My MMO Life, Part Two

EverQuest: The Wonderbuns Era

II. Welcome to the Family

Radiant Circle welcomes me with open arms, and I even see people I recognize, like Zefir, and Nosifer.

Nosifer tells the guild, 'KARUR!!'
You tell the guild, 'NOSIFER!!'

I knew right away that this guild had some quality people.

The next day the guild gathered for our raid on the goblins of Runnyeye. Almost everyone showed up. I took screenshots of all of them, knowing one day I'd love looking back on them, but those were lost. I remember Nosifer and Solo in their full bronze armor, looking all cool. I remember meeting Solo's wife, Tessy, and Zefir's son, Cirion, who at the time lead the guild.

This raid was the start of a tradition that followed the RC for the rest of it's duration. The tradition is, whether by accident or glitch, we all get wiped out atleast once. More often than not this was caused by a glitch. I really wish I still had the screenshots of our wipe in Runnyeye...the room we were in was literally flooded with goblins, and more kept pouring in. I had a blast.

A few days later, in the wee hours of the morning, no one in the guild was on but me and Nosifer. I was in a group, and that familiar sound once again scared the shit out of me.

You tell the guild. 'Yay level 20! I get a last name!'
Nosifer tells the guild, 'grats man'
You tell the guild, 'From now on, I shall be known as Karur Wonderbuns!'
Nosifer tells the guild, 'ROFL'

Life went on, and time passed. The guild got really close to each other, and started feeling like a second family. I had made a few alternate characters to play around with if I got bored with Karur, which did happen. It was with one of these alts, an Ogre named Bhooger that I have my first memory of Banon. I was fighting in the Oasis of Ro, and Banon shot me a tell saying that if I needed help he'd be in the area and just ask. We started talking in guildchat, and ended up joking about all the things that could be found of Bhooger's Ogre ass. Such as a few cars on blocks, dead gnomes, ect. This was the first of countless times we turned guildchat into one big asinine joke. Banon, of course, was Rob, and we still make ass jokes as often as possible.

I also started joke flirting a bit more, really over the top cheesy stuff to get a laugh. I look back on it now and cringe a bit, but I guess everyone enjoyed it, as they gave me the Ladie's Dorf nickname. One of my first 'victims' was a human named Beauregard, who became a regular victim of mine. Beauregard later became Mitty.

Karur was in his mid 20s now, and I decided to head to South Karana, taking the advice of Zefir. This is one of the most vivid memories I have of my early days. Running into South Karana, seeing the plains ahead of me, trees lighty scattered about. Elephants wandering off in the distance, Centaurs to my left. I was wide eyed the whole time, I thought this was the prettiest thing I have ever seen. I instantly fell in love with the place.

I spent a long time in this place. I didn't want to leave. I grouped with with Zefir's youngest son, Barad a lot, and made a new friend named Stikki. Stikki became a long time friend, and constant target of Karur's flirting, but she didn't mind, as long as her husband didn't see. We always got together and killed the Treants. They were wonderful experience, and made you rich, but killing them also made certain parts of the world hate you. I didn't care at the time, but I ended up paying for it though hours of faction building.

When I reached my 30s or so, South Karana and the Treants weren't yielding the results they once did. I left and took up residence at the Lower Guk Frenzy camp, trying to get myself an item called the Flowing Black Silk Sash. I ended up staying there a very long time, and I usually had nothing better to do than chat with the guild while in this very boring camp. I really got close to a lot of people at this time.

Zefir, Solomakane, Nosifer, Ilean, Rassaths, Ravynetti, Moedor, Asharak, Myskel, Sinnamyn and Mitty were the ones I was the closest to. I know I'm forgetting names, but this time period was a blur. Ilean was Karur's main flirt victim, and I vowed to have her marry me in game. For the longest time we'd go back and forth, but I was determined. It was a fun cat and mouse game the whole guild was in on.

At this point, a few of us were getting into the higher levels, and could go on raids with a bunch of people, whether into the Plane of Fear or Hate, or against big name monsters like Trakanon. Nosifer was one of these players, and he itched to go on these raids. Unfortunately raids usually take a whole guild of players to be successful, and Radiant Circle wasn't able to do them, since we had players of all levels, and only a few high level guys.

Nosifer contented himself with helping out the lower players of the guild, and fighting around in Lower Guk. One night he sent me a tell asking for help. How could I help him? He was one of the best players I'd ever known, but it he wanted a different kind of help. He wanted to join a guild that did raids, but didn't want to abandon everyone in Radiant Circle. He didn't know what to do. I knew he was at a stalemate in the game, he had reached as high as he could with Radiant Circle, and was burning out. Being able to raid and enjoy the endgame would let him have all the fun he wanted. I told him to go and have fun. He wasn't abandoning, he was just moving on, and he had to do what was fun for him, or else it wasn't a game. So with a heavy heart, he announced his retirement from the guild, though he stayed a good friend for long afterwards.

This was the first example of people needing to move on. Others soon followed, it was the natural order of the game.

There was a core of us that stayed, and grouped together often. Usually we were lead to little used dungeons by Zefir. Our resident spaced out philosopher would research dungeons we could go to, round up whomever he could, and take the place by force, or wipe many times trying. One of the most successful of these groups was when we went to the Crypt of Dalnir. Soon we had people in there all of the time, and it was one of my favorite dungeons.

(Thanks for the screenshot, Jeff....if you read this, start playing WoW with me!)

A few of us were a little full of ourselves as far as how good we were, so every once and a while, a few of us would make little elite 'Kill Teams' to see how far we could go in some dungeons. I was always fond of doing this, because I was damn good at the game, and this is even before my peak with Lokarth. Below is one of our kill teams, Kethai, Bubulu, and myself, after working our way through Kaesora, a much avoided dungeon, and killing it's boss. Radiant Circle oozed with skill.



