EQ 10 years old today

[Tebonas]

Damn, I've been clean for years now, and I still got goosebumps hearing the Everquest title music.

I am still in love with the experience I had back then, the sense of wonder never recreated in another MMOG since. But lets face it, nobody would stand for the design flaws anymore. Corpse Runs until three in the morning to not lose your equipment for good? The Plane of Air which you couldn't leave for a few days after you started the raid, jumping form Isle to Isle and never daring to be miss an evening because it wouldn' allow a whole raid to press on (If you were one of the people with the keys)? Rare Lore Items that got destroyed when you opened the corpse and tried to loot them a second time, screwing everybody else over? The ability of others to rob you blind when you consented them dragging your corpse? Rogues actually stealing the loot from under the nose of other players with their pickpocket ability?

I still think most of the love is some perverse variant of the Stockholm syndrome.

[sam, an eggplant]

Damn, I've been clean for years now, and I still got goosebumps hearing the Everquest title music.

Forget the music, this still makes my nipples hard.

[raydeen]

Damn, I've been clean for years now, and I still got goosebumps hearing the Everquest title music.

Forget the music, this still makes my nipples hard.

Woot Ding Congo Rats!

[Dtrain]

Let's get this out of the way first: I love EQ for what it was. What it was not, however, was a great game. It had it's revolutionary aspects that are indesputible and place all MMOs in it's debt.

It also had a profoundly positive effect on my life - to the point where it is sad.

Things that resulted from me playing EQ like a fiend:
One of the better jobs I have had
A viable career path
A good part of my life for the last 10 years
My girlfriend, hopefully fiancee soon

So, yes, I am an EQ success story. And yes, that is still so very sad. So. Very. Sad.

The above embarassing personal revelations aside, I feel I must piss on the birthday cake with second hand urine. Let us not forget...
EverQuest: A Retrospective Look At Why I’m So Great And This Game Sucks

[Tmon]

I played at launch and after learning to rebind my attack key to something other than a, finding some some decent people to play with, and learning to stop flinching when I got the "you are being examined by xxxx" message it was a lot of fun.  Then two weeks after launch I went away on a two week business trip, I came back and all the people I knew from launch had leveled beyond where they could help me in any meaningful way (cash still being super tight) so I ended up soloing most of the time.  After two months trying to solo level a warrior while trying to fit the game in around my job and family and I was done.

[Nonentity]

I played this game for five years on and off. I was terrible at it. I never got higher than level 52. It has resulted in me making lots of friends, meeting lots of interesting people, etc etc.

Every time I would quit, I always came back.

What is really sad is that my time in WoW has now eclipsed my time in Everquest, if you count the year I was in the beta. WoW has also had a more profound effect on my life at this point.

I cancelled my EQ account multiple times, but there has never been a time when I was not paying for my WoW account, or when I was not on comped time for the account.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hi, my name is Mr.Bloodworth, and i did not play EQ1

[Ratman_tf]

I remember looking over my friend's shoulders to see what was dragging them away from our tabletop RPG and saw some shitty graphics and shit boring gameplay and thought "WTF?"

I tried it years later, and hated every aspect of the game and thought "WTF?"

Now I just take it on faith that there must be something appealing about the game, since people actually paid money to play it.

But I still go "WTF?"

[/threadcrap]

[squirrel]

Meh. Glad you all had good memories. My memory of EQ was SOE fucking up billing me (Australian CC, Canadian Address) and not letting me play but charging me twice. I went from UO --> AC-->Modern Times ^TM. This undoubtedly has coloured my view of 'the scene'.

[Kageru]

Stealthing through lower guk to get my rogue the mask of the deceiver (permanent DE illusion mask) when everything was deep red, I didn't actually know how to get out, wasn't sure what could see through invis and hadn't been bright enough to leave my gear in the bank. Scary, intense and atmospheric with lots of roaming undead frogs and roaming players. Also joined a good Aussie guild and made it to plane of time (after which the expansions got quite silly and WoW was in development).

