Someone always has to be the first to get lost. Marco Polo didn't have
a map. Columbus wasn't following someone else. We call the brave souls
who take a risk and step into the unknown "explorers" or "pioneers"
after they have made a wondrous discovery, but when they are out there,
getting lost, history calls them less complimentary names. Ever since
I first started playing MMOs, I have had one goal that I haven't yet reached,
and I'm not sure I'll ever find my proverbial pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow. Still, I'm going to keep trying to be the first person in
zone.

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I started playing Everquest only a day or two after my boyfriend started.
Only a day or two, and yet, I was at least ten levels behind. I planned
to close the gap by stubborn determination, but I kept getting distracted,
by real life responsibilities and by in-game conversations and quests. I
always trailed by a minimum of ten levels, but, as it turned out, that was
a blessing in disguise. I don't always want to be the follower, nor do I
like taking orders, so that, as I gained levels, I learned something about
myself. I hated not being the first to zone in, the first to complete a
quest, the first to encounter a mob.

So I became a guide. I got to explore without being attacked, when things
were quiet. I got to lean about the lore, the tactics, and the NPCs. I
became the most knowledgeable underachiever on the face of Norrath. Of
course, being a guide only meant that I fell further behind in levels.
Fifteen, seventeen, nineteen at one point. Still, being a guide and seeing
the wide zones of Norrath was very different from fighting and achieving
the sense of accomplishment that came from participating, not observing.

Perhaps
symbolic in my quest to be an explorer, the zone that I loved most was
Mistmoore. I talked my regular experience group into camping in the graveyard
of Mistmoore more than once. It took me a while to get them past the hill
and the lake where everyone else camped. Ok, so I preferred Mistmoore
to Unrest, but that doesn't mean that I was responsible for all
the trains.

We let a glyphed warder escape once, and she brought back a train longer
than the Orient Express. We tried to follow her, but we walked into a
courtyard full of pale, silvery heralds. Thrilled and terrified at the
same time, I played my invisibility song and inched back toward the crypt.
In that darker-than-night graveyard, I was afraid to breathe, listening
to the receding sounds of slaughter. Three full parties, less one death-defying
bard, were wiped out by that train. Months later I was poised on the threshold
of the castle itself when my invisibility wore off and the resident vampires
decided that I was their blood type. I knew that I wasn't going to be
the first person in Mistmoore. Maybe I could be the first person into
just one of the rooms, I thought, and so I kept trying.

I might have finally accomplished my goal when the Velious expansion
of EverQuest was released, if not for a quirk of fate, or at least game
mechanics. My bard perched on the deck of the ship, waiting for the first
voyage to the new world. I had gotten up early, finished my morning ablutions,
made a pot of coffee, put everything within easy reach. Yes, I even took
a day off from work. My eyes were gritty, I had ingested enough caffeine
to keep me awake for at least twenty-four hours, and I positively hummed
with tension.

Last week, in What
Goes Up Must Come Down, Raya talked about her fear of heights and
how navigating treacherous ascents in game can cause a significant physical
reaction in the real world. Well, I sat there on that morning, tapping
my fingers on the desk, afraid to get up and pace. I had been part of
a large number of explorers, all waiting to take the boat to Firiona Vie
on the day that Kunark was released. I didn't know what to expect in Velious,
though, and so I waited. Finally, the boat began to move. I think I held
my breath, leaning forward, as the "Loading...please wait" screen
resolved and I found myself standing on a dock next to an NPC gnome and
a troll.

What?
A troll? If my character had been capable of staring, open-mouthed, she
would have gawked. The troll shuffled around and cheered at me. I noticed
that the troll had parentheses around his name. An invisible troll, better
yet. I shivered. "Pritty ladee, can u tell me were dis ship goez?"
the troll asked, scratching. A quick /who in the zone told me that I certainly
wasn't alone in the zone. Two dark elves, two trolls, one ogre, and three
others with /anonymous or /roleplay flags turned on were wandering around,
somewhere out in the pristine, white snow. It appeared that I couldn't
see my invisible shipmates as I'd stood on the deck of the ship. My goal
had come so close, and yet remained so far.

There have been zones where I was part of the only group, for hours at
a time. One such zone was Dragon Necropolis. Our group of six spent weeks
exploring, but we knew we weren't the first. Perhaps we were the first
on our server, though, and as we ventured further, we found less and less
information posted on websites. The lack of suggested strategies fueled
our own interest in unlocking the secrets of the dragon tomb. We unlocked
some doors, but never any secrets.

Are you lost if you don't have a map, and aren't sure where you're going?
Maybe. I choose to believe, however, that there's a difference between
being lost and stepping into that vast unknown where the cartographers
of old wrote Here Be Dragons. The actor Al Bernstein once said,
"Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction."

Perhaps it bodes well for those of us who are interested in becoming
the first to get lost that Merriam-Webster Online defines "vanguard"
as "the forefront of an action or movement." After all, I haven't changed
at all from the young bard who stood in the graveyard of Mistmoore Castle,
listening. You can be assured that I will be out there, somewhere, trying
to find a way to step across that line into an undiscovered zone.