What is this place??

Suddenly I found myself at the base of an enormous tree, or perhaps tree city is a better description. As I stared towards the lower branches of the tree some 20 body lengths above me, I spotted several hanging bridges going from that tree to other similarly huge trees nearbye. I could see platforms resting comfortably in the trees and buildings on the platforms.

To my amazement, a platform directly above my head lowered towards me and as it reached the ground, I saw a beautiful woman...no wait, a beautiful ELF?! step off the platform and go past me. 'What the'.....I thought, and stepped onto the platform she had vacated. As the platform rose into the tree I found myself nervous, but excited by what this strange new place might have to offer.

Arriving on a much larger platform, I stepped into what was indeed a large city. Many creatures were all around me, mostly elves, but also a few humans, dwarves, gnomes and a few other types. I tried speaking to some of them, but no one seemed to understand my words....until one kind elf took pity on a poor inexperienced boy and offered me some advice on how to get around and communicate in this world. Eventually I thanked him and left the tree city to explore this world further.

This was my first experience in a massive multiplayer on-line role-playing game....and it was truly stunning to feel like you have walked into an alternative universe for the first time. The game was called Everquest, and I was hooked quickly. Yeah I was staring at a computer monitor, but I found myself completely immersed in this world. I've always been a game player, and I've always loved Fantasy books and anything involving magic and magical creatures.

I had played a game called Diablo for almost a year before this, and although it had a bit of interaction and involved magical worlds, it was really a simple game where you took a premade character and directed them through a world, killing skeletons and other creatures and picking up loot to improve yourself when they died. I had a lot of fun with it, but finished the game about 15-20 times and got pretty bored. I was waiting around for Diablo 2 when I heard about this MMORPG phenom....and thought I'd give one a try.

When Diablo 2 came out....I was already completely hooked and never really played it. It was a children's game in comparison.

Everquest was the first of these kinds of games to really take off, and I know why. The world was beautiful and interesting, and gameplay was fun (although pretty repetative.) It has it's problems, but they did enough things right to truly capture people for the first time in this sort of environment. I played that game for about 5 years total....I eventually was playing 4-6 hours a day every day, and it was never enough. In order to make it to the top guilds (groups of players that raid together) you had to play more than that. There were days where I would play upwards of 18 hours in ONE day....call in sick and spend the entire day at the computer. It sucked away all of my extra time, and I'm not quite sure how I managed to have a life during that time.

I know it annoyed George at times, but he was always wonderful about it, and I took advantage because I loved it. This was finally Dungeons and Dragons come alive! (almost.) I had three Everquest accounts so that I could play on at least 2 computers at once with more than one character. I had about 10 characters that made it into the 60s in levels (tops at the time.) My first main was called Dalomir and was a male wood elf ranger. The city I described was the Wood Elf main city, and of course they live in trees. When Dalomir got to about level 15, a friend started playing with me and I changed to a female wood elf druid named Kolina. She remained my main character until I got into the 50s and into a guild that needed warriors. (poor Dal never made it to level 50 even.) At that point I switched to Berg Gerr.....a HUGE Ogre warrior who was one of the main tanks in our guild. It was fun role-playing an Ogre, but I always felt like I was really that female wood elf druid.

I was one of those crazy people who spent real live money on virtual items for my characters in the game once in awhile. People think you are nuts, but I was feeding a habit that I loved, and it was worth it to me. (and it took even more hours than I was willing to put in to get some of that stuff yourself....there are people who formed companys with several employees who worked full-time to get the items that people like me purchased on ebay with real money.)

I got to the 4th biggest guild on the server, and basically burned out. After 5 years, i finally gave it up. In the 3-4 years since, I tried a few similar games but mostly stayed away until this past year when I started playing World of Warcraft. That took the Everquest idea and made a ton of improvements, and far surpassed EQ in numbers of players. I've been playing it nearly a year (and again have a druid named Kolina and a warlock named Kolrama.) I again love playing, but I've not let myself get swallowed by it this time. I play an hour or two average a day, and although I'm in a guild, don't do many of the raids (which means I'll never get the best gear in the game.)

I hope that I continue playing MMORPG games until my cold dead hand can't click a mouse. They take the best of two of my favorite things to do (play games and live in a fantasy world) and meld them together in a fun, interesting way. They are definitely not for everyone. But for silly boys like me who intend never to grow up....they are perfect.