Adventures in Cyberspace
Oct. 20th, 2002 02:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Went to Writer's Night tonight. Left feeling kind of odd... in that I didn't get to read anything, but I don't think I wanted to read anything either. All I really had to read was several scenes from an untitled Tai-Pan story that I've posted to the Tai-Pan mailing list already... I don't think I've rewritten the first scene yet, which I need to do. Anyway, I don't know if it would be worth reading just the few scenes that I have. The other thing that I was actually considering reading was chapter one of Magical Girls In Oz, which I don't know if people would have been interested in that or not, but at least the first chapter is done and about half of the second. ^_^
Stopped at my comic shop on the way over to Gene's place. I lent my comics dealer some of my Northside CDs to see what he thinks of them. Vasen, Groupa, JPP, one other one, oh yeah Wimme. I gave him back his soundtrack to the Escaflowne movie... the movie sucked, mostly because it wasn't the same as the original series, but actually the soundtrack is pretty cool.
I played some Everquest this week... just Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. That would explain why I got up so late Friday and kind of missed going to lunch with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
miertam, altough it's not all my fault since we didn't have any plans ahead of time.
It also occurs to me that I was playing EQ on the roleplay server Firiona Vie Friday night, and Miertam was playing Earth and Beyond, and meanwhilesora_kitsune was playing EQ on some other server, Antonius Bayle or somesuch. I only mention it because the main reason I have a character on Firiona Vie is because Sora talked me into playing there so we could play together... and the only reason Miertam is playing Earth and Beyond is because Sora bought it for him so they could play together... and then Sora abandons us both! ^_^ But I understand... he was playing one of the cat race people for the first time since getting his new computer (the old one couldn't handle the cat city, which is one of the newest parts of Everquest and much more graphic intensive). Since you can only have one character on the roleplay server, he had to go to another server to play a cat.
So I suppose we'll forgive him, just this once.
So anyway, here's three stories from my last three days of EQ gaming. I don't think I've posted anything of this sort in my live journal before -- mostly when I want to tell boring stories about my EQ adventures, I do it on my guild board where at least everyone else shares my gaming addiction. So if you don't want to read about virtual events, feel free to ignore.
Feeding Time!
Even though I've been playing on the role-play server, I haven't really participated in much role-playing, other than telling people "I am a rogue of sixteen seasons" instead of "I'm a 16th level rogue". You use colorful greetings a lot and talk like 20th century people imagine people in the Middle Ages talked. That's called role-playing. Also, I've discovered that a lot of the dark elves use "Dark Elf" phrases like "Bella dos" or somesuch, which means "thank you". Just like real dark elves. ^_^ I guess the phrases come from Dungeons and Dragons, from the novels or whatever.
So I'm hunting by myself Thursday night, and another player asks me to come to where she is so she can see me. She's a much higher level player, and I do as she asks because I assume she has something in mind, perhaps giving me some cool equipment, who knows? She asks me to take off my helmet so she can see me better, asks how old I am (what level I am, I assume). She compliments me on my looks. Then she says she's hungry.
Hungry? I tell her I have some food if she needs it.
No, she doesn't need any food. What she needs is blood.
Well by this point I was wondering where all this was going, and if it was going to wind up being some sort of cyber thing ("virtual sex" = cybering). But I decided to play along and see what happened. She said that she wanted to drink some of my blood, and asked if I would let her. She said it would leave me weak but would not kill me.
So I said if there was no danger, then I would let her do it. She invited me to group with her, I assume so that we could talk privately via the group channel. Then she stood close to me and described her character biting into my neck, drinking blood, enjoying it, then finally pulling away. And I added a few bits about how I felt weaker, and then I asked if she was sated... probably a loaded question, since I didn't really know if she was planning to do anything else. But she said that if she drank any more she might kill me.
She said that she wasn't a vampire, and that I could see that this was so because it was daytime and we were outdoors. I asked her what manner of person could walk about in the daytime and yet drank blood, but she declined to tell me anything more, saying it was a secret.
