Yes, that’s one hell of a statement I’ve made there, but is a correct one.
Flip back to 9/11/01. I lost two co-workers who were also good friends. One of them taught me how some of our app works, so now checking it I always think of him. And of course they were visiting that day, was not their normal office.
My next two years afterward were a bit of a blur really, due to a darkness that settled over me; I honestly cannot remember most of it. I had moved to 3rd shift as my apathy came to an all-time low, and had settled into a routine that helped to slowly climb out of it.
November 2003, two things happened: New notebook, and Uru came out. The notebook was to create a fresh start, mark a new time in my life (I did the same with the car, in getting my first Prius one month later). Uru, however, I waited on since like all games I now waited due to patches and bugs. Plus I was extremely skeptical of Live at the time.
Well, after X-mas that year, I had spent some money getting the Myst Anniversary DVDs, and played them. I realized that I should try Uru after all, and got it. And finished it two days later. And applied for Live, for the heck of it.
I got in quickly enough, as one of the ‘Accounting Error’ group just after New Years. It was laggy, and overcrowded, and problematic. But realized from talking to others online that I had found a new group of friends. That *we* were going to be the story, for which an ending should not have been written.
But, alas, it was. The shutdown occured on my birthday no less. And yes, I’m still bitter at Ubisoft over this. I’ve been through the hell called the Diablo 2 server issues, and Uru Live was nothing like that, never would have been like that. It just needed time, and they were not given it; That’s it.
So why do I stand by this claim of Uru saving my soul? Many reasons. It introduced me to forum culture. It gave me a new circle of friends that I could understand and be with, even at my hours. And most importantly, it gave me a direction again – which I needed badly to get out of that darkness my soul was in.
But with Live offline, there was uncertainty of what I would do next. I swore off online games totally for a while, and forums as well for a bit. But I began seeking, and quietly heard of some places where people were trying this again.
That’s when I heard about Second Life…