AN ODE TO WANQUER [Author: myschyf]
I ‘met’ Wanquer when I was playing LOK. I was GM of a guild called The Sun Clan of Warriors and on LOK, we were the bomb. We were the guild to belong in. We found all the bugs and after we brought down the beta for two weeks by abusing a dupe bug we found, we didn’t abuse bugs anymore. We actually reported them after that. We were the firstest with the mostest and it was hard to get into the guild. Wanquer really wanted to get into the guild. But he kept doing stupid shit like jumping off cliffs without featherfall boots on. Or running smack into known zoos on the Serpent Level of Oak. At level 5. So we didn’t really want him. He also had a stupid name. “Wanker??? What kind of a name is that?” we would ask. “It’s French,” he would reply. “It’s pronounced Won-coore,” he’d say as he jumped off yet another cliff.
But he kept hanging out with us and he grew on us and he eventually quit jumping off cliffs without featherfall boots on. He never did stop running smack dab into known zoos on the serpent level but he turned into a levelling god (he surpassed all of us) so at least he could kill the zoos when he ran into them. Finally we liked him enough that he found the necessary sponsors and we accepted him into the guild. He turned into a pretty good friend and a superior gamer. He also changed his handle to Knossos, which really beat the hell out of Wanquer — French or otherwise.
As time went on we started talking on the phone, as generally happens when friendly people game together for long periods of time. Nice guy. Never met him in person. He golfed, played games. Turned out he was an old-time Battletech player — used to go to the very first Btech conventions (in the Bay area maybe?). I really wish I had gotten to know him better.
In UO, he made three GM characters (a macer, a fencer and a tankmage \{remember tankmages?\}). Then he killed at least one of everything there was to kill. Then he was bored so he left the game. He gave me his account. I still have it. He had pretty much stopped doing online games because of the state of them (and this was 2 years ago) and I had left the Sun Clan when I heard he had died. Though we had fallen out of touch, his death hit pretty hard. It hit everyone hard. He was a healthy guy from all accounts. His death was completely unexpected.
His account is the last thing I have of his and when I cancel that in a few weeks it will be gone too. So I wanted to write this ode to his memory. Bye Wanquer.