Continued from…

Margaret's bookshelf is stocked with fantasy titles. She's even written some fantasy herself; one night, after being killed three times in a row on EQ (resurrection is a routine but difficult part of the game), she exorcised her frustrations by writing a short story about Faline's misadventures.

"I've never played a game quite like it," she says of EQ. "You're just in this world, you can look up at the sky, the clouds going by, down at the ground… You're free to do what you want to do."

What she wants to do right now is get through the Butcherblock Mountains so she can show me some of the game's more impressive scenery. Some of her guild members alert her that they're heading into a dungeon in about a half-hour. It's on another continent, which means getting to a port and then taking a 15- to 20-minute (real time) boat ride across the ocean. "You have to go through the Dark Elf Forest to get there," she says with a grimace, "which is instant death because the guards will kill you if they see you. Of course, I've got invisibility, so I should be okay."

The landscape unfolds in three-dimensional crests and valleys, with digital detail so precise you can see the texture of the bark on trees. Other characters wander by, some of them part of the game's permanent computerized cast but most of them representations of other human players who are traversing the same ground at the same time from living rooms, bedrooms, and offices all over the (real) world. Faline pauses to chat with one or two, but she doesn't want to miss her boat. She wants to meet up with her guild friends. Especially with Silvan.

Now let me switch gears a bit and tell you what has happened recently. For some reason I decided to move to San Diego. Don't ask why, I'm not sure, but I do plan to move there. A friend and I planned a week vacation to there, to check it out and see if we liked it enough to live there. Now in the meantime, I found out that several members of Ilsik Haucil actually live in San Diego, and Onyx lives in Los Angeles. Now I thought that was a great coincidence, and started talking to another guild member, Finan, about our trip. We also started talking frequently through e-mail, and we made plans to meet, and have him show us around the city when we got there. Now once again you can see how this is merging with my real life. I actually met six Ilsik members on my trip.

The unforeseen thing that happened was my meeting Finan's roommate, Silvan. He is also a member of Ilsik, the first officer actually, and I had grouped with him several times in the game, although not as often as some. He and I hit it off in real life almost immediately. As a matter of fact, he is coming here to see me in a little less than two weeks. Now. While in Cali, we decided to go to L.A. and meet Onyx also, who agreed to show us around L.A.

Now when I came home, and things had been spelled out between Silvan and I, I had to tell Onyx of this. It's so strange. We called off the in-game wedding, because of real-life relationships. And some people in game actually got angry that the wedding was canceled because in the announcement that we sent out it was said that my heart was stolen by another.

After an hour or so, Margaret and Faline have shown me deserts and dungeons, forests and towns. Margaret also introduces me to her other characters, a warrior and a bard, both of them low-level "newbies." There are ways to transfer money and equipment from veteran characters to newer ones, but the practice–called "twinking"–is frowned upon. Margaret sheepishly admits to doing it once. But she's baffled that people are actually selling senior characters for real money on Internet auction sites like eBay. "A 35th level character went for like $800," she says, shaking her head.

She shows me the Oasis of Marr, a desert landscape with velvety maroon skies. It's where she comes to relax, she says. She uses a jpeg of it as her computer desktop.

Margaret hasn't been playing as much the last few months, she says. She has too many other things going on. But she likes to have it there.

"I really get into escapism, I do," she says, "and EQ is really just a prime subject for escapism. But it's not like I'm trying to escape from life. It's just that I enjoy this other little universe, too."

Heh something else that you will find amusing. I have never liked my actual first name, and have always wanted a nickname but never had one. So since these people all know me as Faline, I plan to just continue going by Faline in real life also, when I move, I intend to keep the name :) Of course I cannot do that here, because everyone knows me as Margaret, but in Cali…

Bye for now,

Marg/Fal

First Published: November 11, 1999 • Metro Pulse

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