A Biography of a RZ vet. ( Resist key details to classic inside)

[mourning]

MY---LIFE.


First off i'd like to say that this has nothing to do with strategy for enchanter pvp, and it has nothing to do with arrogance. It's mainly an autobiographical post about the 'EQ life'that i lived, as a pk. I'm posting this mainly for blue server people to see what a pk goes through, of course people from other servers are more than welcome to read. It can be a lot of fun being a true pk on rallos, but it's real hard, and almost anywhere you go you'll be shunned and people will try to kill you.

I started this game in summer, 1999.. June perhaps. I didn't know what pvp meant, that's why i joined rallos zek and started my GNOME enchanter. I never planned on pk, hell, i didn't know what it was. Level 1-8 took me a really long time and i used my level 1 choke spell mostly. I wasn't a pk back then, I got killed a lot by newbie pkers, and i had been saving everything for my level 8 spells. Naturally the first spell i bought (with all of my money of course) was chaotic feedback. It just blew my mind, when i used it, how much damage this spell did! I was a beast! And i set out to find someone to test it on. Low and behold, about a minute after setting foot outside of gnome town, i found a twinked up wood elf warrior by the Kobalds, nice and shiny bronze armor. It looked real heavy on him, since he was only a little elf. It took me 2 shots of chaotic feedback to kill the poor guy (probably level 4) with all of his friends around. Too bad for them they couldn't loot, at the time, no one could loot a kill unless 50% of the damage or more was done by the person. So I got loot, 40 platinum and a bronze sash I took, my first score and it was a GREAT one for my level. That was all it took to get me hooked on pking, as well. I walked back to the bank PRAYING i wouldn't be killed on the way because i had all of this platinum. I was also able to buy my spells. Mesmerise, tash, everything. This was the life. I pked all i could get from the gnome and wood elf inhabitants of akanon, and decided to level in a safer place where no one would know me. Greater Faydark.

Crushbone was the dungean of choice, it didn't take very long, and i was leveled 12, but i didn't stop there. Oasis became my hunting ground until 16, I remained unknown until then with fairly easy leveling. Charm worked on people back then too, at 16 i bought every spell, including charm and misc. others that I never bought at level 12. Charm and Sanity Warp became my main weapons. I also joined the guild Terrorizors of Norrath, and quickly became an officer. I thought i was invincible, I had this huge arsenal and a guild to back me, Oasis was easily taken over for a few weeks. I'd win some fights and lose some, considering the fact that it was about 20 people to 3 of us, we did well. I pked a lot with Platnumkutz, some might know him now as Icedout. We got to the 20's in oasis. But whenever we leveled we had the 'police' of norrath (anti pkers of course) constantly attacking us, trying to exp kill us and get us while we were hurt. After every fight we'd hide underwater using breathing spell, or we'd hide in a crack in a cliff at the far south edge of oasis, just above the water. We were never safe to hunt there.

When we hit our 20's we naturally headed to South Karana, 'the land of the pk', and we had also ditched our guild. Along with some buds we held the treants until we got to level 30. During that time, we suffered attacks almost as bad as on Oasis, except these ones were more organized, with more people. It was a lot of effort to level and fight people at the same time, and many times we were killed by the treants while people nuked us from behind. A lot of people would come solo, die, and come back again to attack, not even bothering to pick up their corpses. These kind of people were the worst, they would call a gm after they died again (of course they brought it on themselves by attacking) and sometimes the gm would give us a warning! So we would get harassed a lot, usually paranoid of being attacked from behind in the middle of a fight, and if someone went low health, they'd have to run down to the shore and sit in the water until healed back up. It really did suck. And leveling as a pker is not at all easy. I almost got fed up and quit before i reached 29. But i stuck it out, and when i got clarity, i just thought to myself 'this is un-****ing believable'. I was enjoying myself! Of course my buds were way ahead of me, some of them were 35 by this time, i was getting almost 0 exp. I was stoked with getting clarity, but it didn't last long because of this.

I had usually pked naked. I had very little money and by the time i was level 20 they had changed charm and fear, my main weapon. I was doing horrible. I was in Greater Fay one night, running around attacking people. I don't think i scored 1 kill that night, but I did happen to meet someone really important. We didn't meet as friends though, he happened to be a pk as well, just recently having quit Darkenbane, but never giving up the pk life, he loved it too much.

Jeir, the little gnome wizard, caught me underneith the tree city in faydark, and it took him 3 nukes to kill me. I had tried to outrun him, but he had jboots, I did not. Being the good sport he is, he challenged me to a duel afterwards, and I accepted. It was probably the closest fight I've ever been in. His magic resistance was well over 100, he was a very well funded individual, and I know it was all from pking. The first thing I cast was enthrall, and it stuck, luckily. Tishan and Strip enchantment were next. It did take his Shielding buff off, but it also took mez off, and because of this, he was able to get off a shock of lightning, interrupting my next spell. I think he got me 4 times before I could mez him again. It took about 1 1/2 bars of life, more than i had done to him. I blinded him once, and only once, the level 24 (can't remember name)damage spell was all i had, compared to his almost 300 damage spell. But i nuked him anyway. He had his spells hotkeyed, and nailed me with this spell. It hurt bad, taking me down to about 1 1/2 bars of life left. I mezzed him again, and loaded up color flux, my level 4 shift spell, seeing that it was faster than the level 20 shift. After I hit him with my nuke again, he attempted his big shot 1 more time, he got fluxed and i casted my nuke, this would have killed him, but he broke stun and shock of lightning'd me, interrupting my cast, then sent the finishing touch. I lost again.

After these 2 battles I was ready to quit, then i get a tell from Jeir, 'You should really wear some gear man, you probably would have beaten me... come to the bank i'll give you some of mine.' From then on we were pk partners, up until I was banned at level 50. This really revived the game for me.

The first few fights were kind of dull, and they all got away because of our bad coordination and teamwork, but we eventually got the hang of working together, and we recieved some of the best loot we'd ever seen. We had (probably) a unique looting style, ever since day 1, it was basically if one of us needed it, no matter what, that person would get it. And if neither of us needed it, we really didn't care who got it, since my money and armor was his, and his money and armor was mine. Over time, we had reached the magic number 34 we both kept the same level all the time, so that we could always back each other up, no matter what, and pking got a WHOLE lot easier for us.

We were triangle pking in South Karana, Cazic Thule (we had a good way of getting in through the maze) and Greater Faydark, we'd stalk the paths, or we'd go outside of the bank and prey on people sitting(or standing) near the tree, a gm was called on us several times of course, but what we were doing was legal, and with the mez/nuke combo, they never had a chance to even MOVE. Blinded the entire time, many people lost thousands of platinum worth of items and cash outside that place to us.

Cazic Thule was also a lot of fun, we got into battles with entire groups there. We would sneak in invisible, and quickly nail a key member such as a cleric or druid, if they didn't have a cleric, then I would use the Area mezmerize (yes it does work at these levels) and enthrall anyone left over, while Jeir worked on one, and then I'd join jeir and blind/mez/etc. so the guy couldn't get away or bag, then we'd do the same to the rest of the group. But, alas, it didn't always work that way. Necros are a dangerous thing, especially in tight spots, 4 necros and 2 clerics are an even more dangerous thing, i believe we killed ONE of them before having to zone and evac with less than a bar of health remaining on either of us. Sometimes battles just went horribly wrong, a resist somewhere will screw you over.

We had been partners for 2 months solid, and decided it was time to gain some levels. It took about 2 weeks per level, and 35 was really bad, took us about a month to get. We had pressure from both anti pks, and pks alike. We had both basically said '**** you' to any friends we may have had at the time, and *everyone* was a potential enemy or threat. Some fights were really intense. We were fighting a wiz and a necro combo that attacked us at the druids, it took us over to the dunes in East commons, by the tunnel to Ro. I went Linkdead in the middle of the whole fight. I thought for sure I was dead, I had everything on as well. But when i got back, there was a near-dead Jeir standing by my spot and 2 dead corpses. He had guarded me while i was linkdead AND stood his ground the entire time even though he risked himself and his items. We leveled to 39 on the druids in East commons and West commons, it took longer than anybody i know, probably about 3 months or longer. We didn't level the whole time though. Jeir was dedicated at one point to getting me Jboots. We spent many days in South Ro looking for the beast who would drop us the ring, so that I may have the coveted jboots. Up until that point, when we had to run somewhere, Jeir would switch off his jboots and run with me, so that we wouldn't get separated, because if we did, we would die. Simple as that. We had each others back no matter what happened, and if things were going horribly, we'd either BOTH make it out alive, or none of us would.

South Ro was a dangerous place for us, the biggest threat was a large attack by other players after the same treasure as us. South Ro is also a hard place to fight in, all of the dunes and hills make it hard to fight an enemy who's running, because they start to circle and disappear from lag. We usually used this to our advantage though, and the results were disasterous to the other side. THey'd get split up a lot, and we'd pick them off 1 by 1, we kept near each other, and communicated well. Jeir and I spent countless hours in that hell-hole. But one evening when Jeir wasn't on, I was with my slave (basically, he would do anything we wanted him to do as long as we left him alone), we were porting over to South Ro so i could goto Oasis and look for some sheets of research from the gypsies. He followed me (luckily) and caught the cyclops on track when i had just zoned over to Oasis. He was yelling 'CLOPS CLOPS GET OVER HERE NOW!!!!'. I had a shiny new pair of jboots by the end of that evening, and Jeir was stoked. We also vowed to never hunt for another ancient cyclops, ever, again.

