User:Ezekial Riddle/My Background

My First
I was a die hard offline game player ever since I was born. My brothers had an old school NES, and even when we finally got a computer we never did any web-surfing with it. Age of Empires, Road Rash, Diablo II, Unreal, etc. Never went online with those games. It wasn't until my cousin showed me Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns and how fun internet play was. Even though the game was virtually a giant and money-costing mod to Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, I had plenty of fun with it on the internet. My favorite screen name, though in retrospect it was a horrible one, was Feral_Outcast.

Part I
After having several fun years with this game, I eventually moved onto Closed Battle.net for Diablo II. How I managed to make it to Guild Wars still mystifies me a bit. The Diablo site that I went to (and still go to) had something about the Beta event, and everyone loved Guild Wars. Needless to say, I was jealous. A few months later, my cousin (same one that got me into SWGB: CC) and I would talk about getting the game. We both agreed that we should, except I had a few obstacles. While it was easy for him to get the game, I ran into a few problems concerning the hardware needed and the money to get it. So, I saved up my money (painful dollar-a-day allowance) until I could get Guild Wars. In the meantime, I would have to spend a week in June '06 at my cousin's house, tending his kittens and other things while he was gone in DC. For the first few days, I played TES IV: Oblivion, which, in most regards, is an Epic. However, after spending 10 hours a day for 3 or 4 days playing Oblivion, I got bored. I opened up his SWG launcher, but I couldn't guess his password for his account. Usually I know what it is, but he got smart and changed it on me. So I ran his Guild Wars launcher, guessed his password and made my own character, Ezekial Riddle. I was blown away. I had so much fun in Prophecies.

Part II
But, eventually, I had to leave. I would dream of playing Guild Wars, the dollar-a-day allowance seemed worth every penny (even though I was handed bills). So, in August '06 I bought my own copy of Prophecies along with Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and a better GPU than the stupid integrated Intel Extreme crap that came with my comp. Even though the Extreme could run GW, it ran GW very crappily. No biggy, I had me a better GPU. Then I ran into the snag of *gasp* dial-up. Damn. Since I only had Prophecies, I would have to spend hours downloading all the Factions stuff. I didn't feel like doing that, so I loaded up Episode 1 and spent hours downloading some other crap, which is weird because Downloading from Steam seemed less daunting downloading for Guild Wars. I don't know how I managed to pull that one out.

Part III
So there I was, playing HL2 E1, and HalfLife DM Source (which ran fairly well on Dial-Up). I had given up Diablo II after the Bannings following the 1.11 patch. Even though I hadn't been banned, most of my friends were. So I gave up. My CDs had long been ruined, so I was running of Daemon Tools and a prayer. But I eventually uninstalled it and completely erased everything related to Diablo II. It wouldn't be until November until I would go to my cousin's again. The first thing I did was hop on GW. Hey look, Nightfall. I got back onto Ezekial Riddle and continued from where I ended (Yak's Bend). He saw me having so much fun with Guild Wars that he said "Yeah, you can have the account. I don't care so much anymore." This left me with an awkward situation: two Guild Wars accounts, one which had my favorite character name, and one that was Game of the Year edition. I stuck with my favorite character name one and tried giving my cousin the account that I bought. He agreed to it initially.

Part IV
So, right when I got home, I went to my computer and started downloading all the necessary stuff to play GW. This probably took me a total of 12 hours, but I had other things to do, and so I did them. When it was said and done, I would start playing GW with my cousin. We did this for a few days, but then he would buy Factions, create a whole seperate account, and play on that instead. He gave me back my old account, and so I was stuck with two accounts. Whatever. I would buy Factions and load that onto my account, he would buy Prophecies and load that onto his, and we had fun through Wintersday 06/07. Eventually he would stop playing, but I would continue on and pick up Nightfall and EotN along the way.

Currently
I play my ranger Ezekial Riddle mostly. I like to delve into PvP every now and then, but like with red wine, I do it in moderation. You may see me on my other characters, usually for some reason that I don't know. I've had a fun experience with Guild Wars, up until the point where grinding became requirement for the PvE meta (See: Norn Title Track). I've one maxed title and that is SS. I hated getting that one, but I just wanted one accomplishment. Going for LB next.