I came here to post a tribute to Atwix and it's nice to see that someone already did. His real name was Ivo by the way.
As seen below, the man sure loved him some EU IV...
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I met Atwix in an mmorpg called Asheron's Call 2 in 2003. I was looking for a new guild and he invited me in a guild called AClegend.
He became my patron in the game and we quickly found out we were both from Belgium, so we were in touch a lot.
As with EU IV (and pretty much any game he played) the guy was pretty hardcore and was always dozens of levels above me.
There were server wide events where'd often play together, but most of the time he was grinding in groups with the big guys on the server.
Here are some screenshots from August 2003 where we were just fooling along.
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Then i started playing Wow, but he kept playing AC2. After that he switched to several other mmo's. But just like me he was a huge fan of Arpg's.
We played Diablo 2 together a lot, i got him into Titan Quest and also Dungeon Siege 2. As with EU IV, the guy was VERY good at theorycrafting, so usually he made some OP chars where he just killed everything and i was tagging along behind him
Then we were out of touch for several years, untill one day i drove through the city where he lived and decided to get in touch with him again.
We were in touch regularly, but didn't play any games together. We did meet in Antwerp a few times for steak and beers.
In 2019 i convinced him to buy Grim Dawn + Expansions, because it was my favorite arpg. We played it for over a year every week/two weeks.
As with every game he plays, he gets too good at it. We had a lot of fun, but it lacked challenge for him.
I kept telling him 'once we get to Ultimate difficulty' it will get harder, i swear! But even the endgame was pretty doable when you play with someone like him.
In february we were playing Valheim for the first time, but he kept complaining about this painful cough he had.
A week later when we were playing GD again, he was still complaining about it and mentioned to me 'it might be cancer'.
He was a nurse as profession, but i rolled with my eyes and found his conclusion pretty dramatic. Then a week later, i got a text then it turned out to be myeloid leukemia.
So he soon went to the hospital where i visited him the first week and lend him my laptop so he could play some games. I dont think he played a lot, because obviously chemo wears you out. Very unfortunately the chemo didn't work. The second time neither.
At the beginning of July he got a new treatment (with weekly injections or something) that seemed to get the cancer down by a lot. It also turned out that one of his brothers was 100% compatible for stemcell transplant. So things were looking positive.
Unfortunately life likes to kick you down when you're about to get up and they couldn't the cancer down enough to start the stemcell transplant. AND his brother that was compatible, also got a tumor in his throat and also had to get a treatment. So stemcell from him was never an option again. From what i've heard from atwix/Ivo he will probably be ok though.
A few weeks ago he told me he was out of options. Saturday 4th september i went to a bar with him near his house, we sat on the terrace. I had a few beers and he had some water, but he had an agonizing headache. And his spleen was hurting. After an hour he asked me to take him to his mom's house. He couldn't keep up with me and he was very weak.
A few days later he was back at the hospital. Thursday evening he told me on whatsapp he felt a bit better, and we were even talking that maybe if he had some better days, we could go to the sea for a day or something. But it all went downhill from there rapidly.
I wanted to visit him last weekend, but saturday i got a text from his mother that he was in very bad shape. The plan was for me to go visit him yesterday, but unfortunately he was already in a very deep sleep since saturday evening and he passed away yesterday afternoon in the arms of his younger brother.
I feel VERY bad that i didn't spend more time with him this summer. I was so focussed on the positive results from the start of the summer, that i never realized it could go downhill so fast.
Atwix/Ivo was a sweet guy. A loner, socially a bit awkward and very intelligent. He turned 42, which is also my age. I'm heartbroken and i found it very painfull to see him suffer from chemo, complications, etc. for half a year and that it was all for nothing. Respect for him in the way he handled it. I have not seen him complain or whine "why me!?" once.
Having experienced this was also a great motivation for me to never touch a fucking cigarette in my life ever again.
Grim Dawn was probably my favorite game, but i don't think i'll ever be able to log into that game again. We played it so much the past year together, that it makes my stomach churn just thinking about it.
I'll miss my gaming buddy. R.I.P. my friend and sorry i wasn't there around more often last summer.