Level 35 was an especially BORING time for us. I did have jboots, but it didn't make leveling any faster for us. We would kill the druids, sell the weapons for huge cash, and when we got overloaded, we'd head for GFAY, this was pumice money, and i bought them for Jeir because i had more charisma. He usually used the pumices because i had other things i needed to do instead of waste time on the pumice. Getting pumices wasn't an easy task although the vendor was right outside the bank, we had about 5 people every time waiting for us, even the simplest task can be 20 times harder for a pker. I got the pumices under fire, Jeir was busy levitating us up so that we could run off the ledge asap, and we were just about to gate back to our bind point when Jeir gets a tell from Singood (again, another slave, Jeir annihilated this man several times in the past, he was probably scared of us) telling him that there's 3 people in butcherblock mountains in our range to kill, and that he was being attacked by them. We loved a challenge, and we got there as quickly as we could. We were faced with an enchanter, Ksanth(i think), wizard (dont remember the name), necro, Nutso, and out of range healer, Wolfen. They were on the shore to the left of the docks in Butcherblock. Nutso was sitting on the ground near a house, and his friends were off in the distance, we knew they had spotted us, because they were running toward us, but Nutso didn't seem to notice us. It took about 10 seconds to cook the poor necro before we had to fight the enchanter and wizard. This is one of the times we did split up to fight, Wolfen followed jeir and the other wizard, and i was left 1 on 1 with Ksack the enchanter(i honestly can't remember the name, maybe some of you know? it started with a K) I believe it was a level 39 ench(him) vs a level 35 enc(me!). He didn't last too long, his healer wasn't around, and there was a vast difference in magic resistance. Pks shouldn't fight other pks, but we did, thats how it went. On the other side of the battlefield, Jeir was killed by a dwarf that had caught his trail while he was running, he mowed down by its powerful axe. I was left with 2 bars of mana to fight this wizard and Wolfen's healing. He was rather easy to mez and blind, he had no idea how to pk. I ran out of mana quickly though, and Wolfen kept him full health. I had to gate and catch up with Jeir. After that fight we decided not to pk until 36.

Level 36 was probably our best pvp level. We were just getting done pking and we wanted a new place to level, the druids were getting old, and all of our enemies knew where to find us. We decided to take over Darkenbane's spot in West karana by the Barbarians. We were all pumped up ready for a fight, but when we arrived, it was empty. No darkenbane in the zone. Oh well! We binded and started to fight. A few darkenbane came over every once in a while, and were dispatched fairly easily. Our little buddy Rykker popped in about an hour after we took over the barbarians. I believe this guy was level 27 at the time. He tried to killsteal us, hehe. He told us that Darkenbane was gonna come git us, after 3 failed attempts to take our kills, and he told us to stay here. So we did. And we leveled for 2 hours straight until finally, 1 dber in the zone, ivanale, a level 45 wizard. He came over and chatted with us a little and watched us, but he couldn't do anything. Then I get a tell from him 'watch out, 8 db coming your way'. I checked the zone (something we had to do every minute or so) and sure enough, we have a large group of darkenbane. I yelled at Jeir to evac us to Gfay and come up with a plan to fight them. It took all of 20 seconds, and Ivanale offered to help us, even though he couldnt attack the 6 we were going to fight, he could kill their 2 healers they brought along. Trust a Darkenbane? I guess we would have to, to fight these guys (and yes, we REALLY wanted to fight them). So we gate back, our bind point is a bit away from the Barbarians, and Ivanale joins us in the spot. We then advance toward the group of pkers, 3 mages, 1 necro, 1 wizard and 1 enchanter. Ivanale made true to his word, he killed Daero and the other druid before they could heal even 1 time, and i had mezmerized about half the group and their pets, i was bombed by the necro with dots from hell and Jeir was forced to switch targets to prevent my death. It took all of 3 minutes to demolish this fearsome (obviously) force of darkenbane dreadknights. The only survivor was the enchanter, we had no time for him, his friends were going to come back soon and we had to get out quickly. Jeir took us to Tox to rest up. I had about 1 1/2 bars of life left, Jeir was a little more hurt with 1 left and Ivan was 3 1/2 bars. I honestly think we owe this one to the element of surprise, luck, and Jeir's knowledge of Darkenbane. Ivanale was kicked from his guild shortly after. Why he helped us? Who knows, but i doubt we'd have beaten even 1 of them if they had their healers along.

We visited the place of massacre later on that evening, looking for darkenbanes to kill, no one was around, so we visited the hills of qeynos. We ran into Darkenbane's leader, probably one of their more famous leaders as well, Eladrin (aka. the original Ever). He was a slippery one indeed, and gave us quite the chase. Harmshield and shadowstep was this young man's best friend. The big mistake he made, was coming back to the spot we were sitting in, where we finally caught and killed him. In fact we killed him multiple times over the next few days. He became more frustrated with Darkenbane and their incompetant players, and i recieved a message from him saying, 'Darkenbane sucks.' .... 'level 40 necromancer at your service...'. A great victory indeed. But we didn't accept his offer, instead we destroyed him again by the Druids in West commonlands. After this I don't think we ever saw him again.

We were prime Darkenbane targets now, along with anti pk targets, we were having a really hard time leveling. Saradin, top officer of Darkenbane at the time, informed me that initiation for Darkenbane included 'Killing Nath and Jeir', I was only killed once by a group of 3 darkenbanes while i was afk sitting at the bard in South Karana, bad idea, but i wasn't thinking. I don't think they kept that policy around very long. Also some people camped at our bind spots near the druids and waiting for us to gate in to attack us. We were lucky to get more than half a bar of exp a day. We eventually did reach 39, and moved to Butcherblock, and using charm kiting, we were able to take the spawns from Kaladim all the way to the docks and back before the next spawn cycle began. It was fast, easy leveling, and we were only in 3 fights until then. The first one was with Azzar, a level 44 wizard. He kept dying to me at level 42 and he kept laughing that i suck because i don't have 44 spells. Mental problems? Quite possibly. My second fight wasn't so pretty though, we were faced with a ranger, warrior, necromancer, and cleric. Each one had huge magic resist. They caught us off-guard sitting at the docks, and though we fought our hardest, we couldn't win, and we ran from them, we both almost died, luckily for us it was a cliffy area, and we used the cliffs to get away. These kinds of attacks were actually very, very frequent ever since level 29 and up, every 15 minutes or so we'd be under attack, and it hindered our leveling more than anyone could imagine. The last fight we got into during our leveling in Butcherblock was with a level 45 necromancer, he got 1 dot on Jeir and almost killed him. But we did manage to take him down, twice in fact, the second time we didn't make any mistakes and we took him down with surgical precision. We were offered a spot in his guild, a known pvp guild then, called Dark Legion Syndicate. It happened to be part of the plane group, TR/e, and we were invited on plane runs. Coolness. Our guild was made up of pvpers, every last one of them. Dathan, Fongh, Chaucer, Kidmen, Ironfoot, and so on. We were limited in our selection of pkables, but we did have quite a few to kill who we were at war with, mostly Peace of Formosia.

We flew to level 50, and we went on plane raids almost every day, eventually we were at the top of their loot list and we both recieved close to full planes gear. Originally we had planned to get full, and leave and take them down. But we grew to like them, and we stayed. Dark Legion was disbanded during our early days of plane runs, and Gravesson(the MAN, and leader of Dynasty of Blood) offered to guild us. And we accepted. He knew of our rep, and it seemed he knew our entire history. And he told us that he didn't mind us pking, just don't do it too much!

Although we did have a good honest guild behind us, we were still attacked by everyone, and KOS to every guild. We loved it too. This was our thing. Hell, we could have probably organized our own events, we knew these places so well. Any run we were on became a dumbass fest. Jeir and I filled the screen with dumbass **** and just generally had a good time. It livened things up for the others too, they were probably bored out of their skull before us. And our group got the extra dumbassness that we had to offer, if we didn't get exp, it was blamed on someone in our group just to mess with the guy =P

We were doing great, of course we had started about 15 wars for dynasty of blood, we resolved each, individually. All of this ended though, when we were kicked because someone complained a little too much to an officer of our guild. Gravesson wasn't on, so he couldn't do anything about it, and by the time he came back on, i had been banned from EQ. Before that time though, we decided to spend our last days of EQ (we didnt think it would be our last days), pking people. It was only during the last week of pking that we thought to make a webpage and screenshot our kills.

Our last week was interesting, it was a week of intense pking against foes with powerful spells and more intelligent than those we had fought before. I made a huge mistake during that week. It was the week of the wizard best of the best, and i decided to visit the arena and watch. It was nothing spectacular, i was bored out of my mind, and was grateful that it finished quickly. Akkirus (head gm) was standing around while everyone rushed the center stage. I found myself staring Akkirus face to face, and I wondered if he was attackable. I decided to try, and nuked him with chaotic feedback. It worked! I could tell he was pissed too, and i tried to enthrall him, but he /killed me. Jeir looted my body for me and then ice cometted Akkirus for that. He died too. But Akkirus was down half life. I wish we would have killed him, it would have made a great kill shot. Oh well. The next day i was banned without explanation. And i was done with EQ. Jeir was done as well.

Our last Recorded week can be found at http://www.eqgods.cjb.net/ , made by Jeir, all pics are also from Jeir's point of view.

We never did become anti's or goodies, we were always pks, Gravesson knew this, and so did most people who did events with us. We never kept it a secret. They still kept us around for as long as they did. TR/e had balls, I guess it became too much for them.

Also note that I included barely any of our battles, if i had, this would have taken days. We were fighting CONSTANTLY. A pk's life is HARD.

- Mourning. Aka God.

[Morninx]

Just wanted to make sure you knew i did not waste my time reading your post. Get a real life.

[Bazia]

I liked the post.

I noticed there was little interaction with melee characters.

Were they rare back then (and probably here as well?)

[jilena]

Fun read.

[valithteezee]

^^ The real morning speaks

[Amuk]

Are you fucking kidding - didn't read one line of that novel.

[MakeYouMad]

I don't see any valid resist details. Just made a post that has actual resist parses and game play mechanics:

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51839

[Doors]

Reading is hard.

[fistses]

chaucer is a fgt

[mourning]

I do not remember when I was unable to read and comprehend things.

[Daero]

he killed Daero

Never happened.

[Deafeye]

Eximos > You

[Pudge]

good read.

at least in the state i am right now !

