Again, a wave of memories of Lineage II washed over me. I played it for 4 years, from 2007 to 2011 and this time will remain in my memory forever. In fact, the stories from Lineage can probably be remembered endlessly, as well as the people who played next to me.

I played for Blade Dancer in probably the coolest Russian clan, there was a necromancer hero in our party. If you have not played Lineage, there is only one hero for each class on the entire server, and in order to become a hero, he, figuratively speaking, must defeat all other players of the same class in PVP. In general, it was a respected clan and a very cool party.

When I left the game forever, a lot of players heard about me, at least remotely (the usual online server was from 5,000 to 9,000 people, but there were probably about 100,000 registered, but the numbers were never given) - many of the players went to area of the main city to see me off forever. The heroes of the entire server shouted in the chat to the entire server about this - I will never forget this. It was very cool.

I remember that when I first started playing, I met one of the most amazing people I knew - his nickname was Skullgraver, but we all just called him Skull. He was the head of a very small clan that I started playing in, but he treated each of us, literally, like his children.

I saved up resources and money for three months in order to craft the best swords in the game (Talum/DLE, if you played Lineage), I collected money, but there was one caveat - for the equipment bonus to work, they needed to be "sharpened" to +4 , each enchant level after +3 has a 60% success rate. If you're not lucky, then you lose everything.

I was not lucky.

I cursed the game, got out of it and didn't want to go back into it - I literally spent 3 months in the air, losing it all. A week later, Skull called me and said that if I didn’t play anymore, he would ask me to enter the game and give the remaining resources - I didn’t mind. I logged into the game and saw that my hero was already enchanted to +4 Talum/DLE.

He just spent everything he had and sold all his stuff to buy me the damn thing.

He is an amazing person - it's been 11 years since I stop playing Lineage, but Skull calls me and wishes me a happy new year, happy birthday - he is probably about 60 years old now, but he always remembers me. And I'm proud to know him.

I wore these swords for 4 years, taking risks, but improving them, and on the day of my departure, I broke it when sharpening to +13 - so that I would definitely never return to the game, putting a bullet on it and leaving beautifully.

In general, MMOs were kind of an amazing phenomenon in 2005-2015 - for me, I can explain their emergence as a mass culture phenomenon by the fact that people had broadband Internet and a new way of interacting with each other. This method combined several psychological moments that were of interest to almost everyone:

1) Competition and contention

2) Play as a way to relax

3) Communication that is not bound by any obligations, the ability to share something and interact with another, unfamiliar person (in Russia this is called "fellow traveler syndrome", but, unfortunately, I cannot find a suitable expression in English).

The death of MMOs, which occurred in 2015-2018, is still inexplicable for me - if I can connect the death of the culture of "forums" with the emergence of fast social networks and managers, it is much more difficult to find an explanation for MMOs.

Yes, we can say that WoW is still alive - but it no longer has a culture of competition and competition in the right amount. Perhaps someday I will write about it, but it will be a separate post.

Yes, you can say that MOBAs have appeared - but MOBAs do not connect people. You can make friends there, but you won't become a family like you did in MMOs.

And this inexplicability of what happened oppresses me - I think that, unfortunately, this will no longer happen and society has simply changed to live there, in the game worlds.

Not because of something, but in general, like the butterfly effect.