mmo-gaming-memories

Tales of friendship, love, betrayal, and cunning make up our favourite MMO gaming memories. What are yours?

MMORPGs are so much more than just another genre. The friendships, adventures, and memories forged in snowy peaks and dark dungeons tend to stay with players for life. Ask any lover of the MMORPG and they'll be able to list off tales of their hilarious exploits, epic escapades, and unforgettable encounters. And so, we've reached out to some of our favourite MMORPG superstars to discover their most cherished MMO gaming memories. Enjoy!

Bazgrim - "The Great Bathroom Moonstone Heist"

I come from a large gaming family. And nearly every weekend when we were growing up, my cousins and I would go to my grandparents' house to play MMOs together like EverQuest, RuneScape, or whatever else we were hooked on at the time. That led to some of my most priceless memories. One that sticks out was when we were going hard on an MMO that was new at the time called Last Chaos.

One of my cousins and I would have been in our early teens at this point. And while my grandparents fully enabled and supported these gaming weekends, they did also support maintaining healthy habits like going to bed at a reasonable time - usually around midnight. But one weekend, my cousin and I decided that it was much more important to grind out some very valuable Moonstones in Last Chaos... all night. 

Despite our teenage rebellion, we were worried that our grandparents would be upset if they found us pulling an all-nighter playing Last Chaos, so we came up with a plan. We set up a laptop on the bathroom sink across the hall from the bedroom we were staying in. We decided that one person would grind Moonstones while the other person slept, rotating shifts every 30 minutes.

We set a bedside alarm to make sure we stuck to the schedule. When the alarm went off, the person who was sleeping (or pretending to be sleeping) would go and do a secret knock on the bathroom door. The person grinding moonstones in the bathroom (I bet you've never heard that phrase before) would report what progress they made and hand off control of the laptop before going back to bed for the next 30 minutes - rinse and repeat. It was foolproof. If one of our grandparents happened to come downstairs in the middle of the night, it would just look like one of us had woken up to use the bathroom. The only risky time was during the switch - or in the morning, when one of us had to walk out of the bathroom with a laptop and mouse.

Nevertheless, we carried out the plan like clockwork and made absolute bank on Moonstones. Now looking back some 15 years later, it seems completely absurd, but is still one of our favourite gaming stories to tell.

Check out Bazgrim's Twitter channel, his State of the MMO interview, and his brilliant YouTube channel BazgrimTV.

Peter Farrell, aka CCP Swift - "Keep Your Friends Close..."

I've got one that I tell all the time yet it's probably not one that you would expect. EVE Online is the MMO I've played the longest and is dearest to my heart. I used to run an alliance called Pandemic Legion, which was notorious. They were the kingmakers of the game - that extra mercenary force that would push you over the hill. We had great fights all over the place.

My favourite MMO gaming memory was during an in-game event in one of the most lucrative areas of lowsec, where the pirates hang out. Naturally, I embraced my inner pirate and headed over to get plundering. I found someone else there running the sites so was instantly like "Nope, mine." And I killed him.

I took his stuff, finished the site, and kept going about my day thinking nothing of it. But this guy was incensed, he was rage-filled. He sent me the nastiest letter you can imagine calling me the worst names under the sun. I shrugged it off, thinking "Hey, this guy is just having a bad day, whatever."

A couple of minutes later, he opens a direct message with me and says "Hey, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to say all those things. It was just the heat of the moment and I got overwhelmed with a blinding rage. I've settled back down again now and realised what you did wasn't super evil. But I could use a wingman, do you want to join me?"

At this point, I was thinking "Well obviously this is a scam and this guy is going to kill me." But I wanted to know for sure so I said "Sure, let's do it." So for the next few hours we run the sites together, and he just helps me run them, that's it. We split the loot evenly and I could see on the loot tracker that he didn't steal a thing.

Next, he adds me to his contacts and for years he shoots me a message out of the blue whenever there's an event going on asking if we want to run it together. And I say "Sure."

I made this friend out of nowhere and I was convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that he would one day wait for me to take a bigger and bigger ship then backstab me to get his long-brewed revenge. But it's never happened.

I'm looking at the date today and touching wood; it's been five years. Once a quarter he'll pop in and ask to team up, and I'll keep saying yes. He has no idea who I am, that I work at CCP, he just saw this guy flying in space and he made a friend from an enemy.