[MakeYouMad]

good read.

at least in the state i am right now !

obese

[lethdar]

The first one was with Azzar, a level 44 wizard. He kept dying to me at level 42 and he kept laughing that i suck because i don't have 44 spells. Mental problems? Quite possibly.

lolololoool azzar

Nice find, I remember half of the people mentioned in there, good times.

[naez]

longest post ever on any forum on the internet

[Crenshinabon]

Decent read. It was great playing back in the day when 1500 people were on.
Thought I noticed you said you were bored a few times. Seems odd to have such fond memories of you being bored.

[letsjoe]

MY---LIFE.


First off i'd like to say that this has nothing to do with strategy for enchanter pvp, and it has nothing to do with arrogance. It's mainly an autobiographical post about the 'EQ life'that i lived, as a pk. I'm posting this mainly for blue server people to see what a pk goes through, of course people from other servers are more than welcome to read. It can be a lot of fun being a true pk on rallos, but it's real hard, and almost anywhere you go you'll be shunned and people will try to kill you.

I started this game in summer, 1999.. June perhaps. I didn't know what pvp meant, that's why i joined rallos zek and started my GNOME enchanter. I never planned on pk, hell, i didn't know what it was. Level 1-8 took me a really long time and i used my level 1 choke spell mostly. I wasn't a pk back then, I got killed a lot by newbie pkers, and i had been saving everything for my level 8 spells. Naturally the first spell i bought (with all of my money of course) was chaotic feedback. It just blew my mind, when i used it, how much damage this spell did! I was a beast! And i set out to find someone to test it on. Low and behold, about a minute after setting foot outside of gnome town, i found a twinked up wood elf warrior by the Kobalds, nice and shiny bronze armor. It looked real heavy on him, since he was only a little elf. It took me 2 shots of chaotic feedback to kill the poor guy (probably level 4) with all of his friends around. Too bad for them they couldn't loot, at the time, no one could loot a kill unless 50% of the damage or more was done by the person. So I got loot, 40 platinum and a bronze sash I took, my first score and it was a GREAT one for my level. That was all it took to get me hooked on pking, as well. I walked back to the bank PRAYING i wouldn't be killed on the way because i had all of this platinum. I was also able to buy my spells. Mesmerise, tash, everything. This was the life. I pked all i could get from the gnome and wood elf inhabitants of akanon, and decided to level in a safer place where no one would know me. Greater Faydark.

Crushbone was the dungean of choice, it didn't take very long, and i was leveled 12, but i didn't stop there. Oasis became my hunting ground until 16, I remained unknown until then with fairly easy leveling. Charm worked on people back then too, at 16 i bought every spell, including charm and misc. others that I never bought at level 12. Charm and Sanity Warp became my main weapons. I also joined the guild Terrorizors of Norrath, and quickly became an officer. I thought i was invincible, I had this huge arsenal and a guild to back me, Oasis was easily taken over for a few weeks. I'd win some fights and lose some, considering the fact that it was about 20 people to 3 of us, we did well. I pked a lot with Platnumkutz, some might know him now as Icedout. We got to the 20's in oasis. But whenever we leveled we had the 'police' of norrath (anti pkers of course) constantly attacking us, trying to exp kill us and get us while we were hurt. After every fight we'd hide underwater using breathing spell, or we'd hide in a crack in a cliff at the far south edge of oasis, just above the water. We were never safe to hunt there.

When we hit our 20's we naturally headed to South Karana, 'the land of the pk', and we had also ditched our guild. Along with some buds we held the treants until we got to level 30. During that time, we suffered attacks almost as bad as on Oasis, except these ones were more organized, with more people. It was a lot of effort to level and fight people at the same time, and many times we were killed by the treants while people nuked us from behind. A lot of people would come solo, die, and come back again to attack, not even bothering to pick up their corpses. These kind of people were the worst, they would call a gm after they died again (of course they brought it on themselves by attacking) and sometimes the gm would give us a warning! So we would get harassed a lot, usually paranoid of being attacked from behind in the middle of a fight, and if someone went low health, they'd have to run down to the shore and sit in the water until healed back up. It really did suck. And leveling as a pker is not at all easy. I almost got fed up and quit before i reached 29. But i stuck it out, and when i got clarity, i just thought to myself 'this is un-****ing believable'. I was enjoying myself! Of course my buds were way ahead of me, some of them were 35 by this time, i was getting almost 0 exp. I was stoked with getting clarity, but it didn't last long because of this.

I had usually pked naked. I had very little money and by the time i was level 20 they had changed charm and fear, my main weapon. I was doing horrible. I was in Greater Fay one night, running around attacking people. I don't think i scored 1 kill that night, but I did happen to meet someone really important. We didn't meet as friends though, he happened to be a pk as well, just recently having quit Darkenbane, but never giving up the pk life, he loved it too much.

Jeir, the little gnome wizard, caught me underneith the tree city in faydark, and it took him 3 nukes to kill me. I had tried to outrun him, but he had jboots, I did not. Being the good sport he is, he challenged me to a duel afterwards, and I accepted. It was probably the closest fight I've ever been in. His magic resistance was well over 100, he was a very well funded individual, and I know it was all from pking. The first thing I cast was enthrall, and it stuck, luckily. Tishan and Strip enchantment were next. It did take his Shielding buff off, but it also took mez off, and because of this, he was able to get off a shock of lightning, interrupting my next spell. I think he got me 4 times before I could mez him again. It took about 1 1/2 bars of life, more than i had done to him. I blinded him once, and only once, the level 24 (can't remember name)damage spell was all i had, compared to his almost 300 damage spell. But i nuked him anyway. He had his spells hotkeyed, and nailed me with this spell. It hurt bad, taking me down to about 1 1/2 bars of life left. I mezzed him again, and loaded up color flux, my level 4 shift spell, seeing that it was faster than the level 20 shift. After I hit him with my nuke again, he attempted his big shot 1 more time, he got fluxed and i casted my nuke, this would have killed him, but he broke stun and shock of lightning'd me, interrupting my cast, then sent the finishing touch. I lost again.

After these 2 battles I was ready to quit, then i get a tell from Jeir, 'You should really wear some gear man, you probably would have beaten me... come to the bank i'll give you some of mine.' From then on we were pk partners, up until I was banned at level 50. This really revived the game for me.

The first few fights were kind of dull, and they all got away because of our bad coordination and teamwork, but we eventually got the hang of working together, and we recieved some of the best loot we'd ever seen. We had (probably) a unique looting style, ever since day 1, it was basically if one of us needed it, no matter what, that person would get it. And if neither of us needed it, we really didn't care who got it, since my money and armor was his, and his money and armor was mine. Over time, we had reached the magic number 34 we both kept the same level all the time, so that we could always back each other up, no matter what, and pking got a WHOLE lot easier for us.

We were triangle pking in South Karana, Cazic Thule (we had a good way of getting in through the maze) and Greater Faydark, we'd stalk the paths, or we'd go outside of the bank and prey on people sitting(or standing) near the tree, a gm was called on us several times of course, but what we were doing was legal, and with the mez/nuke combo, they never had a chance to even MOVE. Blinded the entire time, many people lost thousands of platinum worth of items and cash outside that place to us.

Cazic Thule was also a lot of fun, we got into battles with entire groups there. We would sneak in invisible, and quickly nail a key member such as a cleric or druid, if they didn't have a cleric, then I would use the Area mezmerize (yes it does work at these levels) and enthrall anyone left over, while Jeir worked on one, and then I'd join jeir and blind/mez/etc. so the guy couldn't get away or bag, then we'd do the same to the rest of the group. But, alas, it didn't always work that way. Necros are a dangerous thing, especially in tight spots, 4 necros and 2 clerics are an even more dangerous thing, i believe we killed ONE of them before having to zone and evac with less than a bar of health remaining on either of us. Sometimes battles just went horribly wrong, a resist somewhere will screw you over.

We had been partners for 2 months solid, and decided it was time to gain some levels. It took about 2 weeks per level, and 35 was really bad, took us about a month to get. We had pressure from both anti pks, and pks alike. We had both basically said '**** you' to any friends we may have had at the time, and *everyone* was a potential enemy or threat. Some fights were really intense. We were fighting a wiz and a necro combo that attacked us at the druids, it took us over to the dunes in East commons, by the tunnel to Ro. I went Linkdead in the middle of the whole fight. I thought for sure I was dead, I had everything on as well. But when i got back, there was a near-dead Jeir standing by my spot and 2 dead corpses. He had guarded me while i was linkdead AND stood his ground the entire time even though he risked himself and his items. We leveled to 39 on the druids in East commons and West commons, it took longer than anybody i know, probably about 3 months or longer. We didn't level the whole time though. Jeir was dedicated at one point to getting me Jboots. We spent many days in South Ro looking for the beast who would drop us the ring, so that I may have the coveted jboots. Up until that point, when we had to run somewhere, Jeir would switch off his jboots and run with me, so that we wouldn't get separated, because if we did, we would die. Simple as that. We had each others back no matter what happened, and if things were going horribly, we'd either BOTH make it out alive, or none of us would.

South Ro was a dangerous place for us, the biggest threat was a large attack by other players after the same treasure as us. South Ro is also a hard place to fight in, all of the dunes and hills make it hard to fight an enemy who's running, because they start to circle and disappear from lag. We usually used this to our advantage though, and the results were disasterous to the other side. THey'd get split up a lot, and we'd pick them off 1 by 1, we kept near each other, and communicated well. Jeir and I spent countless hours in that hell-hole. But one evening when Jeir wasn't on, I was with my slave (basically, he would do anything we wanted him to do as long as we left him alone), we were porting over to South Ro so i could goto Oasis and look for some sheets of research from the gypsies. He followed me (luckily) and caught the cyclops on track when i had just zoned over to Oasis. He was yelling 'CLOPS CLOPS GET OVER HERE NOW!!!!'. I had a shiny new pair of jboots by the end of that evening, and Jeir was stoked. We also vowed to never hunt for another ancient cyclops, ever, again.

