My Nerd Creds

Hello all, I am a guest blogger here at Cuppycake.org and I would like to introduce myself. My name is Shaun, I am a 21 year old college student from Milwaukee WI studying pre-med and psych.

In the MMORPG world I am known as Naewen Zephhyr. I have been playing MMORPGs for the past 7 years, trying just about every one that has been released in that time at least for a little bit.

The game I have played by far the most is EverQuest (over 300 days /played, to be more precise. /sigh). I still remember to this day seeing EQ for the first time at my friend’s house. He was commanding an Iksar Warrior in the Field of Bone bravely slaughtering gigantic scorpions and other monsters the likes of which I have never seen or heard of and all I could say is, “Wow! This game looks like crap!” Finally after over an hour of convincing I decided to give the game a try and I entered the world as an Iksar warrior named… Shakashikesha. After many people telling me I would never get a group with such an absurd name (not to mention I made a female iksar without knowing it) I decided to make a new character. This time I went to the random name generator for help, and thus Naewen the High Elf Enchanter was born. Over the months I fell in love with the class, especially after the magical day when I realized what mezmorize meant! Ever since I could not imagine playing anything but an Enchanter — bringing order to chaos is something I just can not get enough of. Fast forward through 6 and a half years, 12 expansions and hundreds upon hundreds of raids later I finally stopped playing EQ for good earlier this year. 

I did play World of Warcraft as well from beta to the opening of AQ as a Dwarven Priest, which may seem an odd choice for someone that loves CC. But I started playing a Priest back when they were a CC class in beta1 and couldn’t stop. Eventually I grew tired of the game and went back to EQ.

Now I am playing VG, 2 boxing a Kojani Psionicist and a High Elf Cleric. I’m trying to take my time enjoying the game and experience every nook and cranny of the massive world, and I’ve been both very impressed and very let down so far. Overall it’s a fun experience exploring a brand new world, finding server first drops, quests, and doing it all spoiler-free.

I’ve also started playing EQ2 (for the 4th time) and this time I’m thoroughly enjoying it. The community in EQ2 now is fantastic — something I haven’t seen since the PoP days of EQ. People are fun to talk to, helpful, kind, knowledgeable, and so far I haven’t been in a group that made me want to kill someone. It’s the perfect casual game for me right now and I’m glad Cuppy talked me in to giving it a try (and you should too on the Permafrost server!)

Well, that’s it for my introduction. I am looking forward to guest blogging here in the future on more specific topics and hopefully get to know the growing community here at cuppycake.org!

Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life.  She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com.  She can be reached on Twitter or by email.