Lineage 2 was my very first true MMORPG. This was in many ways a blessing and a curse. On the good side, I wasn't bitter and jaded from drama in other MMORPGs. I could appreciate the fun parts of the game without worrying about the desperate grind of people that actually knew what was going on. Blissful ignorance. The problem was generally that L2 came from Korea, where it had already been played for some time. Most of the people in North American L2 by the end of beta were people who had learned the game by beta-testing the asian versions. They knew all the glitches and duping opportunities and milked them mercilessly in the opening weeks after the Open Beta character wipe. For these and a number of other reasons, L2 was doomed from the start but I got sucked in early.
Ketae and I had signed up for the L2 beta together. It looked like my kind of game - manly combat in a roughly medieval setting. After I got into it, I immediately thought of her and looked her up. We had some resolving to do, but patched things up and played together for the last week of closed beta and two weeks into open beta. Then she had to take a couple weeks off, I kept levelling, and I do not believe she started back up again.
The story of my adventures in L2 are many and someday may be told in their entirety. I was primarily a casual player, hardcore for a week or so at a time. I never made a huge amount of progress despite being in the game from the very start. I got a character to level 40, left the game, came back and started a new one which I got to 52, left, came back and got him to 60ish, only to be knocked out of the game by nothing other than a classic scam which deprived me of my primary weapon. I've kicked myself over and over for it since then, but what can you do?
By way of reflecting on my time in Lineage 2, during which I was involved in many high-level political conflicts and rubbed shoulders with the best and brightest of Sieghardt server, I think it was chilling how many hours you could sink into the game and how immersed in it you could become. In the era of voice communication and broadband internet, for several years now MMORPGs have truly been alternate existences for people rather than just outlets of entertainment.
On the subject of alternate existences, during my L2 travels I ran into Charisse, Eddie, and YumYum, my old There cronies. YumYum and I spent a lot of time together in L2 during my second stint in the game, and it was she that introduced me to something called Second Life. SL was like There, she said, only way better. It was free, so there was no reason for me not to try it out.