Level 35 was an especially BORING time for us. I did have jboots, but it didn't make leveling any faster for us. We would kill the druids, sell the weapons for huge cash, and when we got overloaded, we'd head for GFAY, this was pumice money, and i bought them for Jeir because i had more charisma. He usually used the pumices because i had other things i needed to do instead of waste time on the pumice. Getting pumices wasn't an easy task although the vendor was right outside the bank, we had about 5 people every time waiting for us, even the simplest task can be 20 times harder for a pker. I got the pumices under fire, Jeir was busy levitating us up so that we could run off the ledge asap, and we were just about to gate back to our bind point when Jeir gets a tell from Singood (again, another slave, Jeir annihilated this man several times in the past, he was probably scared of us) telling him that there's 3 people in butcherblock mountains in our range to kill, and that he was being attacked by them. We loved a challenge, and we got there as quickly as we could. We were faced with an enchanter, Ksanth(i think), wizard (dont remember the name), necro, Nutso, and out of range healer, Wolfen. They were on the shore to the left of the docks in Butcherblock. Nutso was sitting on the ground near a house, and his friends were off in the distance, we knew they had spotted us, because they were running toward us, but Nutso didn't seem to notice us. It took about 10 seconds to cook the poor necro before we had to fight the enchanter and wizard. This is one of the times we did split up to fight, Wolfen followed jeir and the other wizard, and i was left 1 on 1 with Ksack the enchanter(i honestly can't remember the name, maybe some of you know? it started with a K) I believe it was a level 39 ench(him) vs a level 35 enc(me!). He didn't last too long, his healer wasn't around, and there was a vast difference in magic resistance. Pks shouldn't fight other pks, but we did, thats how it went. On the other side of the battlefield, Jeir was killed by a dwarf that had caught his trail while he was running, he mowed down by its powerful axe. I was left with 2 bars of mana to fight this wizard and Wolfen's healing. He was rather easy to mez and blind, he had no idea how to pk. I ran out of mana quickly though, and Wolfen kept him full health. I had to gate and catch up with Jeir. After that fight we decided not to pk until 36.

Level 36 was probably our best pvp level. We were just getting done pking and we wanted a new place to level, the druids were getting old, and all of our enemies knew where to find us. We decided to take over Darkenbane's spot in West karana by the Barbarians. We were all pumped up ready for a fight, but when we arrived, it was empty. No darkenbane in the zone. Oh well! We binded and started to fight. A few darkenbane came over every once in a while, and were dispatched fairly easily. Our little buddy Rykker popped in about an hour after we took over the barbarians. I believe this guy was level 27 at the time. He tried to killsteal us, hehe. He told us that Darkenbane was gonna come git us, after 3 failed attempts to take our kills, and he told us to stay here. So we did. And we leveled for 2 hours straight until finally, 1 dber in the zone, ivanale, a level 45 wizard. He came over and chatted with us a little and watched us, but he couldn't do anything. Then I get a tell from him 'watch out, 8 db coming your way'. I checked the zone (something we had to do every minute or so) and sure enough, we have a large group of darkenbane. I yelled at Jeir to evac us to Gfay and come up with a plan to fight them. It took all of 20 seconds, and Ivanale offered to help us, even though he couldnt attack the 6 we were going to fight, he could kill their 2 healers they brought along. Trust a Darkenbane? I guess we would have to, to fight these guys (and yes, we REALLY wanted to fight them). So we gate back, our bind point is a bit away from the Barbarians, and Ivanale joins us in the spot. We then advance toward the group of pkers, 3 mages, 1 necro, 1 wizard and 1 enchanter. Ivanale made true to his word, he killed Daero and the other druid before they could heal even 1 time, and i had mezmerized about half the group and their pets, i was bombed by the necro with dots from hell and Jeir was forced to switch targets to prevent my death. It took all of 3 minutes to demolish this fearsome (obviously) force of darkenbane dreadknights. The only survivor was the enchanter, we had no time for him, his friends were going to come back soon and we had to get out quickly. Jeir took us to Tox to rest up. I had about 1 1/2 bars of life left, Jeir was a little more hurt with 1 left and Ivan was 3 1/2 bars. I honestly think we owe this one to the element of surprise, luck, and Jeir's knowledge of Darkenbane. Ivanale was kicked from his guild shortly after. Why he helped us? Who knows, but i doubt we'd have beaten even 1 of them if they had their healers along.

We visited the place of massacre later on that evening, looking for darkenbanes to kill, no one was around, so we visited the hills of qeynos. We ran into Darkenbane's leader, probably one of their more famous leaders as well, Eladrin (aka. the original Ever). He was a slippery one indeed, and gave us quite the chase. Harmshield and shadowstep was this young man's best friend. The big mistake he made, was coming back to the spot we were sitting in, where we finally caught and killed him. In fact we killed him multiple times over the next few days. He became more frustrated with Darkenbane and their incompetant players, and i recieved a message from him saying, 'Darkenbane sucks.' .... 'level 40 necromancer at your service...'. A great victory indeed. But we didn't accept his offer, instead we destroyed him again by the Druids in West commonlands. After this I don't think we ever saw him again.

We were prime Darkenbane targets now, along with anti pk targets, we were having a really hard time leveling. Saradin, top officer of Darkenbane at the time, informed me that initiation for Darkenbane included 'Killing Nath and Jeir', I was only killed once by a group of 3 darkenbanes while i was afk sitting at the bard in South Karana, bad idea, but i wasn't thinking. I don't think they kept that policy around very long. Also some people camped at our bind spots near the druids and waiting for us to gate in to attack us. We were lucky to get more than half a bar of exp a day. We eventually did reach 39, and moved to Butcherblock, and using charm kiting, we were able to take the spawns from Kaladim all the way to the docks and back before the next spawn cycle began. It was fast, easy leveling, and we were only in 3 fights until then. The first one was with Azzar, a level 44 wizard. He kept dying to me at level 42 and he kept laughing that i suck because i don't have 44 spells. Mental problems? Quite possibly. My second fight wasn't so pretty though, we were faced with a ranger, warrior, necromancer, and cleric. Each one had huge magic resist. They caught us off-guard sitting at the docks, and though we fought our hardest, we couldn't win, and we ran from them, we both almost died, luckily for us it was a cliffy area, and we used the cliffs to get away. These kinds of attacks were actually very, very frequent ever since level 29 and up, every 15 minutes or so we'd be under attack, and it hindered our leveling more than anyone could imagine. The last fight we got into during our leveling in Butcherblock was with a level 45 necromancer, he got 1 dot on Jeir and almost killed him. But we did manage to take him down, twice in fact, the second time we didn't make any mistakes and we took him down with surgical precision. We were offered a spot in his guild, a known pvp guild then, called Dark Legion Syndicate. It happened to be part of the plane group, TR/e, and we were invited on plane runs. Coolness. Our guild was made up of pvpers, every last one of them. Dathan, Fongh, Chaucer, Kidmen, Ironfoot, and so on. We were limited in our selection of pkables, but we did have quite a few to kill who we were at war with, mostly Peace of Formosia.

We flew to level 50, and we went on plane raids almost every day, eventually we were at the top of their loot list and we both recieved close to full planes gear. Originally we had planned to get full, and leave and take them down. But we grew to like them, and we stayed. Dark Legion was disbanded during our early days of plane runs, and Gravesson(the MAN, and leader of Dynasty of Blood) offered to guild us. And we accepted. He knew of our rep, and it seemed he knew our entire history. And he told us that he didn't mind us pking, just don't do it too much!

Although we did have a good honest guild behind us, we were still attacked by everyone, and KOS to every guild. We loved it too. This was our thing. Hell, we could have probably organized our own events, we knew these places so well. Any run we were on became a dumbass fest. Jeir and I filled the screen with dumbass **** and just generally had a good time. It livened things up for the others too, they were probably bored out of their skull before us. And our group got the extra dumbassness that we had to offer, if we didn't get exp, it was blamed on someone in our group just to mess with the guy =P

We were doing great, of course we had started about 15 wars for dynasty of blood, we resolved each, individually. All of this ended though, when we were kicked because someone complained a little too much to an officer of our guild. Gravesson wasn't on, so he couldn't do anything about it, and by the time he came back on, i had been banned from EQ. Before that time though, we decided to spend our last days of EQ (we didnt think it would be our last days), pking people. It was only during the last week of pking that we thought to make a webpage and screenshot our kills.

Our last week was interesting, it was a week of intense pking against foes with powerful spells and more intelligent than those we had fought before. I made a huge mistake during that week. It was the week of the wizard best of the best, and i decided to visit the arena and watch. It was nothing spectacular, i was bored out of my mind, and was grateful that it finished quickly. Akkirus (head gm) was standing around while everyone rushed the center stage. I found myself staring Akkirus face to face, and I wondered if he was attackable. I decided to try, and nuked him with chaotic feedback. It worked! I could tell he was pissed too, and i tried to enthrall him, but he /killed me. Jeir looted my body for me and then ice cometted Akkirus for that. He died too. But Akkirus was down half life. I wish we would have killed him, it would have made a great kill shot. Oh well. The next day i was banned without explanation. And i was done with EQ. Jeir was done as well.

Our last Recorded week can be found at http://www.eqgods.cjb.net/ , made by Jeir, all pics are also from Jeir's point of view.

We never did become anti's or goodies, we were always pks, Gravesson knew this, and so did most people who did events with us. We never kept it a secret. They still kept us around for as long as they did. TR/e had balls, I guess it became too much for them.

Also note that I included barely any of our battles, if i had, this would have taken days. We were fighting CONSTANTLY. A pk's life is HARD.

- Mourning. Aka God.

i liked it, i also played on RZ around this time. i remember all of the names and experiences. i swear there was a gnome ench that pked with Jeir Dawg named nathanuel??

[lethdar]

nath something yeah.

[Darksinga]

He said his name was Nath, so I'm sure that's him you're remembering.

Good read though. Thought there was some juicy details on the ban, but only an egotistical GM, blah.

[deramius]

Good story!

