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Thanks for a sweet victory after 30 years
A few days ago, I killed Morgoth for the first time (no cheating) on the plain vanilla Angand, v4.2.0. It was a pretty good feeling, I have to admit, more satisfying than I'd expected. And then I cast my mind back and remembered just how much time I've sunk into trying to win this game over the years.
My first encounter with this kind of game would have been around 1989, 1990? My friend's brother was into PC's pretty early and I remember playing tapping around the ASCII screen, picking up some potions, getting killed by some random creature, probably Rogue, I don't recall. We only played for a few afternoons before getting shoo'ed away by the evil big brother.
Around 2000 / 2002 I somehow got my hands on Moria as a uni student. I only played sporadically, having had kids as well in my early 20s, but definitely got sucked into some late nights crawling through the dungeon. My brother is also a big player, to this day, and prefers the more exotic variants. I'm a vanilla player myself, through-and-through.
For the past 10 or so years, I've been dived into the dungeons occasionally, usually for just a few weeks, maybe a month; I'll find myself getting more obsessed with this or that strong character, then they die and I delete the game and I'm away off it for another year. I find myself coming back to see what's changed, what's being done differently. Every new version has felt like a major improvement over the last.
Anyway, I finally had the patience, luck and willpower to just play a couple of levels each day for long enough to build up a good enough character to knock off dirty old Morgoth. There's no twist to this tale, I don't imagine my experience was really anything that different to most players. I just wanted to finally write something in this forum where I've been lurking for the past 15 years or so and actually say thanks. I imagine that for every person here on the forum talking about how great this game is, there's actually another 10 or more that quietly download each version as it comes out and, sometimes only after 30 years, finally manage to complete it.
So here it is, a heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in creating this incredible game. Cheers to you all,
Mick
PS I see that, Nick, the current game maintainer is from Canberra; I was born there so... Weston Creek Represent!
My first encounter with this kind of game would have been around 1989, 1990? My friend's brother was into PC's pretty early and I remember playing tapping around the ASCII screen, picking up some potions, getting killed by some random creature, probably Rogue, I don't recall. We only played for a few afternoons before getting shoo'ed away by the evil big brother.
Around 2000 / 2002 I somehow got my hands on Moria as a uni student. I only played sporadically, having had kids as well in my early 20s, but definitely got sucked into some late nights crawling through the dungeon. My brother is also a big player, to this day, and prefers the more exotic variants. I'm a vanilla player myself, through-and-through.
For the past 10 or so years, I've been dived into the dungeons occasionally, usually for just a few weeks, maybe a month; I'll find myself getting more obsessed with this or that strong character, then they die and I delete the game and I'm away off it for another year. I find myself coming back to see what's changed, what's being done differently. Every new version has felt like a major improvement over the last.
Anyway, I finally had the patience, luck and willpower to just play a couple of levels each day for long enough to build up a good enough character to knock off dirty old Morgoth. There's no twist to this tale, I don't imagine my experience was really anything that different to most players. I just wanted to finally write something in this forum where I've been lurking for the past 15 years or so and actually say thanks. I imagine that for every person here on the forum talking about how great this game is, there's actually another 10 or more that quietly download each version as it comes out and, sometimes only after 30 years, finally manage to complete it.
So here it is, a heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in creating this incredible game. Cheers to you all,
Mick
PS I see that, Nick, the current game maintainer is from Canberra; I was born there so... Weston Creek Represent!
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