Toril, Thy Name Is Everquest

photo by Jesse757

In the beginning there was the MUD. And when the MUD cooled it formed a heretofore unknown shape and that shape was known as Everquest.

Now that may be a little more history than most gamers care to think about, but my experience as a gamer really left me no choice, because I had, after all, been a part of it. I played the MUD that gave birth to the game: I played one of the very first MMORPG's back before the term even existed, back when the best graphic available was a well turned phrase in ANSI color.

That was the MUD known as Toril, previously known as Sojourn. Back in 1995 it was my first introduction to the online gaming experience. And what an experience it was! For six months or so I did little else, other than work and eat. Sleep became an oddity, a rarity. I still remember to this day the first friends I made there; they were my first online friends ever and it shaped the way I interact with people online to this very day. I was no longer a human being having a digital experience. I was a digital being having the occasional human experience.

I mudded so much I was starting to dream in text. Psychologists say that you can't read in your dreams, and while that may be true, I felt like I was coming close: the online/computer experience carves out brand new cognitive spaces, states of mind that, for the first quarter million years of human evolution, have never existed. It makes us one with the machine, and as far as I was concerned this was the next stage in the inevitable neurological evolution of that rarest of creatures, homo sapien, the animal that conquered the physical world by crafting tools, and the computer was his greatest tool and the virtual experience was its utlimate application.

Needless to say I've mellowed out with age.

In the end there were three things about Toril that were remarkable. First, it represented one of the first of its kind. In its heydey Toril was one of the most famous, most played MUDs on the internet and it still exists to this day, although it's now but a shadow of its former self. Toril offered a MUD experience that was unparalleled. Its zones were the best written, its ANSI was the best implemented and its gameplay the most authentic: it was, after all, based on second edition AD&D. As a sorcerer I actually had to take the time to memorize my spells in real time. The sense of immersion was awesome and the graphics were the best I've seen to date because they existed in my own mind; as a result they weren't fixed in time. Every room, every mob evolved over time and nothing ever looked the same way twice.

Second it was a DIKU mud and the DIKU model has shaped the playing experience of most every single MMORPG that exists today. The concepts of camping mobs, corpse retrieval, and the obsessive focus on gathering uber-gear... all of these things have their roots in the DIKU muds of the 90's. They say there's nothing new under the sun and while that may be true for many of today's games, it wasn't true in the nineties. DIKU was the granddaddy of online RPGs, and that makes it pretty much the greatest game that most gamers have never heard of.

And thirdly Toril was the home of Brad McQuaid, who played a ranger by the name of Aradune, who went on to make Toril the basis for Sony's breakaway hit Everquest; in fact it even appears in the original Everquest credits. I never played Everquest myself however. There was no need; I had already played it. Back in the day when Mystra ruled with an iron fist and the island of Evermeet crawled with Grey Elves. Back when Waterdeep lived up to its reputation as the largest, busiest city in the realms. Back when evil had a face and its name was Duris.

Back when the dream was real and the reality was the greatest dream I had ever dreamed.