The previous post in the series A is for Azeroth, was about my first entry into the world of MMOs. The very first MMO I played was Lineage 2, and I would like to keep exploring that part of my memory bank a little more here.
So the game was built on and Unreal 2, which is what was used in games like Unreal Tournament 2k3, then 2k4. I had a little bit of experience working in that engine, so I was really interested to see what it was like to have an MMO built on it. And wow… it was incredible. It was a game with almost no loading screens, you traveled everywhere in the world by just running there and you didn’t need to use any teleports.
The part about not having loading screens sort of spoiled me for the rest of my MMO gaming experience.
For example Everquest, had loading screens between every zone, nothing breaks immersion more than having a loading screen interrupt your gaming session. As I played Lineage 2, I wasn’t aware that there other MMOs, but with loading screens. Now granted I didn’t play every single MMO on the market at the time so I don’t really know if that statement is true for every one of them. To that point there was a brief moment when I tried switching to Everquest 2, my friends were playing it at the time, so I thought why not. I couldn’t do it. Loading every single screen… come on… what is this 1998? So I never stuck with anything other than Lineage 2, that is until World of Warcraft came out, but more on that at a later point.
The conclusion is that Unreal 2 never looked better than it did in Lineage 2.
The whole goal of Lineage 2 was to get into a good enough clan and then hopefully a big alliance and participate in the Castle Sieges. So let’s talk about my first clan and then about my first castle siege.
The first clan I joined was an all Orc clan, called The Golden Horde. That was the first clan I ever joined in an MMO and it was an all Orc clan… I don’t know how they pulled that off but it was awesome. We had both big Orcs… and the, umm, smaller Orcs. The big ones were the melee fighters and the smaller Orcs were Casters. I called them the nerds of the group, only later to find out that they were the freakin walking talking nukes and had the most amazing buffs. So you had to respect those guys or you would get nowhere in the game.
I don’t remember what Alliance we were part of, but it was something that wasn’t very catchy and I don’t think it was one of the big ones like Inner Circle, or maybe it was, my memory is a little foggy on that part.
Whatever the case was we were not very well known, because Orcs were not super great at Castle Sieges, the problem was we were very slow when it came to running. So I remember the best thing we could be used for is blocking the entrances into a castle, but if you don’t have a castle to block entrances to… not a whole lot of use from you.
I participated in a couple of those sieges and it was a miserable experience, my 56k modem was not able to keep up, so all I got was a slideshow and then death, and then loss of experience.
But of course I didn’t care, there was plenty of stuff to do outside of sieges, like grinding mobs.
Another point that is worth mentioning here is that the game had an open world player versus player environment. What that means is if you stepped outside the city walls anyone could kill you and you had a high chance of dropping a random piece of gear and on top of that you would lose experience for your death, which then could force you to delevel. For us at the time that was a way of life, nowadays that’s called hardcore. I have had plenty of experiences of dying to other players and mobs. Like I said that was just a way of life for us.
Just to show you how dedicated I was to the game, there was a summer when my family went camping. I stayed home to play Lineage 2. I…. Stayed…. Home…. I have no idea how my parents let me, but I did and I spent the better part of that week downloading the game and its patch, because 56k internet connection. By the time I got to play everybody came back from camp and I didn’t get to play any more than I would have if I just participated in family events. That little stunt did not earn me any good karma I can tell you that. My dad was very upset and disappointed in me. And to this day I regret doing that.
But that event pushed me to get cable internet. At this point I already had a job and was making a little bit of money, and convinced my dad to get the internet ordered. I was going to pay for it, which I didn’t and my dad didn’t force me to.
The day I got cable internet, I remember I went to the Lineage 2 website and started downloading the newest game trailer for the next expansion, which was free by the way, unlike today. And at the same time I was downloading the latest patch and I called my dad and told him that while I was doing all of that I was able to call him and not have the line busied up!!! I was so excited it is really hard to explain now how that truly felt like freedom.
The things that went on afterwards aren’t really all that different from what I mentioned before. More clans, more sieges, more deaths and eventually World of Warcraft.
See you guys in the next one!
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