Nostalgia Corner

Wow! It's been a whole two years since my last post here, it doesn't seem that long. At least, not after going through my old screenshots from Endless.

This morning, I stumbled across something or other that got me thinking about "the good old days," and inspired me to see what I could dig up of my old screenshots. It's pretty fragmented, my collection, I was only able to get any at all via an old backup of my personal documents back in 2006. Going through my collection was a surprisingly good reminder of how long I've been away, just as much as it made everything feel like yesterday, a lot of information I would have considered common knowledge, once, is completely lost to me now. But! Enough of this rambling on, click on through and join me as I show-and-tell some select screenshots.


Let's start with the oldest of the screenshots I possess, shall we? From v.15b, we have:


The old Aeven sewers. I recall I took this screenshot to show off my exp. I was one of the loons that farmed exp, to get on the top list, before exp had any use. Heh, I really did like my scrolls.


The old Death Cave, many hundreds of people spent many hours here, waiting minutes for the chance to test their reflexes killing Death. And I do mean testing reflexes, because this was before the final piece of the battle system, HP and damage.


Speaking of no damage and HP, mobs couldn't attack players, so it was very possible for them to become trapped, especially in Death Cave, behind idle players. This was also before being able to walk through players was introduced as an anti-blocking feature.

v.16 brings us:


Who remembers the good old days of the Admins being active and not emotionally crushed by the community? I do!
A quick aside, v.16 was the harbinger of the once-infamous server scam. After a glorious day of v.16, the game goes offline for around three months, to return, in a limited capacity, for v.17.

Speaking of v.17:


There's not a lot interesting in that screenshot folder, but here's a screenshot of what the Arena once looked like. There will be a screenshot of Arenabot (A.K.A. Dressbot(?)) later.

Moving quickly past v.18, right on to v.19:


Once more, a vanity shot. Showing off my exp again, am I? Shameful. You can see that by now levels have been added to the game, but still no skills. Also you can see my guild. I snapped one up rather quickly after they were added to the game, and believe me, getting the 10 players to make the guild was more difficult than gathering the money when the server tops out at 100 players. By v.21 the guild ends up going downhill, essentially becoming a vanity guild with a bit of history behind it.


Aww, look at that, how cute. Commemorating being on the same screen as Aengie. I've never been immune to being star-struck by game developers, I just try harder than more to hide it.


Game developers or people with things I don't have, I guess.


Another vanity shot? Stop that, you, you've not got anything to be egotistical about. Well, except compared to yourself. Never did get past level 15, did you? Well, that ends the story of looking at my stats.

And moving onward to v.20:


Ah, the time-honored tradition of making sure everyone knows that you, in fact, spend every free moment logged into a game.


Fun times camping chests with friends. I always got in on things before or after they were a common task for a large number of people after a certain point. I really slipped into the mentality of not wanting to socialize with the "newbs."


Want to impersonate me? It's that easy! Just replace the crossbow with a reaper scyth, an Ablo or a Lens Staff(?). It's a classic look that, aside from the occasional change, suited me well from beginning to end.

We now join our regularly scheduled v.21:


Me and myself accompany Arvid in the arena. Multiple accounts; totally hilarious, right? Made possible by v.21 launching without the code disabling multiple clients open on a computer.


Fun times in the Test server arena.

Concluding our tour, we have v.22:


Nothing beats the time-honored tradition of not doing anything in the arena. It really never got old. Never. Seriously! It really was entertaining, sometimes, especially all those times that I participated as well.

I took a these screenshots after-the-fact, so it's in reverse:







Was such a fun, if short, time. Nyuu, Ephy, Arvid and myself formed the grand council of Endless for around an hour. Just long enough to set forth the rules with which Endless would be governed for years to come.


Ruuuuuuun. Events in Endless shifted from scavenger hunts to massacres somewhere along the line.


Just four guys, hanging out on a server nearly "emptied" by a severe error. It was a bit creepy, wandering around the server, everyone standing where they logged out/lost connection.