Then she stood back, buffed me ("buffing" = casting beneficial spells on someone, such as spells which make you stronger, quicker, tougher, harder to kill). She said that I should consider it payment.
So I thanked her, and went back to hunting. I actually used the phrase "May the Prince of Hate not be against you", because most of the dark elves are supposed to follow Innoruk, the Prince of Hate, so I was trying to figure out how to say "God be with you" or the equivelant for dark elves, but my own character is agnostic so it seemed to me that the most I could ask for was that Innoruk never consider me an enemy. ^_^
That's all it turned out to be... a little roleplaying, and then buffing me as a reward. I have to admit, it was fun, partly because I really didn't know what to expect. Nor do I know if she or any of her friends have more of a story behind why they drink blood, that maybe I might learn more some day down the road... in any case, an interesting experience.
Zombie Skin for Sale!
My second story is about my adventures Friday night. For a while now I've been killing willowisps, because they sometimes drop lightstones and greater lightstones ("drop" = you find this item on their corpse after killing them). The greater lightstones are especially valuable. Friday night I hit 16th level and had collected 17 greater lightstones.
First I travelled to the Oasis of Marr. Here, in the center of the zone, is a small band of gypsies. One of them will give you a "Concordance of Research" if you give her a greater lightstone, and this book sells for more than twice what the greater lightstone itself would sell for.
So I spent a lot of time converting my greater lightstones into cash. Between each transaction I would hide and look all about, because dangerous monsters such as ghouls, crypt mummies, and spell-casting skeletons prowl the area that could kill me very quickly.
Finally I had my money, and I headed out on a long trek. I crossed through the Northern Desert of Ro, and then through East and West Commonlands, where griffons and hill giants and kodiak bears roam. I snuck through Kithicor in the early morning hours, which is very dangerous because high-level undead prowl there at night. Lucky for me, as a rogue I can hide and sneak and avoid the nasty Zombie Commanders and the like. I also snuck through High Hold Pass, which has a lot of orcs and kobolds that would gang up on me if they saw me. Then I travelled down the long and winding path along the edge of the gorge in East Karana, and snuck some more to avoid more giants, griffons, highland lions, and the humans there who don't like dark elves at all.
Finally I made my way to the Wizard Spires in North Karana. Here I essentially purchased a ticket to the moon... within a few minutes I was "beamed up" and arrived in a zone called The Nexus, which connects to five different wizard spires on the five different Everquest continents. From the Nexus you can run to a zone called The Bazaar. The Bazaar is a wonderful place. ^_^
In a game like Everquest, there are thousands and thousands of items you can find, perhaps more than five thousand total. Clearly, not everything you find is going to be useful for your own character, perhaps designed for a different class or race or alignment, or something that is not suited for your level, or something you already have... so people do a lot of trading in the game. Long ago, people would auction to buy or sell items in whichever zone they were in, and certain areas became known as auction zones, and people would even organize events that were like virtual flea markets... the more people in one place, the more likely you were to sell your wares or to find what you were looking for.
The people at EQ took note of this, and so they developed the zone known as The Bazaar. Here, you can type a simple command and set your character up as a merchant. You set the prices for your wares, and then you can simply walk away from the computer, maybe go to work or go to sleep, or play EQ on a second computer/account. Other players can come up to your character, click on you, and buy whatever you have for sale.
It's pretty slick. ^_^ But even better, if you're shopping for something in the Bazaar, there's a window that pops up that allows you to search for your item by multiple categories. For example, I can search for something that is usable by a dark elf who is a rogue, that is a piercing weapon, that grants a bonus to strength. Instantly, I'm presented with a list of items that match my criteria, with prices and the name of the merchant. I can click on the item name to get a detailed description, and click on the merchant name to find out where they are.
This is VERY slick!
