Memories of PWI, Forum Event!

my story:

* before you read it: grab a drink *

Somewhere in 2010 I got someone on the phone. This person was talking about PWI, he needed help with some quest and I didn't had a clue what it was except for being a game. Normally I only like to design stuff or programming tools and such. Never liked playing games.

Well, I was asked to download the game just to help him. Then the war started (over the phone): I had downloaded the wrong client: Perfect World Europe. Took me some time to actually have the same client as he did. Then I had to choose a character. Since I don't believe in magic- unless it's my own lol- I had chosen the archer class. Free wings to fly! At the time I didn't knew all keys so flying in the air took several hills. I was a real lawnmower man! After doing some quests I had to visit plume just to wait for 'the dude' to arrive. I was shocked when I finally discovered his character: a female cleric. Wtf!

Then he told me that he had chosen this character because female players can easely have free stuff from other players. We just waited for one of his other friends. Then there was another wtf moment: his friend also played on a female character. We decided to fly to Archosaur. With my white wings I had to stop multiple times just to let the mana-bar get full again. After some time I reached Archo finally!

My connection became completely laggy but while running 1 meter per 5 minutes lol I did notice catshops. AFK spots like we have now simply didn't exist. Catshop snipers and other bots like we have now didn't exist. Gamazon spam? No, didn't exist. People actually had to do quests to level and some had chosen to sell their stuff in the big city. I tried it once, some 2 years later, only to discover people didn't want to buy my flyer, believe it was 3.3 speed, for 10kk but where willing to buy it for less... let's say 10% of my sellingprice.

Back to 2010: I started to support the dude by helping or even doing his quests. Later on I helped a lot of other people in the game. Never needed help myself except for the culti's. My BH29 was finally done at level 51! Cool! As for today I still need to finish the culti-quests. Main reason for this is that most people I've met are not willing to help an archer or would only help if there is any profit for them. It changed my gameplay a bit.

Wow... hopped back to the future. Moving to 2010 again:

Then one day the person who I had on the phone called me again. He had a new character. A male version this time. I was like "okay, so what?". He told me he was too scared to embrace a female character. I should make one so he could grab me and fly around for a bit. At the time I was drunk as f.ck so made a psychic, waited until he arrived at my location and accepted the 'embrace' thingy. He flew me right to archosaur. Had to run/swim back to my starting-location because at level 1 you can only do one thing: start the quests! Had some bad experiences with the "high level" mobs. Why would they attack me? O wait... level 1... I was still a moron!

At the time (2016) the dude is married and divorced 3 times so he's not affraid to talk to strangers anymore lol. He sometimes calls me just to ask if he can get help with something while sometimes he just want to know if I have 'the same quest(s) as he does', meaning: 'yes I can solo, if you help me'. It's odd, expecting him on the phone each day. We are both addicted to the game lol.

PWI for me is just a game. But it's a wonderful game. I only missed 1 day playing since the day I started. In the past it was "quests" everyday while now I just make some time for my lazyness, following the new bots around the worldmap, reading worldchat and factionchat, help people when I'm nearby, just s(h)it in my homestead or relog to another character (or server) just to mess around for a bit of experience. Yes, still having fun each day! Hope PWI stays here for a long time.

My fav moment.

A few years back, I was bugging a GM (shubei I think it how it was spelled). Well more harassing them, than bugging them.
Anyway, he asked me to stop. I said the only way I would is if he would spawn a big mob named after me.
He did



Don't think I stopped harassing him though.

So why is this my fav moment? Well its the first time in PWI that something named Foley took more than 1 hit to kill.

PWI is the first MMORPG I've ever played, and I was lucky to have a faction "discover" my cleric and take me under their wings. I started playing as a distraction because my Dad had been diagnosed with cancer and I just needed an escape from my overwhelming emotion. However, I didn't realize I would find more emotional support than I realized.

There was a barb in faction and we hung out in caves and led squads through their daily BHs. Soon, we were inseparable. I called him my "tank slave" and he absolutely loved it. We got married in game and ended up doing everything together.

My Dad passed away only a few months after I started playing PWI, and I got obsessed with the game and poured my time into it during my grieving, hanging out with my barb friend daily. But eventually my barb friend started to logged on less and less, and then not at all for months. When he finally returned, I found out that he had himself been diagnosed with brain cancer and had undergone major surgery. He didn't want me to know because he didn't want to add to the distress I already had. He was in his own distress because he seriously almost died and that emotional trauma put him in a dark place. After that, we got really close, and shared our feelings, particularly when we were having a hard day emotionally. We listened to each other and did things to make each other happy as much as possible... something that isn't easily done unless the other person understands your sadness.

That was in 2010. Today, in 2016, we continue to keep in touch and still focus on making each other as happy as possible when we chat. I cannot be more grateful for such a precious friend. Even though I live in Canada and he lives in Puerto Rico, spending time nver feels like we're continents away.



joosii on Tideswell.