The risk, the unknown (impossible now with sites like wowhead being just so complete) and the sheer immersion of being in a 3d persistent world with other people was amazing. Hard to even remember a time when 3d graphics and internet gameplay seemed novel. And the game did have the feeling of geekish intensity / designers who cared and tried to create a world to explore. Same was true for the players I guess, reputations and guild pride mattered (even the idea of a zone you called home) whereas now the skin is off and people know how the machine works and the most convenient ways to beat it. Lots and lots of really daft mechanics though, and SoE seems to somehow convert all its designers into soulless corporate drones.

Happy I played it, love the fact that time has erased my memory of the tedium that made up so much of the gameplay and still despise SoE.

[palmer_eldritch]

One thing I miss about EQ is just going to a dungeon, shouting "LFG" and going in. No worrying about finding people with the same quest as you, or on the same part of the quest as you. Just go to the place for your level, find other people of roughly the same level, and go fight things. I know it sucked when you couldn't find a group but quests don't help that.

The areas had a lot of character, as others have said. You got to know those dungeons.

Other people running around was cool. I know almost everyone prefers instances. I like having people running around, looking for groups, begging for resses and talking nonsense.

Right when the game started, I wrote an angry nerdy e-mail to Brad McQuaid about my class being nerfed (they nerfed Whirl Till You Hurl, an enchanter spell). He wrote back replying to what I had said in some detail and thanking me for my e-mail.

[Venkman]

He wrote back replying to what I had said in some detail and thanking me for my e-mail.

Yea, I still remember Crossroads of Britannia, getting into a minor debate with one of the UO devs about how to manage the hyperinflation of Trammel, about 10 months after Renaissance launch. Good times.

But yea, nothing captures trepidation better than the first run across Kithicor, the first time at Unrest, the first time you fell off the boat from Freeport to Qeynos.

I'd be curious to see what analogs there are for people whose first MMO was WoW. Aside from maybe falling off the north side of Teldrassil, what constitutes "hazardous" to a newb these days?

[MisterNoisy]

I played a Ranger on Test - I started at launch and played a year, then picked it up again right around Kunark for about another year.  I miss the game and the people I played it with to this day - Test was a much smaller community than the other servers and most everyone knew everyone else.  I tried other servers both before and after that, but the community on EQ Test will probably be the high point of the MMO medium for me.

[Redgiant]

A few more memories that some of these comments brought back:

Getting my Sense Heading up to finally see:
    You have no idea what direction you are facing.
    You have no idea what direction you are facing.
    You have no idea what direction you are facing.
    You have no idea what direction you are facing.
    You have no idea what direction you are facing.
    You think you are heading East.
(back then we didn't know about compasses or dropped daggers facing N; and you were really lost without SH)

Levitating and running 20 feet above all the Aqua Goblins and rocky terrain across the Cauldron to get to the Unrest entrance.

Porting my wizard into Temple of Cazic Thule, getting whaled on by passing lizards, and begging a higher level group to fight into the maze to get my corpse back.

Kiting Hill Giants around with a group since they dropped big bucks (to us at the time).

Finding that little fucker Hasten Bootstrutter when I was weighed down with coppers.

Getting my first decent robe, a Flowing Black Robe, from Najena.

Watching some Enchanter with Illusion: Werewolf tear up Aviak City.

Wondering why West Karana was three times longer than any other sane zone with no town or merchants.

My first Qyenos to Freeport run at lvl 5, died in Runnyeye twice solo until a group was in there and cleared it on my third pass.

Worst chain death ever: in Lower Guk live side, died near King with no friends online, no groups around, no necro. I died 6 times and lost 2 levels that night.

"Fucking brownies! ..."

[Ossigor]

Haha yeah. Putting Sense Heading on a hotkey was the first thing you did on a new character. Start early enough and by level 10 you might have a 50% chance to know the direction you're going!

The cool thing is by level 10 you probably knew the zones by heart anyway because you weren't spoonfed maps and it was before the popularity of gaming/strat sites. EQ Atlas came along eventually but wasn't there right off the bat.

