Everquest going f2p

[Trippy]

Yantis bought my lvl 27 druid when I quit for the first time.  That druid probably made a lot more than the $300+ I sold him for.   Pretty sure it was the actual guy, since I remember leveling with him some (had an Erudite wizard named Yantis). 

I may have helped kick start one of the biggest plat/account sellers.   

Was your Druid on Luclin? Maybe I bought your character

[Rasix]

Nope, I was on The Nameless. Home of Legacy of Steel and just about every Malaysian and Taiwanese player in the game.

[MuffinMan]

Damn, $300 for a lvl 27 druid? Maybe I should have asked for a lot more than $75 when I sold my cleric at 34. I shudder when I think about how much time it took to level characters.

[raydeen]

Damn, $300 for a lvl 27 druid? Maybe I should have asked for a lot more than $75 when I sold my cleric at 34. I shudder when I think about how much time it took to level characters.

Heh. I recall it taking 2 to 3 months of solid play to get my BL up into the 50's and that was 6 to 8 hours a day minimum and knowing where all the 'hot' zones were at any given time (some zones would give more exp than others for a period of time and then go back to normal while other zones would then become the main hunt spots).

[Sky]

When I was playing EQ, we didn't have no goddamned BLs.

[raydeen]

When I was playing EQ, we didn't have no goddamned BLs.

I always played the pet classes. First character was a human mage. If/when I get back in I'm going to have to check her birthdate. I know it was really close to the start of retail. Mages, druids, necros and beastlords were my preferred picks.

[Sky]

Beastlords were added with Luclin, the third (?) expansion.

[palmer_eldritch]

Jesus Christ I spent 63 days of my life playing Everquest.

http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/character_profile.vm?characterId=468151594693

[Kageru]

Urgh. 21 days on my shaman, 29 days on my monk, 18 on my cleric, 50 days on my necro ...  That's terrifying. I wonder if I can get a time refund?

[Merusk]

81 days on my Druid alone.  

Though, in fairness, that counts a lot of time sitting in the Nexus as a vendor bot.

Ed: I find it odd my last day online was in 2005. I take it that's the first time they updated that service, because I quit just before COH was released in '04.

[palmer_eldritch]

Yeah a lot of characters have dates of November 16 2005, so it must be some sort of server update date rather than the real last-played date.

[Tale]

When I was playing EQ, we didn't have no goddamned BLs.

Or levels above 50 (the other thing mentioned about levelling the BL).

[El Gallo]

I played last year's progression and actually liked it a lot. It got four paying months out of me before I got bored of grinding Plane of Hate.

I enjoyed the first round of progression servers for a few months and was looking forward to the second.  Then I logged in to find out that they have altered the XP curves to brutally penalize soloing.  What fucking retard at Sony thought "Hey, you know what the problem with EQ1 was?  It rewarded soloing too much?"  Assclowns.

[dd0029]

If/when I get back in I'm going to have to check her birthdate. I know it was really close to the start of retail. Mages, druids, necros and beastlords were my preferred picks.

The character profile site has that information under the Rankings link. My lvl 16 ogre shaman was the 24,967th character created when I made him March 28, 1999. I can still remember the visceral feel of getting lost in the dark in Feerrott (because why not have three double letters?) at level 2.

[Sky]

Creation:    Mar 17, 1999    
Server: 76
Worldwide: 784

 

[Chimpy]

You obviously spent too much time deciding on which hairstyle and skin tone to use.

[Azazel]

81 days on my Druid alone.  
Though, in fairness, that counts a lot of time sitting in the Nexus as a vendor bot.
Ed: I find it odd my last day online was in 2005. I take it that's the first time they updated that service, because I quit just before COH was released in '04.

SK - 152 days 10 hours 36 minutes
Druid - 161 days 6 hours 54 minutes

Granted, a lot of that was 2-boxed once I started the second account and moved the druid across, but.. ouch. 
And I had other toons I used as merchant bots..

[El Gallo]

167 days on shaman + 41 on necro.  A lot of bazaar time, but still 

http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/character_profile.vm?characterId=532576020133

[Phred]

Creation    Mar 16, 1999                  24                176

[taolurker]

My creation dates weren't until June, and surprisingly the amount played for my 60+ characters seems relatively tame.

Rogue = 39 days 0 hours 41 minutes
Shaman = 30 days 17 hours 29 minutes
Cleric = 36 days 13 hours 9 minutes

None of them over 65, and I also don't think any of them were ever used as mules for the bazaar. Our guild did that for me.

[Special J]

Have a 61 Shaman I played up until the WoW launch.  I'll probably check it out.  Once I'm done exploring a few zones I doubt the nostalgia will keep me around for very long.

[fuser]

I was really late to EQ avoided it for so long but went into PoK raiding on my Mage

Creation    Apr 2, 2003
Total Time Played 100 days 15 hours 45 minutes

"Planes of Power - Access to Plane of Time granted". Pretty much quit after downing Quarm, it was a bookend for my time in the game. Pretty much never touched again after WoW as the guild moved to raiding there.

