, some of which were decorated for one night only for an event. Armor and a stun rod? Scuba diver. Add some fish, some looted decorations, and you've suddenly got an exotic sea scape for the best dressed of Intrepid to wander in.
Yet another in SWG: the sheer versatility in clothes. There were zero advantages in clothes, yet I spent a fair number of credits on them. All sorts of types and colors, it made creating a formal suit quite easy (and made a macro to swap into my evening clothes). If they could create so many different types of clothes, that were only worn for show, could we *please* have a wide variety of armor? Not "oh, its another suit of fullplate". I want to see styles and colors of fullplate in each "slot".
Anyways, the events. I loved the random PvP aspect of the game. I could be wandering a planet, only to get a message from someone that the Empire was massing for a raid on a base on an entirely different planet. I would promptly suicide onto a tough enemy and take the "cloner-express" back to the city, hop in my ship, and fly to the planet. Then it was a quick shuttle flight and sprint to the rally point. You'd see people racing in from all over, in widely different armor, trying to figure out who could do what to help the defense. It was madness, chaos, and it was *glorious*. Driving the Empire off was quite challenging, but *totally* worth it when we managed it.
Further, the Dev team stepped in and helped out with the in game conclusion to a massive communal RP thread that had lasted for months with over 100 players in it. Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, Imperial Walkers, everything. I mean, we got to freaking fight Darth *VADER*! The story was concluded in an awesome fashion, and we all felt it was totally worth the effort we had put into it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of my favorite events from my days of UO Catskills was the orc invasion of Trinsic. Basically it was an arranged conflict between the RP guilds located in the city of Trinsic and the best bad guy guild in any MMO the Shadownclan Orcs.
The Shadowclan was a large group of players who dressed like NPC orcs. Mind you all player characters were human at that time. They invented their own orcish language and culture and refused to break character even when being harassed by pks. Their base of operations was an NPC orc fort that they had taken over.
Standing against the orcs were the noble Paladins of Trinsic and the city militia. I remember watching ships full of orcs sail into the harbor. They slaughtered the defenders and set up a fortified camp from which they raided other parts of the city. After a long night of street to street fighting the orcs pushed the paladins back onto their island keep. After sometime the orcs grew bored and sailed home with all their spoils leaving the surviving paladins to clean up the mess.
I have never seen as great a player community as the Catskills RP folks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My first MMO was runescape. I had a ton of fun with that game, and its still a great game for kids.
I was a medium level, just starting to equip some of the better armor in the game, magic or 'rune' armor and weapons. I had a whimpy run sword and shield, but my big goal was to get a rune 2handed sword, which packed quite a bit of power.
Hanging out in a noobie area, skilling up (Doing the same thing over and over thousands of times) I came upon a man standing outside an item bank asking if anybody had a red bead. A red bead was an item you got from lvl1 imps that would spawn in random places of the world, and for a low level quest you needed 4 or 5 beads of different colors to complete it. So here was this high level guy asking for over 30 mins if anybody had a red bead to trade for- he was getting frustrated from waiting. Out there leveling... something I think it was woodcutting I came across an imp, slayed it and god a red bead. I went back to the guy at the bank and said "Hey I got a red bead, trade you for it?", he said "YES! What do you want for it". I pondered this for a moment, then blurted out my heart's desire, "A rune2handed sword". There was silence for a good minuet and he said, "Ok... fine. But you'll owe me a favor and when I ask you- you'll have to do it." I agreed, and made the trade of a red bead for a very powerful sword I could barley equip. Having this powerful weapon accelerated my character growth, and it was my faithful companion on many adventures. I loved that thing.
About a year and a half later I get a message from whats his face saying its time to cash in the favor, I want 2 million gold. I laughed him off and my alignment IRL went -80.
Fast foreward quite a few years and I'm an experienced WoW player, quitting the game at the end of burning crusade. The fact that I broke my word had always bothered me, well a little anyways. So I decided to set the karmic balance straight. I went to the noob area for blood elves and opened up a trade window with a new player. I entered 1000 gold pieces, and hit accept, making the noob incredibly rich. I waited for his response which was, "Can I have more?". I put him on my ignore list and logged off for the last time. Guess I deserved that, karmic-ly speaking.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I remember one event that happened in everquest. The dark elves of neriak led an invasion of the commonlands and then onto freeport, and my dark elf necro was there leading the charge. Was a wild battle between the forces of evil and the local town. A similar event happened a few years later in kunark where the force of evil took over the main port town for the forces of good, permanently. Was alot of fun running beside members of lore that were being controlled by GMs in the assault.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My favorite memory comes from DAoC, Server Lyonesse.
As with many other servers the Albs on Lyonesse were numerous. When a sizeable amount of players arrived at max level and (finally) the Epic Armors were given out so that you no longer were a two hit to every Sorc and Wiz out there, we organized a massive Relic raid.
The most important part was stealth. if the Albs realized what happened beforehand their sheer number would likely crash the zone ending all hope for us to succeed on capturing one of their relics.