Note: too many high elves in this thread. "Felwithe this" and "Felwithe that" my ass. Nothing was more disgusting than a high elf pali... Or erudite.

[Redgiant]

Hitler Plays Everquest

"I gave up grouping with Eva and Herman to camp that shit." 

"Even [with] Fabled, he goes down on pulls like Mussolini on spaghetti."

"And who the fuck cast Illusion: Faerie on me? Do I look like Stalin?"

"Albert rolled on those gloves. They were an upgrade for me. NO DROP - he can't even use them. I'll never get my epic."

Lawl, classic! And not far from truth.

[Sky]

I never fell off Kelethin by accident, but it was my favorite place to train up safe fall with my monk. And try to get newbies to cast a heal on me, I'd feign death right as I landed.

I also loved the lowbie nekkid run from Qeynos to FP. And the FP tunnels, and secret rooms in Felwithe.

Unrest was so much fun when it was just our two rival groups camping it because nobody else was high enough level or knew about it or whatever. There was like a week where we were the only two groups there, competing for mobs (in a good way, not like CT later), slowly working our way through to new camp spots, we originally pulled from the basement to the wall! Binding sight as a wizard on the puller and learning the whole house from the safety of outside. Watching newbie groups begin to show up and wipe constantly, which is when we learned how to camp inside the house.

I was a high elf originally :P (wizard)

[Slyfeind]

I still go back to EQ once in a while. It's still fun. I miss downtime. I miss sitting for 10-15 minutes waiting for the boat. I never got that into it though, and still don't. I missed out on the initial release, but I wish I started playing on launch day. I never stick with it too long, though. Just long enough to have some fun, then when it gets boring I quit and hop onto the next MMO I see.

Yeah, you just can't go back to it and recapture the magic. It was a one-shot deal, just like UO was. It's still ok though.

[Tale]

I went back with members of my old 1999 guild for the progression servers a couple of years ago (starts off as original-world EQ give or take a few zones, and you unlock the expansions via achievements). It was amazing how we slotted back into our old well-oiled group routine, lining up mezzed crocs on Oasis beach and keeping the XP rolling with minimal mana/HP available. We got bored after that, but it was a little taste of the old days.

Things I remember:

* I was senior writer with a PC magazine and one of my colleagues had reviewed EverQuest while I was overseas on holiday. I returned, read his review and bought the game. It was July 1999. I rolled a human monk in Freeport and crossed the sea to meet him in Butcherblock, and night fell as I ran through the zone. And I was amazed it actually got dark, the sounds were spooky and I couldn't see a damn thing, and then his elf came running out of the darkness holding a torch and said "Hail". He never played much further, but he experienced the game through my emails and screenshots for the next 3 years, while I got pale, fat, unfit and alone, because I was so obsessed with EQ.

* Helping start the first major Australian MMOG guild, Southern Legion, on a mailing list called EQOZ (it was before web messageboards). I suggested starting fresh on the newest server and a majority voted yes to my suggestion, so if anyone played on The Tribunal you can blame me for all the Aussies (we were Aurora Noctum later).

* Rerolling as a troll warrior and discovering everyone else was good-aligned and based in Qeynos. So at level 7 I ran there KOS to everything, on a fully spawned server where nobody had even reached level 20, across all these zones, got a bind outside the city walls and the sewers merchant became my lifeline.

* Temporarily rerolling for the start of Vallon Zek (PvP Teams) and charging the humans among an army of evil characters (ADRENALINE!). All of us were slaughtered by a levitating higher-level barbarian shaman, who roleplayed the defence of Freeport in a Scottish accent and made us kneel to get our precious loot back.

* Sights and sounds: The beholders in Runnyeye and Gorge of King Xorbb. Sheer terror. The carved walls of the enormous pass that led to Highpass Hold. Sand Giant coming over a dune as I hunted in Ro. The many parts of Solusek A.

