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Comment by jib | Hacker News Reader

I disagree on it being the only game. There are people I played EQ with from 10 years ago who I am still in touch with and would consider friends, and we spent a lot of time in the game talking about just about everything.

I also had the same experience with people in quake that I played with - I am sure if I caught up with some of the guys from the swedish QWCTF scene back in the day we would have a bunch of things to talk about, same with the community around the webgame Utopia.

I think it depends on how much time you put into the game and how engaged you are with it. Communities can develop around all types of games, but I agree that UO was a very engaging game and I still remember the people I played UO with 17 years later, even though I am not in touch with them anymore.

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It is hard to explain this, you might have community outside the game, but UO is probably only game when you have community inside the game. You really have neighbours ingame, you meet them often, maybe some other guy you see on market from here and there will steal something from you.

I still remember one guy, which I considered to be my friend, to betray the city, making the portal that leads to small house full of PK, quite a few people get killed and robed out of equipment that you need to spend weeks of full time dungeon going to get to. There was greed, noble characters and also evil ones. You lost your precious equipment forever easily, you build ingame friendships and hatred by seeing same people every day.

There was also another guy, who by playing his role pretend to be mentally ill, but was actually using greed of other players to steal out of them. Just by talking, little bit of using known bugs (for hiding his name), using different clothes and stuff like that. He wrote it up when he did his act and it can be great book, but it actually happened in game and you were part of it.

These stories are 12 years old, tell me about your frags ;)

I played a similar game. Originally released as Subspace in 1997 as a MMO asteroid-type game by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. VIE later abandoned server hosting duties but server software was available so the game became player ran on community servers. Eventually the client needed to be replaced due to cheating, which was done by a player named Priit Kasesalu, known for Kazaa. Years later the server software was also replaced by the community as well.

The game split game types into "zones" that were 24/7. The zone I played, and eventually became a "sysop" of, would regularly have only 40-80 people tops at any given time. Maybe 500 unique people. Not sure exact numbers because we didn't track stats like that.

Anyways, can totally resonate with playing with the game group of people every day for months or years. I had an arch-nemesis who, while we were cordial, always ended up playing league matches against each other. The rivalry was fierce but so was the friendship.

The game has been Steam Greenlit after many years of problems (copyright issues with original company, no source code for client, etc) and is about to make its debut:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144913...

You can play today at http://getcontinuum.com

My brother still plays Subspace and he was on the beta in '96. Something about that game brings out the meanest streak in humanity, though. The comments are often hilarious, you can almost hear the other guy snap his keyboard in rage.

Great, balanced mechanics, though perhaps that's changed. I'm thinking of the old Chaos and Capture the Flag zones. Can still hear the sound effects as I'm typing this.

I'm glad someone replied who recognized the game. I started in around ~2001 when its spiritual successor game (SOE Cosmic Rift) went pay-to-pay and killed off its dedicated beta player base.

I login every so often to check my ?messages and see if any old friends are online. The zone I eventually sysoped in is dead these days but the community is still strong.

The game honestly started my programming and tech career with things like bot and zone/squad website dev. I plan to check in tomorrow for the Steam launch.

> "you can almost hear the other guy snap his keyboard in rage."

This made me chuckle as it 100% spot on.

Do you know your brothers alias or would you be willing to ask him if he was ever involved in SS[*] RedStar or knew me? (game alias same as hn account)

I think I have stories from all my games. Utopia - plotting against the 4-500 people strong enemy alliance by building a network of 2-300 loosely connect people with various interests, balancing various alliances and allegiances, trading together a team of 25 dedicated team mates, racing for the top but being pulled down by trying to manipulate one alliance too many. And doing it again next 2 month round.

EQ - pulling all PoF bosses without touching any trash mobs, swimming through lava with a one hit kill boss behind me to save time, spending 3-4 hours with 70 other people to clear council of rathe, progressing from killing dragons in the ice zone to clearing plane of time, aoe kiting an entire zone... (Eq bard is still the best designed class I saw in any game)

UO - getting an order for 200 suits of coloured ore, working to complete it like mad for 2 weeks and being robbed by a bug in the new stealth feature just before completing the sale... Hitting GM smithing, buying a tower with 3 friends, exploiting blade spirits for resists forever... First time buying a house (just north of Minoc)

QWCTF - first time winning a clan game by timing quads perfectly on e1m2 for a full map (I could still run that map in my sleep), taking on and beating a clan miles better than us by playing from the same room, playing a match entirely with the boom stick in a clan game and still typing kills, the feeling of flying into a base with perfect grapple moves despite two guards with ro and str/res runes, the feeling of bouncing along on the long stretches of e4m3 with floor grapple speed jumps...

All of that more than 10 years ago and still vivid memories for me.

And same with people who I interacted with...

QWCTF - Capten, Foureau, TwinTurbo, Pimp all the other Synergy and Lords guys, Nii! (We were the worst and nicest), Skalman and many more...

Utopia - All the Malaysians from HaLL, the swedes from AV, The mishmash that was PAX, all us monkeys, the hasbeens in Mordor who you still couldn't mess with, the annoying Absalom guys, the other random alliances that formed and broke up.

EQ - all the dawnraiders I played with, the dream team with Zohran, Ashigaru, Filroden, Stragen, Veggi, Ganewate and his brother, Graouwl, Qujam, Stamford and their team and way too many more to mention..

UO - all the smiths in Brittania, including the UBB guild led by Ulysses... Min, and the other independents, Ethereal and his two crazy Canadian sidekicks in our guild, the two Danish pks (dog something?) and so on...

All those games are filled with memories of both events and people.

utopia, good times.

This. The fact that you literally had to build communities... I would meet neighbors, get along, not get along. There would be people where if you see them, you immediately run into your house, lock the doors, and just have to wait it out. Probably safer not to try returning to your house or use a alternate "safety" rout.

EQ was a social game. In between the massive amount of time siting waiting for something to happen you had a lot of time to talk :)

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