As you may know, a real-life celebration of life service was held last week in San Diego, California and was attended by many of Brad’s family, friends, and colleagues from over the years. It featured a special slideshow chronicling many aspects of Brad's life, as well as eulogies from his daughter Julia, Chris Rowan (CEO of Visionary Realms), John Smedley, and others. The organizers of the event sent me the recorded footage of that event and asked me to distribute it online so that those in the Pantheon community that couldn’t be there in person can still be a part of it, as Brad had fans all around the world. So you can now find it on my YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/KeaT01AElNI
Just watched the entire video - thank them for recording it, thank you for posting it on your channel. Much appreciated.
Brought back so many memories - I was choked up at times, and laughing at others. I was a huge DnD nerd back when I first heard about EQ (DnD video game?! impossible!) around 1997. I applied to beta test and was accepted in 1998 because I was lucky enough to have a first gen cable modem (just happened to rent at the time within a few hundred yards of the local cable company's distribution head end - only way you could get access back then) and they wanted to see how it would compare to dial up. Cable net went down quite often (sometimes for days!), so I could personally compare 9600/56k baud vs 10Mbps [ha, shared access - so actually much less bandwidth per user]. Didn't matter which way I connected, I had to have my daily fix - the world was something so bold, so amazing, so Brad. I tried everything, but loved my gnome wizard best and wandered the world to experience everything I could - ended up in Everfrost scaring a bunch of barbarians who thought I was some rare spawn odd little mob. Only met Aradune once in game, briefly, and never in person. Moved on to other MMOs, tried them all - loved Vanguard the best, but mainly played on test servers as the genre declined (one bard's opinion) catering more and more to the soloists and the cash shops.
RIP Brad McQuaid - the world is a better place for having had your passionate love of games and communities (The Vision™), albeit for way too short a time.
P.S. - Saw you Baz in the Pax East/Boston & Evening Pub Party stills at the beginning - still irritated I was out-of-town for work and couldn't attend. Glad you were able to spend time with the legend. Can't wait to play with everyone in Pantheon - and have a toast in Brad's honor.
Kumu said:Just watched the entire video - thank them for recording it, thank you for posting it on your channel. Much appreciated.
Brought back so many memories - I was choked up at times, and laughing at others. I was a huge DnD nerd back when I first heard about EQ (DnD video game?! impossible!) around 1997. I applied to beta test and was accepted in 1998 because I was lucky enough to have a first gen cable modem (just happened to rent at the time within a few hundred yards of the local cable company's distribution head end - only way you could get access back then) and they wanted to see how it would compare to dial up. Cable net went down quite often (sometimes for days!), so I could personally compare 9600/56k baud vs 10Mbps [ha, shared access - so actually much less bandwidth per user]. Didn't matter which way I connected, I had to have my daily fix - the world was something so bold, so amazing, so Brad. I tried everything, but loved my gnome wizard best and wandered the world to experience everything I could - ended up in Everfrost scaring a bunch of barbarians who thought I was some rare spawn odd little mob. Only met Aradune once in game, briefly, and never in person. Moved on to other MMOs, tried them all - loved Vanguard the best, but mainly played on test servers as the genre declined (one bard's opinion) catering more and more to the soloists and the cash shops.
RIP Brad McQuaid - the world is a better place for having had your passionate love of games and communities (The Vision™), albeit for way too short a time.
P.S. - Saw you Baz in the Pax East/Boston & Evening Pub Party stills at the beginning - still irritated I was out-of-town for work and couldn't attend. Glad you were able to spend time with the legend. Can't wait to play with everyone in Pantheon - and have a toast in Brad's honor.
Thank you for sharing. I did giggle at the thought of Barbarians thinking you were a rare spawn.