* The opportunity to become incredibly powerful, but still face NPC forces many times more dangerous than you. I think that was why the fear/danger worked. You could become the stuff of legend and strike awe in the newbies, but the forces at work in the world, with which you did battle, were more powerful than the admiring newbie at the East Commonlands tunnel could imagine, and you were still really just an ant (but you showed off your shiny armour and weapons anyway, making the most of your precious loot before it was lost forever on a Plane of Fear misadventure).

* The functioning world - the sun rose and set, things came out at night, politics mattered due to the faction system (NPCs could have spontaneous fights with you and with each other), crowd control was an amazing traffic juggling act against deadly odds, good loot was genuinely rare and genuinely made a difference.

[Le0]

Reading this brings back quite a lot of memories!

I remember when I rolled my first character, a female dark elf necro, I was in that newbie forest that I can't remember the name killing skeletons and stuff. At this time, I got so many people giving me stuff because they though I was a real women it was incredible. This char ended when I lended my account to a friend who went and died and never looted back my corpse, I must have been on a break at the time but I remember coming back and my corpse at vanished.. I remember when I got one of the few Necro robe from Plane of Fear that had ever dropped, Blighted Robe on the Boogey man, I was so proud, even more because I won the roll with something ridiculous.

After that I rolled a Gnome Enchanter that guy kicked ass, I was in love with gnomes! I really loved the aoe stun enchanter had, it was all colorful and you felt really powerful being able to crowd control with all the mezzes etc...

I remember doing Nagafen raids for epic cleric weapon till the earliest hour for our lead cleric, that was awesome. Also after months of questing and hours over hours of camping plane of fear for that bitch mob that would be super rare I finally got my epic wand that casted that haste buff !

Quite a lot of memories, I wasted so many hours on this game it is incredible!

[raydeen]

2 favorite memories:

1.) The opening of Stonebrunt Mountains. I ran my lil' druid through the Warrens at break neck speed desperatly trying to find the SBM zone entrance. Was thrilled when I found it (was one of the first on my server to find the route). Spent the next 10-20 levels out there farming cool wicker armor.

2.) One of our guild picnics. I was in charge of supplying the bevies. I got some of it from vendors, and some from raping the kobolds in the Warrens for their booze. Got to the picnic (it was near the Wizard Spires in SRo iirc), everybody got really drunk (one guy drank himself to death and had to be rezzed), one guy ran up the spire, lost control and fell to his death, and our guild leader (druid) had a duel with our top wizard. Hilarity ensued when our illustrious leader was buffing herself and forgot to retarget the wiz and dotted herself to death. :D

EQ was a bitch of a game, but the community has never been matched. We played for the social aspects and ignored the grind because we were with good friends having a helluva time.

[Dtrain]

Asking Prince Thrineeg in Plane of Growth for "the phat lewts"

[Slyfeind]

EQ was a bitch of a game, but the community has never been matched. We played for the social aspects and ignored the grind because we were with good friends having a helluva time.

I play WoW with a bunch of former EQers. I didn't play EQ with them, but they played EQ together and then migrated to WoW. They play WoW the same way they played EQ, not much attention to grind, more socialilzing and just having fun. And, sad to say, it frustrates me because they're doing it so unoptimally. The warrior never taunts, the warlock does the least damage in the group, and in general they just don't know what they're doing. Loot is always free for all, even when questing, stuff like that.

And it's kinda sad to think it frustrates me, because I used to always be about fun first and efficiency second. I guess WoW doesn't allow for that style of play the way EQ does.

[Le0]

Wow does not allow you to play for fun sorry sir

[Ubvman]

EQ was a bitch of a game, but the community has never been matched. We played for the social aspects and ignored the grind because we were with good friends having a helluva time.

I play WoW with a bunch of former EQers. I didn't play EQ with them, but they played EQ together and then migrated to WoW. They play WoW the same way they played EQ, not much attention to grind, more socialilzing and just having fun. And, sad to say, it frustrates me because they're doing it so unoptimally. The warrior never taunts, the warlock does the least damage in the group, and in general they just don't know what they're doing. Loot is always free for all, even when questing, stuff like that.

