Complete Heal

I’d like to say a warm welcome to all of you who are finding this new site. Before I get rolling, let me give you a small bit of history regarding my prior gaming experiences and what led me to create this site.

Like most of you, I have a passion for video games. I’ve been playing them for 20 to 25 years. My first “game system” was an Atari 2600 and I can remember hooking up that RF modulator to the back of our crappy TV and playing games like Pitfall, Barnstormer, Defender, Frogger and Pac Man for hours. As I got older, my parents brought home an Apple ][e which served as my introduction to the online world. I started out with a 110/300 baud modem. I’d spend hours playing games such as Zork and logging on to local bbs systems such as the “Atlanta Crackers.” Before I went off to college, I delighted in taking my buddies to school in games on the NES and I still to this day am convinced that I am the best “Excitebike” player in the world.

During college, I pretty much bailed on gaming as I concentrated on enjoying the college experience. To this day, I’m pretty psyched I did that as I was able to have enough time to study, hang out with friends, join a fraternity and just really enjoy that time period. I also met my wife during those days. During graduate school, I discovered Quake and with an ISDN line fell in love with gaming all over again. I can remember sitting in the movie theater watching “Men in Black” thinking about my Quake CTF clan with the same name. I ended up battling in competitive CTF matches under the name Taxman{MAD} along side my clan “Madmen” that to this day still hangs out together in IRC. Long live the grappling hook.

A year or so later, I started my first job. Two buddies from work were gamers and told me I needed to check out this new game called – Ultima Online. Ten years later, here I am. During that time, I spent extensive time in the following titles:

UO, Asheron’s Call 1 & 2, Everquest, Everquest II, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, D&D Online, LOTRO, Warhammer, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and Vanguard.

I’ve been a high end raider and a casual explorer. I’ve server firsted content and fought epic pvp battles over contested mobs. Through it all, I’ve had one hell of a ride. As I’m faced with somewhat reduced playtimes these days due to RL responsibilities, I thought it would be cool to start keeping a log of my in game experiences and also share my thoughts on MMO news from time to time. I typically play healing classes so I named the blog after one of the most famous spells from Everquest – complete heal. Few spells since have been as powerful or class defining as this level 39 spell from the original game.

I invite you all to journey with me through nostalgia and beyond as I document my travels through Norrath and dabble in other MMOs from time to time. Hope you enjoy and welcome!

If you want to reach me – feel free do drop me a message on the site or e-mail me at lazaretto1@gmail.com