I am an old roleplayer from the days of Dial-up where everyone went home to roleplay anime adventures after watching their afternoon toonami run, and probably older than that. I started around the late 90s distinctively because I recall playing Final Doom and Metal Gear Solid while trolling Compuserve chat rooms and roleplaying so maybe a year before 99 or 98 generously? Speaking of Compuserve.
After the amount of FUN I had in AOL I switched ISPs because AOL sucked in terms of service. I got to taste blood in PVP beyond the scope of what I already obtained in AOL.. my own blood. I saw the contrast between different fighting styles and fell in love with such an idea of an infinite universe of roleplay fighting, but not before my bewildering OTK. AOL had its great fighting talent, but Compuserve's original Zones pvp was a different beast entirely. There was no rhyme or reason. There was only fighting and permanent (almost) killing. People spent days researching frivolous AskJeeve science articles, obscure words, not-established supernatural theories, actual unproven theories, and overall cheapness to kill other players. I changed. I went from barely spelling to spelling decently. I vested time in the ability to put my wit against the locals on a daily basis and the excitement of dueling, raids, or simple death matches.
Then I forgot there was an entire universe, and fell in love all over again. I lost internet but gained determination. I'd discover free-form roleplaying on RPGchat back in 2003 and changed once again. I was introduced to a more laid back but sensible scale of power-efficiency. These people were more concerned about player positioning and simplicity than abstract and absurd metaphysics, and though Compuserve's meta had remain true to function it didn't offer the tone to level down a bit to something comprehensible. Scale the pointless and streamline your idea. The universe was a big place for me and I think that excited me more. My ambition for battle and war matched now a bigger scale and I would fight randoms all over to just prepare for it. RPGchat was good for one specific thing and that's style in writing. Forum based roleplaying focused specifically on how well you actually wrote circa 2004 and up, and my propensity for verbosity had to adjust. Transitioning is a term I'd use but you'd think I was talking about an operation.
2005 got my net back and suddenly my 3 to 4 paragraph barely able to post a day became a tremendous 7 paragraph and up epic for a specific fight because I. Love. This. So. Much. Ask Reno. My fight bout back into the game was by-far the most intense nights of my career because I was active, fierce, and finally took in everything I've learned. My character then is my main now. Jhieten represents that drive and dedication I put in from hours of even attempting to get one hour of net in a forum that demanded a decent level of quality in modern-fantasy clan feuding. An addiction is one that requires a fix from a fiend. You can't fix passion. I OTK'd Murrocko something nasty he never recovered from. I wonder till this day if he still thinks about that. Reno's proposal to go around wrecking shit titillated me more than the act itself. I think that's what makes me fight PVP. The idea of just fighting and killing itself is much more exciting and keeps me focused; however, let's ignore the paranoia some of my Ls awarded me. No one talks about their defeats. Shhhh.
2005 is my best year. Fighting here. Killing there. Being apart of a big clan and being its main big bad enforcer guy. I messed it up introducing Delve to Reno and had to kill the operation. I lament that still. Poor Reno. He was in the way of our cross-fire. Fellow zoner rivalry has its casualties I'm afraid, but it isn't like I didn't suffer. I became a moderator on Animeleague. That's pain. I became a new moderator for a new clan nation section thanks to Rita and... yeah, Delve; unfortunately, that was short lived because of a combination of both roleplay shenanigans and personal issues that were concurrent and intertwined. I broke my own separation of business and personal. We all learn the hard way. Back to RPGchat.
2006 is a year I don't like talking about. Let's talk about 2007. I did absolutely nothing of value on RPGchat because I got a little too caught up in making trouble ooc, arguments, and playing DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. Sorry Ru; however, this is the year that changed everything. TheZones Duel League. A tournament I made to just run a tournament on a forum no one cares about but me. I modeled the damn thing out of my love of Compuserve's zones which precipitated my penchant for unwarranted violence and murder. Compuserve no longer had its actual players in it so it's time to reinvent the wheel -- make it better. What a year to learn that players will cheat to win and cause drama. Taste of my own medicine (except the cheating part). TZDL2007 didn't change how I viewed the game anymore than just restructuring the definitions of rules and being more concrete; by the way, changes that are huge are usually subtle and slow. I say that unironically.