[Kageru]

Likewise... The whole planes of power progression was a perfect end for the story, the content after that was remarkably ugly with no reason to care, and WoW was just doing everything better.

[Tale]

I couldn't do Planes of Power due to the grind. I hated levelling and grinding AAs. I'd had all I could take getting to 60 and earning a few AAs to play through the pre-PoP expansions. We all had a good run of adventures at level 60, particularly Kunark and Velious. Luclin was just weird and unfinished, PoP was big and beautiful but the grind went up exponentially.

I started in June 1999 and the bookend of EQ in my mind is the Velious endgame in 2001/2002, much like the Project 1999 people think, even though I actually stayed till 2003.

[Kageru]

By that point it had pretty much become a raid-centric game. Soloing and exploring the old-world was heaps of fun when they didn't know what they were doing. Intricate and random dungeons just strewn around the map and only the vaguest progression. But Luclin really only made any sense in terms of raid targets and a rough progression (still half-baked though), and Planes of Power was basically raid progression with a little bit of game built around it. So the people who count PoP as the end are probably raiders, for explorers and casuals it was probably much earlier, most likely Velious. And of course the WoW developers took that raid game and moved it to the next level, which sort of overshadowed luclin and PoP even more.

The original EQ was still something broken and special. Kicking you out into the world and telling you, "try not to die, it's dangerous out there". Which probably happened due to low expectations and absent management. Nowadays it would be planned and scripted carefully enough that you'd never go off the rails. And the paradox of the extremely punitive game-play strongly encouraging groups and downtime made it both boring and social.

But yeah, I'd play the emulator over EQ f2p.

[Tale]

By that point it had pretty much become a raid-centric game. Soloing and exploring the old-world was heaps of fun when they didn't know what they were doing. Intricate and random dungeons just strewn around the map and only the vaguest progression. But Luclin really only made any sense in terms of raid targets and a rough progression (still half-baked though), and Planes of Power was basically raid progression with a little bit of game built around it. So the people who count PoP as the end are probably raiders, for explorers and casuals it was probably much earlier, most likely Velious. And of course the WoW developers took that raid game and moved it to the next level, which sort of overshadowed luclin and PoP even more.

The original EQ was still something broken and special. Kicking you out into the world and telling you, "try not to die, it's dangerous out there". Which probably happened due to low expectations and absent management. Nowadays it would be planned and scripted carefully enough that you'd never go off the rails. And the paradox of the extremely punitive game-play strongly encouraging groups and downtime made it both boring and social.

But yeah, I'd play the emulator over EQ f2p.

Hmm. In the guild I was in, it felt like a raid centric game non-stop from 1999, for three and a half years before PoP launched.

It was always about progression. Vox and Nagafen, then PoF, then PoH, then the Kunark raiding game (Venril, Trakanon, outdoor dragons, Veeshan's Peak). Then the Velious raiding game (dwarf, giant and dragon factions, into Sleeper's Tomb). Then some stupid crap called Luclin, then PoP.

We lost geared corpses in PoF, we CR'd around Trakanon's stupid aggro, we looped Halls of Testing eleventy-one times to do Ring of Scale. It means nothing now, but it happened.

WoW was made by people who went through all that, before anyone ever heard of PoP's pansy teleport books and graveyard respawns.

[HaemishM]

Leading a guild from being a friendly casual guild to raiding was what absolutely burned me out on both EQ and leading guilds. We made it through the Vox/Nagafen progression through to Plane of Hate and were just starting on the Venril Sathir raid in Kunark while also using Velious Giant fights to build up when I couldn't take any more. I think part of the problem really started with the introduction of the epic class weapon quests. The sheer selfish greed that sort of shit spawned, along with the absolute necessity for getting gear like the Cleric's resurrection mace, made leading people through a game VERY VERY UNFUN. People turned from friendly, helpful human beings to slobbering, gibbering cockgobblers in the span of seconds.

[Sky]

People turned from friendly, helpful human beings to slobbering, gibbering cockgobblers in the span of seconds.

Both times I quit EQ1 were due to this. First my wizard with Cazic and rubicite nonsense, greed overtook many former friends. Then later our cool little casual guild got swallowed by another guild of absolute douchebags so we could be a raid guild. Our small guild actually formed the nucleus of the active raiders and my friend (guy I used to talk about I called the eqholic a few years back) was in their 'inner circle'...that's what they actually called it. So I was privy to all their douchey inner workings because I'd LAN the game with eqholic.

The crowning douche moment was when they gave some epic drop thingy to their inner circle necro who never showed up to any regular raids and sklipped me over, despite saving their bacon after so many wipes. Like I would feign when I saw a wipe coming on Hate, we got the clerics logged out, and I could relay to them when to log back in and start ressing, summoning the corpses to a safe spot. We pretty much never lost geared corpses mostly due to me. Then they give the best necro drop we saw to this kid they knew irl despite the fact he never (ever) showed for raids, I had never actually seen his character in game before that. Quit on the spot and never went back. Should probably thank him.

