So the title was right!

This isn’t going to be about ranting, Huk or any other recent drama; redirect that stuff somewhere else. Basically I have 2 hours before State of the Game starts and no idea what to do in that time, so I’m going to write my second ever blog.

What about you ask? Well, I didn’t actually think that far ahead. I kinda just started writing… Hmmm. I thought about writing a Sega Megadrive games blog but I think i’m going to instead go with a little-known MMORPG called Helbreath. So if you have some spare time, take a seat and enjoy the story.

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This game was the shit.

Helbreath was first MMO I ever played; I was about 13 when a friend introduced it to me. When I first played it I was pretty much instantly hooked. Me and said friend played on a small private server (of which I can’t remember the name) where around 50 others played. The server had low XP rates (x3, in relevance to the original rates of the game) which meant levelling was a pain, but when you did get in to the higher ranks it felt like you earned it. I say x3 and most people will go ‘but that sounds like a lot?’ but in comparison to others, it really wasn’t. The average server would be at least x20 or so, a particularly popular private server called HB Spiel was x100 I believe.

Anyway, taking a brief tangent I actually got my gamer tag from this game. I always picked the city of Aresden on any server I joined, so I saw myself as a citizen of Aresden, an Aresien. This name has stuck with me through the years and it seems that STILL no one can pronounce it properly (I’m English, everyone says Ares differently

).

Let’s get back on to subject. As I spent more time on the game I became more involved in the general private server community. I went under a few aliases (not always Aresien), but in general I knew a few people. This turned in to me actually becoming a GM/admin on a few servers, a power my 14 (by this time) year old self loved to abuse. I would often create super powerful items (my favourite GM power) for my alts or friends, leading to my powers being revoked a few times. Although I did these kinds of stupid things I still seemed to stay in a fairly good light. As I became friends with more and more people who actually ran the servers my role reversed somewhat from being a player to a developer (I have no idea what else to call it).

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Some of the mad PvP

As a developer I did a few things. The files for the servers were easily editable using notepad, meaning if you knew what variables did what you could create items, create monsters and more. So this is what I did for a while, I created new content for a few different servers. Although looking back it wasn’t much, it felt like a proper contribution at the time!

This leads on to the next part of my Helbreath journey, my own private server. Now to run a private server was fairly simple. Due to player numbers you could literally run a whole server off of a single computer with an old Pentium processer, a GB of RAM and a 512kb connection. Now the only problem was you couldn’t run it behind a router (for reasons I can’t remember). I had a router. So me and my friend from earlier (who also had a router) joined up with another guy to start up our own server. I had the role of editing the server files, my friend created the website and the other guy hosted. We even bought a proper domain name (www.helbreathblizzard.com).

Now, this might sound all well and good, but in our naivety we didn’t actually know this guy. He was just some guy who said he could host and we took him up on it. This turned out to be a huge mistake. The server never actually went live, mainly because it turned out the guy was from Siementech (the company that owned and ran Helbreath). After some very official looking e-mails hit us from Siementech my friend and I quickly abandoned ship and ran. To a 15 year old (to give some idea of the progression of time) that was fucking scary. Thoughts of being thrown in prison often crept in to my mind in the week following that.

So as you may guess, after that point Helbreath kind of died off for me. I didn’t want to risk going back, assuming the cease and desist (I believe they were the words) letters included playing on such servers - I was young, I thought they’d track me! Not only that, a new MMORPG called Knight Online entered the picture; a story for another time. Knight Online was the final nail in the coffin though and so ended my Helbreath journey.

Looking back, I was involved in stuff that was actually pretty damn illegal without even thinking about it in those terms. Although I doubt I would have ever got in serious trouble, it was a risk that I never even thought about until I got those letters.

So, that’s all I’ve got for now concerning Helbreath. If any of you guys actually played it I’d love to hear from you. If not, thanks for reading this far!

Have a good day/night guys and try not to get too wound up about current drama.

Game

3191 Posts

August 17 2011 03:09 GMT

This looks like a huge mix of Ultima Online and Diablo II, both great games.

Aresien

United Kingdom305 Posts

August 17 2011 03:16 GMT

Yeah my friend tried to get me on to Ultima Online after this, looked good but I was already hooked on the next game

. But yeah, I see the mix you're talking about.

