Greetings!

[Maliki]

Suilebhain, now that's a name I remember fondly. I vividly remember running through the main city, and lurching to a stop when I ran into the back of more players than I'd ever seen before. All lined up in a row and a few on stage. I quickly and quietly eased back out of there so I didn't interrupt whatever. Turned out that was Suile's wedding, and someone noticed me not making a fuss and leaving quietly and invited me to the ardee log. Before long I was in O'Suilebhain. I was Therinn. Running around with Shainah and sporting that clan tag are some of my fondest gaming memories. I've never found anything quite like it, and even though my time with O'Suilebhain was short, it affected me deeply. Thank you.

[malikikusa]

Suppose registering will make this easier. Also, this is what brought me here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ-MRYbAD7c

[Morreion]

Welcome Maliki and yes, DAoC in the early-mid 2000s was awesome Unfortunately, post-WoW, I haven't found anything close.

It was a time and place that will always be magic.

[Suilebhain2]

Greetings, all! Nice to see everyone! I know Kalyce and Mags have kept in touch, but the rest of you folk! Cool.


Actually, if it was an event in the Grove in the city, it was no my wedding, it was a clan initiation. My wedding took place in a large stone circle out near a lake somewhere. Ardee, maybe?

Hey, if anyone is playing anything that might seem cool to get together, hit me up. My email is [e-mail].

[suilebhain]

What made DAOC so great was timing.

The game itself was many things to many people - an escape from EQ or Ultima, the ultimate expression of what we once knew as paper & dice games, the connection to others once denied us as we trekked through levels of Might & Magic. It provided a way to literally get lost in a world fraught with danger (to our characters), a way to make new friends that we could otherwise never meet, an addiction that most likely would not affect our health (though it seemed to still destroy lives). The Internet was getting faster and more capable of sending these virtual worlds to us for a mere $15 a month. Many games have come forth since, often improved in every way possible, but the timing was everything.

We came to roleplay. That was what made our community so great. Sure, we came to level up, to bash other players, to "make our realm safe", but we mainly came to roleplay. For some, like Magnoliah, the roleplay was all. For others, like me, it was something that should be assumed, not considered, and the rest of the game served as the framework within which the true game was played. For most, it was something that people did when they had nothing else to do, or thought it was foolish to imbue a "toon" with any sort of voice at all, and only use it to advance through the game to the endgame, and then wash, rinse, repeat.

Along the way, I made a lot of friends, and a lot of non-friends. To call them enemies is as foolish as the reasons we bickered, as some of them, when encountered in other games, other circumstances, were more than willing to let bygones be bygones. To judge whether it was worth it or not at this point is pointless, but at the time, it was essential. I was a roleplay evangelist. I saw no reason why, on one of three servers designated as RP, we should tolerate the presence of those who had no regard for the game we were playing. Mythic was at fault in not supporting us, and this only increased the frustration. Then there was the RP-nazis, of which I was often dragged into their tirades against someone with names like Sugarnspice.

As guild leader of one of the purest RP clans on the server, it almost became a crusade of its own. I thought it was important to maintain the level of RP on our server. There were many others all over the three servers that felt the same way. In my server hopping, I found one guy on Midgard Guinevere, a superior roleplayer himself, that berated Magnoliah for being an immature child, thinking her Dwarf male Fighter was played by a 12 year old boy, and that my Human female Healer was actually an elder sister in real life. We had him fooled. Evidence of the number of people who truly believed in roleplay-first could be seen by the number of "refugees" from the other servers who created characters specifically to attend the Ardee at the Log storytellings. They wouldn't come to level their characters, they came for the roleplay. It always annoyed me that people who were influential stressed RvR over roleplay, where all it would take was for one of them to step up. RvR should always have been in character, not so much as we needed to sit around and tell stories, but in that, without BEING the Hibernian Elf, or the Midgard Troll, or the Albionian Minstrel, we were running toons and nothing more. Jacobs realized this and elected to remove the elements of DAoC that led to CHARACTERS and focused on providing TOONS for PVP.

That all said, I've probably annoyed or offended more than a few of you at that time, perhaps even still, and for this I apologize. It was something that I was passionate about at the time. Now, I mostly play stuff like Conan Exiles or Ark in single player mode, though I racked up quite a few levels in GTA-Online, all the while attempting to stay in character whether anyone noticed or not.

BTW, thanks for the link to the videos. It was cool seeing the sceenshots of the guild. I wonder how many people hated me as Suilebhain while blissfully unaware that I was teamed with them as Abigael? I know quite a few hated Carnerella but loved Magnoliah until they found out they were one in the same.

Ahh, roleplaying! Truly a two-edged sword.

