The gentle notes
wafted lazily on a warm, fragrant breeze. Sometimes, if she let her awareness
drift, she could no longer tell whether she was hearing skillfully-played

At the foot of
this very platform, she had taken her first breath, amazed and awed by
the grandeur rising skyward. Somewhere to her left, up a ramp or two,
she had spent her youngest days in devotion to the masters of the bards'
guild, The Songweavers. She had become friends with the merchants there,
even flighty Tenra, who liked to climb up on the roof during her frequent
breaks to get a better view of the city. She had purchased her first plate
armor from a wizard of the twenty-second season just outside the doors
of the bank, and she had traded her looted items for the pure water and
fresh muffins from the vendors near the center of the city. Kelethin had
become home, a refuge from the orcs and the place she had chosen to sleep…
until adventure called her from the safety of the familiar.

"It is good
to come home," she told herself, feeling the warmth of the sun above
the forest mist. Still, she reached for her pack, touching the folds of
the cloak that had been woven from a dragon's scale and letting her fingers
wrap around the hilt of her singing sword. All those years of exploration
and discovery had made this homecoming bittersweet, for while it was nice
to see that Kelethin hadn't changed, it was smaller than she remembered.

Do you remember visiting
a place that you remembered from your childhood? Maybe this place seemed
beautiful, or overwhelming, or even frightening. Maybe you remembered
having fun there, and you decided to revisit that place later in life,
perhaps even with your own children. When you arrived, you found that
your memory had played tricks on you: the rooms were smaller, the statues
were shorter, the paintings were more amateur, or the park's grassy expanse
was only a small field.

I find it both amazing
and comforting that we mature in our online worlds in a similar way, although
within a compressed time frame. The places where our characters begin
become less impressive as we gain levels and expand our knowledge of zones,
and the creatures that inhabit them. Still, there are places that I remember,
places that I cannot imagine having been reduced by the passage of time.
These places strike a particular chord in our memories: this is not only
true of Everquest and other fantasy-based games such as Asheron's Call,
Ultima Online, and Dark Ages of Camelot, but of every genre of MMO, which,
by their very nature, seek to impress either grandeur of scale or the
common, every day touches into our consciousness.

She drew a deep
breath and stepped away from the shelter of the overhang and the protection
of the guards. At least she had company, in the form of her dearest friend,
a ranger, but they were both so young, barely fourteen seasons. She swallowed
hard, grabbed the hilt of her sword, and tried not to look over the edge
as they made their descent. The pass was remarkably free from dangerous
creatures, she realized, but was unsure whether to be comforted or disturbed
by that realization. The high, granite walls rose up around her and the
twisting cliff fell off, first on her right, and then, in a sudden switchback,
on her left.

The journey seemed
endless, but then, just as they were about to camp, or turn back for the
night, the pass opened into a wide plain, sunset painting the grasses
in shades of pink and gold, with mountains rising on the far horizon.

I remember my passage
to the plains of East Karana as the first real journey of my gaming experience.
Others remember different places and experiences, for a wide variety of
reasons. Over on the Official Vanguard Forums, I asked what places people
remembered, and why. The answers ranged from the Plane of Hate to BlackBurrow,
from Moonglow Island in Ultima Online to "a lone strip of beach by
the sea" in Asheron's Call. There seemed to be three categories of
locations that we're likely to remember, as defined by both my own experiences
and the adventures of others: Familiar Places; Difficult Places; and Distressing
Places.

A Familiar Place is
somewhere you feel comfortable and relaxed, and it's generally associated
with pleasant memories. The Familiar Place might be your starting city,
or a tree outside the gates where you wait for the other members of your
party every night. It could be a tavern or a bar in a big city, or a tunnel
at a zone line. Generally, a Familiar Place has a limited possibility
of danger and has conveniences associated with it, such as being a central
location, a landmark, a place where few people will see you when you log
in, or adjacent to services such as shops, a mode of transportation, or
a bank. It may also be a place where you participate in tradeskilling
or role-playing, or a location of significance to your guild.

A Difficult Place
is remembered for very different attributes. It's a place that you, with
or without a group or guild, fought to access. It may be a location that
needs a dropped or quested key, so that future entry is simple, but the
initial entry was next to impossible to obtain. It may be a place that
requires skill and coordination to get to, like a ledge over a precipitous
drop or an underwater cave with a hidden entrance. It may require fighting
through creatures you have never encountered before, or finding an entrance
without a map. In any case, the Difficult Place is remembered because
of the effort it took to reach that location.

Finally, a Distressing
Place is the diametric opposite of the Familiar Place. It is somewhere
that makes you feel uncomfortable and uneasy, and it has a high risk factor
associated with it. Examples of the typical Distressing Place include
the Plane of Fear or the Plane of Hate in Everquest, or the frontier in
Dark Ages of Camelot. There's both a thrill and a terror that comes from
standing (or running for your life) in a Distressing Place.

She froze, listening
to the wind howl around the mausoleum, her fingers numbed by the night
air. It hadn't taken much courage not to flee when the creature had shrieked
and the night had danced with spells. Instead, petrified, she crawled
into the crypt and stared in horror at the single rose, as fresh as if
it had just been clipped from the vine, laid across the sarcophagus.

Many years later,
she would laugh at her own adventures and the dreadful nightmares that
had haunted her sleepless hours. Many years later, she would be older,
and undoubtedly wiser, a bard who could take her memories and bring them
home, home at last. She sat atop the platform in Kelethin, listening to
the fairy-bells, remembering.