[Nirgon]

I'd post but for reasons of maybe taking up more than one page and/or causing a massive uproar... I believe I shan't.

[Softcore PK]

Good story! It's a shame you were banned :/

I killed a GM once, he was like afk in GD lol.

[Nirgon]

I seen one go down in Dragon Necropolis to Ehunogor and another rogue (Trikk maybe). I remember Ozuri getting jumped on a Sabbat skyshrine raid when he ported in, quickly invulning and saying "next person to attack me is going to die and a res won't give back the xp".

[SoulLeech]

Entertaining post.

I vaguely remember you guys. I'm thinking you started a bit later based on the Darkenbane reference (I don't recall them going PK until pretty late in classic).

I'm particularly fond of this...

I found myself staring Akkirus face to face, and I wondered if he was attackable. I decided to try, and nuked him with chaotic feedback. It worked! I could tell he was pissed too, and i tried to enthrall him, but he /killed me. Jeir looted my body for me and then ice cometted Akkirus for that. He died too. But Akkirus was down half life. I wish we would have killed him, it would have made a great kill shot. Oh well. The next day i was banned without explanation. And i was done with EQ. Jeir was done as well.

See, that's the good old "You're in our world now" bullshit I remember. The self-entitlement that everyone on staff behind the scenes in EQ evidenced was just ridiculous.

They truly didn't believe they were running a service, that they should actually serve the customer. It was "This is our shit, our vision. Be glad we allow you the privilege of paying to participate".

[Softcore PK]

BTW the link does not work; I would really like to see those pictures.

[georgie]

MY---LIFE.


First off i'd like to say that this has nothing to do with strategy for enchanter pvp, and it has nothing to do with arrogance. It's mainly an autobiographical post about the 'EQ life'that i lived, as a pk. I'm posting this mainly for blue server people to see what a pk goes through, of course people from other servers are more than welcome to read. It can be a lot of fun being a true pk on rallos, but it's real hard, and almost anywhere you go you'll be shunned and people will try to kill you.

I started this game in summer, 1999.. June perhaps. I didn't know what pvp meant, that's why i joined rallos zek and started my GNOME enchanter. I never planned on pk, hell, i didn't know what it was. Level 1-8 took me a really long time and i used my level 1 choke spell mostly. I wasn't a pk back then, I got killed a lot by newbie pkers, and i had been saving everything for my level 8 spells. Naturally the first spell i bought (with all of my money of course) was chaotic feedback. It just blew my mind, when i used it, how much damage this spell did! I was a beast! And i set out to find someone to test it on. Low and behold, about a minute after setting foot outside of gnome town, i found a twinked up wood elf warrior by the Kobalds, nice and shiny bronze armor. It looked real heavy on him, since he was only a little elf. It took me 2 shots of chaotic feedback to kill the poor guy (probably level 4) with all of his friends around. Too bad for them they couldn't loot, at the time, no one could loot a kill unless 50% of the damage or more was done by the person. So I got loot, 40 platinum and a bronze sash I took, my first score and it was a GREAT one for my level. That was all it took to get me hooked on pking, as well. I walked back to the bank PRAYING i wouldn't be killed on the way because i had all of this platinum. I was also able to buy my spells. Mesmerise, tash, everything. This was the life. I pked all i could get from the gnome and wood elf inhabitants of akanon, and decided to level in a safer place where no one would know me. Greater Faydark.

Crushbone was the dungean of choice, it didn't take very long, and i was leveled 12, but i didn't stop there. Oasis became my hunting ground until 16, I remained unknown until then with fairly easy leveling. Charm worked on people back then too, at 16 i bought every spell, including charm and misc. others that I never bought at level 12. Charm and Sanity Warp became my main weapons. I also joined the guild Terrorizors of Norrath, and quickly became an officer. I thought i was invincible, I had this huge arsenal and a guild to back me, Oasis was easily taken over for a few weeks. I'd win some fights and lose some, considering the fact that it was about 20 people to 3 of us, we did well. I pked a lot with Platnumkutz, some might know him now as Icedout. We got to the 20's in oasis. But whenever we leveled we had the 'police' of norrath (anti pkers of course) constantly attacking us, trying to exp kill us and get us while we were hurt. After every fight we'd hide underwater using breathing spell, or we'd hide in a crack in a cliff at the far south edge of oasis, just above the water. We were never safe to hunt there.

When we hit our 20's we naturally headed to South Karana, 'the land of the pk', and we had also ditched our guild. Along with some buds we held the treants until we got to level 30. During that time, we suffered attacks almost as bad as on Oasis, except these ones were more organized, with more people. It was a lot of effort to level and fight people at the same time, and many times we were killed by the treants while people nuked us from behind. A lot of people would come solo, die, and come back again to attack, not even bothering to pick up their corpses. These kind of people were the worst, they would call a gm after they died again (of course they brought it on themselves by attacking) and sometimes the gm would give us a warning! So we would get harassed a lot, usually paranoid of being attacked from behind in the middle of a fight, and if someone went low health, they'd have to run down to the shore and sit in the water until healed back up. It really did suck. And leveling as a pker is not at all easy. I almost got fed up and quit before i reached 29. But i stuck it out, and when i got clarity, i just thought to myself 'this is un-****ing believable'. I was enjoying myself! Of course my buds were way ahead of me, some of them were 35 by this time, i was getting almost 0 exp. I was stoked with getting clarity, but it didn't last long because of this.

I had usually pked naked. I had very little money and by the time i was level 20 they had changed charm and fear, my main weapon. I was doing horrible. I was in Greater Fay one night, running around attacking people. I don't think i scored 1 kill that night, but I did happen to meet someone really important. We didn't meet as friends though, he happened to be a pk as well, just recently having quit Darkenbane, but never giving up the pk life, he loved it too much.

Jeir, the little gnome wizard, caught me underneith the tree city in faydark, and it took him 3 nukes to kill me. I had tried to outrun him, but he had jboots, I did not. Being the good sport he is, he challenged me to a duel afterwards, and I accepted. It was probably the closest fight I've ever been in. His magic resistance was well over 100, he was a very well funded individual, and I know it was all from pking. The first thing I cast was enthrall, and it stuck, luckily. Tishan and Strip enchantment were next. It did take his Shielding buff off, but it also took mez off, and because of this, he was able to get off a shock of lightning, interrupting my next spell. I think he got me 4 times before I could mez him again. It took about 1 1/2 bars of life, more than i had done to him. I blinded him once, and only once, the level 24 (can't remember name)damage spell was all i had, compared to his almost 300 damage spell. But i nuked him anyway. He had his spells hotkeyed, and nailed me with this spell. It hurt bad, taking me down to about 1 1/2 bars of life left. I mezzed him again, and loaded up color flux, my level 4 shift spell, seeing that it was faster than the level 20 shift. After I hit him with my nuke again, he attempted his big shot 1 more time, he got fluxed and i casted my nuke, this would have killed him, but he broke stun and shock of lightning'd me, interrupting my cast, then sent the finishing touch. I lost again.

After these 2 battles I was ready to quit, then i get a tell from Jeir, 'You should really wear some gear man, you probably would have beaten me... come to the bank i'll give you some of mine.' From then on we were pk partners, up until I was banned at level 50. This really revived the game for me.

The first few fights were kind of dull, and they all got away because of our bad coordination and teamwork, but we eventually got the hang of working together, and we recieved some of the best loot we'd ever seen. We had (probably) a unique looting style, ever since day 1, it was basically if one of us needed it, no matter what, that person would get it. And if neither of us needed it, we really didn't care who got it, since my money and armor was his, and his money and armor was mine. Over time, we had reached the magic number 34 we both kept the same level all the time, so that we could always back each other up, no matter what, and pking got a WHOLE lot easier for us.

We were triangle pking in South Karana, Cazic Thule (we had a good way of getting in through the maze) and Greater Faydark, we'd stalk the paths, or we'd go outside of the bank and prey on people sitting(or standing) near the tree, a gm was called on us several times of course, but what we were doing was legal, and with the mez/nuke combo, they never had a chance to even MOVE. Blinded the entire time, many people lost thousands of platinum worth of items and cash outside that place to us.

Cazic Thule was also a lot of fun, we got into battles with entire groups there. We would sneak in invisible, and quickly nail a key member such as a cleric or druid, if they didn't have a cleric, then I would use the Area mezmerize (yes it does work at these levels) and enthrall anyone left over, while Jeir worked on one, and then I'd join jeir and blind/mez/etc. so the guy couldn't get away or bag, then we'd do the same to the rest of the group. But, alas, it didn't always work that way. Necros are a dangerous thing, especially in tight spots, 4 necros and 2 clerics are an even more dangerous thing, i believe we killed ONE of them before having to zone and evac with less than a bar of health remaining on either of us. Sometimes battles just went horribly wrong, a resist somewhere will screw you over.

We had been partners for 2 months solid, and decided it was time to gain some levels. It took about 2 weeks per level, and 35 was really bad, took us about a month to get. We had pressure from both anti pks, and pks alike. We had both basically said '**** you' to any friends we may have had at the time, and *everyone* was a potential enemy or threat. Some fights were really intense. We were fighting a wiz and a necro combo that attacked us at the druids, it took us over to the dunes in East commons, by the tunnel to Ro. I went Linkdead in the middle of the whole fight. I thought for sure I was dead, I had everything on as well. But when i got back, there was a near-dead Jeir standing by my spot and 2 dead corpses. He had guarded me while i was linkdead AND stood his ground the entire time even though he risked himself and his items. We leveled to 39 on the druids in East commons and West commons, it took longer than anybody i know, probably about 3 months or longer. We didn't level the whole time though. Jeir was dedicated at one point to getting me Jboots. We spent many days in South Ro looking for the beast who would drop us the ring, so that I may have the coveted jboots. Up until that point, when we had to run somewhere, Jeir would switch off his jboots and run with me, so that we wouldn't get separated, because if we did, we would die. Simple as that. We had each others back no matter what happened, and if things were going horribly, we'd either BOTH make it out alive, or none of us would.

