Originally posted Posted May 5, 22.

To All the Players I’ve Loved Before (yes I borrowed the title)

I was talking with Vomher and was reminded about this being not just the 5th year for SWL, but also the 10 year anniversary of The Secret World. It’s crazy to think I’ve been a part of this community and this experience for basically that long (started about a month after launch), but then I also vividly remember so many experiences I had in this game setting and in this community.

Some of this will probably be rehash, but it's how I wrote it so I'm leaving it! When I first started playing, I had never played a MMO and I hadn’t played many games at all for the better part of a decade, especially PC games. It was a very new and confusing experience for me. I aggroed literally everything I passed. I just could not seem to manage to work my way around it, so I constantly had mobs chasing after me everywhere I ran ingame.

I first played with my husband, one of our friends, and one of his friends. They were all way better than me at basically every aspect of the game–except actually solving the puzzles. My friend and I did most of the legwork on that, and I loved the challenge.

I remember learning about screenshots and basically taking hundreds upon hundreds immediately. Whatever we were doing ingame, we’d have to pause for some silliness, commemorating each occasion with silly outfits and emotes. I would pose Medrina sitting on everything she could, or laying on people/things. I still have a shot somewhere of her sleeping on the girl at Red’s Bait & Tackle. It was silly, simple amusement.

When I finally branched into the roleplay scene, it was many months later around March of 2013 and everything felt big and overwhelming. I dipped my toe in on Rye, but then ultimately pushed Medrina into it, starting on the outskirts of one of Notes’ shows and slowly working through my nerves to get brave enough to really interact. That was the start of so many fun and cherished experiences.

I’m going to break this up into several posts over the next few days, depending on how long it gets. I actually started in a different direction than it’s going so I’m just letting the words come out as they do. <3