Recently, I returned to DNF for a bit. Let's talk about my youth, that familiar yet unfamiliar Arad. What's familiar is Arad itself, and what's unfamiliar are the new gameplay and various newly added characters. Although I sometimes come back to take a look after quitting in high school, I never really delved into it, just brushing up on levels and completing quests.
As a game that was extremely popular back in the day, it accompanied me throughout my youth. I started playing in the 3rd grade of elementary school and continued until I graduated from junior high. When I think back to those days, my family didn't have a computer yet, so on weekends, I would go to my cousin's house to play. We would take turns adventuring in Arad for an entire afternoon. At that time, it was still the second chapter, "The Challenge of the Death God." Later, my family finally got internet access, and I could finally play at home. We started forming teams to tackle dungeons together. Back then, dungeons were still difficult to clear, and it wasn't guaranteed that we would succeed as a team. So, there were often people who would carry us, and there was even a mentorship system. During that time, we would make plans to go on adventures every weekend and level up together. At that time, there were many scammers, and I was still very naive. I was tricked out of a lot of gold and equipment, and every time I was scammed, I would feel sad for a long time. After all, I had worked so hard to obtain them.
What I remember most is the Zombie King from back then. Many people couldn't defeat it, but we had to defeat it for our class advancement quest. So, we would look for people who used the flying hack to run through the map, and some of them turned out to be scammers who took our money and kicked us out of the party. In the earlier years, dungeons were difficult to clear, and we would look for high-level players to carry us. We even had to consider the COF value. So, we mostly looked for players with similar levels to carry us. Hidden dungeons were particularly challenging, like the Floating City. I reached level 60 in that version and cleared the Rat King dungeon countless times. The last adventure was in the Sky Tower and Time Gate after the Energy Center, and then I quit. After that, the game lost the joy of teaming up for dungeons and became a single-player game.
The game is still the same game, but the youth is gone. The friends I made back then have disappeared as time passed. Nowadays, when I hear the familiar BGM, I still think of the passionate adventure journey from those years. But I can't go back, I can only reflect and say, I had such a youth.