An excerpt from my [S] chatlog of that morning:
12/30/2005 4:14:42 AM [S] Reboot sequence started (server shutdown)
12/30/2005 4:14:52 AM [S] 1 player(s) were launched, now fight -server
12/30/2005 4:15:01 AM [S] rashalnxxx (ace of hearts) won the arena event! -server
12/30/2005 4:15:57 AM [S] 1 player(s) were launched, now fight -server
12/30/2005 4:16:20 AM [S] rashalnxxx (ace of hearts) won the arena event! -server
12/30/2005 4:16:42 AM [S] Reboot sequence started (server shutdown)
12/30/2005 4:16:47 AM [S] Reboot sequence started (server shutdown)
12/30/2005 4:16:58 AM [S] 1 player(s) were launched, now fight -server
12/30/2005 4:17:01 AM [S] thregin (the fool) won the arena event! -server
12/30/2005 4:17:19 AM [S] Reboot sequence started (server shutdown)
12/30/2005 4:18:38 AM [S] thregin (the fool) won the arena event! -server
12/30/2005 4:19:11 AM [S] 1 player(s) were launched, now fight -server
12/30/2005 4:19:34 AM [S] thregin (the fool) won the arena event! -server
12/30/2005 4:19:53 AM [S] Reboot sequence started (server shutdown)
12/30/2005 4:22:34 AM [S] You entered Combat Room #1
Even with human intervention, the server rebelled for an extra 8 minutes before finally succumbing. At one point, the online players list exceeded 550 players, in a time when the server could barely handle half that, because the "ghost" players still registered as online.


Here we have Arenabot, as he appeared before he was entirely removed from the game for being detrimental to server performance. Disgracefully left sitting in thin air. (As seen on the Test server)


And finally, we have a scene from a multi-day event on the Test server. Because of a hurricane damaging the datacenter hosting Endless' servers, the Test server was going to alleviate issues while moving to a new host, so hell was opened up in Aeven on the Test server, and the enterprising few were left to defend town as they saw fit. Here you see myself and a brother in arms using the crates in the northwest to our advantage.

Oh, well wait a moment, it seems that I have a couple more screenshots from the ashes of the old MG website. Of course, I have absolutely no idea when these are from, other than "v.22 or later."


Aha, I have no idea what the circumstances are surrounding this. It certainly is amusing. (I sure hope I didn't fabricate it, that would be pointless and embarrassing.)


The opening performance of the play by the ART guild, in the theater created for just that performance. In fact, it was through a discussion with a few of the Devs that the Theater, and accompanying scrolls, came to be, just for this play.


And finally, I... Well I don't know the context behind this, either! Perhaps lag-induced ghost items, or perhaps a glitch of some sort.

Phew, that's a lot of thinking, a lot of flipping through images, and a fair bit of writing. I hope someone out there enjoys this, and my work was not in vain. If you have information you would like to contribute, or have found something I remembered incorrectly, feel free to comment here, and maybe in 2013 I'll make corrections.

And no, I'm not coming back to the game, still. The good old days are the good old days, I love thinking back on the fun I had with the good people I knew. There's no possible way to re-create the fun times I had, and any attempt to would just rob me of new experiences. So, if you're someone I knew, and you want to get in contact with me, feel free, I'm not difficult to reach, just don't ask me when I'm coming back, or try to convince me to play again!

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One More for the Road

Or more like 35 more. It's a few years late, but here is the Unabridged Adventuriffic Collection. From comic #1, to comic #35, it's all here. No need to read any other post in this blog, unless you care for my ramblings. More after the jump.


It was brought to my attention yesterday that some of you out there may still be interested in the old comics. The hosting for the old Magicks Guild website has long since expired, and the site in its most recent form is lost to the ages, so this will now be the only official source for the comics. Just remember, if you want to use these comics on your own site, there's no need to ask. I'm not too worried about you using what little of my own art went into these, as long as you don't edit my name out of the originals, of course!












For those of you who were in MG in the "good ol' days" this alternate version of comic #6 will make sense.

































































Enjoy!
-Rashaln

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