This is will be a Diary of my experiences in the Endless Forest. My Book, so to speak. My name here is Rivenlore and so, quite simply, I've decided to name my avatar Riven. This first article, which is aptly named, "The Cover" - is just me jotting down my outside perspective and what I think I will see in the game before I actually involve myself. After all, one doesn't read a book without looking at the cover first - if only to see the title.

I've seen the Endless Forest a few times on the various MMO listings and it catches my attention every time despite the fact that it has very few of the typical traits of a mainstream MMO. To most, this would seem a very pathetic excuse for a HnS MMO - which it is, considering it doesn't even share the genre. The Devs make it very clear that this game, this sim, is totally unlike anything else out there - a piece experimental media under development rather then a formulaic subscription or micro-transaction game.

What catches me is the fact that it's a new execution for an interesting idea, no objectives, no OOC communication, no end game...just woods. You and the Forest. It's so surreal, nostalgic even. I mean, speaking interpretively here, in the very beginning - that's all there was. There were no cities, no nations, none of the modern things we take advantage of. The Endless Forest totally strips away all of the trained goal-oriented, competitive thinking and puts you in a setting where everything you've come to expect from a game simply does not exist. To me, not only does this represent shedding the modern or mainstream mindset to participate in this game (therefore giving a greater immersion). This also presents the opportunity for a refreshing experience where you are forced to relearn the world you experience in a totally new way. In a sense, it takes you to the beginning.

It's new and exciting - it's disorienting and even terrifying to me, considering I'm typically the kind of player you see wandering about in a game doing their business without ever saying a word. To immerse myself in a purely social game where your only form of communication with others in game is nonverbal seems daunting to me. I'm personally at a loss where to begin in this sim, and so when I log in for the first time I expect I'll just try to watch and play it by ear.

There is merely the community here, and a tightly knit one that cares deeply for their game at that. What draws them so? I'm on a mission to find out. My desire is to understand and experience the Forest - hopefully in a way conducive to the vision of the Developers when they made the Endless Forest. Even the Administration here involves themselves in the day to day of the Forest, under the guise of the Twin Gods - the fickle deities of this game world. The denizens owe all manner of miraculous wonders to them, even the day and night cycles are manually adjusted to give a sense of mystic wonder to the world.

One question still lingers in my mind like a bad memory though - I wonder if I'll ultimately be able to understand and like this game as so many others have. And if I do, I wonder what kind of player I'll become? Whether I can play it day in, day out and never tire of it - or just play it every so often to keep it fresh and exciting. Or whether I'll ultimately dismiss it and return to the drull, half-baked mainstream line of gaming because I can't "grasp" the scope of this game.

My curiosity treads lightly, as a deer...Quite literally.