EQ 10 years old today

[naum]

Wow, 10 years…

* …I remember that it didn't run very well on my old Toshiba desktop machine and I splurged for a new rig and snazzy graphics card so I could play…

* …starting my first character as a human ranger in Qeynos Hills and dying because it was nighttime and humans had no vision and toon drowned in the lake there… …2nd character fell off the tree city in Kelethin… …after that, had to go with the half-elf…

* …joining a guild (playing on Rallos Zek, then later on race war server) primarily comprised of Age of Empires (and soon to be ex-AoE players as most were consumed by the EQ lure…)…

* …making low level character runs to HH, and SplitPaw (or ?) dungeons…

* …all of the constant server outages, and ire and venom that soon was directed at Verant for people unaccustomed to a subscription based game (in addition to shrinkwrap purchase)…

* …the early days of PvP+ server, full loot, Blackburrow train + caboose, the gankings… …corpse looting…

* …the bugs that never got fixed (like zoning from Qeynos Hills to W. Karana)…  …or the oversights that led some to gain incredible coinage before the "exploitable" snafus were addressed (i.e., a crafted item, a quest in Qeynos that gave a much higher spell than should have been…)

* …enchanters going from the ignored class to overpowered and then nerfed…

* …staring at a spell book for entirely too long, which knocked out my reading list (think I read all of the Robert Jordan novels along with some other SF tidings while "meditating")… …which also caused me to finally unsubscribe, as I couldn't justify paying for/playing a game where I spent such an inordinate amount of time reading a book!

[Hawkbit]

I'll likely get the uberdork title here for this, but maybe there's a couple of people that never saw this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_b9n76F5KQ

It's a goodbye video by a guild that was leaving EQ a few years back.  Decent production quality and the best part:  It's enough of a memory of why I don't need to play again.

[Xurtan]

Fuck, way to kill the happy. Maybe it was just me but that video was depressing.

[palmer_eldritch]

And something else - maybe kind of obvious, but even so. For those of us playing in the early days, the gameplay was new and nobody knew what the hell was going on.

A tank who treid to kill things with his sword instead of taunting, or a wizard who blasted away and got attacked by the monster, wasn't an idiot. They were just a player trying to work out how to play the game. Things like aggro or crowd control were new concepts. I don't know if this stuff existed in non-graphical diku muds, but if they did then EQ players didn't seem to know about them (and they were far more likely to be UO refugees than diku refugees after all).

Figuring out the basic gameplay was an adventure in itself, and one that players went through together. You can't get that in most MMOs nowadays because even when something brand new comes out, the chances are that the basic game mechanics - tank gets aggro, mage carefully limits blasting, controller-guy mezzes - will be what we have seen in EQ.

[needle archery]

I played from beta and stayed with it for about 18 months before getting burnt out - corpse runs, downtime, kill-stealing, bugs, lag-death... all exasperated by playing from the UK and paying silly money for dial up.

Highlights;

* watching the sunset for the first time over butcherblock mountains with a new friend after a few hours adventuring.
* getting charmed by a beholder and then being used as it's pet to attack fellow players, and subsequently dieing.
* first time getting ganked by a ninja dark elf in home territory.
* watching the naming ceremony of the first few level 20 players by GM's riding in on thunderclouds.
* getting blinded by a minotaur shaman while trying to navigate a maze back to the group.
* the excitement of searching the world to find the answers to quests, rather than using online guides.

The only other similar immersive RPG experience that I've ever come across was playing a virtual reality game called Legend Quest http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/virtuality.html. Created back in 1992, it blew my mind and gave a similar gameplay experience as playing eq for the first time.

I've been keeping my eye on VR tech since then, hoping someone would release a commercially successful product. 18 years later and still nothing. My hopes are with Nintendo doing something but it looks like 3D TV will be the next iteration before a fully head tracking VR product makes a break through.

[raydeen]

On a happier note:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKDkvy9sKuY

Oldie but a goodie.

[Ratman_tf]

And something else - maybe kind of obvious, but even so. For those of us playing in the early days, the gameplay was new and nobody knew what the hell was going on.

