Background...
By: Kollrick
The early days of Kollrick. Step back with me to a time about 10 or 12 years ago, when only a lucky few had DSL or cable and dial-up was the common connection. To the early days of MMORPG's, to a game called UO...
So here I was addicted to this "new game" I would go to work, come home and play until way too late. And then try to do it all again tomorrow. Heh, with dial-up and lag, often times you would lag out, go to bed and log-in tomorrow only to find that all you had done the night before was lost. I was existing on four hours sleep a night and one meal a day. I worked 45 hours a week and played 60 - 80 hours a week. My dial-up provider threatened to raise my rates because I was using so many more hours of use than their normal customer.
I had become a part of a large community of players that were banding together to try to create a "player run area." Many of these were role-players. I have always played in a happy state of suspension of disbelief. Though I did not role-play much myself, I always tried to stay in character in open channels. And preferred others to do the same because it allowed me to preserve the feeling of being there.
Out of the blue one day, my lovely wife, who had tolerated the absence of her husband for several months with great fortitude decides she wants to play too. Being on dial-up, we could not afford the expense of a second computer, second phone line, second internet account and second game account. So, she would have to play after I got off. She starts to hang out with the same group of people as I did and was more of a role-player than me. Her character, Maryssa, she decided was the betrothed of my character, Kollrick. You may already see where this is going...
So, I would log out to go to bed and she would get on and immediately go to town and ask if anyone had seen Koolrick. They would even go so far as to help her look for him sometimes, if they had recently seen me. I started to get into this as well and would come home from work, log in and ask folks if they had seen Maryssa since I seemed to have mossed seeing her yesterday...
It really became a source of great amusement to us when people started oocing me that they thought I was sick to create a girlfriend for myself like this, thinking they had figured it out. Eventually I got the pain of re-creating Kollrick from scratch since their were no character transfers or anything like that. After a few months I was able to log in and ask for help in finding Maryssa and people were actually astounded when we found her since they thought they had figured it out.
That was a fun time. Games held so much promise with this newly discovered community involvement. I have hoped to re-capture that ever since I left that world. I have had little luck in doing so, coming close only once with a guild of close-knit friends and family. Most of them are still playing WoW and still having fun. But, I still yearn for that thing I had back in the beginning. Gaiscioch seems to have that, reading the material here on this web-site. And, remarkably, has managed to do it across worlds. I find myself feeling optimistic for the first time in almost 10 years.
So, this is my first blog...ever... Just thought that I'd start my time with you here by trying to contribute to the community and give you all a little insight into me at the same time. I will happily write more in the future if any find these words of interest.
Travel with a light heart my friends and let not the burdens of the world wear you down...
-Kollrick