Ye Olden Days, Part One: Introduction

WoW isn't the first time I've been a role-player.  I first started role-playing more years ago than I care to admit, when I was in middle school. For a while, I've been wanted to write about those experiences, particularly as they become hazier in my mind.  Those experiences shape the way I've approached playing in WoW.

First, bit of background.

Years ago, back in the days of middle school, I stumbled across a fantasy series known as the Dragonriders of Pern.   I went to the library and read every book I could find.  I got my two best friends at the time interested as well- especially when, one day, I came across the most interesting fan site:  Harper's Tale. 

Harper's Tale is an online game based on the series.  It still exists to this day, but I'm going to refer to it in past tense, as I haven't actually been there in years.  Everything I am describing is how it was in my memory.  Their current website is bit dated, though. 

At the time I found it,  I didn't have any idea what a MUD or MOO.   I had just found this cool place where people got together and pretended to be people from that series I loved.  I shyly created a character named Kalani. 

The game was completely text-based and RP-driven.  You didn't roll a class, earn levels, or go on quests.  You simply set your name, age, gender, a quick description, and you were off!  Well, almost.  There was a moderator who had to approve your description as being IC, but it generally only took five to ten minutes. 

After that, you were free to do what you wanted.  The world was a series of connected "rooms" with various descriptions to tell you where you where.  You started out on Ista Beach, just outside the gates of Ista Hold.  You weren't told were to go, or what to do.  I spent my first day flying from room to room like a complete noob!

It was a very small place.  A regular night had about eighty people logged in; I was there the night a record 147 people logged in at once.   Everyone was largely aware of everyone else, as you can imagine, and we all lived in the same continuity.  

That's very different from WoW, where guilds and people can go along and merrily ignore other people's plots.  I had a character named Sariny who was a hostess at a bar;  I couldn't just go to the bar and start pretending.  I had to interview ICly with the leaders of SeaCliff and officially get the position and have the title added to my character.   It's why I like seeing continuity and crossing plots between guilds on WoW; it feels right to me.

There was another big difference: time proceeded four times as fast in the game world.  Winter would come by four times every real year.  It meant it was very easy to play from a young age into an adult. 

HT had a lot of features you see in WoW.  We had channels that we constantly talked on, like we do over in AllianceOOC.  Looking over my old logs, over half of everything was channel conversation!   I had developed the ability to track IC interactions, and three different channel conversations at one, all in text!  I'm slowly getting that ability back now as I go to AAMS events where I have to track multiple conversations, but honestly, I don't really want to get back into the habit of spending more time in channels and /w than in real RP.

(At one point, I started dreaming about HT.... in text!))

  

We also could whisper, emote, send mail.  I couldn't log on without getting "hug" messages from half of my guildies.  There were a lot of custom messages for things like "hugs" and "slap" and "kiss," even.  We had an /em like on WoW, but we also also @emit, which let us post text without  our character's name in front.  It made it easy to have an NPC in the room when needed, or just added scenery.

You could "subscribe" to mailing lists that people contributed to.  I usually spent the first ten minutes of my day reading through all the mailings lists I was interested in.  We didn't have a forum to post stories in, but people would mail in bits of "news" and "gossip" to the appropriate mailing list to keep everyone updated.  

There were guilds, too, but with very different rules.  All guilds were IC and approved by the community team that ran HT.  They were based on the various guilds in the book series, although there were one or two "new" guilds that were permitted… such as Starcraft, which I'll get to later.  Everyone in the game was required to join a guild, weyr, or align themselves with a town.  Your guild or hold was where your character ICly lived and worked. 

Being aligned with a town let you set HT's version of a hearthstone in that location, and let you subscribe to that town's mailers and channels.  You could be any type of townsperson you wanted, or even nobility, if the community was willing to accept you ICly!   Sariny, the hostess, was the only townsperson I had. 

Guilds had their own living spaces- usually inside and aligned town- and mailing lists, as well.  Plus, once you were in a guild, you gained access to that guild's special abilities.  Harpercraft, the musician's guild, was the only guild allowed to create "music" items, for instance.  Not that you couldn't RP being a musician, anyway, or create a generic object with a flute's description, but Harpers were the only ones allowed to create the special objects with custom macros and commands that let them easily "perform."  For you WoW people out there, think of a GHI item that no one outside of your guild is allowed to use!

Guild did demand more specific RP than towns.  Ranks mattered; apprentices were expected to ICly be respectful to journeymen and masters, and you couldn't advanced in rank without fulfilling specific IC requirements.  Usually it involved attending guild events, and being tested ICly.  I had three guild characters: Lyara in Harpercraft, Lynyl in Starcraft, and Kalani in Dolphincraft.  (Trust me, that last one made sense in the game-world, where dolphins were intelligent beings!) 

The last category was weyrs.  That's where the dragons and their riders, lived, along with their support staff.   Dragonriders had to be active, high-quality RPers who went through an intense IC testing before getting approved.  They had to be the best, because everyone wanted a dragon!  It paralleled the books, where dragon rider candidates were a very special, rare commodity. 

I never had a dragonrider- except for one NPC I invented for story purposes named Jenria- but I did have two characters who lived in weyrs as support staff, similar to townsfolk:  Calisina and Kebrin. 

I was obviously an altoholic even back then.  And it was very easy to multi-box by opening multiple game windows, so I could play two characters at once, assuming I could manage the concentration.   Eventually, though, I settled into playing two characters on a regular basis, Lynyl and Lyara. 

Lyara was a brash musician, and the twin to my friend's character, Lyana.  I liked playing on her, and going to parties where I could @emit a whole band for everyone to enjoy.  Lyara was a lot like Elren is now- and I even wrote some Pernese poetry for her to "perform."  Only a few samples survive on my current hard drive; I lost a lot of my logs and notes when my family's computer crashed.  The only things that survived were files posted to my website, or saved to a - gasp! - floppy disk. 

Lynyl was a shy young girl, who over the years I played her, grew into a quiet, but confident astronomer.  I logged on her more than any other character.  She best marked my growth as a role-player, and is the character I miss most. 

My next post I'll write more about her.