It's a strange experience to jump back into an old game character after 15 years

[Sandsifter]

I recently received an email from the developers of ?Dragonrealms?, inviting me back to play, and offering a 50% off deal for a 3-month subscription. This was the first online game I had ever played; three years before I signed up for the Everquest beta. It was a ?MUD?, which were the non-graphical precursors of MMORPG?s, and although played entirely via text input, it was extremely complex nonetheless. I played from 1996 ? 1999, before moving on to the new generation of games that were coming into their own at the turn of the century.

I didn?t think much more about the email at first, but during a night of wine-fueled gaming, the thought struck me?why not go back and just check it out? It?s not like I haven?t thrown money away on a whim before; my library of un-played Steam games will attest to that, so glass in hand, I re-subscribed and travelled back to the lands of Elanthia after 15 years.

I opened my eyes in a cave somewhere, read the rather verbose description of the room I was in, saw that there was one exit, and immediately realized that I hadn?t the foggiest idea where I was. That?s when the fire elemental arrived. I just stared as it approached. It moved to pole range, and my brain still couldn?t react to the threat. Then it closed to melee range, and as my fingers just hung frozen over the keyboard, it started to beat the crap out of me. ?You are bruised???you are battered???You are hurt?.I think I actually muttered ?Help?, but my wife usually ignores me when I?m playing my ?silly games?, so I was on my own. That?s when it finally happened. Whether it was some long unused part of my mind waking up, or some form of keyboard muscle memory kicking in ? I remembered what I needed to do. I frantically started trying to type ?Retreat?, realizing quickly how badly my typing skills had deteriorated. I somehow managed to get out of range, ran to the next room, then the next, and took stock of the situation. Then I remembered another word. ?Assist?.

Believe it or not, Dragonrealms still has live Game Masters, and within a few minutes one popped into the cave in a puff of smoke, and asked me ?What seems to be the problem??. I explained that I just recently arrived back after a long absence, was kind of hurt, very lost, and had no way to defend myself under the circumstances. He pointed to the sabre in my right hand, but kindly agreed to teleport me back to my old town, which turned out to be actually fairly close to the death cave.

It took me ½ hour to find the bank, and was pleased to see that I still had a small balance there. Twenty minutes later I found my storage vault, the same surly Dwarf from 15 years back, still guarding the door. I paid my overdue rental charge and stared into a vault with 175 items collecting dust?and the memories came flooding back. The Enchanted gauntlets that I had won at a bazaar raffle in 1997, my instrument case with my very expensive Mandolin (I?m a Bard in-game), and countless other precious possessions, all there waiting for my return.

It?s taken me almost a month to begin to feel comfortable in the lands again, and I have a ton of things still left to relearn, but the experience has been pretty amazing. I?m not sure how long I?ll be staying this time, but I?m certainly glad I decided to take a trip back and visit. There?s nothing like that warm feeling of familiarity, when you stumble upon of piece of your past that hasn?t changed, despite the years.

Has anyone else had a similar experience revisiting their gaming past?

 

[Treeberry]

I logged into the original Guild Wars and it definitely felt strange to look at bank storage. I never got particularly wealthy in that game (I had a bad case of chronic restartitis and largely stayed in Pre-searing anyway) but it was strange to walk around areas that had once been so densely populated they lagged heavily. How valuable is that white dye or black dye when no one else is around?

Starting with a new character to experience Pre-searing Ascalon again was incredibly nostalgic. Back then I had to skip the cutscenes due to technical issues so I didn't know what was going to happen to Ascalon. I found Post-searing to be depressing and once I made it Kryta I didn't care about continuing the story. My favourite area was the Ascalonian Catacombs.

A few years ago I logged into my old Runescape account. I had been a member at some point so I had all kinds of cool premium items as well as the festival and special occasion items. I remember working my pixelated backside off to get a dragon dagger that I kept poisoned, alternating between chopping wood and catching lobsters near the party house place. I remember the agony of trying to get my crafting skill up and painstakingly mining for clay to make the amulet I wanted. The joy and fear I felt when I escaped a player trap in the Wilderness when foolishly exploring in full gear for the first time. My kitty cat

Sadly I can't log into either of my old Runescape accounts. *shrugs*

 

[Cowabungaa]

It moved to pole range

You. I like you. Welcome to the Escapist. We need more folk like you.

Anywho, back to the topic. As for actual characters, I had this experience in a mild way. I got back to WoW while I was out for around 5 years but that didn't have the same level of impact. Given, it did seem like a long time. I slightly cringed at how awful I was at naming characters back in my late teens and snickered as I saw all the random outfits in my Gnome Rogue's bank that I gathered because I got bored. You only had so much to do as an endgame raider who didn't PvP back in the earlier Burning Crusade days. I forgot all about those but boy I really put some work in those; a pimp outfit, including cane, a very convincing Link outfit, an awesome pirate outfit. Yeah, that was a good time.

Then I logged out of my Rogue and never touched him again, in favor of a new Dwarf Warrior on a completely new server. Nostalgia never hooks me for long.

A bigger culture shock, as the one you describe, was when I discovered Unreal Tournament '99 GOTY was on sale on Good Old Games, I think it was last summer. I hadn't played the game in nearly 10 years and it was like ?2,- or something so what the hell, right?

So I booted it up, glorified in the nostalgia of that menu music, found me a Deck-16 server, got into the game and, well...

Yeah it wasn't pretty. The game was certainly familiar, but boy it was like I had two left hands.

 

[briankoontz]

I think the best way to revisit the past is to play the games of the present, which fortunately is very do-able these days with the modern retro scene. Shovel Knight is a better experience to me than playing old platformers - modern developers have the benefit of having played those old games, whereas older developers had much less of a games backlog available to them (and the technology wasn't as available to access as much). We learn from each other - game development progresses over time because of all the individual and group contributions that we all make. Even when the gameplay is very similar, there's often a Meta-level to modern retro games, such as in I Wanna Be The Guy.

Not only are modern retro games often simply better than older games for the above reasons, they also allow us to explore a new space. It's a new unknown game, so we're not retreading the same shoe-steps we've done many times before. While this matters much less in an abstract timeless universal game like Tetris, games with narratives are often linked to the time, place, and personal biases in which they were made. The deep meaning in a game like Thomas Was Alone loses it's value over time, when the cultural landscape shifts away and makes the narrative much less relevant.

The greatest value in old games for me is when there simply hasn't been a modern improvement in a great game, so in order to get that experience there's no better method than to go back and play that game. I suspect that people will be playing Minecraft a decade from now. Tetris of course, and Deus Ex is still an amazing experience partly because if anything, it's cultural relevance has only increased in the age of Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, but it still suffers from the re-tread aspect as well as the learning process of modern developers, thus making Dishonored a better game from strictly a gameplay point of view.

A secondary value in old games is when some key aspect of them has been lost to modern developers. I still play Angband not just because it's world is amazing and what it allows for the imagination is unparalled in gaming history, but because the wondrous efficiency that it achieves in time spent for satisfaction gained (similar to Tetris) is not duplicated by the cumbersome and bloated modern games. While we learn from each other, we also forget some things and fail to incorporate everything of value as we develop the medium.