Saturday 12 October 2002

Pic of the day: Itland The Faithful. Uh oh. Yeah, right.

The Faithful Paladins

As you should be able to see from today's picture, I've gotten a new tag. < The Faithful > is not a personal appellation, but rather the name of the paladin guild on the Galahad server of Dark Age of Camelot. I've been drooling for membership in a pure paladin guild for a while, and this night I finally got there. Took their sweet time too, but then I guess it is not quite for the casual observer, as it were.

The Faithful guild is verging on role playing even though Galahad is not an RP server as such. (There are a few such servers, for the people who don't want to hear any references to the modern world while they play. I don't play on any of them, but I understand there's a lot of Thee and Thou and bowing and curtsying.) The Faithful make no attempt to tone down the religious connotation, rather they have guild level names such as "Missionary" and "Bishop". This is of course all in the game, there is no requirement that the player be a Christian in real life. For those who have a real life, that is.

I like to play classes I can identify with. It is telling that I have never played a DAoC class with backstab, and only cursory tested an archer class. I also played a minstrel with sneak skill, but I did not use it in fight. I am just not comfortable with sneaking, subterfuge and backstabbing. Of course, in real life I'm not comfortable with killing openly either, but that's more a question of obedience rather than innate impulses ... and the sad fact that once people die in real life, they're out of the beta test altogether, and won't be back until the final release of Real Life. (Which has been so long delayed now that most people have probably written it off as vaporware. More about that another day, perhaps.)

In a role playing game where death is merely inconvenient rather than permanent, I feel quite OK about being a magic knight of religion. And I'm happy to report that so far it looks like the other people in the guild are much like me. I guess this is a benefit of having such a specialized guild. One of them even came over to the Tomb of Mithra (where I was hunting) just to babysit me. Paladins don't have the ability to cast protective or enhancing spells on people outside a group, so the only thing she could do for me was really to resurrect me if I died. Which I did not do until well after she was gone. My characters tend to die rarely when not in groups. I play cautiously and pick my battles with as few surprises as possible.

So I'm still not likely to find love, and it sure won't make me rich. (Quite the opposite, since I still haven't got my ADSL to work. Waiting for the new modem.) But hey, being able to have fun while being good - who could ask for more? Now if you will excuse me, there are undead to hack to pieces ...