A tank who treid to kill things with his sword instead of taunting, or a wizard who blasted away and got attacked by the monster, wasn't an idiot. They were just a player trying to work out how to play the game. Things like aggro or crowd control were new concepts. I don't know if this stuff existed in non-graphical diku muds, but if they did then EQ players didn't seem to know about them (and they were far more likely to be UO refugees than diku refugees after all).

Figuring out the basic gameplay was an adventure in itself, and one that players went through together. You can't get that in most MMOs nowadays because even when something brand new comes out, the chances are that the basic game mechanics - tank gets aggro, mage carefully limits blasting, controller-guy mezzes - will be what we have seen in EQ.

Yes. Let's not forget that Everquest gave us the holy trinity and mired MMORPG gameplay so badly that nearly every game copies their piss-poor paradigm.  Ah god, the hate for EQ will keep me warm tonight.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Random memories, good, bad and ugly.

Camp check!

A_Grass_Snake_003 kicks you for 15.

Finding out the mobs have no LOS restrictions while sitting in a hut in E Commonlands when a Griffon flew by.

Staring at that damn spell book for 40 levels.

Being able to tell when something was moving up behind you (while your screen was filled with that stupid spell book) just from the sound of the footsteps.  You could actually tell exactly how close and what direction it was.

Running from Kelethin to Halas and then leading a friend back from there to Kelethin, at like level 8.

Driving 15 minutes each way during lunch to go home from work and play for half an hour.

Celebrating the last night of beta by drinking till my field of view narrowed to about a quarter screen and my character was moving 30 feet from side to side while sitting on the ground, then running from one end of Kelethin to the other several times without ever falling off.  Finally climbed up on top of the roof of the highest hut in the city and jumped, died, then logged out.

Yelling "BONNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!" in guild chat when I leveled up.

Yelling "GGGGGNNNNNNNNNNNNNOB!!!!" in guild chat 15 minutes later when I died and lost the level and two weeks worth of experience.

Running Norrath's original drunken druid taxi service.  Picking from 4 pages of teleport buttons in that damn spellbook while smashed, we didn't always end up where we were supposed to, and occasionally I ended up there alone.  but I never accepted any tips until arrival! LOL

Jawing with a cleric and a necro about setting up a guild named Povar SAR - dedicated to recovering corpses with the least possible loss of exp from anywhere you lost it (except Hate, lol)

Getting dumped into the ocean by the ship when it zoned from butcherblock to Freeport without me.  madly swimming back towards shore trying to get close enough before drowning that I'd still be able to recover my corpse without drowning again.

Drowning as a ghost.

Zoning away from anything resembling a GM-run live event after the first couple when it became obvious that not only was the zone doomed to crash shortly as everyone on the server tried to join in, but the event would largely consist of ridiculously over powered/under conned GMs ganking anyone and everyone level appropriate to wherever they were until "the high levels" got a group in to spank them.

"Loading, please wait..."

Looting a rusty 2-handed sword, and discovering it was a huge upgrade for my girlfriend's ranger who used it for the next 3 or 4 levels.

Fishing while invisible in Crushbone.

Killing Mitty for the 50th time and STILL not getting the Paw of Opalla.

Keeping my GF company while her cleric camped a stupid STUMP in Kithikor forest for a ground spawn required for her epic for a full WEEK of evenings.

[Senses]

I had alot of great times over about 2.5 years in this game and still have some very good friends from my old guild Legacy of Steel.  I never really expect to fall into a game like I did EQ or even WoW for that matter, but when you do, and suddenly start to give a shit about that world and the people in it, it isn't altogether different than the same experience in the real world.  Good times.

[raydeen]

I'm currently playing on the free Zek shard using EQEMU and it's a pleasant diversion so far. It's actually quite soothing with all the old textures and models. Kinda like dancing with that old flame at the high school reunion. And not one mouth breathing retard in sight. WoW is fun but let's face it. It's the AOL of MMO's. Sometimes it's nice to game with grownups who appreciate a fine vintage wine.

[Senses]

That sounds pretty cool, I didn't even know free EQ shards existed.  I'm actually playing on a free UO shard, but if you could post some info, that would rock.

