Video games news, releases, esports and culture — all the biggest gaming stories in one place.
My first MMO character #7: Andrea Shearon
Andrea Shearon recalls Rennyfuu, her first memorable MMO character, an archer in Priston Tale. Although she briefly played RuneScape and Graal Online, Priston Tale became her real introduction to MMOs, leaving lasting memories of early online communities, frustrating hardware limitations and youthful competitiveness.
She played during the game’s lengthy western beta while using a computer with a 4MB integrated graphics processor, which caused severe lag. She remembers taking part in the Survive or Die arena, arguing with older players and even becoming the subject of a fan-forum thread; after Priston Tale changed ownership, she believes Rennyfuu was eventually lost when the servers closed in 2013, though she now keeps the memory alive through a lilac-coloured cat in Toontown Rewritten.
In short
- Rennyfuu was Shearon’s first meaningful MMO character.
- She played an archer in Priston Tale’s early beta.
- The character disappeared after the servers closed in 2013.
Explained simply
Massively multiplayer online games, or MMOs, let many players share a persistent online world. Players create characters, explore, complete challenges and meet others, so a character can become tied to memories of the people and places encountered in the game.
Priston Tale is a fantasy MMO in which players choose characters with different abilities, including archers. It was one of several early online games Andrea Shearon tried, but it became her main introduction to the genre during its western beta, when the game was still being tested and her computer struggled to run it smoothly.
Online communities and competition were part of the experience: players gathered in arenas, debated and discussed one another on fan forums. The game’s servers later closed, making characters such as Shearon’s difficult or impossible to revisit; players may instead keep those memories through stories or new characters in other games.