Greetings and salutations, Ego readers. Since I’ve been persuaded to become a regular contributor (read: she has a surly gang of bikers at her command and is not afraid to use them for nefarious purposes), I’ve been informed by the warden that I should make an introductory post, or else.

I kid, I kid! But not really. Send help.

You’ve known me as EgoTank. Ego knows me as Aensu, and now so will you. I’ve also been called other things that start with ‘A’, and I usually answer to “hey you”.

I’ve been a gamer for over 20 years now, and for over 10 of those I’ve been a part of the MMOG “phenomenon”. Harken back to the halcyon days of Meridian 59 and The Realm Online. I was there, partaking of the beta tests, being amazed by the fact that there were sometimes over 100 other people playing at the same time!

Enter Ultima Online, the first (in my book) online game that could truely call itself massively multiplayer. I remember being the envy of my online friends when I was the only one to make it into the beta. It was a simpler time…there were no “raids”, or even a functional grouping system. You weren’t defined by your gear, since it all wore out eventually…a weapon and suit of armor made by a player served just as well as the magic bits you received from killing balrogs and dragons, and was much easier to replace.

I remember expanding my early mining operations by purchasing my first ship - fondly dubbed “The Filthy Ore” - and using it to find pristine mountainsides, untouched by the unwashed masses and relatively free of roving bands of PKers looking to steal my precious minerals. I remember setting my first house in a high traffic area, and single handedly running off one of said roving bands of PKers with my demon summoning grandmaster mage (one of the first on the server). I remember the many, many times I was caught off guard by some pricks with halberds, and my corpse was picked clean of any and all valuables. I remember infiltrating a particularly slow witted group of pricks with halberds that had terrorized the town of Yew and the nearby valley for weeks, aided by the fact that one of my characters shared a name with one of their friends from a different server, “accidentally” killing a few of them in sparring matches, and after I’d acquired a key to their headquarters, returning in the middle of the night to rob them of their ill gotten equipment and using it to help supply daily assaults on their houses and personnel, until we eventually drove them from the community permanently. I remember having a grandmaster everything, more armor and weapons and materials stockpiled than I could ever find use for, and generally being bored with the limited scope of the game as far as PvE was concerned.

Then I was accepted into the Everquest beta, and it was all downhill from there!

These games are not my life, but they are my hobby. Like a woodworker who strives to build beautiful pieces of furniture, a gearhead who will rebuild an engine for fun, or one of those guys who are really into model rocketry, I tend to take my hobby rather seriously. Most of my real life contemporaries don’t understand my fascination, and think I should “get a life” and “stop being anti-social” instead of wasting my time and money on silly games. Most of my real life contemporaries spend the bulk of their free time drinking and watching TV. I think I will continue to deprive myself of such horizon expanding endeavors.

I’ve learned a few things from my hobby. For instance, that most people are complete asswipes when they forsee no real consequences for their actions. I’ve also learned that the only thing worse than a stupid person is a willfully ignorant one. Mostly I’ve learned that a team is capable of far greater things than an individual, but no matter how skilled and dedicated you are, you can only achieve as much as the worst person on your team will allow, so pick your friends and colleagues carefully.

In short, I am a bitter and jaded son of a bitch, fully convinced of my own superiority since fate sees fit to demonstrate it for me on such a regular basis, and this tends to come through in anything I write.

I also love animals and long walks on the beach.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 and is filed under Blogstuff, ~ Aensu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.