[Daztur]

Only ever played any character in EQ up to the mid teens because it got insanely boring after that point and I pretty much only played trolls and halflings because I got lost/dead in most every other starting city.

What I liked the most was the real feeling of there being a world there and that it was BIG and SCARY. I'm sure that other games since then have had bigger worlds, but I haven't had another other PvE game in which I felt actually terrified while doing something in it or so happy that I just survived after running for my life.

But as a game, not fun at all. Horrific time sinks and messed up risk vs. reward.

[Slyfeind]

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?

Hah yeah, I just realized what a wacky contradiction that was. Maybe because any deviation from the norm in EQ is certain death, they think as long as they're in for a penny, they're in for a pound.

Now I wonder what their EQ sessions were like. Dying is fun?

[Trippy]

Probably members of a zerg guild and rarely if ever had to pull their own weight even in single groups.

[raydeen]

http://www.eqemulator.net for those looking to take a stroll down memory lane. You'll need to get EQ Titanium Edition to be able to play on the free shards and you may have to patch some of the zones (Nektulos is one of the usual suspects). Instructions are all there on how to set things up. Word of warning: The site and login server are kinda spotty. Sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down.

[Hindenburg]

Sometimes it's nice to game with grownups who appreciate a fine vintage wine golden shower.

[Dtrain]

Sometimes it's nice to game with grownups who appreciate a fine vintage wine golden shower.

Just any old golden shower? Why not a fine one? If you're going to half ass your efforts, nobody is going to take you up on your offer.

[Shatter]

EQ1 makes every game since easy mode. 

You want quest bublbes to show you where to go?  Screw you, find it yourself.  In fact, I wont even have a quest flag over my head, if you want to do quests you can just run to every NPC and /h

Oh look its getting dark, not just dark but Fing DARK.  Not being able to see where you're going is hardcore

Rezz at the spirit healer....Lol..puss!  We corpse run here baby!  Oh you died in Plane of Fear, enjoy your 6 hour corpse recovery. 

Instances are for girls, real men SHARE the zone.  Karnors...TRAIN TO ZONE!  Thats a man zone. 

Lalala im a level 12 killing crocs...BOOM HEADSHOT...Im a Sand Giant beatch and I look like Saddam Hussein!

[Hindenburg]

If you're going to half ass your efforts, nobody is going to take you up on your offer.

EQ proved otherwise.

Shatter's post... if it's sarcasm, it's beautifully done.

[Dtrain]

If you're going to half ass your efforts, nobody is going to take you up on your offer.

EQ proved otherwise.

Shatter's post... if it's sarcasm, it's beautifully done.

EQ was at least a fine golden shower in the context of it's day. Perhaps even exhilarating.

[naum]

BOAT. BOAT.

target me and type /d

[Redgiant]

I dug up the old Allakhazam fashion table, and my original Erudite wizard's screenshot of his SMR from LGuk on Veeshan is still there. It was somewhat the rage back then to be the first of your particular race/gender/item combo to post your ss. I think it was around late Spring '99.

Old Fashion Table

1. The silly hair. I figured the only thing uglier than a big bald forehead was bangs.
2. The silly name.
3. I was in that little building in the Mistmoore graveyard as we were sneaking into the castle the sekrit way to camp some item for someone.
4. Note the original manastone. I sold it much later for $$ well after it stopped dropping from the Evil Eye but before The Great Nerf Bat for using it only in Old World zones.

[El Gallo]

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.

It's odd.  EQ was certainly anti-casual in the sense that it required enormous amounts of contiguous time to actually do anything.  But the actual gameplay was more casual in the sense that it was much less demanding than WoW by far.  In a WoW dungeon, you are constantly moving, constantly spamming multi-skill rotations, dealing with gimmicks.  There's basically zero time to talk on vent, and certainly not to talk by typing.

Compare to a classic EQ dungeon.  Once you break the camp (if you had to, and you usually didn't in the old days since everything was camped), you didn't move for hours.  The actual combat was extremely slow, required little button-mashing, and was punctuated with regular downtime.  The game was all about shooting the breeze with your group, your guild, and/or /ooc trolls.  In EQ, you could basically watch tv, read a book, or interact with RL people and still play. You could alt-tab or afk a while, and it usually didn't matter. 

