Everquest came out in the last week in March, 1999. It is an online multi-player Dungeons and Dragons type of game. For the time it had reasonably impressive graphics and a 3D sound. For those of us that played Dungeons and Dragons in our youth, and even for those of us that didn't, it became a very addictive game. For the first year I played a halfling druid, Devnull BreakWind. At the time the maximum level in the game was Level 50. I got Dev to Level 50 in about 10 months of playing, and about 80 days played. You have to understand that days are measured as a 24 hour period online. I don't mean continuous, if you play 4 hours a day for 6 calendar days, that would equal one day played. Although I have to admit I did do some of those days and one continuous session. By the time I stopped playing Devnull he had over 100 days played.
After the first year a expansion came out called Ruins of Kunark. The expansion raised the maximum level to 60. I has started to burnout on the game and had to travel more because of work so I didn't play much. In the summer of 2001 I switched from Tarew Marr server to Tallon Zek server. We switched because we were getting bored of the game and Tallon Zek offered the opportunity to fight other players. Again more work, travel and being very busy I haven't had time to play much. I don't know if I will ever get a character to Level 60. I still like the game, but no longer feel the need to put in 8 hours a day and 30 hours on weekends. I guess if you don't know this game I should say that the Everquest can be a lot of fun before about level 40. Before 40 you can have as few as 2 people and as many as 6 people in your group and go to most places. After level 40 everything becomes a big deal and takes lots of hours. Post level 50 there is nowhere you can go without a full group of 6 and most places take 12 or more. It means that if you are going to play infrequently you will likely start a new character because it takes 3 hours to organize the smallest outing after level 50. The game for me was never about leveling or acquiring items, although I like both, but it was about adventuring and meeting people. Everquest has since had another expansion, Scars of Velious and another is planned. It remains a very fun game, and I still play it a couple times a week when I can. Every now and then, if I have been away from Everquest for a while, I get the urge to sit down and do an 8 hour session. Even though it looks like I am at the end of my Everquest playing, or nearing the end, it was very entertaining for a year and quite entertaining for another year. For a game, that is outstanding.
In general I liked to play short characters. The three main reasons for this are:
At some point I plan to add a section which describes the adventures of my various characters. Given my past record of updating my page, don't hold your breath.
Here are my cast of characters that have provided me with years of entertainment. The characters are organized by server on which they exist. Although there are more servers, the servers I play on are Tarew Marr and Tallon Zek.
Tarew Marr is the name of a server in Everquest. It has the same rules as most servers. In a nutshell those rules are that you can attack and possibly kill any non-player character in the game. You cannot attack other players. This isn't enforced by rules, your combat spells don't effect other players and your weapons don't work when you try to hit other players. The two exception to this is if you challenge somebody to a duel and they accept, or if you go to one of the very few PVP (Player vs. player) areas in the game, where it is open combat.
Dev was my first and favorite character. As a druid he never killed bears or wolves. As a halfing he liked a quiet home, good food and was not above taking the odd bit of loot if it happen to follow him home. He was very loyal and would stay long after the battle had been lost to the foe. Dev is an adventurer and scout. When he was not with his friends he was out exploring new areas for them to have adventures. He was often seen with his pals Kaldrim, a Dwarf Paladin, Morn, a Half Elf Ranger, Newf, a Wood Elf Druid, Eldrad, a Wood Elf Druid, Rain, a Half Elf Warrior, and Zorbo, a Wood Elf Druid. With these stalwart companions Dev adventured the lands of Norrath. He did go through a period in his mid 30's to late 40's where he took a particular dislike to Giants on the old continents of Norrath, before the discovery of Kunark. If there was a giant in the zone, it wasn't long before it felt Dev's wrath Dev remembers many fallen comrades and often wondered what happened to Perdunk, Judah, Astro,Cefari, Agave and many others that discovered the world of Norrath when it was young.
Dev got tired of seeing all the "Windwalkers", "Skydancers" etc. in Norrath and that is why he took the very old and distinguished halfling surname of Breakwind. Breaking wind was a long established tradition in Dev's family and he carries on that tradition both proudly and with vigor.
Although being a Necromancer Phaj is not really evil, he is just misunderstood. He had a pretty easy time in life since he got to use the resources of Devnull. He is a bit of a fashion victim dressed all in Shadow Bound Silk. As a Gnome he dabbles in tinkering and since he is a necro and everything attacks him he also tailors. This just shows his environmental consciousness by turning his foes into clothes. Phaj has some good stuff and was a lot of fun to play, but never really got much air time. His primary role was to be around when to adventure with friends who were not of Dev's advanced stature. He was named after a rotting skin disease, the Fage. Usually he can be seen carrying his Stein of Mogguk but he likes to break out the scythe for pictures.
