Winners of the Sentinel’s Fate Key Giveaway

Grand Prize Winner:

Entry 23: I started playing EQ1 right after it came out. It was great fun and was my first real MMORPG endeavor. One day while camping Guk for my enchanter’s epic weapon, I saw a gnome down there farming things so I asked if she had an extra shiny metallic robe. To my surprise she did and we traded an FBSS for the SMR. She was nice, but there is more.

In Feb 2001, at the EQ Fan Faire, I saw a cute girl and the name on her name/guild tag was very familiar. We spoke a bit and I realized who she was – she was that gnome! I also found out she lived near me so we became friends. From here what started as small talk evolved into chatting in-game and grouping with some of my guildmates in our groups. I’m not sure how it happened and I’ll spare the sappy details but I ended up falling in love with this girl – the real girl when I’d see her, not the gnome. :)

Nine years later, she’s my wife and as beautiful as ever and has given me 2 wonderful kids. We moved on from EQ when RL came up but eventually found ourselves back with EQ2 nearly 2 years ago. We started out just like any other noob in chat, asking for help, looking for guilds, and the fun stuff that goes with that, but we were mostly, and a pretty good, duo. When the kiddos settle down for bed, we enjoy time with our guild. When we’re not raiding, we sometimes do things together in-game. She’s pretty fun to play with and is a great teammate to blow things up with. I’ve attached a screenshot from our latest duo mission, destroying that Bugaboo (80 ^^^ x2) in Unrest.

Finally, I’m active duty in the military and have to travel fairly often. EQ is something that gives us something to do together even though we’re far apart.

This is us. With this contest being right around Valentine’s Day, I thought this would be appropriate.

Prize Winners:

Entry 1: I have to say my favourite EQ2 memory is the one that makes me laugh the most. I’m just glad I had the presence of mind to screenshot this as it was happening.

After we received the cockatrice house item, my IRL friend I play with down the street calls me on my phone. “oh my god, you HAVE to come to my (in-game) house right now!”

I zone in there, and lo and behold, the places is COVERED in cockatrices. Somehow she had gotten a bug that allowed her to keep choosing and placing as many of the cockatrice house pet as she wanted. I logged on my arasai so I could get as small and as high up as possible to get as many of them in the picture as I could.

It was truly hilarious…and incredibly noisy! The GM she contacted nearly fell over laughing.

I’m including two screenshots…one with the UI so you can see how cluttered it looked in-game, and one without.

Entry 16: So this is just a picture from my first month back in game after a very long hiatus. Please ignore my horrible UI, resolution, and low level. I was younger then.

I was crafting in the crafting instance in Freeport when I encountered this strange event. If you look closely, in the middle of the screen, that is ME…. I am about 1 inch tall.

I could move around anywhere in the zone mostly, but kept falling through the world. It wasn’t until I reloaded the client that I was normal size again.

Heres to wishing I could be this small on a PvP server…..

Entry 20: Every day I’m in EQ2 is a fond memory. It’s the place that I need to go to get away from the horrors of the real world, and the stress of real life and the worries of being a responsible adult.

I’ve been a guild leader for 5 years, my guildmates and friends have gone with me everywhere I’ve been throughout Norrath. They’ve waited for me to catch up when money made it difficult to pay for this month or that month’s subscription. They’ve waited for me to catch up when money has made it hard for me to buy an expansion on time.

I have taken pictures of some great displays of friendship, I’ve taken pictures of things that meant only something to me. What I wished I could have sent a screenshot of was is an event that happened last year in my guild, however, that computer was destroyed a few months ago so I lost everything on it including the pics from the following event:

My Sr Officer (as grumpy an SK he can be) has done all he could to make sure EVERYONE else got the updates for thier Fableds and constantly putting his updates for last and never getting around to them becasue there was always someone else who could get thiers faster. So his goal was get everyone taken care of first when the opportnity arose or even if we just were going to do something random that day.

One day one of my regular officers came to the rest of us and asked us ALL to roll Wood Elven Paladins and name them variations of our Sr (Bramdar) name. So one day, all of them logged out over the span of an hour, logged into thier Wood Elven paladins. Gathered together at the registrar and created the guild . Every last one of them had a whole bunch of status loot on them, accumulatively enough to ding the guild to 10 if necessary =)

An army of Wood Elven Paladins with variations of the name “Bramdar” march to the Claymore in Antonica while I adventured with Bramdar out in Kunark. Once the army was in position, I got the message to get him to come to the claymore by whatever means I could. Now Bramdar is a smart Dark Elf. Getting him to the Claymore was going to be tricky without him grilling me to death before agreeing to go there or outright refusing because he was going to log soon. So wracking my brain and delaying the expedition for another 20 min (while our Wood Elf army patiently waited)…

Suddenly I had a flash of genious. I said to the group.. Hey someone just told me theres some sort of Guide thing going on at the Claymore in Antonica. Lets check it out before we log! Of course he wants to know what event. I said, “I don’t even know, a friend of mine sent me a tell asking me if I know why a “chill wind blows wildly and sounds can be heard coming form the Claymore” message appeared in the zone.” So he becomes intrigued and we gallop to Antonica.

