plmkoi

Do you think you are truly ready for Dual Universe? Well don't wait for it to come out and prepare yourself here. Don't worry, I will be there to help you and no I won't grief you. I can go that in Black Rise.

When I was young, my first foray into computer games was RTS (real time Strategy), the likes of Starcraft/Broodwar, Red Alert 2/Yuri's Revenge and eventually Command and Conqueror Generals. The only thing that I knew was anything RTS games and brought me more enjoyment than any console game ever good and I loved my SNES. But due to the computer's integrated gfx, I was unable to play more RTS games to feed my ravenous hunger to play them and then go into multiplayer to dominate people. So I began to not only acquire the best computer parts at the time and I was able to get a mentor that helped me understand computer hardware (I am not that bright). This lead to my first computer after 8 months and +£2000  in 07'. This was when I met a few acquaintances that played a lot of World of Warcraft since release back in 03'.

Now these individuals allowed me to come over the few times while I waited for the parts to ship and learn about World of Warcraft. At the time it was amazing in my eyes, almost magical. A online game that allowed me to play with many people on one server and with cool/different unique classes. Now I was also a heavy book reader (even though it took weeks to read one) in the Scifi/Fantasy setting and so my only interest at the time was only doing pve. But these individuals convinced me to do pvp, as even back in 06' people had the toxic mentality that players who do pve only were sub human. That if I wanted to prove my masculinity, it would be going to a pvp server and risk death and violence to do my quests.

So come 07' I finally can play any RTS games I wanted and so I purchased dozens of RTS titles to play to my hearts content, but the MMO genre was always in the back of my mind. So one day I decided I will play an mmo, but I was concerned that I was too late, as Wow was released in 03'. So some how I ended up getting word that Funcom was going to release Age of Conan, which I would assume was from me trying out Anarchy Online. I wanted to be involved in MMO's and the one that was in my mind, that was the gold standard, was World of Warcraft. This game also had quests and it was launching soon in the summer, so why not be a first mover. So I pre ordered the game and jumped in at release.

Now Age of Conan seemed in my mind to be like World of Warcraft, just nothing to do with magical races, but there was magical powers. I decided to go initially with the Stygian race as they seemed like the most interesting, I was unaware of intricacies of Conan lore. I have also decided that I would go into a pvp server like what I assumed would be similar to World of Warcraft. Well I was ignorant that these pvp servers were not faction and there was only 2 safe zones. This was FFA (Free for all) pvp servers and someone like myself it was basically throwing a lamb into a den of lion's that would provide an experience similar to the movie Hostel, before they killed you.

In this FFA pvp world, on the island of Tortuga I tried to do quests in zones that had people constantly killing other people. Surprisingly there were more wolves than lambs and I constantly saw acts of violence as I snuck around to finish my quests. It was interesting to see human nature play out similar to the original Mad Max movies of rape and murder being done in an online environment. At one point I (being naive) thought it was wrong to gank people just because they were low level. So in a few instances I intervened (as my toon was high lvl at that point) and killed the ganker, but shockingly in each instance the victim attacked me and I had to put them down. It turns out that people actually killed gankers so they can sodomize the victims themselves and after having that happen so many times, they now believe any interference was a continuation. While progressing through the world outside of Tortuga I also began to learn certain concepts unique to the mmo genre like "rape train", where the purpose is your mates will form a group and just murder anyone seen in the open world, chasing them down and killing them. You do these acts to others as you have been a victim yourself and this is where I learned to enjoy such acts, due to the negative influence of the guild I joined.

After some time (once the level grind became impossible because of Funcom's incompetence), I ended up playing Eve Online. I heard of the title, but avoided it as the term Griefer's were usually associated with it. But I met some friends that played it and they encouraged me to join. So in 08' I started to play around the time of Bob's fall (summerish/fall) and I was a carebear. During this time I enjoyed every carebear activity, from having 10 alt accounts to mine Veld, to making ammo (ships were crap for money at the time), and even dabbling in mission running/exploring when it came out. I always avoided any pvp and risk adverse to the extreme, where I would pay people or get friends into pvp to do dangerous missions for me like scouting for prices in null space. Frustrated when I was podded for the first & last time because of auto pilot. Eventually, market and industry gets repetitive and so I went to the character Bazzar and purchased another alt, but this time skilled in basic pvp. I was curious to experience a bit of the other side, once again ignorant of things that would once again push me into the dark side. 

Here I used an alt to join a random corp and as fate would stack certain events, I ended up being thrown into null sec under the N.C's banner. At the same time the Southern Coalition was invading at the time we were forced to move into our new home in Vale under Imperial Legion's control. The fighting across the region vicious as hundreds died on a weekday as systems were under siege and systems being blockaded to prevent additional people entering with gate camps. I was also a victim of such a gate camp under Atlas pilots that were gate camping with the most feared ship at the time, the Dramiel. A frigate sized ship, that once it moves in your direction your fate is sealed due to it's speed and hard to kill because of the Sig radius (the size of the ship). I still remember it today as I saw two moving in my direction after the drag bubble caught my first battleship I saved up and almost like slow motion as it was futile to shoot them. Podded back into empire on top of losing 1 billion (Think $5 worth of plex at the time) and eventually made it back in a cruiser with barely 1/4 of that value in goods. I wasn't upset, as tbh I would just plex the goods back in the end and this character wasn't my main, so I had 0 emotional attachment. 

During my time with Imperial Legion I learned to kill Russians, as at the time they would funnel some groups throw the Geminate/Vale corridor and we would kill them in small groups. As at the time from talking to the executor a lot, I learned the higher ups in NC wanted the pets to keep additional trash from coming into the Tribute region. At first I was assisting in killing these people (tackling them) because of duty to the alliance, but eventually things changed as the war progressed and eventually ended. I began to have a blood lust that was exactly like what I had in Age of Conan and began to lose all interest in anything carebear activity wise. I then began to funnel most of my gains into additional toons that had pvp skills and after leaving the corp (because of real life constraints to help) I began to terrorize innocent people just for the lulz. My journey to the dark side after a few years is now finally complete as I didn't just become a pvper, but a sociopath, relishing my terror on helpless victims.  Mainly mission runners and explorers, as I only messed with miners by putting them in hull and taunt them before letting them go. I still have some empathy to miners as it is already a difficult life, a lot to do with the events of Hulkageddon introduction by Goons when I was mining and avoiding the roaming gangs.

Eventually I stopped playing, until the most controversial announcement, introduction of skill injectors. With this addition finally added I was able to repent from the sin of being a carebear starting out. So with my 180 mill sp main and a dozen or so alts with 30 mill sp I boosted my main/alt into god mode and liquidated all assets in order to stock up on ships/ammo. From that year and on I was terrorizing people and occasionally joining causes just for the pvp (also terrorizing people on the side as there are no innocent bystanders). Eventually I liquidated all my characters except one that is now my main and a mission runner or two. As this around the time that a lot of kickstarted mmo's with sand box features are being worked on and in particular Dual Universe. After dropping £5k-6k in plex and subscriptions, it might be wise to hold off and see if Eve (which has been in heavy decline) might be snuffed out after the release or a few years later, because of Novaquark doing things different from CCP. 

So here I am today, waiting and carebearing more as I wait to see if the choices made by this studio will be different from the poor choices made by CCP. Who is right now doing drastic changes to resuscitate the game.