Quichangkane was named after the main character in the 1970's television show "Kung Fu". He had a hard life growing up. Unlike the other characters in the stable, he was human, which makes him virtually blind at night. Monks in EQ are more like martial arts masters than christian monks in monasteries. Unfortunately for Quichangkane, because his name was so long to type, he became known as Quiche. He practiced the monastic disciplines of poverty, piety and kicking ass. He prided himself on having all his skills maxed and would practice safe fall, falling off of objects without hurting himself, for hours on end. This pursuit gave him the opportunity to practice his other important survival skill of bandaging his wounds. Quichangkane was a bit of a home body and has never really been farther away from home than West Commons.
Quichangkane was a lot of fun to play. The ability to fight without weapons made him a cheap character to run. He was really just created to participate with a group of friends who all had higher level characters but had never adventured in some of the lower level dungeons. Since I usually play casters, playing a melee character was a switch. I used to flinch when I would get hit because when you are a caster, if you get hit you die.
Celute was originally name Celut. She is a party girl and a babe with a great singing voice. She dislikes Orcs and likes presents. Life was fairly easy for Celute. Even though she never called on Devnull's resources, as a babe in Norrath people would just give here stuff. In a group she was very quite.
I started a bard because after playing a druid it was irritating to have characters that could not move fast. Bards are faster than druids. I made her a Wood Elf because the of the races that can be bards, Wood Elves can forage, so no food shortage, hide, so easier to get out of danger, and see in the dark. I made her a female because all the faces of male Wood Elves available looked like whiney little kids.
Allardyn was my favorite Dungeons and Dragons character, and he was a wizard. I found wizards fairly boring to play, and I assume it gets better at higher levels. Allardyn never got to experience teleporting to other planes or doing massive damage. Allardyn never really developed much of a personality other than being rather cantankerous. I often felt that at some point I would go back to playing Allardyn. Unfortunately at the time I was spending most time playing Devnull and I never really developed a group for Allardyn to hunt with. Wizards don't solo very well and I didn't like the style of play very much. The wizard tended to have limited options for survival and not having any way to heal himself led to long down times.
I, and a bunch of the people I played with, were getting bored of EverQuest. We all had level 50+ characters and it seemed like the fun had gone out of the game. We decided to move to Tallon Zek. The reason was because on Tarew Marr you could not kill other players. On Tallon Zek you could. Most servers operate along the lines of Tarew Marr. On the few servers were you were allowed to indiscriminately attack and annoy other players, they could take your stuff if they killed you. On Tallon Zek they could just take what ever money you were carrying. Since items are very hard to get in EverQuest, we decided getting killed because somebody liked your shoes seemed to much like real life.
Phaj was named after Phaj on Tarew Marr. When we moved to Tallon Zek we were all starting new characters, we needed to know the name of one character that we could all contact so we would know the names of the characters we started. To this end I started a character that had the same name as one of my Tarew Marr characters. We divided up who would be what type of character, and since we thought we needed a necro, I volunteered. In general a necromancer is a good class. The downside of a necro is that it does not bring much to a group and since you are considered evil, you have a hard time in non-evil towns. On Tallon Zek a Gnome Necro is a mistake. You can't go to the good towns because the guards kill you and you can't go to evil towns because other players kill you. This leaves you begging for somebody to buy you food in the newbie areas
Growing up in Steamfont was hard. Phaj would kill rats for hours so he could sell rat ears and whiskers to go buy his much needed spells. He would get enough for a spell and just as he was heading to buy it, pk'ing Elven scum would come and kill him and steal his spell money. For those that don't know pk means player kill. This gave Phaj an attitude towards elves, and humans and pretty much anybody tall. The effect of this is that Phaj extracted a lot of revenge. Sometime around his early 20's the talls stopped attacking and he pretty much concentrated on killing evil races.
Phaj is my current character but I don't get a chance to play much. He is still fun, I just don't have the time.
Stdin was created because when Kunark came out Devnull was too high to adventure in most the low level zones on the new continent. I wanted to see them, so Stdin was born. I already had a necromancer, I prefer casters, so the only other caster available to an Iksar is a Shaman. Shaman also have the advantage of getting the spell Spirit Of the Wolf like druids, so traveling is much easier.
Stdin despises Elves and Humans of all sorts and thinks Gnomes are quite tasty with a nice chianti. He also hates "Turbo Looters". Turbo Looters are people who expect you to group with them, heal them and help them and then take all the money from every kill. Stdin will put up with it for a while, then mention that he needs to buy spells too, and if that doesn't solve the problem, he just lets the turbo looter die. He is very loyal to good groups and feels bad groups bring that sort of thing on themselves. He prefers to group with Monks and Necros and as of yet has not been very far from home.