2009 though. I got Paradox, Ru came around, Argryia... what a player. Basically I got some veterans I knew from AOL and one from MSN (Mystic). Decoy got training to get into Vertex (we were going to crash RPGchat) and ran another fun tournament. This was a bit different though. I got to see Ares get completely crushed by Ru. Holy hell I didn't know she can play that way. Oh snap Argryia is actually pre -- THE $%#@ IS STRING META?! WHAT?! So that can be done.. I always wondered that. Huh.. guess Mystic couldn't handle that. Poor guy. Paradox why did you even use an EMP bomb that early? Now I have to call Meta-game. Everyone seemed to LOVE the definition list though. I learned that I've acquired a new talent and love for the game that transcended even violence itself. I discovered there's order in what people believed is chaos, and they didn't know because these phenomenons didn't have definitions. They were never invoked by name but by action. Man this universe gets bigger the smaller an object actually is. Then TZDL2011 hit and blew everything away. There's a demand.
At first people just like the definition list and some sites asked to borrow it. Ok cool, but now they are asking me to write more. They want to know these terminologies. There's a name for occurrences. I overhauled my baby, made live-streams, podcast interviews, and general fun asshattery in our ooc or phone conferences. I got to meet the wonderful people of ZEJ (once was called CoU) and that's how I got acquainted with Keileon (known as Jason at the time). Draven finally joined. Argryia and Ru is there and the first clan rivalry between the AoA and.. Vertex? Well can't really have a clan rivalry in a tournament that has people representing themselves but Lokanas sure believed he'd beat Argryia. I warned him not to underestimate her cause she's a girl. I know he thinks I fucked him over but that OTK is now legacy to a player who became the literal embodiment of top tier play at the time. She'll thank him moreso than insult the guy, but I'm sure his scorn is much more lethal. TZDL2011 was the height of some of the ooc memes and fun but I learned a lot about being a judge and running an event, a community, and myself. I've learned to calm down. I want my players, assets, to have fun. They like the balance, meta, and information. I will give them even more next time. They'd have to just wait 8 months for a semi-finals round... oops. $#@! Skypark.
TZDL2012 is when I learned the meta from a much more bigger picture and every year since my understanding grew. I became content in watching my players compete and perform to expected levels though Argryia just kept growing. Really. I got to see Paradox and Seth Mayvus come around, Draven compete, Keileon compete, Goliath debuts, Ru come back, and Argryia showing everyone she is a legitimately good player. I was not defanged -- quite the opposite. I realized my fangs needed sharpening, but it isn't your bite that's lethal. It's the force. What I saw there changed everything and it all came together again.. until certain shit happened but we'll just not bring it up. Sorry Seth and Paradox because your match suffered because of it.
From there on my love for exploration overcame the game itself.. by exploring the game itself.
vertex.wikia.com/wiki/Home_PageInstead I invested my time understanding concepts, tactics, theories, and even functions of the game I thought I knew and I kind of actually did. That's not the thing that surprised me. What surprised me is that EVERYONE already knows.. they just don't know they are invoking these concepts, at least not by name or a uniformed jargon.. maybe lexicon? I'm not in the mood to synonym this. From here on I am much more interested in seeing new applications of the meta or how it's used rather than beating someone up.. but that's because I want to see order and structure to some degree. Prometheus Project. Not related to NASA. Dabo Ignem. I'll be punished accordingly, but first the mission. I dedicate a lot of my brain power into roleplaying and not just going in a thread and pretending to be a weeb because that doesn't interest me.. not in the conventional way. It's full-circle here. The competitive streak of the original zones and the free-form liberty of 2005 where RPGchat's c/g and Animeleague's.. CN? I don't know. Whatever. Anyway the free-form thing. Yeah. That. Bring back a time of roleplay where pvp was fun as much as it was deviously competitive, but this time with some uniformity and some structure. Definitely NO POLITICS.. unless IC where most people's attention SHOULD BE AT!
V ---------- Too Long Don't Care ----------- V
I like rp fighting and stuff. I people watch in all sorts of sites and arenas for fighting just to see how people move/do. That's why I am here now.
Auz
Spike
