EZ Server

I could have named this thread "I remember when"

Or, "Why I Read the Forums"

But I think that its better to name it after the guy that I remember when I think of EZ.

This story begins with a level 61 Shadow Knight named Kaos (Hey, that's ME!).

Anyhoo, I was level 61, I had been playing EZ about a week (it was pretty slow going at first) feeling kinda lost, but feeling pretty pimp with my sweet Dulak gear and my totally awesome 1h epic.

Enter the Bastion of Thunder. What a mood squasher that place is. I got my face pummeled. Alot. So I'm taking my beating like a man, just trying to single pull and do what I can to grind out some small amount of AA exp, when this ranger walks up, and offers to help me out.

He's level 70 and pretty cool looking on his horse, and he's boxing a Mage as well. We group up and he demolishes mobs pretty quick. I notice right off that his English stinks, but we talk and make friends. I learn that he's from France and he likes motorcycles and drinking. We gear me out with a bunch of upgrades and he invites me into this guild. "Prophecy."

Next thing you know I'm epic'd out with a nice 2.5, I've read all the forums posts and guides and I'm making alts. Things are looking pretty good. I've figured most everything out, and my guild is raiding QVIC with regularity.

I really wish I could remember the Frenchman's name. I heard he was in a bike accident but recovered ok. All the best to him, he helped me when I had no friends. It was mith something I think. Anyway, I remember him as a really nice guy. I think he just liked making friends and wanted to have a good time. He didn't seem to be doing it for more than that, the guild that is. Prophecy was his, as far as I can recall, and I don't think anyone expected it become the next Epic Fail or BC. (Obviously not the latter cuz BC was 2 guys and Prophecy was totally a "Zerg" type guild model.)

So one day I get on the internets and start perusing the forums (the old forums, not the new forums, or as I like to call them, the Fancy Forums) and I see the the Frenchman is getting his lunch eaten for KSing. There was some sort of miscommunication I think about the finer details of how long you have before you can move on a raid mob, but the thing I remember most clearly, was that he was getting blasted for his poor English.

Pretty soon, the guild began to crumble from all the negative press and while raiding QVIC for tokens Xeky, Blighton, myself and few others started talking about putting together another guild with an actual recruitment policy. IE a smaller guild with mainly 3.0 people (There was no 3.5+ in those days)

So we talked about names alot. Its so funny what you remember, but I remember we talked about names a whole lot. We ended up, I think out of pure not caring any more and being burned out on talking about it, choosing Red Dawn.

So we make this guild, and knowing myself, I distance myself from any responsibility immediately. I mean, I don't want to be able to guild people, I don't want to be an officer, I don't want to be responsible for anything. I'm one of those people you absolutely don't want in your guild if you are trying to do something with your guild. I cannot be counted on to make planned events. I show up when I show up because its a game to me, and there is almost always somebody willing to drag me away from it. So, anyway, we have this brand new guild and we have this brand new content, it had been out, but it was brand new to us and we were stoked about it, called the Plane of Dragons.

We go into PoD ready to rock with Tacvi gear and shiny 3.0s and get our faces raped, lol, not really, but we had some wipes, I mean to say, they weren't uncommon, but once we got rolling we got rolling and things went pretty well. And, I think this is the stuff I most remember. Xeky and Blight running around PoD rezzing my dumb ass and me deciding that I HAD to make a warrior and get him ROA 100 with Anger Vs. That was totally awesome, and I wanted to be that. I talked alot with Xeky and the fellas during this time, but Xeky started playing less and less, and eventually, I just never saw him online again.

So over time I get my crew up and going, I now have a Cleric and Warrior and my SK and a Necro and I can do some PoD just me and my crew. Just press Stonewall, Auto Attack, and start spamming the hell out of Vivification, anyhoo, you know what I'm talk'n about.

So, things are going swimmingly, but I'm bone tired of PoD, I'm not fully geared but its kind of whip to just sit there and grind it out, and my guild isn't on when I'm playing all the time, so I stepped away from the computer and didn't come back for 2 months.

HOLY SHIT! When I came back things were nuts. Guild chat was non-stop with all these new people and they were all moved on ahead of me. We had a sub-guild that was as far as I could tell just for weeding out the losers (like me) before they can get in. And I can tell that the people in this guild are focused, waaaaayyy more focused than I ever was. So I jumped back in and started working on some grinding, and then got bored and left. As it turns out, I was pretty happy for those guys, but knew I had neither the time, nor the inclination to put what they were putting into, into it, as it were.

Now the thing to know here is, that even though I wasn't playing EZ server for long periods of time, I always would read up on the forums. And things really began to heat up on the forums somewhere in here. People started getting upset at Blighton. It was so fucking weird to read. Because I was a member of that. I was one of the first members of Red Dawn. And, I like those guys. I still do, I've never had a problem with any of them. But the shit that was going on was pretty nuts. I never had anything to do with that stuff, because, as a rule, I don't really do much of anything but sit back and watch. But man, how shit started to go crazy.

When the new server finally went live, and then the new new server. Well, lets just say there as some people who play this game who care alot about it, more so than I think they should. But hey, as a rule, I don't get involved. When I went to the first new server, if Blight was handing out free shit, I fuckin missed it, but man, that would have been pretty sweet. An exact duplicate of Beatstick on a server thats only been up a week? It would have been great to have that sort of leg up. Maybe I'm not supposed to say that, but duplicating everything I've done on EZ wasn't the most appealing thought I've ever had.

That shit just got more nuts.

I sit and I think now about what Xeky might say about all this. I wonder if he sat in awed amazement, as I did, as everything unfolded, good or ill, and took pride in being a small part of that. A silent, not present part, like me. Sometimes I feel like we were kids who unknowingly stumbled upon a Rube Goldberg Machine, enjoyed the dominoes, marbles and toys of it all, walked away, and were completely amazed by the fact that it painted an entire goddamn picture in our absence.

For all I know, Xeky might have came back, he might be under a new name and playing EZ at this very moment. If so, how the fuck have you been?

I don't play on this server any more, but I do read the boards. I don't play on Blight's server, but occasionally I read those boards as well.

I hope everyone is well.

I was just reading the forums and all this came to mind and thought I'd post it. It trips me out, but I suppose I'm easily tripped out.

I am usually not much for long reads but that was pretty good. I always like history anyway.

O.o

I'm surprised nobody has yet posted with an assinine "Where's the TL;DR version?", but hey kaos, good write up. What I especially like is that the writeup is ordered into paragraphs and there's sentences with beginings and ends and all that.

Yeah, having some sort of sentence structure definitely helps on a longer read. When someone puts up a huge wall of text in one paragraph, little or no sentence structure and oddly placed periods commas and capital letters it makes me want to stab them underneath the fingernails. Errors are fine, laziness, not.

I like the words and all TY ( you notice no dots and parenthasees)

What a very enjoyable read Kaos.  Thanks for sharing.