Yesterday while I was playing EQ2 I saw the message in my chat box: Your friend swg.bloodfin.chaze has logged in. Chaze is an old SWG friend of mine, and I have always had a soft spot for this young lad. It has been often while gaming and meeting new people that I have wondered what happened to Chaze, and if he was still out there gaming somewhere.
Chaze was different than the other friends from Bloodfin. Chaze was an often misunderstood 12 year old boy who used the little allowance that he got to pay for his monthly subscription. I thought this showed a lot of character for a young boy to save up his money to purchase something that he wanted so badly. A lot of kids that age end up blowing every dollar they get as soon as they have it in hand.
I remember when EQ2 came out I wanted Chaze to move with us, and well he still loved SWG and he couldn’t get his parents to pay for the game, and he only had enough allowance to pay for one monthly fee. I remember feeling so sad that he couldn’t play, and I wanted dearly to send him a copy of the game and a few game cards, but again he was only 12, lived in Sweden, and I didn’t think that his parents would appreciate him giving a stranger on the net his personal info, or getting a package from me.
Earlier I called him misunderstood and there was a reason for that. Often one member of the guild or the other wanted to ring his neck (in a loving way…). You see being that he was only 12 years old and male (especially the male part), Chaze had a bit of a mischievous side. He was always doing something that he thought was funny, but the others did not. Like for instance when one of the guild leaders gave him an officer title, and while everyone was logged off he changed the guild name to <Chaze’s Slaves>, and unranked everyone. To him this was a harmless joke, but to the other leaders, the male leaders, aside from Annzac, it was not funny, and they were more than a bit perturbed.
We had to all leave the guild and start a new one, and some of the leaders still a bit angry didn’t want to invite him back right away, but Annzac and I seeing it as a harmless child’s prank softened them up and convinced them to send him the invite. Every-time I think of that episode I laugh. What a crazy little kid he was, always doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Of course I still talk to a lot of those people who were leaders then, and anytime that story is brought up everyone laughs about it and it is a wonderful memory.
I stayed in touch with a few of those SWG people, but Chaze was not easy to keep in touch with since he only played SWG, and after awhile he stopped logging into that. Like I said, I always wondered about him and how he was doing. So when I saw him log into SWG after so many years I had to do a doubletake. I thought, “Maybe it is someone else playing his account.” But sure enough it was indeed the one and only Chaze Quero.
Of course Chaze has grown older, and is no longer a 12 year old boy, and at the age of 16 he is still playing MMOs. It really did my heart some good to hear from him after so long, after all I was sort of like his SWG mother hen. Chaze directed me to Guild Cafe, and today I check out the site. I knew I had heard about it before on Moorgard’s blog. It is very neat and interesting. I suppose it is the myspace for gamers. I created a page which can be found here, and hopefully I will see you all on the site:)
Happy Gaming!
That’s always neat 🙂 My story is a little different. When I played Asheron’s Call (’99-’03) I made a couple really good friends and when I came back and gave the free trial a shot a couple weeks ago, I was really happy to find that they were both there four years later, and it was great catching up on things. I got their new e-mail addresses so I can keep in contact even though I’m not still playing the game.
I really liked Cahze, it sucks he is dedicated to his current guildmates.
Adele,
I think that Guild Cafe has great potential. MMORPGs are the ultimate Web 2.0 communities. However, the games themselves do little to promote this. I hope that Guild Cafe will make developers see the potential of using mmorpgs as social communities where Web 2.0 concepts and features can be included.
/poke
“Chaze’s Slaves” — That gave me a good laugh.
I started a profile at Guild Cafe under “hallower” (my first MMO character’s name, and I still use it for forums…though not for games). Unfortunately though, I can only remember a couple of names from all the people I’ve played with over the years. I’m terrible with names. =/