My favourite memory in PWI is the rivalry between Vindicate (& allies) and Hoorah (& allies). This rivalry existed on Sanctuary and carried over post-merge on Twilight Temple. Thanks to this rivalry, we've had a lot of fun PvP in Territory Wars, open world PK and Dragon Conquest (to a lesser extent). I hope both factions can continue being challenging rivals for one another.

https://youtu.be/lJ9g4n5mkRo

This was a group effort, so we don't necessarily want the winning prizes.

The participants are:
GORILLA, Wyvelin, Nevranite, LaWikiSpirit, YuureiHana, Evelayne, FuyuYin, Dartwave and nub. All players are on Twilight Temple server.



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Apologies for the eleventh-hour submission, but I hope you'll agree the story makes up for it.

In late 2008, a small group of my friends had stumbled upon PWI and were playing it LAN-party style in a public space of my college's student union. Two BMs, a barb, and a veno were among the original group. Around the same time, I met my future wife (both in-game and out) and she joined as well, starting as a Cleric. I went with Archer first, partially to serve as her questing counterpart, but also because the group didn't have one yet.

Nobody really told us how to play, but by comparing notes, we figured most of it out on our own. I was the one who took up crafting first, and in the mid-20s I made a two-star Doublestrike Crossbow with Toughen proc. I was floored - that weapon was amazing, and I had no idea that I'd essentially crafted the fb19 Trial Crossbow out of sheer coincidence. But then, we knew nobody above our level, and so none of us even tried fb19 until the late 20s.

That FB19 was a formative experience for me. It was like doing a BH run before such a thing existed... an evenly-balanced squad attacking everything in the instance. We died a fair amount of times, as much for the sake of learning as anything else. For example, no one had informed my wife of the benefits of Ironheart over Pureheart (and that's not an obvious thing in the 20s), so we occasionally bit off more than we could chew before Pureheart kicked in.

The way we beat the boss was, in retrospect, kind of kludgy... though it seemed pretty amazing at the time. Occultist, as you may recall, has these little water pools on the sides of his room. After we found out that Pureheart wasn't sufficient to heal a single tank at a time, we ended up swapping in and out of those pools in order to swap aggro on the boss. The barb, the two BMs and I kept trading aggro, taking what damage we could and retreating to the pool to pop potions in between. Looking back, I don't know how we managed to avoid the boss resetting on us, but we did.

I wish I had saved more screenshots of that run. As-is, all I have is this one of the squad at the entrance.



As time went on, our offline friends eventually moved on to other games, and while this was a downer, we continued on with PWI anyway (sometimes, despite ourselves). I remember my first fashion set (verdana/tang pants combo), my first flyer (elven radiance - I refuse to call it "glory"), my first mount (panther), and my first mold weapon (Sinister Shooter). I remember the first time the Snowmen came to Archosaur and the how fun the Christmas card collection quest was. I remember scouring Vibrant Cliffs and the Lost City outskirts for herbs to sell, and listening to the game's music while doing so is probably one of the most relaxing experiences I've ever had with a game.

PWI has changed a lot over the years - more for the worse than for the better IMO - but overall, the only thing I truly regret is that ever since the Celstial Vale was introduced, no newbie can experience the PWI lowgame in the ways that I did. Still waiting on a classic server, PWE!

In the meantime, let me leave you with a few miscellaneous screenshots from those days. Perhaps some oldies like myself would enjoy them.

-Miugre/Etherblade





Hanging at Broken Bow Bluff with my crafted crossbow. Life Powder was my bread and butter apoc for surviving those old quests. Also, NecroMeaty Pants!
This was probably the first catshop I ever put up. Later ones were mostly focused on selling the herbs.
Anyone remember these wraith events?? If you were quick enough on the draw, you could farm tons of low-level DQs for 800 coins or 1.3k each, which back then was a fortune. They did heavily favor Archers, though.
You think you've seen GM events? You probably never saw a lagball quite this big. Maybe some of you will see a face or two in the crowd that you remember.
When World Bosses first came into the game, they were a constant presence on the questing fields because no one could kill them yet. I of course had to poke Cenminator after taking this screenshot, which worked out about as well as you'd expect.
Every so often the game would glitch and lock down all the teleporters for a few minutes. I was told once this is a side effect of the monthly race that never got implemented.
Fireworks over west district at 1/1/2009, 12:00 EST. Just strikes me as sad how much more populated the game was back then.
My first mount was a panther. IIRC I bought it at that level for 800k. It's still my Archer's mount, though I double-spurred it long ago.
Another GM event. Also: Kantorek! Also also: a flyer that got renamed later! A cookie for anyone who can remember why.
Finally, a rare shot of FrankieRaye, showing up during the original new years events. I think I was talking to him because the event had glitched and there were these paper lanters that were supposed to spawn.