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Instant Addiction

By Lady Sirse

Who can ever forget the suspense that comes when you buy a new game? The heart pounding, palm sweating joy as the beginning notes of the theme music fill the room. The breathtaking gasp of awe that escapes your lips when the graphics appear on the screen prompting you to log in is a moment that few things can duplicate.

With nervous excitement, hands holding the map and manual often found in the elaborately painted box, you create a character and enter a world. Enter a world? What have I done? Am I really going to pay monthly to play a game? This is cra…WHOA! What is that?!

What was that? It was an elf in the city of Felwithe in EverQuest. That moment of shock, awe and addiction had hit. There I was gaping like the newb I was at marble archways, noble ivy covered buildings, even the water seemed remarkable. I was dressed in rags holding a backpack, a dagger and a note. I had been sent to look for the Master of the Paladin’s guild to begin my journey in life.

Blinking and wide eyed, I struggled for a brief time with settings and oh yes, movement! I am not ashamed to admit that I had run into my share of walls at first. If you think the beginning was bad, you’d have laughed yourself silly watching me get Spirit of the Wolf (SoW) for the first time! Eventually I stepped reverently into the Temple and bowed before the great Paladin before me and humbly offered my note.

That’s all it took! I was hooked. Out into the forest this young elf wandered confident and strong, inspired and fearless in her devotion to the Mighty Mother Tunare. That was until a gruesome and embarrassing death at the feet of the guards right at the city gates.  Learning to “hail” people and not auto attack them was a cruel lesson!

Death after death I learned that the way of the Paladin was not an easy one. A class often misunderstood and under appreciated if hard to be loyal to. That is if you are only playing it as a game. Role-play added life’s breath to this character and I was lucky to play with some real life friends that offered their guidance along the way.

It took five years for my Paladin to achieve level 65, gain her epic and feel that she had finally at long last served the Mother in all the ways she could. This character lead a guild, that still stands. She gained the respect of her server as a noble person and a darned talented raid leader and tank. Yes, you heard me…a paladin got respect as a tank. It was hard earned and well worth the hours of saying ..;.just give me a shot, I’ll show you what a Pally can do!

From those first strains of music and awesome graphics I was hooked. Hooked on a game that was more than a game, it was a world. A living, breathing world. Sadly this didn’t last as real life policies and ownership of the game changed and the player based shifted goals and all the things that we have seen happen with it. It left my Paladin sitting in her favorite hiding spot in the Plane of Knowledge contemplating what the Mother might have in store for her.

There she has sat for almost nine months. I haven’t the heart to delete her. I will, in time. When I know that the account is near to running out. I am sure it will be a tearful moment. But I think I have heard the whispers of this character telling me that she might live again…

Perhaps one day soon when Vanguard: Saga of Heroes plays those opening strains of music, and breathtaking graphics once again fill my screen I might find that she still lives. What will she be looking at? What will her mission be and for whom? What gods will speak to her heart?

I think of these questions daily with a sense of anticipation and yearning as more and more is revealed about the game. Screenshots promise breathtaking vistas, music samples promise the perfect setting, and the people behind the scenes promise a world that lives and breathes like no other.

Can this be true? Can that instantaneous addiction hit again? I hope it can. I hope with all my heart that Vanguard: Saga of Heroes becomes a mystical place where the hopes and dreams of both the developers and the community can come true.