I make sure to be behind him so he can’t run (muahaha) and here we come upon the Claymore and there upon the steps is an army of identically clad Wood Elven Paladins named Brammdar, Braamdar.. all kinds of variations including my favorite… Bramdarina.

Now what he didn’t know was that they were all in a guild called and he was informed that becasue he’s helped everyone and leaving his grumpy self for last, we all decided it was time he did it for him even if we had to force him to lol… and that if he did not allow us to take him out that very weekend and get him his epic updates, they were going to go ding the guild to 10 right now and spam the server, and if he backed out this weekend to insit on another person getting thiers, the server would be spammed that weekend.

Now this was a lot of fun and one of my fondest memories of my guild working together and caring for each other. And backing each other up. I wish I had a screenshot for this.

In the stead of the lost screenshot (unless I can track down another member who has a copy of the wood elves) I’ll leave you with a consolation. Another screenshot that means something…

Me and Darathar. For 5 years I’ve travelled to Cazic Thule hoping to see him and thinking that at this point, he’s not even there anymore. I went there to help a guildmate get updates for Screaming Mace and there he was. Lounging on the ground… so I snapped up the photo opportunity. I had a rather nice dragon screenshot collection on that other computer. This one will just have to start off the new collection.

Sairiss

Entry 24: The night started out well enough. I was attending a birthday party and I’d had a bit too much to drink. Before I knew it, I was half naked and having a pillow fight with wood elf girl who was deep in her cups as well. The night didn’t end there! They had a live band and we eventually found ourselves dancing on the piano in our underwear… It all gets sort of fuzzy after that but I vaguely remember fishing coffee cups out of the pool and stealing some rolls of toilet paper. Good times!

I’m the dark-haired half-elf. I can’t remember who the other girl was. I wouldn’t remember most of that night if it weren’t for this evidence!

Pirate Jaxan the Red
(Bretheren Co-Leader)
Everfrost

Entry 26: Hello there! One of my most fond EQ2 memories is back when the game was just released. Me and two real life friends decided to give it a go since two of us (including me) used to play EQ1.

Our idea was to create 3 identical looking gnomes and give them Scandinavian sounding names. I would go by the name Henrik Johansson, and the others called themself Thorvald and Grell with the same surname (once we managed to get to 20).

Good times were to be had everywhere we went. Often people asked us if we were from sweden or norway, which made us laugh every time. We even had tells in swedish/norwegian occasionally.

After a while WoW came out and we gave that a go, but after like a year max we got bored there and came back to EQ2, where we all rolled other toons so the gnomes were no more.

My friends and another real life friend created 3 new gnomes and the gnome I already had became their fan. They got known as The Crew (with crew being their last name) and me being their biggest fan. They were rather full of themselves too! hehe.

Anyway, so in general I guess my fondest memory is me and my real life friends playing together in any form, but mostly when we were rolling around Norrath as gnomes!

Cheers,

Xubul

Entry 27: My favourite memory, or rather memories where “the good ole days”. It’s not that the game is any worse now. It’s more like Time has put a silver lining on the experience. But I remember how awesome me and the wife thought it was to play with each other and our friends, Friends we almost never got to talk to due to them moving to ‘Canadia’, or somewhere. ;-)

We usually played a lot of tricks on each other. Healers collecting instead of healing, a lot of node stealing and tanks refusing to taunt. We died a lot, but boy did we have fun!

Entry 28: Every server is its own World and just like it happens with a league of teams for any given sport, there are the favorites and then there’re the ones who ride the short bus. Lucan D’Lere, the server, only server, I’ve ever played in fit that category (and to a certain extent it still does): the category of “less fortunate” child in the sandbox. Now, picture 2k5. A rather abundant player base scattered around only a handful of zones, only three raiding guilds capable of doing something other than wiping during three hours before calling it a night and no expansion in sight for at least eight more months.

As a roleplayer who signed up to play a MMO with the expectations of letting the world affect the stories I’d come up with rather than to paraphrase simple character interactions while standing in East Freeport, the game soon felt small and began having the itch to see what was beyond the standard content and so, one night, I got the chance to raid with a competent, for LDL standards at least, crew. Omen was the name of the force, granted it was more like a congregation of ten Omen core members with a bunch of handpicked friends who knew how to play the game…and me. I don’t even remember how I wound up there to be honest.