I played a Dwarven Healer and was assigned to one of the three escort groups.
We sneaked into position in Snowdonia, a labyrinth of hills and forests while a sizeable force did a fake relic raid in Hibernia on Lugs Spear.
Albs, being the hyaenas they were (*chuckle*) posiitoned themselves at their back then favorite spot, the crossroads in front of the Albion Milegate where you could also intercept anyone wanting to travel through to the Midgard Milegate in Emain Macha.
The Mids then led a massive assault on the relic fortress and actually managed to steal the Hiberian Relic after most of the Midgard force was wiped out. As soons as the Albs got wind from the "successful" taking of the Fortress all pretense of ediscipline broke and large groups of Albs poured away from their milegate to join the fun and to mob up the small Midgard force before the Hibs regrouping at Caer Sidi(?) could reclaim their relic.
This was the beginning of a cat and mice that drew the Albs deeper and deeper into Hib territory while we laid low at Snowdonia, avoiding to be seen.
When most of the Mids that were wiped before the Hib Fortress had regouped and silently poured into Snowdonia we struck. Alb forces were in turmoil as they couldn't decide what to do and when they finally decided upon defending their own relic they were to far away to come back in time.
This was a fateful moment as the Alb leaders decided to swing against the approaching Hib forces in order be killed and thus released back to Albion.
But it was too late and too little. Out three elite groups held of the tickle of Albs long enough to allow our relic transport group to escape, even better the group carriing the Hib Relic amanged to sneak through all the chaos and bring back this relic just in time.
Great day even though we lost the relics soon after to night raids.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Space PvP in SWG was memorable.
In WoW, a member of an alliance guild (I think) had died in real life, and his guildmates and other people he gamed on that server with had an in-game funeral in Winterspring. Or tried to...
Unfortunately, this was a PvP server, so they all got ganked while wearing appearance gear...
Priceless.
I played a MUD in the mid 1990s called Gemstone. Coincidentally, it was made by Simutronics - the company that made the HeroEngine. At this point I was new to online gaming. To this day, I've never been in an online world that felt as real as that text based game did.
In Dragonrealms the main town Crossing and smaller towns would periodically be invaded by various high level monsters that really could only be fought by similarly high level characters. The monsters would ride mammoths or be dismounted and the mammoths would rampage as well.
I also played Gemstone III and Dragonrealms, and I have many fond memories of those games! They're what first got me into online gaming, along with a MUD called Dragon's Gate, and I miss the role-play, the GMs being real, interactive presences in the game, the puzzles (in particular, I remember a warehouse in Crossing that I got lost in trying to find the Thieves' Guild, and to get out you had to solve a puzzle involving floor tiles), and the monster invasions. Wasn't really an event, per se, but a lot of people used to hang around the Crossing Thieves' Guild with samplings of different drinks from all over the place, and tobacco from the little shop in the city of Riverhaven and role-play.
Anyway, I digress...
It wasn't really organized, but one fond memory from WOW occurred on a PVP server I was on. I was a druid, often playing with a RL friend who was a warrior. We were doing quests around Hillsbrad Foothills when some alliance rogue started attacking us. We managed to kill her a couple of times, so she came back with a friend, and they killed us. We got a few people to come help us, and things continued to escalate, them killing us, us killing them. Finally, the Horde sent out the call and amassed a bunch of people including higher-levels. Someone had that quest to raise the NPC that attacks Southshore, so we did that, then went in en masse, wiping out the entire town. Don't know if you'd call that an "event" per se either, but it was a lot of fun.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Starting up Warforged Nights in DDO as a way of promoting counter-racism in DDO. We'd do a few raids, but the best part was chasing Dwarves and Halflings around the Stormreach marketplace playing kick the midget.
It lost some of its joy when Turbine started making warforged better so that most people were playing them as the melee of choice.
But then half-orcs came along, and the hate is alive again.
Death to All Fleshlings!!!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Fighting the Lich King the fack that he was hard to beat not because you had to have the best gear in the game ( i fought him after cata) but because he as a boss was a insanely hard puzzle 10 people had to solve together because of my class at the near end of the fight i had to dps heal and tank must fun I ever had and I felt like I did something. I did not gust kill some Boss #367 I killed the Lich King I was a "king slayer"
which not every one is even now the lvl cap has moved up he is still one of the harder bosses in the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My favorite MMO memory comes from EvE Online. It was sometime in 2004, before jump to zero. It was my first time taking a short cut from Amarr space to Minmatar space. As I approached a gate in Hula or perhaps Amamake (don't remember which), I was about 10 km from the gate and I suddenly noticed something new....
I bear perfect ring of flashing red icons around the gate. I said to myself... Wow, I wonder what those are?
An alpha strike later and my Bestower evaporated, my pod followed and I learned a lesson I still live by today in EvE.
"EvE is a cold and harsh galaxy, and you are never safe."
I eventually joined pirates in Amamake and served in the Pirate Coalition and was "blue" to the Sanguine Legion for several months before a shifted to high sec ore theft and war decs.