And it's kinda sad to think it frustrates me, because I used to always be about fun first and efficiency second. I guess WoW doesn't allow for that style of play the way EQ does.

No, your friends are just lousy players. Or have just gotten very relaxed in WoW that allows you slack off and still survive.

A tank that does not taunt, dps that does not dps or CC that do not mez in EQ1 will just get you wiped - and killed painfully with long corpse runs (naked through all the mobs - not a ghost) to your gear. In fact, with harsh death penalties - you have to be constantly on the ball... (like balancing on the ball) when playing the game.

As for my favorite (and long gone) aspect of early EQ1:
A fire beetle says "hit by non-melee damage for 5 pts."

Yeah, they let debugging messages go live - the yellow text was for non-melee damage (spells) IIRC. I think it lasted more than a year until Kunark - spiders, beetles etc. will politely tell you how they got hurt.

[Teleku]

EQ was a bitch of a game, but the community has never been matched. We played for the social aspects and ignored the grind because we were with good friends having a helluva time.

I play WoW with a bunch of former EQers. I didn't play EQ with them, but they played EQ together and then migrated to WoW. They play WoW the same way they played EQ, not much attention to grind, more socialilzing and just having fun. And, sad to say, it frustrates me because they're doing it so unoptimally. The warrior never taunts, the warlock does the least damage in the group, and in general they just don't know what they're doing. Loot is always free for all, even when questing, stuff like that.

And it's kinda sad to think it frustrates me, because I used to always be about fun first and efficiency second. I guess WoW doesn't allow for that style of play the way EQ does.

WTF?  WoW allows you to be casual as hell about the game and just fuck around and have fun.  Not paying attention and playing Casually in EQ was just a fast way to a corpse run and slow as hell advancement.  EQ was THE anti-casual.

Having said that, I do have fond memories back on the game as well, as much as I like to harp on it.  Was my first graphical MMO, and I loved exploring the world.  I played from release day to a little after Kunark.  Even though everything it does is pretty much unacceptable now, still had a good time since everything was new and amazing.  I didn't have a group of friends who played, so I was stuck mainly pug'ing or playing Solo (which makes the game pure hell), and got burnt out eventually. 

This thread does bring back memories though.  Is there anyway I can just use an uber maxed out char for a week so I can go run around the Ginormous world and see everything I missed? 

[sam, an eggplant]

Try a player-managed emulated server, maybe? There are a bunch of em.

[Yegolev]

It's a good thing I wasn't in school when EQ was released otherwise I wouldn't have graduated.

A friend of mine commented while we were playing EQ that it was probably for the best that we were married before it came out.

[CharlieMopps]

Most fun was training the King/Kong Giant Monkey looking thing in Kunark to the gates of the City/noob area.

Most of the noobs there had never seen a mob over level 15 other than a guard. Then they'd see me haulling ass to the city zone line with this HUGE monkey behind me. When I'd zone, the chaos would ensue. Was very very entertaining. Eventually, after it killed 10 or so noobs it would agro the guards and that was a fun fight to watch as well. Man that was funny.

[Xurtan]

On the topic of slaughtering newbies, I was always fond of charming a mob, and buffing it up with everything an Enchanter had. Then giving it weapons and setting it loose. Good times. Orc pawns killing whole groups was always amusing.

[Surlyboi]

I fought 'til just after Kunark not to play. Then I got in and I was hooked.

For the next six years, I had some great times in EQ.

The first time I saw an ogre player coming out of the low visibility rain in Qeynos, scared the shit out of me, especially since i was a level five ranger that was still having trouble with Fippy.

Speaking of Fippy Darkpaw. "You've ruined your lands, you'll not ruin mine!" Seriously, Fippy? Your family lives in a hole that smells like wet dogs and Chuckwagon farts.

The first time I ran from Qeynos to Freeport. Died in highpass twice and expanded my world greatly.

Sand Giant and spec trains to the dock in Oasis.

Breakins to Fear and Hate...

The ring sequence in Velious...

ah, memories.

