Southern Tenkarrdun Foundry University

I have a confession to make: Everquest was my first "serious" attempt at playing an MMORPG. There's an argument to be made that I played Meridian 59 before that, but honestly, I only ever played the demo area.

Like many MMOs I've played (and I've probably tried most of what's come out post-Ultima Online - which, surprisingly, I've never played), it didn't last longer than the free trial. It doesn't hold a special place in my heart. The one that does is that's responsible the title for this post, Asheron's Call.

The land of Dereth was filled with a rich history and a living lore that expanded month by month. I wasn't there at the "Defense of the Shard", but I played on Thistledown and it made me proud. (To all you AC'ers out there: It's HUB, dammit, not SUB). I was part of the initial assaults on Gaerlan's Citadel, though I did not participate in it's initial destruction. I will say that I used Decal, and did occasionally use non-combat macros (crafting stacks and stacks of arrows is not fun, and at one point I wanted an Og mage), but I'm firmly anti-UCM (Unattended Combat Macro) and mostly anti-CM (Combat Macro).

It was a world with culture and with events and its frontiers were explored by monarchies (the game's guild system; I was a member of The Winding Path under the leadership of Eva of Dal). At least for a long while, the developers seemed to care about the community and it showed.

It's really too bad it had a pretty crappy "sequel" that probably just thinned the population out.