In 1999, I joined an IRC chat channel and made fun of someone's nickname and dared my cousin to tell them. The IRC was about a game called Creatures. I had panic attacks about being kicked and banned from the IRC channel, and I swore off social interaction for years.
In 2001, I would have to juggle EverQuest and school. My young self felt like I needed an excuse to leave the game, like when leaving the classroom with a hall pass. I'd make up crazy excuses to just /q out of the game, pretending my network had gone out, to make sure I could get other shit done, like actually go to the next grade.
In 2002, I realized the game was no longer a high fantasy roleplaying experience and tried to hold onto that as long as I could. I'd log in only to go to the Crow's tavern with my then middle school friends and just get wasted ingame.
In 2004, I murdered a Nexus guard during a patch that allowed people to attack NPCs in non-combat zones. My druid still has the Staff of the Nexus. What a horrible thing to do.
In 2005, I realized EQ wasn't aimed at casuals anymore and hopped over to EQ2. I'd make fun of people still playing EQ1 for years because it was a shell of what it used to be.
2006, I joined EQEmulator. This had made a lot of people very angry, and was widely regarded as a bad move.
With 2008, I made my first emulated server after trying to socialize with other people who had their own issues, like Mortenson's Raid Addicts, and aza77's guildwars pvp clone. I was 17 at the time, and I didn't have a fraction of my skills. I tried to find my place in the community, and tried to join up later with folks like Daxum from VZTZ, and contributed small amounts, and my ego grew in turn. I joined up with EQClassic, and tried to establish a reputation as a 'database person' with them, which was just maintaining a bastardized version of Angelox's ax_classic DB that didn't contribute back. I also badgered a person named Doodman until he passed the torch, as he was basically about as interested as Rogean is in EQEmulator's loginserver today.
In 2009, I saw P99 launch. P99 had massive success and I made the conscious decision to join them because I felt EQClassic was 'not going anywhere'. Around the same time, two other individuals wanted to 'betray' Yeahlight by releasing the source code. This was my first incident with drama in the community, and I got caught up in it to the point where I was losing sleep over the anxiety knowing that I caused harm to someone else.
In 2010, I had become a narcissist due to my involvement on P99. I had done small feats that no one else had done, relating to the classic wolves and skeletons via dll injection, and felt high upon my achivement. I ended up getting in a forum spat with Yeahlight in 2011, and that thread was nuked into oblivion. Years later, I would later apologize only to have him berate me for not understanding how he felt, and how self-focused I was on the fact that P99 had success not solely due to me.
In 2011, my ego had inflated to new highs, and Cast (a p99 player and forum dweller here) had started posting 'tranny porn' and gore on the P99 forums. Infuriated that someone would dare fuck with me online, I attempted a bit of 'doxxing', which led to my removal/ban from P99.
In early 2012, I released the EQMac windows hack, after realizing a binary from 2002 could be used to connect to the same server with minimal modifications. Impressed by Rogean and I's collective ability to put it together and make it work, I released it to the public on the FOH forums, not understanding what damage it could do. MQ2 developer eqmule later updated the hack after Todd Schmidt had tried to patch the loophole. About a year later, EQMac was sunset. I realized my actions had consequences and contributed to making TAKProject, the first EQMac emulator by spending about 3 weeks rewriting the emu netcode, so that its players could continue on.
In 2013, I applied to work at SOE on the EQ2 team and was rejected. Being rejected took my ego and crushed it. I spent my time doing a whole lot of nothing, and trying to figure out why that was the case, even though it's very obvious as to why today that was the case. I spent time looking for local retail jobs, feeling like I could never contribute to anything ever again. I also spent a ton of time in private servers, which were almost always using stolen code or binary files to run pirated copies of games with slight or major modifications. Contract that to EQEmulator, which was clean room emulation. I was an adult and needed an income source, but I also refused to take money except for contributions I made myself, so this was a time where I didn't make much money and collected supplemental security income.
In 2014, I was horribly depressed. Seeing the collapse of EQNext and realizing Dave Georgeson sold the world snake oil made me feel like I dodged a bullet, but also made me wonder why I was obsessed with working on a games company to begin with. I met a few industry folks around this time, shared my experience and bonded with them.
In 2015, I was offered a job by one of them, working on one of the games my autism attached to, but as a CSR: All Points Bulletin. From there, I joined the games industry, all while keeping up with pet projects that I'd work on in private. Before too long, the agreement between Daybreak and P99 was made, and it was something I was incredibly happy to see happen. I spent almost my entire time learning and continuing to tinker, got moved over to Hawken's console port as an engineer, shipped my first game, and I can't really tell you more than that without breaking confidential agreements.
Fast-forward to 2021, and I'm still making games... but I am now mentoring younger engineers that are entry level, mentoring hobbyists that have yet to come into the industry, and recounting my experiences over and over so the same mistakes aren't made, all while keeping with me a lifetime full of memories that remind me why I am making games and why I enjoy playing them.
Also I may have hacked a few guild websites on TLPs that pissed me off now and again. Sorry about that. I always struggle with my temper when I get competitive in games. I think that's why I've moved to FFXIV. Less opportunity to have to yell at people. I'm now 30. I tried the EQ TLP and there's so many people who haven't grown past the fact that being the best at EQ isn't the point of the game. The moment I tried to form a raid in FxIV and couldn't, for a target that was up and available to kill, that's when I realized the game isn't for me anymore.
That being said, gmes changed my life. I'm making more than anyone in my family ever dreamed of making. Even at my best, even at my worst, I still have the memories. The fact that I have had the incredible privilege of meeting and interacting with people of all backgrounds is more than enough to want to keep going. I almost killed myself in 2014, but kept going on the hope that maybe there's some new idea, or something to tinker with that I could look at. I taught myself assembly in a few weeks that year. I've had people tell me i'm doing crazy stuff. It doesn't always translate to money, but that doesn't matter to me. What matters is that others down the road get the same beneficial experience I did with games and its industry.
I felt so many different emotions playing, creating, interacting with, talking to, any sort of verb really, with the people who play, develop, socialize and learn on these games. EQ was a big part of that, even if it wasn't 989/Verant/SOE/Daybreak's rendition of EQ.
My mom said I'd never get ANYWHERE playing these games. But I did.
I'm off to tighten up the graphics on level 3.
