Entry 6: Home
Thursday, July 03 2003 - 8:15PM (ScreenShot0072)
Compare the times from the last two screenshots for a second. That’s right, 12 straight hours. Must’ve been a work holiday or something, or maybe I just called in sick. We spent the day looking for Kimos (not that we could take um) and hitting anything that stood in our way. This screenshot tells a few different stories. First of all, you’ll notice that I finally managed to lose the HUD. It makes for much cooler screenshots, but I’m learning that it sucks as well, because I can’t use the chat spam to refresh my memory concerning that particular time and place.
Speaking of chat, Khan was quick to point out that the word about Lok being open for visitors was quickly spreading. What’s very interesting (and pretty impressive) is the fact that we landed on Lok on June 29th, so for the first few days, Lok was all ours for the most part. Sure, you had your random bad-asses who braved the adversities and made the trek, but up until that point, it was just us on the Eclipse server. It was very rare to run into anyone that we didn’t know, and when we [i]did[/i] run into a stranger, we absorbed them with the promise that they needed us to get the most out of the planet. We weren’t jerks about it, because really it was a no brainer. If you were in your Marksman box, or maybe even just breaking into your elite profession box, would you want to be alone on Lok, when you’ve got a guy promising to look out for you if you join his group? Remember, no shuttles, no PRC’s, no mounts, no vehicles. It was Lok vs. you, and no matter who you were, you weren’t going to hold your own on Lok without someone watching your back.
And one last thing about this screenshot. First of all, notice Khan isn’t grouped with us. It’s not because he doesn’t like the way fish smell after being in the sun for 12 hours. There was a grouping bug that would come and go after launch. Sometimes you could join, sometimes you couldn’t. Other times, XP was borked, so it was better not to group, and take turns harvesting. There were many workarounds that we dealt with. But that was the thing, while some people went to the forums to piss and moan about the issues, we had this attitude: “we’re going to Lok, and we’ll deal with the issues as they come up.” And we did. You can even see Kharist explaining that she was unable to loot her corpse. On top of mobs camping your corpse, you also had to deal with the coding being borked, and not allowing you to retrieve your corpse once you got to it. It was a challenge for sure. I can’t tell you how many times poor Kharist had to agro mobs off my corpse so I could loot it, only to find out that the code was acting up and have to deal with the mob once it returned. And then the devs would roll the server back 5 hours and you’d lose all your xp anyway. Yeah, the early days were nothing if not an uphill fight for XP.
Friday, July 04 2003 - 2:13AM (ScreenShot0073)
Look at the time. 24 straight hours. I’m sure the server was up and down, but “hi, my name is Vroflus, and I’m an addict.” It was the 4th of July and that meant a day off from work. I think I went to Naboo to catch a firework show at some point, but other then that, XP and meeting more people were my sole priorities. I was trying to find anyone on Lok to group with, and ended up getting a /tell from a guy named Solator. He was being camped by some mobs and every time he got his corpse, they’d DB him again. Of course I headed his way, but I was really just killing time until the Transendants guys [i]finally[/i] made it to Lok. Check out the chat log. Lack of funds was [i]that[/i] big a deal after launch. People still did not have enough cash to catch a ride to Lok, and this was two weeks into launch!
Friday, July 04 2003, 2:25AM (ScreenShot0075)
And right here you pretty much have a glimpse into what I was all about. I was snaking my way through mobs, while talking to at least three people. I was coordinating with Weola so her and the rest of the Transendants folks could find me, I was discussing with Rampage the finer points of corpse retrieval (he’s the blue dot on the bottom left of my radar), and of course Fuxu was already talking about “really really needing a Jedi slot.” Yes, even back then, the Jedi arguments raged on. I didn’t mind the conversation, but it did not rate high on my priority list next to helping Rampage get his corpse and getting back to business.
Friday, July 04 2003 - 2:50AM (ScreenShot0076)
I don’t know who that dude Aleto was, but his point never the less stands… Kimos drop spawning on the friggin Starport was serious business. I had doubled back to meet the Transcendents at the Starport, but as I showed up, they showed up, and a Kimo DB’d them all, and then proceeded to camp the door of the Starport. Let me ask you this, if people can’t even afford to get to the planet, then how in the world was I going to put together a crew to get this Kimo out of that spot? The answer is… we didn’t. Everyone took a DB (except for me because I was mask scented and managed to avoid a colossal foot to the jaw), and then they grabbed their corpse, and we all had to meet in Nym’s Cantina & Hospital to heal the wounds. By the time everyone was ready to roll, it was 3am, so people stayed on and hunted for an hour, and then everyone logged off. Except for me, I gave Lok a break and met up with some real-life friends on Rori.