As I've said before, EQ was more like a fishing trip than a video game. The game was just an excuse to chat and a source of things to chat about.  Once in a blue moon, you get an overpull or a nibble on your line, and there's some excitement in the activity.  But we all really know you are our fishing as an excuse to drink a couple beers and bullshit.

Typical sessions for me:
EQ - 5 hours of being semi-afk
WoW - 1.5 hours of staring intently at the screen, spamming at least 3 buttons every 1.5 seconds while strafe-sliding around to get out of teh firez while not exposing my unshielded ass to a mob.

I'd never go back to old EQ, but there was a sense in which it was more casual friendly than WoW is (WoW is much more casual-friendly overall, of course).

EQ also had a lot more "emergent gameplay" than WoW.  The shit you could pull off with charm, the countless types of shit bards could pull off, the utterly insane pulls that creative uses of faction and/or pets allowed, ect.  None of it intended by EQ's creators, but it was fun.  You'll never see shit like that allowed in a game again.

[Shatter]

What made EQ1 less casual was the result of your action.  It was far worse to do something or not do something in EQ1 then any game Ive played since, there were consequences. 

Leveling, you could lose levels if you die and you definitely lost xp if you died.  Death, you had to go find your corpse...HAD TO.  If you didnt you lost everything, there was no grace in this. 

If you died in a bad location you had to get help to get your corpse back.  You couldnt go AFK in alot of places cause you always stood the chance of being trained and killed(see corpse recovery).  No one went AFK inside Karnors lol. 

Epic quests took months to complete.  You had to compete with 20 other people over contested spawns in planes and other zones.  It took me > 8 months to get my Enchanter snake staff. 

Contested raid zones.  You didnt get a fresh new instance for your raid, you and every other raid guild had to compete.  I remember many times racing another guild inside a zone to tag the bosses first, hoping they wipe or them hoping you wipe.  You could if you chose to screw with their battle and make them lose. 

In EQ1 if you were in a raiding guild you couldnt just stand around, you had to be on top of mob spawns, zones, etc.  IN WOW you show up 8pm for your scheduled raid time and you're good to go.  IN EQ1 you raided when mobs spawned so be ready starting at 7pm until midnight for anything that might pop, and be ready meant race to zone to beat the other guilds there. 

[Hawkbit]

Typical sessions for me:
EQ - 5 hours of being semi-afk
WoW - 1.5 hours of staring intently at the screen, spamming at least 3 buttons every 1.5 seconds while strafe-sliding around to get out of teh firez while not exposing my unshielded ass to a mob.

I was joking about this with a friend recently.  My EQ wizard would solo for two minutes and then sit for ten to regen mana.  I'd always find a place to park and lift weights irl in my downtime.  Can't do that with wow, hehe. 

[raydeen]

I'm going to have to check if my account has run out yet. The one thing I promised myself I would do if I ever quit for good was take my highest level into Qeynos Hills and repeatedly MurderDeathKill Holly Windstalker, the She Devil who would never let me defend myself against rabid wolves.

edited because She Bitch was redundant and made no sence.

[Hindenburg]

no sence.

How true.

[Teleku]

This thread inspired me.  I torrented a copy of Titanium edition, which has the 10 first expansions and is what the emulation servers run.  Then I found an emulation server that has x4 experience gain, and an item vendor that gives you your epic weapon for free, along with with other armor and items for free which make you regen health and mana at a very fast rate.  Also items that instantly give you SoW, Levitate, and Complete Heal on Demand.  And the special zone which has all these vendors also has a person who will teleport you to any zone in the game.  And a vendor that will instantly scibe all spells possible for you to learn at your level to your spell book.

In a few hours of fucking around last night, exploring randomly around the world with my Wizard, I already hit level 24.  I'm actually having a lot of fun!  I'm going to run around and explore all the places I never had a chance to, plus see all the new crap that was added in after.

Amazing what being able to tank several reds at once in my cloth armor, and having every 3-4 reds I kill makes me ding a level, does to the fun factor of the game! (that and instant travel to everywhere I want to go)

[raydeen]

no sence.