So my big goal for a while had been to raise a lot of money by killing wisps, then to go buy a better weapon and a few other items. I had planned to buy a "Tombcarver", which is a very fast piercing weapon, but eventually I settled on something that was slower but did more damage, and I bought some newer armor and things like orc fang earrings and a jagged band (ring) that increased my strength and armor class. I also bought a robe -- most robes are designed for the various caster classes only, but this one even a rogue like me could wear. ^_^ It was purely a vanity thing, something to make me look different.
And while I was there, I decided that I wanted to try out the vendor side of things. I'd never done this before... and I really wasn't sure that a 16th level rogue had anything worth selling. But then I remembered that I had a lot of bone chips and zombie skins in the bank. Bone chips are used by necromancers for casting their skeletal pet/servant spells, and zombie skins are very useful for making poison vials, which higher-level rogues can use in making poisons for their weapons.
So I set myself up as a merchant, and set my prices a little below what others in the market were offering. Then I took a shower and did some reading, coming back to check out my progress every once in a while. Within an hour and a half, I'd sold all my bone chips and zombie skins, and raised enough money to complete the purchases I wanted to make.
That was pretty cool. ^_^ Not that sitting around doing nothing was fun... obviously this is something to do when you're otherwise occupied. But the whole idea of the Bazaar is cool to me, since I play late at night when a lot of people aren't on. It's one of the best innovations EQ has come up with -- many of their other innovations are actually ideas borrowed from other games, but no game on the market has anything like the Bazaar.
Grouping In High Pass
Well, this last story is really just a basic story about a pickup group... as I was travelling back from North Karana, I was asked to join a group in Highpass. They were fighting orcs. One of the disadvantages to playing on the roleplay server that I actually like a lot is that there is no "common tongue", and if you aren't speaking dark elf, I can't understand you, because I haven't learned the human tongue yet (or any other tongue). The text from other players looks like gibberish to me -- it really is completely unintelligible. Just another of the cool extra touches that set Everquest apart from other games like Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, and Asheron's Call, in my opinion.
But as it turns out, if you join a chat channel the language filters can be circumvented, so our group had opened a "highpass 2" chat channel and I could understand everyone else. Which was a good thing. ^_^
We had a non-standard group, which is pretty standard for pickup groups. We had no true healer -- just a bard playing the healing song, and a ranger with her nearly useless first-level healing spell. We had no tank -- a tank is someone that can absorb massive damage, such as a warrior, a paladin, or a shadow knight. Instead we had a rogue (me), a ranger, a beast lord and a bard, all classes that make relatively poor tanks. Finally, we had a mage with his air elemental pet and an enchanter, who was a huge help because she could mesmerize extra orcs and let us tackle only one or two at a time.
This is called "crowd control" and is one of the most important jobs in a large group in Everquest. The two most important jobs are "tank" and "healer", but after that, I think someone who can do crowd control is most important, because you can get swarmed and still survive the fight.
I tend to solo a lot, so every time I join a group I have to scramble to remember what I'm supposed to be doing... but playing a rogue isn't too hard. My job is to identify the real tank, assist him, stand on the opposite side of the monster and backstab it as much as I can, then when I get it's attention I evade so that hopefully it turns back to the main tank and I can backstab it again.
The tank, it turned out, was the beastlord. He was organized and always on the orcs first, and always had their attention. He was several levels higher than me, so much better at taking the pounding that the orcs dished out. For a while we were swarmed with orcs and things got pretty crazy. A few people left, and others joined, and in the end we were down to just the ranger, me, the mage, and a shaman that had joined. The good news is that a shaman is a real healer, and has some really good buff spells too. The bad news is that the ranger and I were not only poor tanks, but the lowest levels in the group, so we couldn't take much of a pounding. And so, the inevitable happened -- the shaman ran out of mana, we were overrun by orcs, and we had to flee.