Friday, July 04, 2003, 4:12:02 AM (ScreenShot0077)
Nosun was a real-life friend, and along with Zannex (real life brothers), Warbucks, and Junon (a cousin of the two brothers), they were all neighbors of mine. I was actually in a band with Nosun, so we saw a lot of one another in and out of game. He ended up being a human currier for my middleman operation, but more on that in later entries. Right now, they were just casual players hanging out on Rori. I call them casual because they were only clocking like 7 hours a day in game. Real men don’t sleep guys!
Friday, July 04, 2003, 4:12:25 AM (ScreenShot0078)
Zannex had finally hit Novice Architect. He made me a small generic house and left it with Nosun & Warbucks, so the second I saw them log on I had to go pick it up. And wouldn’t you know it, check the chat… while I’m off buying my house, Rampage hits Lok by himself to get XP without me. He was a few boxes ahead of me, and able to handle more on his own. While I spent time maintaining relationships, he never ever stopped the grind. If he was online, a mob was keeling over in front of him. And you can once again see what I had on my mind, Warbucks asks me “how the hell are you” and my response is “I’m going to Lok.” Sometimes I don’t know how these guys put up with me.
Saturday, July 05, 2003, 2:32:27 AM (ScreenShot0089)
About 24 hours later, and there I was, face to face with yet another Kimo lair. Did we dare touch it yet? This wasn’t beta, I didn’t have an army of CDEF toting noobs looking to take a DB on my behalf until we somehow brought the friggin thing down. But I couldn’t help get as close to the ledge as possible. Fuxu had reservations, justifiably of course. And this is where we started to go our separate ways priority wise. If you didn’t want to be as far out into the unknown trouble zones as possible, then you and I most likely would be talking with /tells, because there was no way I was going to avoid moments like the one above.
The problem was, everything was on foot, and getting back to Nym’s was a pain in the ass. Plus, if you wanted your harvestables to sell, you’d have to sell them on a noob planet vendor. No one was traveling to Lok to see what was on the Bazaar of all reasons. And it’s not like credits were dropping off of gurnasets and pharples either. So, to even [i]get[/i] off Lok, you needed to make sure you had the cash on hand when you got there. What I ended up doing was going to Theed and listing all my hide/bone, hoping they’d sell for my price. Quality wasn’t a concern, everyone needed grinding mats, so I set the price high above anyone else’s. It all sold before I even made it back to the Starport. I had around 10k Credits, so I bought myself some brand spanking new Mabari armor and went right back to Lok to be the first person to place his house on that planet on the Eclipse server. Too bad I hadn’t checked my mail… Rampage beat me by about 6 hours and sent me the waypoint. He was the first person on Eclipse to build on Lok.
Saturday, July 05, 2003, 3:50:01 AM (ScreenShot0095)
-557 5113, Lok. First house or not, it was an accomplishment. It’s located about an inch outside of the no-build zone, 1000m from Nym’s Stronghold. There’s a hill right outside my door, and Ramp’s house is on the other side. We did it. We were the first to set foot on Lok, and we were the first to build on Lok. The next move was to create the first guild on Lok. Because guilds depended on erecting a guild hall, and no architect was able to produce one yet, we just “said” we were a guild. But officially, we were nothing, just friends who stuck together.
Saturday, July 05, 2003, 3:52:11 AM (ScreenShot0098)
And there it was. My base of operations for all future endeavors. A safe house for anyone who was nearby. A place to put my stuff. Most importantly, a buffer between the wild, and Nym’s. It was where we rallied the troops for quite some time.
Below, totally out of sequence, are screenshots of my house, and Ramps, taken 4 years later in 2007. I am under the impression that these houses still stand to this day. Either we messed up on the house signs, or the date on my pics taken off my old hard drive are somehow wrong. Either way, we were #1 & #2 on Lok. Ugh the NGE UI is so totally wrecking this memory.
