Prologue
I started Lineage 2 on a private server back in the days of Chronicle 1 on a private low-rate server called ‘Escapeserver’. This was about 4 or 5 years ago. In there, the development of the game went alongside with the progress of the players. Players that were way ahead of others often had a tough time gaining new equipment, not only because the information behind it was simply unknown, but also because certain armors weren’t working yet. The staff of Escapeserver had a hard time fixing the bugs since they were pretty much the only decent private server around with a staff that was capable of modifying server files. There still was respect for administrators and game masters, and the mentality was so pure that you can’t imagine if you haven’t experienced it. It was more than regular for everyone to speak regular English, and players had the ability to understand inconvenience caused by others, because at that time, players didn’t had the urge to cause severe harm to each other merely for the fact that they were other players. Player versus player battles were fair, and neither winner or loser ever felt they had to insult their opponent. Those, together with the fact that the player base counted about 2000, were my experiences.
This was my first impression of the game, it was so good that it kept me hooked for 4 to 5 years, hoping that I’d maybe ever hit a server like that again. Anyhow, I played together with a friend of mine, which I will call by his nickname: DarkWarrior. We both were Human Warriors, and we both wanted to become the server’s best Gladiator, or at least somewhere near it. He was first to reach the second class change, and I never made it to become Gladiator. While that’s a bummer, I never felt guilty or ‘newbish’, I didn’t have to, tons of other players had the same problem, everybody was new to the game anyways.
Over time, it became too linear to kill thousands of NPC’s to gain certain titles, equipment or other things that were obtainable. Exactly on the right moment, DarkWarrior pointed me on another server where he became a game master. It was a medium rate server called ‘K3rb3r0s’, they ran Chronicle 1 as well, and for us it seemed a very fluent gameplay. What seemed a less exciting thing is that the administrator had no idea who he had for staff, so there were game masters around that misused their privileges a lot, being disadvantageous to other players. Meanwhile, beyond my awareness, DarkWarrior started communicating with a certain player that nicknamed himself Versuvio. It wasn’t for long or Versuvio gave it a go and started trying to run his own private server. Not long after, VersuvioL2 became a fact, and it was known as world’s first Chronicle 1 PVP server with 10.000x rates. I applied to become a game master, and thanks to a good word from DarkWarrior I was put on a try-out position. Time flew by and we discovered that the Versuvio staff had good communication with each other, and a certain bond grew among the guys. Versuvio had to reformat the server, causing all player data to be gone. After this wipe, I was given the most privileged builder level, and the days as unknowing player were over for me.
Somewhere along the way of becoming bigger and bigger, nationalities started to grow as well, yet, while we first didn’t notice it, it now became very obvious as the in-game chat box started to become flooded with messages that I couldn’t read. Later we found out that it’s Lithuanian, and not late after, a complete wave of Lithuanian registrants came to the server. Our popular regular players quit playing on our server, and as they disappeared, so did the moral of the other players, causing an infinite loop of decreasing quality in the player base. As if that wasn’t the worst part, the mentality of these players was horrible. Random mass murdering, global insults and a low intelect killed what was left of the quality player base. Lithuanian players became known as the most ignorant fuck-ups in Lineage 2, but they were merely the first ones to start the process of Lineage 2 going downhill. The mindless spam we know today such as:
xaxaxaxaxxaxxaa
and the all known:
Iam stay not party but lamer come and debuff versuvio buffer buff
all originated from these periods. After a certain time, it was Versuvio’s wise call to pull the plug and store this project in the fridge for a while.
This was my history, this was the base of my Lineage 2 knowledge before I started doing serious administration tasks. It consisted of a lot of in-game knowledge, improved communicative skills, and hatred towards Lithuanian players.