South Ro was a dangerous place for us, the biggest threat was a large attack by other players after the same treasure as us. South Ro is also a hard place to fight in, all of the dunes and hills make it hard to fight an enemy who's running, because they start to circle and disappear from lag. We usually used this to our advantage though, and the results were disasterous to the other side. THey'd get split up a lot, and we'd pick them off 1 by 1, we kept near each other, and communicated well. Jeir and I spent countless hours in that hell-hole. But one evening when Jeir wasn't on, I was with my slave (basically, he would do anything we wanted him to do as long as we left him alone), we were porting over to South Ro so i could goto Oasis and look for some sheets of research from the gypsies. He followed me (luckily) and caught the cyclops on track when i had just zoned over to Oasis. He was yelling 'CLOPS CLOPS GET OVER HERE NOW!!!!'. I had a shiny new pair of jboots by the end of that evening, and Jeir was stoked. We also vowed to never hunt for another ancient cyclops, ever, again.

Level 35 was an especially BORING time for us. I did have jboots, but it didn't make leveling any faster for us. We would kill the druids, sell the weapons for huge cash, and when we got overloaded, we'd head for GFAY, this was pumice money, and i bought them for Jeir because i had more charisma. He usually used the pumices because i had other things i needed to do instead of waste time on the pumice. Getting pumices wasn't an easy task although the vendor was right outside the bank, we had about 5 people every time waiting for us, even the simplest task can be 20 times harder for a pker. I got the pumices under fire, Jeir was busy levitating us up so that we could run off the ledge asap, and we were just about to gate back to our bind point when Jeir gets a tell from Singood (again, another slave, Jeir annihilated this man several times in the past, he was probably scared of us) telling him that there's 3 people in butcherblock mountains in our range to kill, and that he was being attacked by them. We loved a challenge, and we got there as quickly as we could. We were faced with an enchanter, Ksanth(i think), wizard (dont remember the name), necro, Nutso, and out of range healer, Wolfen. They were on the shore to the left of the docks in Butcherblock. Nutso was sitting on the ground near a house, and his friends were off in the distance, we knew they had spotted us, because they were running toward us, but Nutso didn't seem to notice us. It took about 10 seconds to cook the poor necro before we had to fight the enchanter and wizard. This is one of the times we did split up to fight, Wolfen followed jeir and the other wizard, and i was left 1 on 1 with Ksack the enchanter(i honestly can't remember the name, maybe some of you know? it started with a K) I believe it was a level 39 ench(him) vs a level 35 enc(me!). He didn't last too long, his healer wasn't around, and there was a vast difference in magic resistance. Pks shouldn't fight other pks, but we did, thats how it went. On the other side of the battlefield, Jeir was killed by a dwarf that had caught his trail while he was running, he mowed down by its powerful axe. I was left with 2 bars of mana to fight this wizard and Wolfen's healing. He was rather easy to mez and blind, he had no idea how to pk. I ran out of mana quickly though, and Wolfen kept him full health. I had to gate and catch up with Jeir. After that fight we decided not to pk until 36.

Level 36 was probably our best pvp level. We were just getting done pking and we wanted a new place to level, the druids were getting old, and all of our enemies knew where to find us. We decided to take over Darkenbane's spot in West karana by the Barbarians. We were all pumped up ready for a fight, but when we arrived, it was empty. No darkenbane in the zone. Oh well! We binded and started to fight. A few darkenbane came over every once in a while, and were dispatched fairly easily. Our little buddy Rykker popped in about an hour after we took over the barbarians. I believe this guy was level 27 at the time. He tried to killsteal us, hehe. He told us that Darkenbane was gonna come git us, after 3 failed attempts to take our kills, and he told us to stay here. So we did. And we leveled for 2 hours straight until finally, 1 dber in the zone, ivanale, a level 45 wizard. He came over and chatted with us a little and watched us, but he couldn't do anything. Then I get a tell from him 'watch out, 8 db coming your way'. I checked the zone (something we had to do every minute or so) and sure enough, we have a large group of darkenbane. I yelled at Jeir to evac us to Gfay and come up with a plan to fight them. It took all of 20 seconds, and Ivanale offered to help us, even though he couldnt attack the 6 we were going to fight, he could kill their 2 healers they brought along. Trust a Darkenbane? I guess we would have to, to fight these guys (and yes, we REALLY wanted to fight them). So we gate back, our bind point is a bit away from the Barbarians, and Ivanale joins us in the spot. We then advance toward the group of pkers, 3 mages, 1 necro, 1 wizard and 1 enchanter. Ivanale made true to his word, he killed Daero and the other druid before they could heal even 1 time, and i had mezmerized about half the group and their pets, i was bombed by the necro with dots from hell and Jeir was forced to switch targets to prevent my death. It took all of 3 minutes to demolish this fearsome (obviously) force of darkenbane dreadknights. The only survivor was the enchanter, we had no time for him, his friends were going to come back soon and we had to get out quickly. Jeir took us to Tox to rest up. I had about 1 1/2 bars of life left, Jeir was a little more hurt with 1 left and Ivan was 3 1/2 bars. I honestly think we owe this one to the element of surprise, luck, and Jeir's knowledge of Darkenbane. Ivanale was kicked from his guild shortly after. Why he helped us? Who knows, but i doubt we'd have beaten even 1 of them if they had their healers along.

We visited the place of massacre later on that evening, looking for darkenbanes to kill, no one was around, so we visited the hills of qeynos. We ran into Darkenbane's leader, probably one of their more famous leaders as well, Eladrin (aka. the original Ever). He was a slippery one indeed, and gave us quite the chase. Harmshield and shadowstep was this young man's best friend. The big mistake he made, was coming back to the spot we were sitting in, where we finally caught and killed him. In fact we killed him multiple times over the next few days. He became more frustrated with Darkenbane and their incompetant players, and i recieved a message from him saying, 'Darkenbane sucks.' .... 'level 40 necromancer at your service...'. A great victory indeed. But we didn't accept his offer, instead we destroyed him again by the Druids in West commonlands. After this I don't think we ever saw him again.

We were prime Darkenbane targets now, along with anti pk targets, we were having a really hard time leveling. Saradin, top officer of Darkenbane at the time, informed me that initiation for Darkenbane included 'Killing Nath and Jeir', I was only killed once by a group of 3 darkenbanes while i was afk sitting at the bard in South Karana, bad idea, but i wasn't thinking. I don't think they kept that policy around very long. Also some people camped at our bind spots near the druids and waiting for us to gate in to attack us. We were lucky to get more than half a bar of exp a day. We eventually did reach 39, and moved to Butcherblock, and using charm kiting, we were able to take the spawns from Kaladim all the way to the docks and back before the next spawn cycle began. It was fast, easy leveling, and we were only in 3 fights until then. The first one was with Azzar, a level 44 wizard. He kept dying to me at level 42 and he kept laughing that i suck because i don't have 44 spells. Mental problems? Quite possibly. My second fight wasn't so pretty though, we were faced with a ranger, warrior, necromancer, and cleric. Each one had huge magic resist. They caught us off-guard sitting at the docks, and though we fought our hardest, we couldn't win, and we ran from them, we both almost died, luckily for us it was a cliffy area, and we used the cliffs to get away. These kinds of attacks were actually very, very frequent ever since level 29 and up, every 15 minutes or so we'd be under attack, and it hindered our leveling more than anyone could imagine. The last fight we got into during our leveling in Butcherblock was with a level 45 necromancer, he got 1 dot on Jeir and almost killed him. But we did manage to take him down, twice in fact, the second time we didn't make any mistakes and we took him down with surgical precision. We were offered a spot in his guild, a known pvp guild then, called Dark Legion Syndicate. It happened to be part of the plane group, TR/e, and we were invited on plane runs. Coolness. Our guild was made up of pvpers, every last one of them. Dathan, Fongh, Chaucer, Kidmen, Ironfoot, and so on. We were limited in our selection of pkables, but we did have quite a few to kill who we were at war with, mostly Peace of Formosia.

We flew to level 50, and we went on plane raids almost every day, eventually we were at the top of their loot list and we both recieved close to full planes gear. Originally we had planned to get full, and leave and take them down. But we grew to like them, and we stayed. Dark Legion was disbanded during our early days of plane runs, and Gravesson(the MAN, and leader of Dynasty of Blood) offered to guild us. And we accepted. He knew of our rep, and it seemed he knew our entire history. And he told us that he didn't mind us pking, just don't do it too much!

Although we did have a good honest guild behind us, we were still attacked by everyone, and KOS to every guild. We loved it too. This was our thing. Hell, we could have probably organized our own events, we knew these places so well. Any run we were on became a dumbass fest. Jeir and I filled the screen with dumbass **** and just generally had a good time. It livened things up for the others too, they were probably bored out of their skull before us. And our group got the extra dumbassness that we had to offer, if we didn't get exp, it was blamed on someone in our group just to mess with the guy =P

We were doing great, of course we had started about 15 wars for dynasty of blood, we resolved each, individually. All of this ended though, when we were kicked because someone complained a little too much to an officer of our guild. Gravesson wasn't on, so he couldn't do anything about it, and by the time he came back on, i had been banned from EQ. Before that time though, we decided to spend our last days of EQ (we didnt think it would be our last days), pking people. It was only during the last week of pking that we thought to make a webpage and screenshot our kills.

Our last week was interesting, it was a week of intense pking against foes with powerful spells and more intelligent than those we had fought before. I made a huge mistake during that week. It was the week of the wizard best of the best, and i decided to visit the arena and watch. It was nothing spectacular, i was bored out of my mind, and was grateful that it finished quickly. Akkirus (head gm) was standing around while everyone rushed the center stage. I found myself staring Akkirus face to face, and I wondered if he was attackable. I decided to try, and nuked him with chaotic feedback. It worked! I could tell he was pissed too, and i tried to enthrall him, but he /killed me. Jeir looted my body for me and then ice cometted Akkirus for that. He died too. But Akkirus was down half life. I wish we would have killed him, it would have made a great kill shot. Oh well. The next day i was banned without explanation. And i was done with EQ. Jeir was done as well.