[Dtrain]

I had a friend at work who would play EQ on his lunch break. Because you couldn't get much accomplished in a half hour of EQ, this play inevitably turned to griefing - some of the most deliciously enjoyable griefing I have ever seen.

He would take any worthless crap he picked up (bags that sell for 1s, or the like,) and pick the lock on the vault in the Freeport bank. He would then proceed to drop the worthless bag inside the vault. Inevitably a greedy player would run in and try to grab the bag, thinking it was someone's hard earned (and dropped) bank loot. He would then shut the vault door on them, leaving them locked inside.

Good times.

Another good one was the hat from Velious (ulthork hide, I believe) that gave you -30 HP. Worthless, but if you gave it to a level 1 character (HP ~20) they would die. And then SOE changed it so that if you were under level 5 you kept your equipment when you died. DEATH LOOP!

I never did any of this personally, but I will admit that it was fun to watch.

[WindupAtheist]

And it's kinda sad to think it frustrates me, because I used to always be about fun first and efficiency second. I guess WoW doesn't allow for that style of play the way EQ does.

The fuck?

[Fraeg]

Rolled a human monk on the Tallon Zek server, because that is where a friend was, and hey "this pvp stuff sounds fun"

Every pvp server needs its cannon fodder, and that was me.  Now with that said, I did have a blast in that game up until Kunark.  

1) looting my first loot of off someone I had killed all by my lil ol self.   was probably a +1 str earring or something like that... but Hey! I ganked someone.

2) Blackburrow, I am sure a lot of it is rose tinted memories, but to this day Blackburrow sticks out in my mind as one of the better designed dungeons I have ever played in an MMO.  Not very big, but it had a very clever design.

3) the realization that I was fleeing for my life from a Snow Orc Shaman with a dude from Poland and a dude somewhere in Africa... that was a holy shit moment for me.

I think 3) was one of the biggest things for me.   These days I don't bat an eye when I am in vent with people in California, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Japan.  But in EQ that completely blew my mind.

As for the downtime, my hunch for the stronger sense of community ties into the *newness* of it all, and simply put there was a hell of a lot of downtime where all there was to do was simply chat.  Newer games have less and less downtime and as such you don't have as much time to bond over the pixels.

[Rasix]

Everquest fails a certain test for me: would I ever play it again? No, under no circumstances could you talk me into playing EQ ever again.  My old roomie and his brother tried this a while ago and failed miserably.  I would not play EQ for free.  I'd rather play whatever joke UO has morphed into than load up this gladly discarded dinosaur.

I played the crap out of EQ.  I'm amazed I was able to marry the my wife who I was dating during much of my EQ time. It's not much of a shock that she doesn't care for me playing MMOs (a certain day long Plane of Sky raid didn't help things).

For every cool moment; there were 10 nut-crushing, punitive ones.  Getting my monk's epic was easily offset by any Planes raid or the time I spent 5 hours trying to recover a corpse and hope I could scrounge up enough sleep to not pass out during a test in less than 2 hours. The novelty of and moments produce by a non-instanced world, were easily washed away by all of the kill stealing and general cockbaggery that went along with it.  Every good dungeon crawling group pales in comparison to the hours sitting on my ass in a dungeon looking for a group or waiting for a camp to open up.

There are some things current MMOs and DIKUs have not done as well as Everquest; mainly creating an environment that felt like a world.  The detail  and care that went into a lot of the zone design is something I don't think anyone has recaptured to the extent that EQ had. Certain games have it spots (other games I haven't played much might do it better).

I'm glad that the industry has mostly forgotten/rejected EQ and has latched onto WoW as its inspiration du jour.  Risk can provide memorable moments and exciting gameplay, but the punishment for failure (and other inconveniences) that goes with it, will forever more be a non starter for any game for me in this genre.  I'm not a college student with almost infinite time to waste anymore, and I'm pretty sure my college self would have appreciated less of his time being spent on activities that were merely gates to having actual fun.

At least it paid for several months of rent. Thank you, Ebay.