And that was the end of that. It was a fun little pickup group while it lasted. The ranger asked me if it took this long to gain a level at the higher levels -- apparently she was new to the game, and this 17th level ranger was her highest (or only) character. I had to tell her no, that at higher levels, it took much longer... ^_^
And so I snuck back through Kithicor at night, walking right by some extremely powerful undead creatures, and made my way back home to the dark elf city of Neriak.
Stopped at my comic shop on the way over to Gene's place. I lent my comics dealer some of my Northside CDs to see what he thinks of them. Vasen, Groupa, JPP, one other one, oh yeah Wimme. I gave him back his soundtrack to the Escaflowne movie... the movie sucked, mostly because it wasn't the same as the original series, but actually the soundtrack is pretty cool.
I played some Everquest this week... just Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. That would explain why I got up so late Friday and kind of missed going to lunch with
miertam, altough it's not all my fault since we didn't have any plans ahead of time.It also occurs to me that I was playing EQ on the roleplay server Firiona Vie Friday night, and Miertam was playing Earth and Beyond, and meanwhile
sora_kitsune was playing EQ on some other server, Antonius Bayle or somesuch. I only mention it because the main reason I have a character on Firiona Vie is because Sora talked me into playing there so we could play together... and the only reason Miertam is playing Earth and Beyond is because Sora bought it for him so they could play together... and then Sora abandons us both! ^_^ But I understand... he was playing one of the cat race people for the first time since getting his new computer (the old one couldn't handle the cat city, which is one of the newest parts of Everquest and much more graphic intensive). Since you can only have one character on the roleplay server, he had to go to another server to play a cat.So I suppose we'll forgive him, just this once.
So anyway, here's three stories from my last three days of EQ gaming. I don't think I've posted anything of this sort in my live journal before -- mostly when I want to tell boring stories about my EQ adventures, I do it on my guild board where at least everyone else shares my gaming addiction. So if you don't want to read about virtual events, feel free to ignore.
Feeding Time!
Even though I've been playing on the role-play server, I haven't really participated in much role-playing, other than telling people "I am a rogue of sixteen seasons" instead of "I'm a 16th level rogue". You use colorful greetings a lot and talk like 20th century people imagine people in the Middle Ages talked. That's called role-playing. Also, I've discovered that a lot of the dark elves use "Dark Elf" phrases like "Bella dos" or somesuch, which means "thank you". Just like real dark elves. ^_^ I guess the phrases come from Dungeons and Dragons, from the novels or whatever.
So I'm hunting by myself Thursday night, and another player asks me to come to where she is so she can see me. She's a much higher level player, and I do as she asks because I assume she has something in mind, perhaps giving me some cool equipment, who knows? She asks me to take off my helmet so she can see me better, asks how old I am (what level I am, I assume). She compliments me on my looks. Then she says she's hungry.
Hungry? I tell her I have some food if she needs it.
No, she doesn't need any food. What she needs is blood.
Well by this point I was wondering where all this was going, and if it was going to wind up being some sort of cyber thing ("virtual sex" = cybering). But I decided to play along and see what happened. She said that she wanted to drink some of my blood, and asked if I would let her. She said it would leave me weak but would not kill me.
So I said if there was no danger, then I would let her do it. She invited me to group with her, I assume so that we could talk privately via the group channel. Then she stood close to me and described her character biting into my neck, drinking blood, enjoying it, then finally pulling away. And I added a few bits about how I felt weaker, and then I asked if she was sated... probably a loaded question, since I didn't really know if she was planning to do anything else. But she said that if she drank any more she might kill me.
She said that she wasn't a vampire, and that I could see that this was so because it was daytime and we were outdoors. I asked her what manner of person could walk about in the daytime and yet drank blood, but she declined to tell me anything more, saying it was a secret.
Then she stood back, buffed me ("buffing" = casting beneficial spells on someone, such as spells which make you stronger, quicker, tougher, harder to kill). She said that I should consider it payment.