Hidden_MotiveS

Canada2562 Posts

August 17 2011 03:48 GMT

You just found those pictures online didn't you! There's no way all 50 people on your private server were online all at the same time... or are some of those monsters?

Anyways, it's pretty cool hearing how people get into programming. It's magical how if you think about it, our lives lead us down that road... like even if some small change had happened, and you'd never found hellbreath, you'd still have gotten into programming. Are you still a programmer?

Aresien

United Kingdom305 Posts

August 17 2011 06:16 GMT

Haha, I did indeed. I've had a few different computers since the helbreath days, don't have any images of my own since then

. But no, you'd never see all 50 on at once.

Yeah, I am a programmer. Currently doing a university course called Games Technology which is basically a computer science course tailored to creating games (lots of physics/AI programming).

Incanus

Canada695 Posts

August 17 2011 06:41 GMT

Nice, oh my! This is the greatest (Korean) MMORPG, and the only one I really played (but that I did for years). If you think x3 XP is low, think about how hard it was to level on official servers. I played on Helbreath International when the Flamberge was the best weapon, still remember my first day in the northwest slime pit on Elvine (Elvine > Aresden fo life) and barracks raiding with 100% short sword. Those were the days... Goldie armor (level 80+) was a big deal since max level was 140, and you ran like shit if someone had Wings or Horned helm. Towards the end of F2P HB International I teamed up with 2 friends to create a mage, lots of Scorpions killed back then... After that HB USA came out but I went to the first private server (I completely forget what it was called) although it was definitely the best private server I've played on. That was where the 'shiny boots' feature - for lack of a better description - was first implemented. Eventually I think the main hoster / GM scammed some people and it shut down, and I hopped private servers for the next couple years. Being a developer, I also experimented with coding / hosting private servers and the various hacks that were released but almost purely from an educational standpoint. The only hack I actually used on public servers was insta log out (which was ridiculously easy to patch out of the executable). I also made a modified sprite pack for some common items and weapons that was used by a few people on a private server.

Random thoughts but it was good times! I still have most of my files from this game on another computer. Most recently I tried Helbreath USA when they made it F2P again, but I don't have the time to waste on MMORPGs anymore, and I gave HB a great run.

Btw, the proper term for what you did was modding (modifying the game), hence you were a "modder".

Aresien

United Kingdom305 Posts

August 17 2011 15:59 GMT

Oh the Flamberge, that was an epic weapon. Although, i'll never forget when I first got a giant sword, those things were ridiculous. Haha, I remember something similar, we would barracks raid with Energry Strike at about a 30% chance to cast, if we hit it though it was brutal!

I think I know the private server that you're speaking about. A guy very famously (for the scene) ran a server and got donations in return for shiny boots (or some other perk) or something like that and then pretty much closed the server as soon as he got the money he wanted? Something like that. I actually played on the server too, it was a good server.

Ah modding, that's the one. The word escaped me, thanks for that

. But srsly, Aresden rules ^^.

Incanus

Canada695 Posts

August 18 2011 01:34 GMT

Haha yeah and warriors would equip flams as soon as they had the min strength, and would swing ever so sloowwly but would keep it anyway because it looked badass.

Barracks level 2 was amazing for mages though with so many dummies clumping up until you got to level 40. After that you had to fight for a spot at one of the scorpion pits and it was a dangerous place to be as a combatant.

Yeah that's pretty much what happened there. The funny thing was that he kept coming back with new servers later on and people would play but it was always short lived after the first one. Too bad that he kept trying to scam people since he had one of the best hosting setups. I think he moved on to Lineage II after that. I had one of the highest level characters on that server, Stelth.

When I first tried out raiding, I remember getting chills hearing the Ares music and being paranoid about lurking invis mages haha. Paralyze and blizzard were dangerous! But Elvine always had nicer maps and better players. :D There used to actually be two servers part of Helbreath International, Apocalypse and Abaddon but the population on Apoc was so much higher that they eventually merged them.

Now that I've jogged my mind through a few screenshots, just a few of the server names that I remember playing on were Helbreath International, Helbreath USA, HB Redemption, Helbreath SS, HB Circle, Helbreath X, Xtreme HB, Helbreath Nemesis, HB Fight, and not to forget the two greatest Helbreath community sites PK-HQ and HB Portal (which is amazingly still around as a wiki).

Early barracks raiding, the great days