Ballad of the Bard [It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad MMO World]

PrologueThis story dates back to those distant times at the dawn of online games, when Warcraft was known to everyone as a series of purely strategy games, and the Internet was not yet such a popular place. In other words, everything happened in the early 2000s.
Thanks to an article in PC Games magazine, a certain guy discovered an MMORPG called EverQuest and immediately became eager to play it. A common story for those years: EverQuest was one of the most advertised games of those years.
After some time, the guy managed to buy a box with the coveted game, then he created a troll named Blart on the Rallos Zek server. His expectations were not disappointed: the game was addictive. It’s not for nothing that the fan name EverQuest (Eternal Search) is EverCrack (Eternal Crack).
After a couple of levels, Blarm was already playing with all his might. The troll came up with a story called “Defense of the Marshes” and began to defend his native bridge.
Blart played for fun and made a lot of new friends. And so all this would have continued if not for the events of July 2001.

Wild serverThere were no established templates for creating online games back then. It was a time of constant searching. So Sony Online Entertainment decided on one rather interesting experiment.
In mid-2001, the Sullon Zek server was created, aimed at total PvP. There was only a minimal set of rules, such as engine restrictions, the inability to attack players of your faction and characters below level 6, as well as a couple more rules.
Characters were either transferred with all experience and belongings from other PvP servers, or were created anew. This was followed by the mandatory choice of faction for everyone: good, evil or neutrality.
According to the developers, self-government and hardcore ubiquitous PvP should have reigned on this server, so administration intervention was minimal.
Sullon Zek quickly gained great popularity. A lot of different people flocked there: from simple fans of battles with a living enemy to cheaters and trolls. The majority chose the evil faction. It seemed the most suitable for such a server.

Birth of a BardAt some point, https://casinosnotongamcare.co.uk/review/iwinfortune-casino/ all of Blarm’s friends became fascinated by the new unusual server and rushed to move there.
Blarm didn’t particularly like this idea. All these factions of good and evil, total war and moving to a new server were not for him. He still managed to persuade his friends to join the good faction, which almost no one played for, but it was still not what he wanted.
And then the troll came up with a brilliant idea: for what happened, you need to take revenge on Sullon Zek according to his own rules.
It was decided to create a new character – a bard. Bard was the ideal class for the intended tactics.
Thus Fancy the Famous Bard was born.

Fancy on the warpathThe method of revenge chosen was simple but effective. The “bard” class with the “acceleration” ability enabled was the fastest in the game, so he could not be afraid of attacks from monsters that were chasing him. Having collected a sufficient number of monsters into his “death engine”, Fancy accompanied them to small concentrations of players who were too tough for so many enemies. And, most interestingly, other players could not attack Fancy! As we remember, the server rules prohibited attacking characters who had not reached level 6. Fancy was on the 5th.
"I noticed something was wrong with Norrath. There’s a hell of a lot of bad guys out there. Almost everything I see looks menacing. Why is there so much evil here?? Evil shamans, evil clerics, evil newts… (Maybe because they are evil IRL (in real life))
(Here and below are quotes from Fancy himself)
I tried to make friends with someone here. But you were too busy doing evil things. What makes me sad. :("
Fancy’s crusade against the entire server began on July 4, 2001.
"Go ahead, good team!"(GO GO GOOD TEAM!!")
At first, he took into battle only such low-level monsters as orcs, which were dangerous only for fairly low-level characters.
"Look: a train of monsters! Like a regular train, but with monsters instead of an engine, carriages, galleys and more.»
“The evil scum realized that they couldn’t kill me because of my superpowers!»
Then the bard realized all the power in his hands. And then he began to walk through all the mountains and dungeons, gathering under his command all the most disgusting creatures of Norrath. Including sand giants.
"The sand giant is so huge,
The sand giant is so strong,
He will trample the villain into the sand
In a company of ten.
Evil bow before
The beautiful appearance of Saddam.»
(Approximate translation of Fancy’s rhyme)

Sand Giant so big
Sand Giant so strong
You keep the bad guy out of the sand
And with 10 of you its a marching band
Evil clerics drop with no pain
And your face is beautiful, like Saddam Hussein

Soon the whole Sullon Zek was talking about him. Every message board was full of warnings about Fancy. The best players on the server were going on campaigns to pacify the Illustrious Bard. Only all these attempts were swept away by a wave of hundreds of monsters. Attempts were also made to force mobs to attack Fancy himself. Which also failed, since not a single spell worked on him.
“This must be how God felt when he killed people.”.»
Fancy even got a few fans like Pansy. But most hated him. He killed over 350 characters of all levels, many of them more than once. One guy was killed 20 times because of him.
Death on EverQuest, and especially on that server, was quite an unpleasant thing. Not only did you have to run to your dead body after respawning for all your equipment, money, and loot through forests full of monsters, but it could also turn out that your lifeless body had already been robbed completely. Plus, after death, precious experience points were lost. So death erased many hours of play.

The administration strikes backWhile Fancy was terrorizing everyone by running around in his underwear, Sony Online Entertainment received a whole bunch of angry calls to ban the Illustrious Bard.
Developers’ opinions are divided. On the one hand, Fancy did not violate a single rule of Sullon Zek, which, in fact, had almost no rules, where self-government should have reigned. But subscribers, even on a hardcore PvP server, remained subscribers, ignoring whose requests would mean a possible loss of the game’s audience. At the same time, the players themselves could not fix the problem on their own.
On the fifth day of Fancy’s campaign, a game master with the nickname Djembe contacted him.
The famous Bard said that he did not violate a single server rule. Djembe, citing rule No. 13 of the game website, stated that the rules were still violated. “Any conflict between players could be resolved through a duel."Since Fancy was level five, and no one could hit him back, this rule was violated.
Fancy promised that he would stop if the administration wanted it.
But that didn’t stop the bard, and he went back to his old ways.
SOE decided not to ban him, but to act more subtly. Whenever Fancy was at the head of a mob of monsters, he would get stuck and get torn to pieces. Or a sand giant materialized next to him, flattening the bard with just one blow of his fist.
Revenge on the server has reached a dead end. Tired of everything, Fancy abandoned his idea.
"I won’t miss you. I’m off to a better MMO.»

EpilogueSOE eventually admitted that while Sullon Zek was an interesting idea, it was a failure. Few players managed to see even a small part of all the content. Most could not stand such hardcore and went to other servers.
But their experience in organizing PvP was taken into account in other MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft and Eve Online.
Fancy became a legend of online games and an icon of various griefers (players who deliberately ruin the lives of other people).
The famous Bard still hasn’t completely broken with EverQuest. Nobody banned him, so from time to time he visited the ill-fated Sullon Zek.

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