So I thanked her, and went back to hunting. I actually used the phrase "May the Prince of Hate not be against you", because most of the dark elves are supposed to follow Innoruk, the Prince of Hate, so I was trying to figure out how to say "God be with you" or the equivelant for dark elves, but my own character is agnostic so it seemed to me that the most I could ask for was that Innoruk never consider me an enemy. ^_^
That's all it turned out to be... a little roleplaying, and then buffing me as a reward. I have to admit, it was fun, partly because I really didn't know what to expect. Nor do I know if she or any of her friends have more of a story behind why they drink blood, that maybe I might learn more some day down the road... in any case, an interesting experience.
Zombie Skin for Sale!
My second story is about my adventures Friday night. For a while now I've been killing willowisps, because they sometimes drop lightstones and greater lightstones ("drop" = you find this item on their corpse after killing them). The greater lightstones are especially valuable. Friday night I hit 16th level and had collected 17 greater lightstones.
First I travelled to the Oasis of Marr. Here, in the center of the zone, is a small band of gypsies. One of them will give you a "Concordance of Research" if you give her a greater lightstone, and this book sells for more than twice what the greater lightstone itself would sell for.
So I spent a lot of time converting my greater lightstones into cash. Between each transaction I would hide and look all about, because dangerous monsters such as ghouls, crypt mummies, and spell-casting skeletons prowl the area that could kill me very quickly.
Finally I had my money, and I headed out on a long trek. I crossed through the Northern Desert of Ro, and then through East and West Commonlands, where griffons and hill giants and kodiak bears roam. I snuck through Kithicor in the early morning hours, which is very dangerous because high-level undead prowl there at night. Lucky for me, as a rogue I can hide and sneak and avoid the nasty Zombie Commanders and the like. I also snuck through High Hold Pass, which has a lot of orcs and kobolds that would gang up on me if they saw me. Then I travelled down the long and winding path along the edge of the gorge in East Karana, and snuck some more to avoid more giants, griffons, highland lions, and the humans there who don't like dark elves at all.
Finally I made my way to the Wizard Spires in North Karana. Here I essentially purchased a ticket to the moon... within a few minutes I was "beamed up" and arrived in a zone called The Nexus, which connects to five different wizard spires on the five different Everquest continents. From the Nexus you can run to a zone called The Bazaar. The Bazaar is a wonderful place. ^_^
In a game like Everquest, there are thousands and thousands of items you can find, perhaps more than five thousand total. Clearly, not everything you find is going to be useful for your own character, perhaps designed for a different class or race or alignment, or something that is not suited for your level, or something you already have... so people do a lot of trading in the game. Long ago, people would auction to buy or sell items in whichever zone they were in, and certain areas became known as auction zones, and people would even organize events that were like virtual flea markets... the more people in one place, the more likely you were to sell your wares or to find what you were looking for.
The people at EQ took note of this, and so they developed the zone known as The Bazaar. Here, you can type a simple command and set your character up as a merchant. You set the prices for your wares, and then you can simply walk away from the computer, maybe go to work or go to sleep, or play EQ on a second computer/account. Other players can come up to your character, click on you, and buy whatever you have for sale.
It's pretty slick. ^_^ But even better, if you're shopping for something in the Bazaar, there's a window that pops up that allows you to search for your item by multiple categories. For example, I can search for something that is usable by a dark elf who is a rogue, that is a piercing weapon, that grants a bonus to strength. Instantly, I'm presented with a list of items that match my criteria, with prices and the name of the merchant. I can click on the item name to get a detailed description, and click on the merchant name to find out where they are.
This is VERY slick!
So my big goal for a while had been to raise a lot of money by killing wisps, then to go buy a better weapon and a few other items. I had planned to buy a "Tombcarver", which is a very fast piercing weapon, but eventually I settled on something that was slower but did more damage, and I bought some newer armor and things like orc fang earrings and a jagged band (ring) that increased my strength and armor class. I also bought a robe -- most robes are designed for the various caster classes only, but this one even a rogue like me could wear. ^_^ It was purely a vanity thing, something to make me look different.
