I was honestly pretty excited when I saw Hive Gaming Community's latest topic/contest yesterday about 'my first online game'. I immediately popped onto my PC and began digging through old folders of screenshots and gaming content to subsequently find... Nothing.
Not a single image, customized file, or anything! Somehow, in the course of the last 12 years I've lost all screenshots I'd had of the five years I spent playing the game.
At one point, I'd even had a bunch of stuff on photobucket or something where I'd hosted some customized skins (which was easy to do back then), and that was gone too.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's rewind and start at...
I found Conquer Online late in 2004. I'd just graduated and, being a dumbass who decided he didn't want to go to college, I found myself with a ton of free time and the first computer I owned myself (and wasn't a shared family computer).
I hunted up some free online games and after a bit of searching found one that looked cool - so I downloaded it and I was instantly having a ton of fun. At that time, the game had four classes - five if you count the early-mid split of one of them - Warrior, Trojan, Archer, and Taoist. The Taoist was the magic caster of the group and was unique in that it could split into either a Water Taoist, or a Fire Taoist, at a certain level. Warriors were specialized for defense (mostly), Trojans were the heavy hitters, and Archers were ranged.
Each has two body types (big and small frame) and both a male and female model.
The game was really popular back then, and pretty soon I was finding myself teamed up with the same folks day after day, as we smashed against the grindstone of leveling in Conquer Online.
It wasn't long after establishing this core group of friends that we players got the announcement of a brand new server being spun up... and since the server we initially joined was well established already, we thought maybe it would be fun to jump from that original server (Dragon), into the new server - Phoenix.
I don't think we had account migrations at that time, as I seem to remember the initial day of the new server being a mad rush of lvl 1 newbies all immediately outside the main starting area - Twin City - killing birds to the point that as soon as one spawned, someone was downing it.
It was amazing.
We clawed and scraped our way through the first days, attempting to stay at least somewhat close to the power-gamers and folks who paid for items.
That first week was a mad scramble daily, and we lived for it.
In the weeks that followed, things started to cool off - the pack had drifted apart and it wasn't such a challenging press for resources, which was a welcome change.
Those weeks turned into months, and a group of us became really close friends, which bonded us to the game for the years to come. We ended up creating a guild, and started to make a name for ourselves. Rivalries popped up, and soon I found myself as something of the guild enforcer - often going 'Red Name' (which meant I'd killed 5+ players), or even Black Name (I think it was 10+ kills for black).
Folks kept fucking with my guildies, and that wasn't going to fly. I had the gear and the skills to smash a lot of the folks on the server then as my Warrior - even some of the 'unbeatable Trojan' players fell to my glaive.
Our group got larger and eventually, we started participating in guild challenges, even winning the guild battle several times before our time in the game was done.
Most of the core, original, members of my group had 'Reborn' by then - a process that's basically the same as Prestige mode in some other games, where you restart at level 1. The unique side of being Reborn however was that the class you picked at the start didn't have to be the class you stuck with. You could start with a Warrior, and RB into any other class you wanted. This process would let you keep some of the skills and specialties of your first class, and combine them with the new skills you'd learn as whatever you were turning into. A very popular combination at the time was to start with a Trojan and then reborn into an Archer. It gave you several skills that really helped mass kill mobs, and would make the process of Power Leveling a new account far far easier. Another one we found was taking Water Taoist, and then RB'ing that into... well, basically anything.
By the time we'd all outfitted houses, leveled multiple accounts, done the whole reborn gig several times, won a bunch of guild challenges, married folks in elaborate RP events... it had been several years of playing.
A friend of mine and I had even begun farming out accounts and selling them for USD, which we'd then sink back into buying crafting components to solidify our power on the server. We were pretty damned good at it too - quick and efficient - which led to us making some great, easy money - completely against Terms of Service but the practice never got us banned so hey. At one point, we were selling accounts for 100 USD a pop, and had more orders than we could reasonably keep up with.
Things were good.
But all good things come to an end. We'd seen a ton of servers get spun up only to be later merged together when they inevitably became stagnant, without enough player population to really sustain the server and the in-game economy.
Then, TQ Digital, the Chinese company that created the game, announced "Conquer Online 2.0". New classes, new gems, and a bunch of other changes were coming down the pipes. With them, new servers would be spun up and we'd re-enter a mad rush of folks trying to hit endgame and whales paying their way to the top.
It was a song and dance we'd done before without all the glitter, and we were burnt out. By mid-2007, a bunch of us had already dipped our toes into World of Warcraft - and with the release of Wrath of The Lich King... Our days in Conquer Online were at an end. Some of the group moved to WoW, and we played that for a while after - but that's a different story for a different day.
Eventually, the group split up and drifted our own separate ways - though to this day I still have regular contact with one of the friends I made way back on Conquer Online, and we chat through facebook and share memes, and I drive him mad pretending that NZ and Aus are "basically the same".
In my hunt for screenshots to use, I ended up finding out that Conquer Online still exists! The original company appears to have sold it or something, as it's under what looks like new management, but it's still around.
It just sucks now.
I spent a few minutes on the new game and found it to be an absolute mess. Gambling games take up a huge part of the start area (because who doesn't want to play slots or poker as a sub-game inside your already pay-to-win game).
Models are basically the same as they always were, just with a bit more flash and a ton more personalized effects.
Conquer in 2021:
The gambling spam is intense in the official Conquer Online these days:
Like, distractingly intense. Not just in the chat, but scrawled across the middle of the screen whenever someone hits a big win. Plus all the icons you can't hide makes for a very busy screen space.
Level ups look a little cooler than they used to - but the savvy among you will notice the video-add popped in.
What fresh hell is this? How do people play with this distraction?
Quick peek at the inventory menu - it's basically unchanged, though some icons have a bit more flair than they used to.
The new status menu has a lot going on but is basically the same as it always was.
With how jank Conquer Online is in 2021, I was super unsatisfied, so I kept hunting for examples of what the game was like back when I played... and I found this video by Drinkable Panda Gaming:
Which subsequently informed me that apparently, there are still some 'Conquer Classic' servers floating around, and they've still got players rocking the full glory of early 00's Conquer Online, such as: https://conquerorigins.com/
And, if you're thinking 'I bet he downloaded that', you're goddamn right I did.
And you know what?
It's fucking awesome.
So say hello to the new OblivionCubed - I'll be making some gameplay videos for this for sure.
For now... it's back to the grind.
Peace out.