Follow CCP Swift on Twitter and check out his other brilliant Stories of EVE.

Bergur Finnbogason aka CCP Burger - "All is Fair in Love and EVE"

My MMO gaming memory is almost the inverse of Peter's. It's going to stick with me forever. I can't say it's my "favourite" as such, but it's certainly my most memorable. It's the moment where the harshness of EVE Online was forced down my neck.

I was originally hired into CCP to work on a different IP. After various projects and about six months, we decided to dive deep into playing EVE Online to see what it's really all about. We gathered a lot of us at the office and formed a Corporation. I invited my friends here in Iceland, my friends in Shanghai, and all over the place. Our contacts were pretty generous, we got sent a whole heap of funds, ships, and modules. We started flying in fleets every lunchtime, often getting killed but having great fun.

I was CEO of our Corp so I was rather overwhelmed. I asked my friend at the office if she'd co-CEO with me. At least, I thought she was a friend. Three days later and she'd emptied out our wallet, all of our assets, everything. She left us high and dry, and then she left the Corporation. She basically disbanded our whole operation. We managed to stay alive for 10 whole days...

Of course, I worked in the same office with her and when I saw her at lunch, I was like "WTF?! Like why??" She just said, "Well, you guys just had to learn what this game is all about, you know?" I had to see her multiple times every day. So yeah, I learned about EVE Online the hard way... and I can't even hold it against her. She bought me a drink and it was a pretty good bonding story in the end.

Check out Bergur's fabulous monthly EVE Online interviews with MMOGames.

Redbeard Flynn - "A Band(ed Armour) of Gold"

Coming up with my favourite MMO gaming memory was difficult. I've been playing MMOs since 1998 with Ultima Online and I've had countless incredible memories. Some have been achievements like when my guild in EverQuest cleared raids on the Phinigel progression server or when I reached max level in World of Warcraft for the first time. Perhaps when I got my first GM skill in Ultima Online or when I completed my epic quest in EverQuest 2 for my Bruiser.

Others have been personal, friends I've met, connections made throughout my life in times when I struggled to be social due to anxiety. Or on the other side of that, moments with friends from middle school, high school, and college where we'd join together in an MMO world to complete things from PvP in Ultima Online to... err... PvP in World of Warcraft... Looking back, I think my RL friends were a bit bloodthirsty.

I could talk about the time I got my wife to try EverQuest for the first (and last) time, and how she described her role as a healer as "running out of the blue stuff while trying to heal the red stuff". It was years in the making just to convince her to try it with me, and kudos to her for giving it a shot because honestly, she's just not a fan at all. That's true love. 

Or perhaps just the general awe of entering into a new world for the first time. Like stepping into a book but all the more vivid. Losing yourself in the splendour of a virtual world at your fingertips from living out your Star Wars dreams or wanting to rub elbows with elves and ogres, it was magical.

But if I have to pick one memory, a singular memory, it's going to be personal. When EverQuest first launched its progression servers in 2006, I hopped on. I was 18 and preparing to be a college freshman. I rolled up a dark elf Shadowknight on the Sleeper server and went about reliving the first time I'd logged into EverQuest back in 2000. It was amazing, I'd never experienced classic EverQuest before because when I started it was already Kunark.

I got to really get a feel for what it was like even if those first progression servers were far from perfect. But that's not why I remember it. In fact, my time on Phinigel was a purer and more exciting EverQuest experience for me. It was meeting a random Tier'dal blacksmith who was making banded armour. For those who don't know, banded armour is the first medium armour set you can make. It's a pretty massive upgrade from the usual dropped armour you'd get at low levels. This person, a stranger on the internet, gave me some banded armour for free. This act of kindness led to an interesting turn of events centred around an item called the "Happy Love Bracers" which drop from an NPC in Neriak and have a vibrant bright green appearance. With a trade of these bracers, a friendship was born.

Over the next several years, this person who I stumbled across in EverQuest by chance became my best friend. Over a decade later, he'd be a groomsman in my wedding, flying down just to be part of it. This to me is the power of an MMORPG over a single player RPG which may do things like gameplay, story, and even immersion better. It's that potential for human connection.

I am incredibly lucky to have made not just one wonderful friend but several, and many of them through EverQuest. That is my favourite MMO memory, facilitated by the game just because I needed some armour.

Check out Redbeard Flynn's awesome YouTube channel, his Twitter, and his State of the MMO interview.