And while I was there, I decided that I wanted to try out the vendor side of things. I'd never done this before... and I really wasn't sure that a 16th level rogue had anything worth selling. But then I remembered that I had a lot of bone chips and zombie skins in the bank. Bone chips are used by necromancers for casting their skeletal pet/servant spells, and zombie skins are very useful for making poison vials, which higher-level rogues can use in making poisons for their weapons.
So I set myself up as a merchant, and set my prices a little below what others in the market were offering. Then I took a shower and did some reading, coming back to check out my progress every once in a while. Within an hour and a half, I'd sold all my bone chips and zombie skins, and raised enough money to complete the purchases I wanted to make.
That was pretty cool. ^_^ Not that sitting around doing nothing was fun... obviously this is something to do when you're otherwise occupied. But the whole idea of the Bazaar is cool to me, since I play late at night when a lot of people aren't on. It's one of the best innovations EQ has come up with -- many of their other innovations are actually ideas borrowed from other games, but no game on the market has anything like the Bazaar.
Grouping In High Pass
Well, this last story is really just a basic story about a pickup group... as I was travelling back from North Karana, I was asked to join a group in Highpass. They were fighting orcs. One of the disadvantages to playing on the roleplay server that I actually like a lot is that there is no "common tongue", and if you aren't speaking dark elf, I can't understand you, because I haven't learned the human tongue yet (or any other tongue). The text from other players looks like gibberish to me -- it really is completely unintelligible. Just another of the cool extra touches that set Everquest apart from other games like Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, and Asheron's Call, in my opinion.
But as it turns out, if you join a chat channel the language filters can be circumvented, so our group had opened a "highpass 2" chat channel and I could understand everyone else. Which was a good thing. ^_^
We had a non-standard group, which is pretty standard for pickup groups. We had no true healer -- just a bard playing the healing song, and a ranger with her nearly useless first-level healing spell. We had no tank -- a tank is someone that can absorb massive damage, such as a warrior, a paladin, or a shadow knight. Instead we had a rogue (me), a ranger, a beast lord and a bard, all classes that make relatively poor tanks. Finally, we had a mage with his air elemental pet and an enchanter, who was a huge help because she could mesmerize extra orcs and let us tackle only one or two at a time.
This is called "crowd control" and is one of the most important jobs in a large group in Everquest. The two most important jobs are "tank" and "healer", but after that, I think someone who can do crowd control is most important, because you can get swarmed and still survive the fight.
I tend to solo a lot, so every time I join a group I have to scramble to remember what I'm supposed to be doing... but playing a rogue isn't too hard. My job is to identify the real tank, assist him, stand on the opposite side of the monster and backstab it as much as I can, then when I get it's attention I evade so that hopefully it turns back to the main tank and I can backstab it again.
The tank, it turned out, was the beastlord. He was organized and always on the orcs first, and always had their attention. He was several levels higher than me, so much better at taking the pounding that the orcs dished out. For a while we were swarmed with orcs and things got pretty crazy. A few people left, and others joined, and in the end we were down to just the ranger, me, the mage, and a shaman that had joined. The good news is that a shaman is a real healer, and has some really good buff spells too. The bad news is that the ranger and I were not only poor tanks, but the lowest levels in the group, so we couldn't take much of a pounding. And so, the inevitable happened -- the shaman ran out of mana, we were overrun by orcs, and we had to flee.
And that was the end of that. It was a fun little pickup group while it lasted. The ranger asked me if it took this long to gain a level at the higher levels -- apparently she was new to the game, and this 17th level ranger was her highest (or only) character. I had to tell her no, that at higher levels, it took much longer... ^_^
And so I snuck back through Kithicor at night, walking right by some extremely powerful undead creatures, and made my way back home to the dark elf city of Neriak.