Our last Recorded week can be found at http://www.eqgods.cjb.net/ , made by Jeir, all pics are also from Jeir's point of view.

We never did become anti's or goodies, we were always pks, Gravesson knew this, and so did most people who did events with us. We never kept it a secret. They still kept us around for as long as they did. TR/e had balls, I guess it became too much for them.

Also note that I included barely any of our battles, if i had, this would have taken days. We were fighting CONSTANTLY. A pk's life is HARD.

- Mourning. Aka Gayboy.

[Palemoon]

You know what was harder then "your hard life of pking"? Being an anti-pk and having to follow a code in a red world.

Ok so you ran around RPKing and got banned (for "unknown reasons" yeah right). Great. Good example of what has ruined the pvp MMO scene these past 10 years.

[Softcore PK]

You know what was harder then "your hard life of pking"? Being an anti-pk and having to follow a code in a red world.

Ok so you ran around RPKing and got banned. Great. Good example of what has ruined the pvp MMO scene these past 10 years.

Hey! Us random PKs provided you with a valuable service! Without us, your EQ lives would have been dull and blah. Have some respect!

:)

Besides, it was the perfect time to be a PK. Back when it meant something to be a PK.

[Crenshinabon]

Every person on the internet is a troll these days lookin to pwn some people. Its the new thing. Everyone has felt it and wants more. I think I was spoiled by Starcraft as far as being introduced to stomping random people on the interwebs.

[Nirgon]

Know what's harder than living by a code? Trying to join a respectable guild with a history as a "PK". If you can tough it out and not be a completely random PK, the rewards are there at the end. The best policy to adopt is one of intelligently choosing when to attack other players and having good reason for doing so aka contesting a raid spawn, not killing a million poor saps out in nektulos who are going to spam shout/ooc about your reputation. That is, unless, you're in a guild large and organized enough that it doesn't matter what you do. Even still, if your would-be "together forever badass" guild disbands, you may never outlive that reputation.

[SoulLeech]

Know what's harder than living by a code? Trying to join a respectable guild with a history as a "PK".

Has there been a game since EQ where one could really be considered a PK?

I honestly don't know.

I do recall that I caught all kinds of shit for refusing to live and let live with opposing faction when I played WoW. Had a grand time doing world PvP in that game for a few months at release.

[Envious]

Was a good read. Passed ample time during class. Lol

[Toomuch]

I could never have played under Rallos' retarded "pk vs anti" bullshit pseudo-rules. It's a pvp server, you picked red, I'm going to kill you if I can, you are going to kill me if you can, period. Only exception to that rule should have been guilds, or an agreement on the spot. This supposed "Free For All" server had turned into Free For Nobody by the time I started playing (couple months before Velious).

This is why I picked Sullon Zek. I honestly tried Rallos for a short time, but those gay ass rules combined with me flying solo (those few people I knew irl that played weren't quite so "immersed" in the game as I was), yet still wanting to fight people, I had no choice but to pick Sullon. I wanted to fight people! I also desperately need a little bit of backup, because my highest level char before then was like a 19 warrior on Terris-Thule... I also made sure to find out which team needed help the most, and picked it, and never looked back. Was fun as hell being scared shitless by the big bad red-con <Ruin> players running through EF to go kill Vox when I was a newbie leveling there and in blackburrow. Was fun as hell to contest zones, have "territory" and even newbs to protect/claim, have big named scary bad-guys to chase down as a group, or eventually be the big named good-guys clearing a whole group/raid out of places. Granted the good team's substantial victories on the battlefield were few and far between, but they meant the most.

Ahh the memories. I can appreciate this dudes tales, despite his "I'm the best there ever was, and ever will be" vibe, because I've played a few video games in my day, and the epicness of old school everquest pvp still tops any other game I've ever played. That's why I'm here, not-so-patiently waiting for live :)

In short: You're a nerd, but so am I for being here, so I liked the story.

[Dontmez_Mebro]

Has there been a game since EQ where one could really be considered a PK?

I honestly don't know.

I do recall that I caught all kinds of shit for refusing to live and let live with opposing faction when I played WoW. Had a grand time doing world PvP in that game for a few months at release.

Darkfall, Mortal Online, Starquest Online, Eve Online, Darkwind Online. Those are a few that come to mind. All but EvE are indy projects. Starquest was the most hardcore of them because you could actually kidnap other players.

[Sorath]

Pretty good read bro.

[SoulLeech]

Darkfall, Mortal Online, Starquest Online, Eve Online, Darkwind Online. Those are a few that come to mind. All but EvE are indy projects. Starquest was the most hardcore of them because you could actually kidnap other players.

Thanks.

With the exception of EvE, I'd never heard of any of those games. The car game looks hilarious while Mortal Online seems pretty interesting. Is/was it any good?

[Knuckle]

MY---LIFE.


- Mourning. Aka God.

Fun read, you make the low levels sound fun.

[Nirgon]

RZ -> player decided "teams", that could ally with/against others or none at all. be broken up, reformed w/e.
SZ -> hard coded teams, f'ing ridiculous evil team advantage. iksars, ogres, best old world leveling spots.

I'd really be curious to see how the fighting on SZ stacked up against RZ at the end game in terms of meaningful PvP.

[yaarii]

RZ wasn't as cut and dried as some are making it seem. Yes, there were hardcore anti-pk's and hardcore pk's, who essentially lived for their chosen art. However, these rules you speak of were optional. I came across many people of ...dubious... motives, who were neither pk nor anti-pk. What's more, it was common knowledge that many of the high end anti-pk's had low level or delevelled alt's for pk'ing fun.

I guess RZ would have been hard for people who seem to innately follow suggestions, or try to 'go with the crowd'. The people who prospered on RZ tended to take a 'fuck you, I'll do what I want' approach. You had to make your own game, because there was no pre-configured, compulsory team of buddies for you to join - if people thought you were a fuckstick, then you were going to die, whether at the hands of pk's, anti-pk's or anyone inbetween. Hell, if you were enough of a fuckstick you could manage to get yourself pretty much kos to everyone.

There was never really a friendly group of randoms you could sidle up next to, ask to join their group and have a blue-tastic exp grind for a few hours. You had to use your instincts as to whether these people were worth the risk of grouping with. In the pk guilds it wasn't uncommon for players to gank their own guildmates over loot, personal rivalry or plain lulz. I remember Darkenbane trying to do it's first pk raids in the planes - take a guess what happens when you put 30-40 pk's, half of whom seemed to have ADHD, in one place with nothing to do for an hour whilst the officers and leader tried to organise and start the raid...

There is no denying that team-based pvp can be fun. However, the notion that some absolute retard can be untouchable forever because they rolled the same team as me is....unpalatable.

[yaarii]

Oh and in my experience, team-based pvp tended to seem quite blue a lot of the time. On RZ, if you were trying to level, anyone who wanted that spot was almost certainly going to be in-range, and thus, a game-legal target. On SZ, I found that the hard-coded teams tended to divide up zones so you would find yourself only ever fighting IF an enemy team happened to come along. Which wasn't as often as I would like, because they were all bunched in their own zones most of the time to do their own levelling. I'm not saying there wasn't fun times to be had, but there were less genuine 'seat of the pants' moments.

[Softcore PK]

I liked VZ ruleset, because it really brought about a lot of good roleplaying opportunities. And with the teams being soft-coded, players had a lot of freedom to do what they wanted.

[MakeYouMad]

RZ -> player decided "teams", that could ally with/against others or none at all. be broken up, reformed w/e.
SZ -> hard coded teams, f'ing ridiculous evil team advantage. iksars, ogres, best old world leveling spots.

I'd really be curious to see how the fighting on SZ stacked up against RZ at the end game in terms of meaningful PvP.

RZ was trash. EQ is a group based game for PvE. I don't like the idea of fighting some guy one day, grouping with him the next day, then fighting him again the day after. I'd rather have permanent enemies than weird shit like that.

[yaarii]

RZ was trash. EQ is a group based game for PvE. I don't like the idea of fighting some guy one day....

Stop right there. You seem to be on the wrong forum. You are looking for this forum (http://www.project1999.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=17).

[Durk]

Good read. I enjoyed reading your experiences.

[MakeYouMad]

Stop right there. You seem to be on the wrong forum. You are looking for this forum (http://www.project1999.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=17).

Yea dude, what a real credible post you have. All those epics and no-drop raid gear on PvP servers just materialized out of thin air. Nobody PvE'd to get them.

RZ is trash because if you play the game like it's supposed to be played, random PK, kill everyone guy, then you will have nobody to group or raid with and get owned by people with raid gear/epics.

So the people actually winning on RZ, are the people avoiding PvP entirely, making as many alliances as they can, and doing PvE all the time for loot. Thus, the server and FFA ruleset in EQ is pointless.

SZ was much better since everyone on the server had a much easier ability to gear up. It wasn't based around who made the most alliances and being forced to join a guild or you're screwed.

I don't like games that basically revolve around kissing people's asses to try and get into a powerful guild for you to be able to do anything. A solo, un-guilded player on SZ could do well. A solo, un-guilded player on RZ will just get zerged to death by guilds of 12 year olds all day.

[SoulLeech]

...trolling...

2/10

That shit about "if you play the game like it's supposed to be played" was the highlight.

[Nirgon]

#trolling ^

[mourning]

Just wanted to make sure you knew i did not waste my time reading your post. Get a real life.

I make 6 digits doin' nothin but gathering interest, I bang models and pop bottles all day.


You slave away at McDonalds to provide Big Macs for yourself. You are a virgin, and you Bang no models.

Good Day.

[mourning]

7000 plat. fbss. lots of mithril armors. smr's. etc
actually ebayed alot of extra stuff. Sold mithril BP for about 100 dollars each on ebay.

[Bockscar]

SZ was much better since everyone on the server had a much easier ability to gear up. It wasn't based around who made the most alliances and being forced to join a guild or you're screwed.