How true.

Yeah, can't spell either. Sense!!

[Ratman_tf]

Typical sessions for me:
EQ - 5 hours of being semi-afk
WoW - 1.5 hours of staring intently at the screen, spamming at least 3 buttons every 1.5 seconds while strafe-sliding around to get out of teh firez while not exposing my unshielded ass to a mob.

WoW actually does emulate this 'fishing' gameplay with some of the rare spawn monsters. I spent a few days doing it oldskool, camping General Fangferror in Azshara. 12-24 hour spawn rate, and he had a 1/3 chance of dropping a blue sword that was decent for a level 40ish.
But it's not WoW's focus. You can get better stuff by zipping up to level cap and raiding.

[Tale]

WoW when I played it was actually a horrendous timesink that made me work hard. It feels casual-friendly because of the more light-hearted world, but swallows people's lives just as much as EverQuest.

Add up the time you spend doing stuff to get enough gold (which you consume at an alarming level), acquiring materials and crafting them for you or your guild's needs, running around doing millions more quests than you ever did in the ironically-named EverQuest, and it's an enormous commitment. I found the amount of information to absorb and inventory to manage more time-consuming than they were in EQ.

In EQ your character could be penniless, do no crafting, do no quests, and you could still login 15 minutes before the raid and help. In WoW if you keep doing that, you'll run out of required inventory items from gold to potions to reagents - all of which were consumed in EQ, but not on the scale that WoW churns through.

Sure, you had all the buffing and preparation time, corpse recovery timesinks on failure, and the actual EQ raid took longer, achieving less than in WoW. But you didn't need to micro-manage your character's life every day in order to keep playing.

The end result was I found them pretty much the same as timesinks, and quit both because they made me sit at a PC for longer than I wanted to commit to.

[Redgiant]

WoW when I played it was actually a horrendous timesink that made me work hard. It feels casual-friendly because of the more light-hearted world, but swallows people's lives just as much as EverQuest.

Add up the time you spend doing stuff to get enough gold (which you consume at an alarming level), acquiring materials and crafting them for you or your guild's needs, running around doing millions more quests than you ever did in the ironically-named EverQuest, and it's an enormous commitment. I found the amount of information to absorb and inventory to manage more time-consuming than they were in EQ.

In EQ your character could be penniless, do no crafting, do no quests, and you could still login 15 minutes before the raid and help. In WoW if you keep doing that, you'll run out of required inventory items from gold to potions to reagents - all of which were consumed in EQ, but not on the scale that WoW churns through.

Sure, you had all the buffing and preparation time, corpse recovery timesinks on failure, and the actual EQ raid took longer, achieving less than in WoW. But you didn't need to micro-manage your character's life every day in order to keep playing.

The end result was I found them pretty much the same as timesinks, and quit both because they made me sit at a PC for longer than I wanted to commit to.

This. My starting post meant 'casual' in this way.

If you were a sociializer, enjoyed the need to combine forces to stay safe or get things done, or liked the danger immersion EQ rocked; if you just wanted to solo it sucked.

A big part of the nostalgia for those who played EQ early was the social aspect that you could not avoid, and the shared experience that we were all thrust into this huge, unfamiliar world together (as others have said, it was before regular map sites, wide-spread game rules or nuances were known or shared). You were more likley by far to ask a question in game or get a friendly tip than on a website at first. I felt like I knew a lot more players a lot better in EQ than I ever did in WoW, even before Roger Wilco, TS or Vent came along. That is why pound for pound you see forum quotes and youtube commemorations always refering to EQ in a very fond social way more than any other game.

The only other game I got that feeling and depth of knowing one player from another was DAoC's first 1-2 years.

[Tale]

Brad McQuaid pops up on EQ forums.

[Redgiant]

Brad McQuaid pops up on EQ forums.

Oh God, the return of Aradune. Now they just need Furor to post some FoH trash talk.

[Tale]

Interesting little fact: if you bought the original EverQuest and reinstall it today with no expansions, you cannot play. You cannot patch it. It can't connect to whatever the original connection server was back then. You need a later version.