New Beginnings: Part 1 - High School & Everquest

So I'm fairly new here and I just wanted to share a little bit about myself, where I came from, and my experiences up to this point. Everyone has a tale, and here's mine.

Part 1: Pre-Pube

I grew up with Atalicus and Owninator. We all became friends in our prepubescent years leading up to high school. We would hold Nerd-a-thons (LAN Gaming Parties) at our respective houses on the weekends, stay up all night drinking Dew and playing Quake II, Counter-Strike and Starcraft. Atal's sisters would look at us with disgust as they tried to step around our lifeless corpses at 10AM the next morning. Atal's Pops was a beast. He'd bring dunken donuts to us and ask how it went.

Own and I played HS soccer together. Atal invited me to Florida w/ his fam for a vacation after we graduated HS. We were all very close - it was rad.

Speaking of graduating high school, I almost didn't. I was heavily addicted to Everquest and raided end game content with Inner Circle on Xegony for three+ years. I played a wood elf ranger and we dominated with server firsts and we woke the sleeper early, pissing everyone else off on the server. Atal and Own weren't into the mmorpgs at the time and they would make fun of me for logging into EQ during LAN parties, but I couldn't help it. It was just too addictive. So much so that I often would miss high school due to "illness". I'd just stay home and play EQ all day, it wasn't healthy. I thought I had my parents fooled.

I'm pretty sure I got a D- in Pre-Calc my senior year of high school. Atal was in that class with me, but he wouldn't share his answers, that jerk. I went to college and played EQ during my first quarter. My grades went a little something like this: German D, 1920s German and Russian History and Lit, C-, C-. My parents told me to get the grades up or I wasn't going to college anymore.

After that quarter I quit EQ (also, my school connection had a packet shaper, it was finally time). I liquidated all my droppable gear and sold each item on ebay. Then I sold the actual account. I got about $2200 from it all. I lived large that summer, bought a new PC, new expensive glasses, etc. When I caught some flack from my guild for quitting and ebaying I turned around and took a screen shot of my paypal account with the incoming ca$h and posted it on the forums. I was young and immature. I'm pretty sure I'm still being hunted to this day.

To be continued with Part 2 - College / Beta WoW