{"id":239,"date":"2014-07-04T19:18:40","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T14:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realmsofdespair.info\/blogs\/tharius\/?p=239"},"modified":"2014-07-04T19:18:40","modified_gmt":"2014-07-04T14:18:40","slug":"a-look-back-with-jade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/blog\/2014\/07\/04\/a-look-back-with-jade\/","title":{"rendered":"A look back with … JADE!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of you will recall a time when a trip into Seth’s Fortress included a run to Emerald<\/em>. \u00a0The reason for this rename is the author of today’s retrospective piece. \u00a0Having to type tell 0.Jade<\/em> must have gotten to be a bother early on and the mob had to give up it’s name so that the immortal could get her tells :). \u00a0Many will recall Jade as one of the driving forces behind the creation of Nephandi along with many behind the scenes projects over the years. \u00a0Without further ado, I give you, Jade!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Realms of Despair spawned in me a lifelong love of video games and gamers.\u00a0 I stumbled across Realms of Despair in the early 90\u2019s and\u00a0 joined the ranks of the Immortals to be alongside Haus, Blodkai, Elcid, Thoric, Darrek and\u00a0 others to join later [like] Dria and so many others that worked tirelessly to make the community a wonderful escape.\u00a0 For years, without ever speaking to any of these folks via voice (way before skype, ventrilo etc) \u2026 we bonded.\u00a0 Some of my fondest memories involved meeting Elcid in real life (sorry I got us lost driving and we ended up on some nasa restricted grounds!), then Darrek (who introduced me to Timothy Horton\u2019s coffee!) \u00a0and finally Thoric.\u00a0\u00a0 I still remember knocking on Thoric\u2019s hotel door to hash out some crazy ideas we had about making graphic muds, and honestly expecting him to appear with a halo around his head and for him to hover feet above the ground.\u00a0\u00a0 I was quite amazed that he seemed so much like a normal human when I was sure he was a GOD.<\/p>\n

Haus, one of my heroes, told us the ideas of color in a mud and graphics was insane. \u201cColor in a mud?? That\u2019s like ketchup on a lobster!\u201d\u00a0 Undaunted, I spent hours creating ASCII MOTDs and a way to have colored pictures appear when someone typed ..\/who jade etc.\u00a0 It was a labor of love.<\/p>\n

While I have a lifetime of memories from that era, one that stands out was around Halloween.\u00a0 I believe I had recently ascended to the Council of Elders and had this great ability\u2014to rename characters.\u00a0 So, I set about changing everyone I could find online into more festive names … everything from Scooby Doo to The Hulk\u2026whatever people requested.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The players all had a great time and it was all good, until we realized we really had a difficult time tracking down all and reverting their names to the normal ones. I was in trouble for that one for days … but I still think it was worth it \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Despite the growth of graphical MMOs , nothing has ever been so immersive to me as Realms of Despair. The game, and others, are not often credited for being the forefathers of modern games, but the newest MMOS have a lot to learn from these ancestors.\u00a0 Death Traps, Balzhurs … oh those were the days!<\/p>\n

Congratulations to Realms and thank you to Thoric and the community that made all these memories for thousands of people possible.\u00a0\u00a0 Sidenote —\u00a0 I recall one birthday of Thoric\u2019s … he was in his mid 20\u2019s and confided that he felt he hadn\u2019t accomplished anything . I was stunned … how could one who had created such an amazing world and provided entertainment to so many \u2026 not feel he had accomplished anything!?\u00a0\u00a0 Of course he went on to accomplish much more, but I hope all will give him credit for one of the most amazing worlds created.\u00a0 Congrats on the anniversary.<\/p>\n

With love,<\/p>\n

Terri aka Jade<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of you will recall a time when a trip into Seth’s Fortress included a run to Emerald. \u00a0The reason for this rename is the author of today’s retrospective piece…. Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospective","tag-jade"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Tri1-3R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}