But I do remember the feeling of being the odd man out. Back then, when everything was still knew, tanks and healers were clad in shiny white-ish armor, mages in purple / crimson robes and scouts…well, actually scouts featured a potpourri of colors that made them look like jesters. But they all had fabled gear while I was rocking my nearly stats-less armor set that I farmed from the succubi-like chicks in the Enchanted Lands.

Even though it’s “just a game” ™, I felt the need to “establish the territory” and so, in true roleplay fashion, my Karel looked for the main tank of the raid; a halasian with the usual hairdo that screams they used a cow’s spit to comb it and the annoyingly French mustache, his name was Salarionn. Check impressions.png for an accurate depiction given screenshots of those days are long gone. I /emote’ed lighting a match on the guy’s shield only to follow it by blewing up a puff of smoke on the barbarian’s face generating a rather satisfactory “!?!?!?!” reply in /say. That’s how the night began, with a complete newbie wielding treasured weapons picking a fight with the fabled clad main tank and co-raid leader. How did it go from there? Five minutes later we began pulling mobs inside King Drayek’s chamber, maybe it’s because I’m a closet sociopath but since three quarters of my swings were either missing or being parried I figured I’d enjoy the rest of my night by talking smack to the very focused main tank since he didn’t seem like the kind who would have the wits to match mine and come up with a reply put me in my place…not that he could anyway since he was tanking a myriad of adds. But the bastard stopped taunting mobs and all of a sudden I found myself with five or six wolves chewing on my paper covered ass. That was my first true raid experience in Everquest 2 although needlessly to say, after the raid was over there was plenty of cursing and cussing going back and forth between Salarionn and I, an activity that soon became a habit.

My favorite memory in Everquest 2? Salarionn is hands down –it-, he and I quickly became friends and for the past five years not only we’ve spammed game, ventrilo servers and forums alike with our endless bickering we’ve also ganged up on the game to achieve many of the things we have. Reaching a milestone, pulling notorious feats, running zones, questing, nerding it up “killing dragons” on a Friday night before going out…all those things bring players some level of satisfaction and / or accomplishment, it’s the core of playing a MMO but to me, none of those things would’ve been nearly as fun if I wouldn’t have had my friend with me when I did them. Yes, Salarionn is my friend no matter how strict I’m with the guy when he screws up or when he takes an afk that lasts two hours only to appear later apologizing like a moron.

I could count with the fingers of one hand the endeavors that were actually successful because the reality is that we would be always so busy picking on each other that our performance would be sub par but it really never mattered because they were all a joyride. Our latest exploit a bit more than a year ago was to make the transition from casual to hardcore raiding; it didn’t go entirely as planned as Luck wasn’t entirely on his side…plus he is a fat bastard. But the time we spent applying to this hardcore guild made the whole experience worthwhile and if not for the fact I had my friend to crack jokes at (and be cracked jokes by) none of the entire “ZOMG Avatar up, go, go, go, go!” paraphernalia would have been appealing at all. Check screenshot.jpg for a verbatim scene of an early raid in Palace of the Awakened before all the nerfs hit the zone.

My favorite memory? The entire five years that I spent playing Everquest 2 with my friend are one big memory. Our raids during Tier 5, our intensive raids during Kingdom of Sky when he returned to the game to help him catch up with everything that was going on, cracking a whip on him so that he would main tank again and of course, our epic app’ing to a hardcore raiding guild, pulling entire raid zones to have him killed, kicking him out of a group a split second before a taunt was cast so that he’d get devoured by an angry x4 mob. It’s impossible to pick –one- memory because it’s all part of a big memory. It’s like watching a perfect season, be it from a series or a sport, where nothing goes wrong, nothing is mediocre or of low quality. Where it makes you look forward to the next entry, or in this case the next time you log on because it’s always packed with a lot of amazing dynamics.

Some people find thrills, buddies, enemies, “love” ™, fun, and so on and so forth, when playing a MMO. I found a friend whom I care for to the point I think of him as a ‘little’ brother (even though he’s actually a decade or so older than I am), including a talk where he was being a pansy about some woman in “real life” ™.

If that’s not a great memory, I don’t know what it is~.

Entry 33: My most memorable moment would have to be my first raid with the guild i stated in EOF, it was my little baby! We named it Perdition after a few days of trying to figure what name would be bad ass!
Anyways back to the raid, we went back to do Vyemm’s Laboratory cuz we only had like 8 players in the guild at the time.
But since we were all friends it was really fun and it didnt really matter what we did haha.

It was pretty much a success, we cleared it and felt pretty beast even tho it wasnt something surprising since it was an old zone from a previous expansion.

But yeah that first raid, which was the start of my raiding guild was my most memorable moment for EQ2

This screenshot isnt of that moment, but its the one i like the most :D
Thats me on the right (Tieron) and my best friend on the left (Loviana)