My first experience in Everquest was much like puberty. I was anti-social, awkward in my body, and, in the end, I was mauled to death by polar bears.

My friend was nice enough to let me use his account (well, one of his accounts) to try it out. So late Friday night I sat down and began to create my online persona. I’m certain that the art of character creation will forever elude me, mainly because it requires reading. So I constructed a fierce barbarian / shaman using such advanced statistical techniques as “Eeniee, meeniee, minee, mo.” At first I wanted to be a woman, not because I’m in touch with my feminine side, but because all the women of Everquest (except the dwarves) have an incredible rack. If I wasn’t going to be able to afford armor for quite some time, I might as well make the best of my time watching myself falling out of my skimpy bearskin bra. Then I realized that I didn’t want to be that creepy guy who plays as a woman, it’s just wrong on so many levels. Furthermore, I didn’t like the idea of all the men of Everquest eye-humping me all the time. I would just feel like a piece of meat.

Next was the name. I couldn’t think of anything particularly unique, nor was the random name generator coming up with anything that didn’t sound like a French side dish. I ended up heavily butchering one such randomly generated name, and thus “Fanedorf,” was born. At least, I think that’s his name. It might have been “Fondor.” No… definitely not Fondor. Fondue? No no no. I think it’s Fanedorf… yea.

So anyway, me and Fondue start in the Shaman’s Guild in Haltor (or was it Halan? I want to say Halitosis, but I know that’s not right). Right off the bat I know I’m screwed because I’m in a snowy mountain kingdom wearing nothing but boots and a kilt. Apparently temperature isn’t an issue in Everquest, which is fortunate because there would have been a lot of shrinkage. I wander around aimlessly for a bit, testing all my buttons and going through my meager inventory of milk, cookies (they looked like cookies) and a backpack. I also have a club, but it looks like a twig snapped from a tree. I assume it’s a weapon because there’s no command to use it as a toothpick.

Fonda and I decide that in order to build up our stats and get money we have to go kill something, just like in real life. So I follow my map to the town exit (Ye Exite). In all the previous demonstrations of the game, the town exit was a tunnel. Here up in Halter it was a ferry. I jump on board, but the platform doesn’t move. I step off and look at it. THEN it moves. It’s timed apparently. So I dash to catch it, miss it, and fall into the frozen lake. I sink like a big kilt-wearing stone. Fortunately I have the breath capacity of a whale, because I had to search through the help file to find out how I’m supposed to swim. In real life, you would have seen a burly, half-naked man, sitting on the bottom of the lake, reading his notebook.

I swim up and to the other side, where I exit the town and into the great snowy peaks. The primary population of this area is dead. Not dead, like on the ground, dead like walking, armed, and pissed. My first combat experience was borne of ignorance. I, the hero Funnel, had stopped one of the walking dead to ask for directions. The skeleton, we’ll call him George, drew his sword and proceeded to hand me my ass. I died, quickly. One of the larger complaints I’ve heard about Everquest is that when you die, you are transported back to the area just outside of town and then you must quickly travel back to the spot where you were killed to retrieve the items you had been carrying at the time. This was no problem for me, seeing as how I had only traveled about ten feet from the town before I was slaughtered. One minute I’m dead, and then POOF, there I am, ten feet away.

This went on for a few hours. I discovered that if you don’t bother the inhabitants, they usually won’t bother you. Except the polar bears. They always hate you and want you dead. I figure it’s starvation, but given the number of times they’ve killed me, they should be well fed by now.

I’ve already started to form an opinion of the game, but I’m going to keep trying it for a little while.