Ryan ¡°Tnexus¡± Tirrell: When I look back at when I started playing, I can't help but think to myself, "How in the world did I play like that?" So, I have to give you some background information first.     First of all, I was 16 when I first heard about EverQuest from a friend who was going-on for a week about how excited he was to play this new game. When he finally got EQ and he invited me over so I could see what it was like. Over the course of the weekend we end up on a 20 hour EQ binge killing rats, bats, and orc pawns trying to get his female Shadow Knight (Yes, "shims" existed even in 1999.) to level 3 on his lightning fast 56kbps AOL connection. eq2 plat Since the game was new, everyone was in the newbie zones so mobs were really scarce. Now he had a pretty bad video card that would only render perhaps 50% of the graphics. So everything else was just white with a black line outlining the shapes, characters and and NPC models. My first character I made incidentally was on his account- it was a Dark Elf Warrior who accidentally fell in the water in Neriak. Well, neither of us knew how to swim so there he sat, slowly drowning. Both of us were frantically trying to figure out what to do. My friend was scrambling through the manual to find out how to swim, and I'm mashing as many buttons as I could. Well, nothing was working and pretty soon all we saw was, "YOU are drowning! YOU are drowning! YOU are drowning!" In the end, the poor guy drowned and was promptly deleted out of frustration.

     Fast-forward about a month and I finally picked up my own copy because I was wanted to level up my own characters. So I go through the install process, log in, and... everything is all white. I think to myself, "Okay, well I'm sure my eight megabyte Matrox video card can handle this. I must have some settings wrong." Well... no. I didn't as I quickly discovered. Being the diligent person that I am, I said screw it, and played anyway with my all white graphics with black outlines. Now for anyone who's played EQ, I picked probably the worst race possible for my starting character with my graphics disability, a Wood Elf in Kelethin. If you're not familiar with Kelethin, it's a city in the trees. If you fall off, you die. So I make my Wood Elf Ranger, log in for the first time and look for my Ranger Guild Master for whom I'm supposed to deliver a note to for my newbie tunic. I walk 10 paces and see "YOU have fallen to your death! LOADING... PLEASE WAIT." Now one of the bugs back then was your Guild Master note poofed on your death instead of respawning with it. So I'm freaking out that I won't be accepted at the local Ranger guild and delete the character and remake him. I zone in, take another 10 paces, "YOU have fallen to your death! LOADING... PLEASE WAIT." "CRAP!" Delete. Remake. Round Three. This time I get a little bit farther, but am still having a hard time making out shapes in a city I've never been in. A few minutes pass until, "YOU have fallen to your death! LOADING... PLEASE WAIT." "SON OF A $%&@!!!!11!!". eq2 plat  Delete. Remake. Round Four. "YOU have fallen to your death! LOADING... PLEASE WAIT." "MOTHER F#$%&@!!!!" Speed forward a few hours (yes, hours) and I finally find him to hand in my note. I could keep going on with my early stories (including handing my Book of Discord to the Priest of Discord to make me PVP), but I'll spare you the agonizing details. And yes, I kept playing with no color in my graphics for close to three months.