Yikes, I got a blog! Stumbled into it...oy vey.
Now comes the phase when you have to overcome the sheer, almost unquestioning acceptance as a noob, and deal with personal issues. That's why we play these game and others don't. We want a game world with lots of people sharing it with us and universal harmony would make an online game as mendacious and shallow as the stand-alone variety.
This sophomore sink is best symbolized for me by armor suits of all things.
First there was the matter of a gift from a master craftsman, what they call GM level....Grand Master I think.
He said if I was still there in a week he'd have a gift for me. That was charming, flattering, generous, kind, an expression of every virtue. After the week passed he presented me with something he was extremely proud to have created for me: a suit made of exotic material that is technically plate armor but can be repaired with a repair contract at any tailor shop. All was imbued, fortified, magnificent in every way.
This wasn't just 70s across the board. This, along with the ring and bracelet, had ever element of protection that can be delivered by something a warrior can wear in UO. He even included a quiver, even though I am not an archer, so that he could attach yet another thing for added attributes. It was a three million dollar suit, as I was to discover later.
So how could I mess this up?
Simple. A dark side of me that is rarely in evidence. It was pure Japanese and I don't like the Japanese. One of my Uncles was shot down in the Pacific, was one of only ten percent of POWs who were pilots to survive the war. He spent the following 40 years drinking himself to death.
But it's not all of it. Many of their customs and cultural aspects feel....well....you get the idea. It was tucked awayr of bigotry I've not excised as I have nearly all others.
I could not walk around my beloved home Shard looking like a Samurai. Avatars represent our ideal selves in many ways, as least they do for me. Our suits, our weapons, our fighting styles express us. You see so very little detail of us as animated objects on the screen, bu we all check out the paper dolls that reveal our detailed selves.
Yes, there was an bug in the package. Although the suit was meant to boost my mana, stamina, hit points, all things important, mana and stamina seemed to plunge in action. Probably an easy fix. You put so many things into one package, something could go array.
Although I believe I saw this, I honestly can't say I can be certain that the other issue was clouding my addled mind.
Thus came a first in my life: I returned an immense gift to its giver - a gift he was so proud of. Plus I owed him candor. I had to admit my bigotry....a weakness I tolerate in no one. I have family (my father was Jewish) who died horribly in WWII yet I have no problem at all with Germans.
I felt enormous shame.
The suit is on sale now for 3 million from an automated vendor on Luna. I hope it sells. If it does it will make someone deeply proud to wear it and the beneficiary of the very best the game and its finest crafters can create.
When I returned it to him he said I could keep the potent ring and bracelet. How in blazes could I do such a thing, accept such a present in pieces?
It is beyond the realm of even the best people to not feel hurt about this. Yet when he'd see me wearing something I like, something of Medieval European style I'd be reminding him that I didn't - couldn't - enjoy the gift at all. If you have to hurt someone, do it, but don't amputate the dog's tail and inch at a time. Sometimes being gracious can be a terrible act of ingratitude.
I've devoted a lot of paragraphs to this but for me in this game it was a titanic event I will remember...always.
Afterward I purchased a lesser suit, in a color I do not love, but I see a bit of me in it. It very much looks 13th Century. After pulling in around 80k in corpse loot I could afford the 200k it cost, along with the cost of completing the quest for the last piece of Virtue Armor to make it deliver it's solid properties.
Shortly after starting out, a player gave me all the spares he had handy, and helped me on the quest needed for the final piece: the cloak. Each station along the quest requires payment: wood boards for a museum, animals to help repopulate the Moonglow zoo, and so on. The fellow helped me figure out how to get going with this quest, and chopped up a lumberyard full of wood for the first step.
The second involved taming. Neither of us had so much as a skill point for that. Thus there it all stalled. He gave me a rune to return to the quest giver who was the beginning and the end of the endeavor. Completing each stage ends by telling you where to take whatever it is you managed to acquire: a shepherd's crook, a sash of Britannia, and so forth.
However each stage would take money in lieu of the odd and the arduous. I finally had enough to finish it on gold alone. So I waited.
Sometimes you want to complete something simply to complete it. Occasionally I'd fine a piece in corpse loot. I was told the cloak was special and it certainly wasn't going turn up on in the stash of Trogs, Ettins or Orc Lords.
Finally I had enough of the gold, and even sewer rats some some of that, oddly. I paid my way through most of the rest.
Once fully assembled there is a a magic anointing glow from above and the sound one imagines when glowing anointing happens. All the 70s were there on the primary list but all those other buffs created for me were not as impressive. It looks a bit Mongol but there's something kinda neat about it.
Still, I get the feeling it's old news. I never see it on anybody and I suffered a bit of that let down that's well said in Beer's signature. I'm happy to have it, and I'll get use out of it. In the end I'll probably stick with the one I recently purchased along vendor statue row.
No, that's not it. I felt powerfully strange, after all that happened with that flawless gift, that the notion of a Virtue Suit felt rather out of place...a Virtue Suit, hell!
I've achieve GM point levels in Sword, Tactics, and Parry. Points are just the beginning of competency, as are power suits. The clothes don't truly make the man, no more than the game, though its reward systems, can actually make you mighty. Yet I've graduated from noob phase for certain.
Time now to assemble some of that neat stuff to pass along to a noob rather than receive wonderful things from veterans. I'm making little packages now and putting them into bags so, whenever I encounter a new guy I can rush off and deliver him or her something fast, as others did for me. It won't be uber, nor can it be for me just yet but it will help and make a new player feel welcome and wanted.
That's how I felt: wanted from the moment of my first encounter with somebody who had a clue
Most of what I've been experiencing will make for good stories. I think you'll understand, however, that this one, at this moment, has been foremost on my mind.
Jonathan
P.S. My ICQ number, Beer, is 645445933. I usually have it running when I'm online.
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Ya gotta look out for anything at all, all the time. I fought a little creeping blob of slime, yes SLIME, that had major magic powers. It shoots magic at you like a mage. You cannot kill it with steel. As it comes close to dying it simply heals itself. A friggin dog triggers a, "You are bleeding!" message in the text buffer as my red meter bar is vanishing. Little bug things damn near clobber you by themselves, but the don't stay alone for more than a moment.