Pale One's Gaming Bio Part 1 "From TRS-80's to Shadowbane"

[PaleOne]

I bought my first computer with the money I received from my 8th grade graduation. A Trs 80 color computer with 4k of Ram.. It actually had cartridge style games since cassette tapes with its only other form of permanent memory. Played lots of radioshack's version of berserker and missle command. Spent a lot of time in Arcades when they became popular Playing stuff like Moon patrol, Joust, asteroids...

But I was also playing D&D. I enjoyed the freedom in a pen and paper Game where what you could do was only limited by your imagination..But it was slow.. stop and roll dice for that.. etc..

Fastforward to College.. My roommate gets an IBM PS2. I become addicted to Mechwarrior and Gunship 2000..

After graduation and starting my own business i start playing warcraft and later renditions of Mech games as well as Command and Conquer. Eventually one of my students invites me over his condo to try a new game on the internet.. its called Everquest...

I start a character on his account to try it out, an enchanter and levle him to 5 that night(for about 5 hours till he makes me go home...) No manual no nothing , figure it all out on your own..

Wow D&D without all that dice rolling crap..it was quick and I went out and bought it the next day.

We played on Solusek Ro a blubie server( I never experienced PVP in a game at that point except for Mechwarrior online where they whined when I kept taking my custom mech and blowing off peoples legs)

I was a huge Dragonlance fan. My first character was an enchanter named Magiuos.(Raistlin was taken :)) and at level 8 i was invited to join a guild called The Conclave of Wizards.(I couldnt refuse.)

I can still remember the awe we inspired at level 20 in the newb area because our entire guild could levitate. We floated over the area.. I leveled quickly and gained some fame on the server as on of its best crowd controllers. In EQ if you didint have an enchanter you couldnt do a dungeon crawl So I rarely spent any time solo as I was always receiving requests. Crowd control was fun, controlling the fight its pace and strategy was more fun than actual killing. I started leading the groups on dungeon crawls as I memorized the spawns and loot drops.

Our guild merged into another , which merged into another and another until we formed Blood of Ro, and became one of the strognest organizations on Solusek Ro. But EQ was changing it was becoming a raid game. Enchanters went from being the sngle most needed class in the game, to relatively useless. In raids where everyone was focussed on killing a God or other single mob, who needs crowd control? I made level 60, I jumped through all the hoops to get my epic, cleared the first few planes Fear and Hate and then Planes of power came out. Raiding became the sole purpose of the game and I left in frustration and started a character on Vallon Zek.

I had loved to duel on Solusek Ro Enchanters were one of the best dueling classes with Charm and Mesmerise working on players. I took a DE enchanter to level 8 and leveled him to 12 doing the Stein Of Mogguk quest repeatedly. I made a pile of cash selling the steins and used it to buy him the best equipment a levle 12 could wear. I then spent my time wandering East commons, Nek forest, and the desert zones in gnome illusion killing everyone and anyone solo. My fondest memories were killing noobs in the Freeport noob area disguised as a cactus :)

Next I tried some WW2 online and had fun piloting a char tank and blowing up Germans, but I had been reading about a game called Shadowbane...

I entered a Contest to win a Beta Key by writing a fan fiction story about an orphan shade who was abandoned as an infant and grew up on the streets of a city ruled by a Temple of the Cleansing Flame. Stealing to stay alive as a small child he was often screamed at by shop keepers"Get out of here PALE ONE" Eventualy the name stuck, he didnt have a name before that. He later heard voices and thought himself crazy, but it was just the manifestation of his warlock powers. In the story the character is taken into an orphange run by the temple where he is educated and cleansed daily. the Justicar beleiving he could save him from his madness and his shade birth defect.

Unfortunately I didn't win the contest but I did get in Beta shortly thereafter, and my first character was Pale One of course. After Leveling to 20 quickly I had no idea where to go, a friend from the forums said that Almecka was a place with lots of action and the tree was open at the time. I repledged there and joined a pvp group with a bunch of templars named Cayth, Aeldred and Reuvil. We were attacked outside Almecka by an aracoix assasin named Duke Rustfield. I guess he didint expect a mage caster with a bunch of templars and I nuked his flying butt out of the sky :) I was hooked

Later that week I saved up all the gold I had farmed and got permission to place a wizards tower in Almecka. Pale's Tower was erected. All my dragonlance dreams had come true. I was the Master of the Dark Tower. It was burned to the ground in a 3am raid a week later... Almecka.however still stood. At the front lines between two opposing factions Redemption held Almecka against all comers for a month straight of constant sieging.

We had a blast in Beta both as a part of the Burning Legion and out on our own. When Beta ended we decided to go out on our own on a server without allies. But we had made enemies in Beta and they followed us to our chosen server aptly named Treachery. Covenant of Swords, the huge multiguild alliance who opposed the Burning Legion in Beta Came to Treachery. We soundly defeated them in Beta as a part of the Burning Legion. But the Burning Legion consisted of Sinister,Covetous Crew, DDH and Redemption. Alone we had 30-60 solid gamers, COS had 300.
COS placed their tree first and began ranking their buildings, We placed ours shortly thereafter.

We chose a large central island as our territtory. As we placed our tree our scouts found another tree being placed close by. we marched in force and game them an ultimatum. Sub or Die. They Subbed but later joined our enemies..

We recruited and attempted to match COS numbers and grew quickly. But there were some fatal flaws for us in the SB Coding. In order to create a bane stone you needed a high ranked sage, In order to create siege weapons you needed to have a high level builder. Cos from their head start in placing their tree was 24 hours ahead of us. They had a bane stone before we had access to siegeweapons to destroy it, They immediately sieged us, we were unable to destroy their bane and the login server went ofline during the siege and most of us could not even log on..New Cambruin burned...

We played SB for a while after that but a lot of us had our spirits broken that day. flawed game mechanics and login server woes ruined months of work..Many Redemption left the game in frustration never to return.

It was during this time that I had gained experience as Redemptions PVP general, I had coordinated the defense of our island up untill the siege effectively but I was far from alone. It was a full time job for many of us. Our Scouts spend hours patrolling all of our real estate all hours of the day, and guildmembers often spent 24 hours a day playing or logging into IRC at work or school to keep up with what ever was happening.Not being able to log in for the final battle was heart breaking.

Redemption grew from those days into a real life band of brothers. Fighting for somehting we beleived in, watching eachothers backs, we were a family and its been difficult to rekindle that feeling in games that didnt have real risk of communal loss like SB did. Maybe Someday.

Hell since those days I've played almost everything, all with Redemption.

[Zarrik]

I remember playing one of those scouts. I got my first pair of Windy boots for hunting down a PK in the swamp. Pale put out the call, I got the kill :)

[Jkaen]

I am surprised you didnt mention the shade deathstar build of beta, that was fun

[Alik]

The Stack is nothing against the Power of the Deathstar!