Eventually the expansion, Scars of Velious, came out, and what an awesome expansion it was. Rob was also playing Banon again, and the Brothers Derf tore it up. This expansion also added a ton of end game content, increasing the amount of raids, thus increasing the draw of bigger guilds, resulting in more of our numbers moving on to bigger things.

Our group dungeon exploring rolled over into the new continent. One such group was that of Karur, Banon, Solomankane, and Sinamyn while we took on the Tower of Frozen Shadow. This tower was made up of many floors, each floor needing a certain key, or objective, to gain access to the next. We have made it through a few floors, but one of them overwhelmed us, and we ended up dying. Which was bad...because the keys were on our corpses, and we had to fight through the previous floors to get to them...with no gear. Well, we had some gear in the bank, but this was stuff we were planning on giving away to lower players, so it was barely better than going in there naked.

I'll never forget the sight of Solomankane running up looking like the gayest S&M biker in existence. He was a Wood Elf, so he already was extra feminine, but his all black tight shorts, and matching sleeveless shirt was a sight to behold. We all gave him crap about it....I think this may have been part of what lead to his constant rape emotes he adopted later on.

It took us a few days to get our corpses back. We warned people to never go in there because you'll lose your corpse and all of your gear. It was an evil, evil place that I never wanted to visit again. Once we finally got our corpses, we ended up staying there for the longest time, and had some of the most fun the game had offered me at that point.

We spent most of our time on the 5th floor of the Tower. On this floor there was a wedding ceremony of the undead going on. Of course we had to stay and crash the party, many times. After you wiped out the whole wedding party, an Enraged Relative in the form of a really mean Spectre would spawn and try to exact it's revenge.

During one of these clearings, I went linkdead after we killed the last wedding attendant. This left only three of our group to try and fend off the Spectre, which didn't work out so well, and they had to zone out to survive. Meanwhile I'm trying to log back in as soon as I can so my group doesn't die without me.

I finally make it back in, and the first thing I see is the screams of my groupmates, yelling at me to run to the zone. 'Why?', I thought, it looked safe enough. I turned around to check out the zone, and got one of the best scares from the game as I saw the Enraged Relative rushing at the hall towards me, intent and making me a smear. I turned and started running as fast as I could towards the exit, hoping I could make it. The Relative caught up to me easily and started eating my life away, but I just managed to reach the zone before I died. As I was loading I let out a sigh of relief, I had survived. Once I finished loading, I was at my bind spot. My character had popped into the zone before I finished loading. I was helpless, and got nibbled to death by one of the monsters outside.

After the a while we had heard that Rygorr armor was dropping from the orcs on Velious. Rygorr armor was one of the new sets of armor to come out, and it had new graphics, so everyone and their druid was there trying to get some. Me, Banon, and a few others grouped there one time, and we ended up killing the chief. The Rygorr breastplate dropped from him, and Banon won the roll for it. We called it a night and we went to the Great Span to rest and bask in our awesome new armor.

As we sat there, talking about how awesome this armor was, I looked out over the zone, and noticed two orcs running our way. Banon and the other guy didn't see this, because they were facing away, but I kept watching them get closer and closer. They were both high level, higher than any group our level could take, and I realized they were coming for us. I start backing up, but by this time the Rygorr Avengers were upon us.

Our third party member was the first to go, dying in the time it took me to type "RUN". They turn on Banon, who was sitting, and kill him before he even completes the standing animation. I turn tail to flee, and make it a few steps before getting plowed from behind. That remains as one of my favorite memories, I laugh every time I think of it.

Velious was my home for some time. I'd group there regularly, whether with random people, or on one of the guild's excursions. I didn't take me long to reach level 45, and have a bunch of doors open for me. The most important door was that of the Planes. At 45, I was now able to enter the Planes of Fear and Hate. For most people these planes are the first taste of end game raiding, and it was the same for me.

Soon I was going on pick up raids to Fear, led by a Druid named Kiluvin. I knew from the very first raid that I was hooked. Even though pick up raids tended to be chaotic and wipe a lot, I was still having the most fun I've ever had. I became a regular, and one of the only people still in RC who was able to go on raids like this.

Many people had left the guild by now, Banon being one of them. He left to join some close friends in a guild called Sun Tzu. Kiluvin, whom I was fast becoming friends with, was also Sun Tzu, and his raids featured many more members, so I was getting more and more familiar with them. This made Radiant Circle nervous.

They had heard me talk about how awesome raiding was in guild chat, and saw that I was in Fear every chance I could get. They also knew Banon was a very close friend of mine, and saw all my ties to Sun Tzu. They were afriad I was going to leave them, and they were afraid of who would follow.

It wouldn't take them long to find out. After many talks with Banon, Kiluvin, and others, I had decided to join Sun Tzu. Ilean had decided to come with me, because, yes, after so long she finally agreed to the in game marriage...and had gotten pretty close to me in the process. So RC was going to lose two of it's eldest members.

This was a pretty hard time for me, for while I was excited and wanted to go with Sun Tzu, RC had been my home, and like a family for a very long time. I hated leaving them, giving them yet another blow that they'd have to recover from. Suddenly I knew how Nosifer felt that night, and understood why he was so troubled.

My leaving sparked many things, as Ilean and one other (eventually) followed me to ST. Zefir was irate, saying that I had stabbed all of RC in the back by leaving, but I knew Zefir, and I knew then when he gets frustrated, he vents, and he aimed it at me. I knew he'd calm down, and he did. I tried to remain friends with them all, and promised to help whenever I could. Somehow I was able to stay close to many of them throughout this time.

Thus ends my time as a Radiant Circler. Karur Wonderbuns had moved on to greener pastures.

Sun tzu is next.