Jophiel has the highest post count in the history of ZAM. We talked with him about his time with our site and more!

ZAM’s forums host many prolific posters, and in the last decade or so there have been many milestones for post scores. But one man has been breaking those records ever since the 10,000 post mark. Today Jophiel (real name Jeff) hit 50,000 posts, and to celebrate I had the chance to sit down and talk to him about his time with ZAM.

Jophiel’s been here long before we changed the name to ZAM… heck, he’s been here since before you had to sign up to post! Originally drawn by the Everquest forums a decade ago, Allakhazam back in the day was a small smattering of talk about the new genre of MMORPGs. For him, Everquest was the quintessential online role-playing game; it “was like all the daydreams I had when I was a kid of being able to play D&D without trying to round up four other people on a Saturday afternoon.” He spoke about how games have progressed since the days when reaching level 20 “was a badge of honor.” Although he’s tried his hand at several other titles, including World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, and Lord of the Rings Online, he says that “EQ sort of spoiled me for fantasy based MMORPGs for the time being.They had an exceptionally rich game world even if the gameplay elements could have used some tweaking.” What he misses most in current is the immersion and flavor of olde tyme MMOs: that 95% of the doors you see aren’t just rendered backgrounds you can’t enter, and having fun spells like conjuring food or weapons, for your friends. With early Everquest, he says, “you could tell that Brad McQuaid was trying to import an AD&D experience into computer form.”

As for games since then, none have stuck quite as well as the original EQ. Besides the mainstream MMOs, he has tried some “ninth tier” games such as Dungeon Runner, Rubies of Eventide, and Fasaria. Currently he is only subscribed to City of Heroes. “It's very casual in that I can easily step away mid mission without worrying about dying and the death penalties are practically non-existant these days anyway,” he says, which is important especially with a brand new baby boy born to his wife just a few days ago. Speaking of which, he and his wife (user profile AtomicFlea) actually met through ZAM! "She's been here with me for five years anyway with a year of long-distance relationship prior.  She was a poster here and we interacted on the forums but not much.  I once offered some music suggestions in a thread of her's and she PM'd me a thanks saying that she liked them.  We started PM'ing back and forth and it went from there.”

Since he no longer plays EQ and ZAM does not currently host CoH forums, Jophiel spends most of his time posting in the Asylum and scoping out the other non-specific forums: general games, OOT, and TV, movies, anime, and books. In the Asylum he is one of the most vocal liberal posters, sparring often times with another long-time poster, gbaji. Jophiel noted that “he (gbaji) used to play EQ as well and would post huge essay style responses to pretty basic questions.  Ironically, back then I used to look forward to those posts because they'd give me something to read for ten minutes.”

Still, he ended the interview by saying, “ I'd just like to thank the developers/moderators and other Powers That Be for years of entertainment.  I can complain about little things but I wouldn't loiter around for ten years if I wasn't happy.  And a shout out to the Asylum for being a large part of that enjoyment.  There're folks I've known now for a decade, and there're some great people there for smarts or humor or whatever they bring to the forums.”

I did also get a chance to ask about some fun, inside jokes from the forums:

Q: Do you know the actual start date for your account?
A: According to Kao, I registered in July on the site although, like I said, my first uBB posts were earlier than that. Since the uBB forums are dead there's no real way to find out but I'd guess around May 2000.

Q: Is there a story behind you “Gyro Girl” avatar that you used for so long?
A: Mostly that gyros are delicious.  That avatar was an old poster that used to hang in my favorite gyro joint back in the day.  I've tried to find a real copy of it sometimes but never with any luck.  eBay has failed me!

Q: So, does Varus have a point? You stole a South American beauty just to give her citizenship and advance the liberal agenda?
A: Well, she was born an American citizen since her father already had citizenship and she was in Virginia when I met her but the liberal agenda part is all true.

Q: You're on a deserted island with one other poster. For the sake of fun, let's say not Flea... who would you choose?
A: Samira.  She's sharp and amusing.  Plus she's an enigma so I could learn all her secrets.

Q: Which poster would you choose to eat on said deserted island?
A: (Laughing) I'll say Moe (MoebiusLord) because it'd be a surprise attack.  Some of the other usual suspects would be expecting it. Me saying I'd eat them would be a badge of honor!