1998 / 1999

Age of Empires

In 1998 Starcraft was released and we lost our Mystic names for a while and I was the Creep of Chau Sara and Hun was Nukebabe. We used to do well at Starcraft and played online a system called Battlenet.. it had adverts which were a pain, but finding games was quite fast, trouble was the maps were not very good and we really missed having trees to chop. We really liked trees in RTS games because they change shape as they are cut away, and act as a defensive shield, so as the game develops you have to keep adapting to the changes in the trees. With Starcraft there was minerals (which would only allow a limited number of miners on) and vespene gas (same problem). Also, the maps that people liked were too small and restricted. There was nothing like the diversity of Warcraft 2, the cliffs were so large and cumbersome and the graphics were still in 640x480 so it wasnt much of a step forward. The larger maps which we liked, were not favoured by many others, so we got bored and went on to play some single player games for a while and make some campaigns.

I made my first campaign with the Starcraft Editor which involved WAV files of me speaking (in a disguised voice) and some great stories.... trouble is, the only people who played them were my family. But they really enjoyed the characters!

In 1999 Hun and I were driving back from the shops in two seperate cars and she said she wanted to pop to town. When she got home, she had a copy of Age of Empires, the Age of Kings with her. We had tried Age of Empires 1 before and didnt like it - it was too slow, so I scoffed at the game and let her play it alone for a while. After she expressed enjoyment, I thought i would give it a go too.

Age of Kings, seemed good fun, so we went online on the Zone and played some good games there, I was Mystic Briton and She was Queen Hun. I created the Mystic Briton name there and then in November 1999 and continued to use it ever since. I called myself Mystic Briton, because there was a civilisation in Age of Kings called "the Britons" and I am from Britain, so it seemed appropraite. I also liked playing the Britons at the time too.