Zero to Sixty - Reflections on a Post-Progression Era

Once upon a time there was Halgrima and Balamor . . .

. . . when G-Money rode up on his steed Lucky, I remember being totally stunned by it all. He was 60 and we were wee. I now know the rearing of his steed was a stunt . . . a theatric flourish that I myself do as The Naked Dwarf, but than . . . it was more . . . it was an indication of power and place.

I had neither here. I had a body that wasn’t my body. I had a world that wasn’t my world. I stared through newborn eyes and remembered other lives in other lands, but that knowledge would not help me today.

G-Money handed us bags and 10g each and we had NO idea how he had made us princess among paupers. From the baby Dwarfland standing next to Hal to The Blasted Lands standing with a level 60 undead laying . . . err . .. dead at my feet, it has been a long seven months [40 days of continuous play].

I now have everything G-money had than and I understand the value of what he gave us freely. Yet, I believe what he was trying to touch .. to share . . were those first moments of wonder . . . of wow! He told me than there were “WOW moments” all the way to 60. From the first time I saw a raptor to Hal’ and I backing away from a dragon in the The Swamp of Sorrows to the Un’Goro Crater and finally to realizing what the Dark Portal in The Blasted Lands represented within the mythology of the game . . . wow moments all the way to 60 indeed!

I had parked my toon days ago at 59.9 to await Halgrima’s advancement from level 58. That night when I logged on as scheduled to share that final moment like we had shared the first I saw that she had gone on without me. Hurt feelings aside, it was time to cross my own finish line.

Heading down to The Blasted Lands, I was joined by Twinkleheal. This was far from cold comfort as he and I go back to the start of my new academic days [daze?]. He is always a welcome traveling companion . . . here and there. I pulled and pummeled and he healed and hexed. It was a grind, but not as bad as many. Pull a 60 . . . kill a 60. rinse and repeat. It was one of those odd disconnected experiences. It had nothing to do with enjoying the game, but only achieving an arbitrary goal, but a personal one nonetheless.

Exhausting one area we moved to another. Dingwise, I was close. Two more kills and a fireworks show. Standing on a light rise, I pulled a 60 towards me. As had been the case for the last half hour, I could not see Twink behind me, but I knew he was there pulling his weight. I had not healed up after the last two 60s, but I was growing confident in how long I could hang without hassle.

As I watched my health meter and hacked away, a basilisk attacked me from behind. I could not disengage from the 60 and for the first time in a bit I had the sense that I’d be a ghost walker here shortly. Yet, a purple blast from on high hit the basilisk dead center and in that one hit it jumped up and flipped over laying dead. My thoughts were, “Damn, Twink’s got a new major kick ass power!”. I would have typed so, but was engaged in the mini-drama before me.

The 60 I was fighting was worn by my mighty two-handed mace. Its health fell fast enough for me to realize I would be the one standing between the two of us. One more hit and I knew I only had one more to kill. Yet, with the final strike the familiar yellow shroud enveloped me as it had 58 times before and I passed from leveling to leveled.

I turned to Twink, but there was no Twink. There was no anybody except the undead and the dead. His party indicator came into focus to reveal he was disconnected. The purple lighting that struck that basilisk dead and spared my toonish existence long enough to kill the 60 and level myself had not been guided by Twink’s hand at all, but by random lighting that strikes The Blasted Lands.

Standing there . . . surveying the landscape I noticed something wrong with my interface. I scanned around the edges until I realized it was my experience bar . . it was now missing. The single most important indicator of my progression was gone! My thoughts were to how would I measure my success now?

So, there I was . . . at the end of the long trail as alone as I had been for all my earlier levels with this toon. I typed the obligatory ‘ding’ into the guild chat and received the same obligatory ‘grats’. Yet, it held little glory for me. There was no fist pumping in the air or a shout of excitement or even a bittersweet feeling. In that moment, there was just me on a hill in a ruined land. I knew behind me was the Dark Portal and if I walked around the hill to the right I could take the road to the Swamp of Sorrows . . . and maybe kill that dragon. I knew to the left were level 62 elites. Unlike when I was wee and wide-eyed, I KNEW where I was standing, yet where I was sitting was in my chair a world away wondering what do you do once you lose your progress bar?

Time to stop ‘playing’ and start researching.

ViaMedia . . . dwarf, warrior, skinner, herbalist, comic relief, bringer of the quick quip, provocateur, naked dwarf, friend to the weak and the wee, auction house pimp, founding member of Knights of Illuminati and level 60.