Dunno about that. One of the server's biggest problems was that basically everyone outside of Hate was two expansions behind on gear. 75% of the server was pretty much bazaar geared all the way up into GoD because the available raid content for all but one guild was so far behind the current expansion that you could buy better droppables. I remember as a decently geared ranger having half the hp of Hate's wizards. It was ridiculous. SZ was pretty good during Velious and some of Luclin, and then it became a pointless server where it frankly wasn't worth playing if you weren't in Hate.

[MakeYouMad]

One of the server's biggest problems was that basically everyone outside of Hate was two expansions behind on gear.

No way, neuts had VT. Plus all the people that were transferring to legends server then coming back with leet gear.

I remember as a decently geared ranger having half the hp of Hate's wizards. It was ridiculous. SZ was pretty good during Velious and some of Luclin, and then it became a pointless server where it frankly wasn't worth playing if you weren't in Hate.

I was on evil team during velious, quit server, came back as a neut during PoP and had no problem killing Hate wizards. I was a warrior with max offensive AA's and Dathor Great hammer + staff of 4 winds tho.

Doesn't seem like a ranger should have trouble killing a wizard during PoP...did you have a crappy bow and no AA's or what.

[Palemoon]

I played on both RZ and SZ and both servers ruleset had its charm. I liked the "make your own alliances" aspect of RZ and I loved the "roleplay/diety" alignment aspect of SZ.

The other two servers, VZ/TZ had what looked to me from the outside looking in, the most retarded ruleset of them all. Gnome SK and Halfling Paladins on the "same team" ok whatever.

Diety/Alignment teams make far more sense then VZ/TZ ruleset.

The whole thing about Evil team on SZ getting so far advanced had a lot to do with the failure of good/neut team. In a three way contest, if one side gets too far ahead, the two weaker sides should of joined forces to hold them in check. This never happened on SZ. I guess it sounded good on paper when designing the ruleset, but did not pan out that way.

SZ ruleset would work very well though, on a server that stops in Velious (like this one.....) Of course the devs would have to find a way to limmit peoples new accounts, or everyone will have several acccounts on all three teams.. (this is something I hope they address in general anyways, the whole "lol im banned, let me open up a dozen more accounts then" syndrom.

[Nirgon]

There was definitely "realm pride" on SZ, esp for neutral/good. I played there until 52 as a wizard and 59 as a cleric, I did enjoy it in that respect. On the other hand, I always missed the freedom to even just hit a fellow raider that was sitting down or horse around on breaks.

Really, having played on both, I can't say any of the guild wars and social aspects involved in them were anywhere close on SZ as they were on RZ. You knew to "stay out" of certain fights, lest you become KOS or bring shame to your guild and subsequently be removed. This of course is in b4 don't be a bluebie. The politics, backstabbings and wars that just started over single events that made news by word of mouth made the server feel alive. Hell, when wars came to the point that two "can't lose" factions started coming out with empty pockets one week or the next, it created mergers. Guilds even renamed and combined (Swarm of Fear comes to mind). Decisions like who would be an officer after a merger, who was getting picked up or dropped as kos by their new combined guild had to be discussed. All of a sudden the little guys became big or were brought along by a giant to fight side by side and get into the raid loot game. Some adjusted better than others to being brought into it. The draw to this game is the sand box elements and they were fully encompassed on a FFA PvP server. If you can handle losing your raw hide tunic or *gasp* even an FBR a friend gave you to a mage at level 8, this kind of stuff is well worth it in the end.

There's so much more to the history of RZ than a hypothetical label is going to put on it. I know a pretty good chunk of it and I'm sure would be surprised how much someone could remind me of it. I did play on and was involved in enough on both SZ/RZ, and most of the crazy moments and rushes came from Rallos. Further, as Velious drew to a close, it became obvious that maybe the truest definition of a guild war was in full swing and factions with real people were definitely in play. I asked Ozuri (king pin GM) why he came to the server and why he started making the rules he did. Shocked, I got a response, he told me something along the lines of the petition queues were full every day and it had to stop, and the server was under his martial law. Shit just wasn't fair to everyone, hence the queue explosions and why the mass market "can't have nice things". It was so brutal even (true) test of tactics kings could be blown up and lose a fungi.

Imagine Rogean coming to this PvP server and saying "no more PvP in raid zones, if it happens, I shut down the zone", the players continue fighting anyway, being sent back to their bind and then a brawl erupting everywhere players were bound. Things like that and how extremely competitive the server became, made me feel like I was a part of a real, multifaceted war. Granted, whether or not he was shutting down zones, it would have felt that way. The brawls and politics were legendary. I list the above point the illustrate how serious the guild vs guild conflict became.

Not to mention, do you really want to be stuck on a hard-coded team with some of the people here by luck of the draw? Or do you just want safer newbie zones :P?

[Palemoon]

Teams would not work here because the population would be too small. As much as I loved the lore aspect of diety teams, FFA is the only real option here. Pluse Rogean would HAVE to put a stop to unlimmited number of accounts per player for diety teams to work.

Really there is only one hope that this sever comes close to those RZ days, and that is the huge xp grind. When certain players discover that player to player relationships mean something, and to burn one bridge too many means leveling solo on light blues in the middle of no where.

For a pvp server to "work", the focus and goal MUST be "PvE". A p99 style xp grind and no boxing may make this happen.

Another key element that will help is to restrict accounts to one per player. No throw away griefer accounts, no accounts to test all your hacks on, no accounts that all your ninja looters and trainers are kept on, etc.

[mitic]

team exp with zone control was the best pvp exp i ever had

[Muaar]

Guild wars in EQ are something that I truly think will never be created again. It was the strangest thing I have ever played - a mix of an MMO, a message board and a true war. The names of the guilds my guild was at war with still stick with me and cause a "!" when I see them to this day. Lucid-Vision I'm speaking of you!

I hope something like this happens on Red99. I think Live will have enough players to sustain it.

[Softcore PK]

As a VZ player, I feel that VZ and RZ were the best rulesets. And this is because all the politics were player-driven, dynamic and creative. I don't feel that TZ ever amounted to what it could have because they all went 4-team long before VZ. SZ could have been great, but from what I heard much of the game became PvTrain.

When I first started on Vallon Zek, most of the server seemed to be Elf vs Dark vs Short vs Human, as the rules suggested. We did have some 4-team guilds, and I remember thinking they were bad guys. Dark team was pulling ahead of the other teams, and very quickly the three other teams came together to form "light" team. Or a lot of them, there were still us purists around. "Light" team was really made up of the "anti-pk" crowd we had on Vallon, though they would never admit to it. They didn't kill other lights, just the darks and the other purists. The server was largely light vs dark for a short while, and then the "x-teamers" came to be. Raiding guilds comprised of all 4 teams. The lights saw the x-teams as bad guys, having decided to exp with and even guild with darks. Then end-game was light vs dark vs xteam, and the xteam guilds had a habit of KoSing each other (sometimes on and off).

My least favorite people in the game were lights. How dare my fellow elves join up with the evils of dwarves, gnomes and humans! They were responsible for deforestation and global warming, after all. And when the xteam guilds became major players, these lights had the GALL to call them cross-teamers! Such hypocrisy, and all in the name of being blue.

While as a responsible elf, I was sworn to murder all shorts, humans and darks, I was especially ruthless with these lights. There was another guild that only included elves, Elven Royal Guard. And though they only allowed elves into their guild, they were lights. They happily exp'd with dwarves and attended some raids with them. They sickened me, and one of my favorite things to do was track these exp groups down with a friend or two and kill their exp partners then make them lns. The fallen elves would get so mad :P

This actually escalated into a guildwar that lasted weeks. Though blasphemous to kill elves, these elves had it coming.

Anyway, as I neared 60 I realized how much of the game I was missing out on, because there simply weren't enough elf purists to accomplish much raid content. I wish I had been dark team, they raided until the end. So I did the sensible thing, and joined a 4-team guild so I could continue killing the dreadful lights. Most purists went 4-team, 3-team had arbitrarily decided to disclude one of the teams. The lights were actually always the most progressed raid-wise, and this was because of Defiant. And as a light in any other guild, or no guild, you didn't have to put up with Defiant (or a LARGE percentage of the server, actually) PKing you.

VZ was great accidentally, and all because the devs didn't think to hardcode the teams. I could not have experienced EQ as I did anywhere else. Here's another story:

I once made an alt. A dark elf warrior, and I twinked her a tiny bit (bronze armor, decent weapons). And I took her to gfay because that was my favorite leveling area. I got a bind from a guildie (xteam) and started exping. The newbie lights in the area saw me and of course attacked, but I decided not to fight back. I told them that I didn't want to fight, and that we could be friends. They killed me a lot, but as I never attacked back many of them stopped attacking me, until eventually (few weeks later) I was actually invited into their exp groups. And I did make friends with these lights. Other lights would sometimes attack me, but then my friends would say, "No! Leave her alone, she is nice!" and they would usually stop.

Sort of a Drizzt story, and again something I could not have done on any other server. VZ was the place to be for rp imo, and I liked being creative about it.

Wish I had stuck with that warrior past CB, I could have maybe tried to get into a light guild! :O

[mourning]

No teams is best. Making your own friends and enemies is much better than any assigned teams in a world pvp game. Teams work on a game like DAOC with just the frontier, and their PVP server was a FFA ruleset too. It's just the best way to do it. And the most fun.

Making friends rage quit off EQ = Priceless.

[Beastro]

The only fault with RZ is the fundamental mechanics of the game and how raiding becomes the end all to get gear to compete.

Yes I know PKs still fought the good fight against the odds but they were being choked to death and eventually died in form old RZers once knew. A pack of LV isn't the same as a large percentage of the population being cutthroats the other portion have to band together to keep under control out of RP desires or just loving to enjoy PvP from the aspect of killing your typical PK personality (As in raging egotists. Yes, you are, admit it and know that you fill your own niche).

The problem is finding ways to circumvent that gear cock block results in points systems and buying gear with dies a quick death with every server I've ever seen it implemented on.