[2Suilebhain]

Wow! I visited Uthgard last night just to see if it was something I wanted to set Mags up with for her birthday. I forgot what a total uphill struggle the grind was! After an hour and a half of fighting and dying to yellows, and killing blues and greens, I was third level and had a few frog legs and about 18 copper, nowhere near the ability to buy my next sword (let alone find one). Faceplant after faceplant. It was horrible. I deleted the game from my hard drive and decided it was best she never experience the frustration herself.

[Morreion]

Some great thoughts you shared, Suile! DAoC was indeed an intersection of time and place in the early 2000s that cannot be re-created and will be remembered always. A server-wide community! I wish I would have stayed there now, all these years later.

Apology accepted! Let me say that there were some who thought you were RPing being irascible, others thought that wasn't RP *laughs* It's all good, and your clan helped made Hibernia Nimue the fantastic place that it was.

I remember well your wedding. DAoC weddings stand out in my mind, having attended and officiated at several. It was at the stone ring in the valley of Bri Leith, somewhat off the road.

I played Uthgard for some months- I have 3 Hibernian level 24s maxxed out of Thidranki and a level 31 Albionian there. It truly takes you back to the old hardcore days. I ran into Aeritas there.

As far as online games go, I occasionally check out Shroud of the Avatar (I have a row house there, or row lot deed anyway), and I putter around in the Vanguard Emulator. Very few people there but I liked the game and have an idea of getting to level 50, slowly but surely.

I've always wanted to get together with some old friends and play something again, but over the years that becomes harder and harder. I hope Echovamper replies here and who knows, maybe we can all appear in the same world again.

[Rakul]

Good to hear from you again, Suilebhain. I'm pretty sure I speak for all of us when I say that we agree with your assessment on both the RP servers and how Mythic handled that, and how they alienated many of us when they altered focus and direction of the game.

[suilebhain]

Hey, all!

"you were RPing being irascible, others thought that wasn't RP *laughs*"

Heheh, well, this is true. I WAS roleplaying being irascible while in game, but on the boards, I was a hellfire and brimstone roleplay evangelist, pronouncing doom on the community if they did not change their ways. It didn't win me any friends except for the others who believed as I did, which were few and spread out across the three servers.

I know people hated Xaltotan, but he was Siabra, it came with the turf, and Marrison was outed by Rywain as being me, but how many knew that I was Taliah, the simple-minded lurikeen who ran with O'Muley?

However, there were times as guild leader when I had to be a bit more brusque, as well, as there was a time when we had some very difficult people who loved pushing other people's buttons and I had to step up. Part of the problems for me started when I kicked a certain someone out of the guild and he made it his mission to make me miserable, even to the point of slandering me. Ahh, well.

Thidranki! One of my greatest Thid memories was one time when O'Muley, Taliah, and Kalyce were running around and we got jumped by some pretty twinked out Albs (I think it was three). Kalyce went down, and with no healing, so did I, but with two or three of them left, O'Muley MOOSED! She kicked their butts! It was awesome. What was really cool was that Talog the Rainbow King had given us both glowy swords, so there's O'Muley, mooseing out, rising up from the water with her flaming sword and wiping them out. Yeah.

Anyway, I've started playing ESO recently, being as Morrowind took me out of DAOC for a time (it took Raylenn pulling me back in, but then she pulled me over to Midgard-Percival once my name was totally mud in Hibernia-Nimue) and I loved travelling those cooled lava roads with the giant mushrooms growing overhead. Now, you can get Morrowind and Tamriel basic in one game for around $15 and play for free, so I jumped on it. When I've played out this portion of it, I am thinking of going "Plus" to play the DLCs, but I suspect if I run through each faction storyline it will take me a long time (you are allowed 8 characters and they can be any faction).

Man, I wanted Uthgard to work. Just too hard.

At one time I ran into the couple who were Distain and Arisel/Cirig in EQ2 but they blew me off for some reason, I think it was after he revealed that they lived near me IRL and she was annoyed at him or something because I was on good behavior there. *shrugs* After that I ran solo, then switched factions.

You know, I find it funny that there are some people in the ESO roleplay community who are more radical than me. Seems the big worry is metagaming - "You are forcing your reality on me! WAAAAAAH!" This stemmed from my saying that, in order to preserve my own immersion, I just turn a blind eye to OOC behavior and treat it all as IC crowd noise. Somehow that got twisted into me saying (which I didn't) that anything I see anyone doing is considered IC and somehow impacts their characters forever, like somewhere there is a cosmic journal that notates everything anyone does and if SUILEBHAIN SAYETH that it is IC, that it is them there, indelible, for all time, for all to see, binding that character to that action. Wow. All I was trying to do is give some people a template by which they can function IC in a non-RP environment, sort of like we had to do in Gaharis or Mordred (yeah, I ran in Mordred for awhile, we roleplayed those Midgardian purists who killed anyone who was not human or Norse).

Anyway, it was cool to touch base!

[suilebhain]

I've been interested in SotA. Is it in some release form yet or only available to those who Kickstarted it?