Yeah. Why don't I get involved with people in online games? Can't knock their teeth in if they get douchey.

[Special J]

I was lucky to be in a really good casual guild.  People were really good to each other and I had to deal with very little cocknobery.  They just didn't really fit the culture and moved on to one of the uberguilds.  Helped a lot probably that we were pretty far behind the curve.

"Planes of Power - Access to Plane of Time granted". Pretty much quit after downing Quarm, it was a bookend for my time in the game. Pretty much never touched again after WoW as the guild moved to raiding there.

Pretty much the right time.  I don't think the next couple expansions were remembered very fondly.

[Kageru]

Hmm. In the guild I was in, it felt like a raid centric game non-stop from 1999, for three and a half years before PoP launched.

It was always about progression. Vox and Nagafen, then PoF, then PoH, then the Kunark raiding game (Venril, Trakanon, outdoor dragons, Veeshan's Peak). Then the Velious raiding game (dwarf, giant and dragon factions, into Sleeper's Tomb). Then some stupid crap called Luclin, then PoP.

I remember reading (fuzzily, and finding the sources is too hard at this point) that the original game did not intend for Vox to really be raided. She was more an "iconic character" (like Kerafyrm). She retro-actively morphed into a raid when huge groups started zerging her down. I also remember older players saying Sol B and such were the launch end game and PoH/PoF came later. I like the narrative of the raid game emerging organically from within EQ. Since there are some people here who were gaming in that period (I started a bit later) is there any potential truth to that view?

Certainly I did feel that the "world to explore" aspect dwindled as the expansions became more about presenting a raiding progression. Velious and Kunark had a lot of zones just for exploring (or no use at all) and one mega-dungeon for the uber, with the Velious one being quite exclusive at the time. Whereas PoP and GoW were pretty much just support for a raid progression with a couple of boring XP zones (or even just areas at the zone in).

Certainly my fondest experience was forming a group of friends and levelling together almost entirely in dungeons. The original had so many hidden away dungeons. Some of them off the beaten path, intricate and threatening enough they were rarely used, which just seemed like some designer having fun. Places like befallen, the town sewers, and the dungeon off the field of bone (Kaesora, Dalnir?, in which the entire group needed rescue due to the boss constantly proccing charm, didn't even have the option to die).

[Trippy]

I remember reading (fuzzily, and finding the sources at this point is too hard at this point) that the original game did not intend for Vox to really be raided. She was more an "iconic character" (like Kerafyrm). She retro-actively morphed into a raid when huge groups started zerging her down

It wasn't so much that she (and he) wasn't meant to be raided as Verant didn't anticipate that more than one group would attempt the encounter together.

I also remember older players saying Sol B and such were the launch end game and PoH/PoF came later. I like the narrative of the raid game emerging organically from within EQ. Since there are some people here who were gaming in that period (I started a bit later) is there any potential truth to that view?

Not sure about the history of the initial Planes -- I quit a few months after the launch cause Magicians were broken (runes weren't dropping properly) and rejoined during Kunark so those Planes were there and being raided when I came back.

[Zar]

As I recall the planes (fear, hate, and air) were not open for the first 3 months or so after launch.  When they did open, they went through significant retuning until things stabilized.  

[Tale]

I remember reading (fuzzily, and finding the sources at this point is too hard at this point) that the original game did not intend for Vox to really be raided. She was more an "iconic character" (like Kerafyrm). She retro-actively morphed into a raid when huge groups started zerging her down. I also remember older players saying Sol B and such were the launch end game and PoH/PoF came later. I like the narrative of the raid game emerging organically from within EQ. Since there are some people here who were gaming in that period (I started a bit later) is there any potential truth to that view?

There had been a long beta. Some people were all organised to gear up and go hardcore from the start. But there hadn't been a successful 3D diku before. Accelerated 3D graphics was a newfangled technology for which you had to buy an add-on card so you could play, while running internet servers for something on this scale was also new and different. It was far more popular than anticipated and the first few months were rough and unstable. The person above who said they played on The Nameless probably doesn't even remember it was nicknamed The Gameless at first, as it keeled over and died for days.

Yes, most players did fumble around, falling off Kelathin or dying in level 20 dungeons and poking at gnolls with sticks, fascinated by their first experiences in a live, threatening 3D fantasy world. But within a few months from launch, every server had serious raiding forces doing PoF and PoH and the dragons. And yes, raiding emerged organically from the fact we needed large forces to take down those targets. By the end of 1999, people were talking about raiding as if it had always existed, as if it was an entitlement for every MMORPG player.

Yes, they intended Vox and Naggy to last longer than they did, but that was the case with most raids designed in EQ. And raiding was always tuned to the maximum level and the uber gear of the time, so it was always just as tough with a brutal learning curve, no matter which era you played in. A piece of high level warrior armour in 1999-2001 had an AC value in the tens, +7 or +10 to a couple of stats, and the occasional click effect, and raiders were level 47-50 with no AA system. Often we had to remove our armour in favour of anything that functioned as resist gear when we fought, meaning the raid targets could swat us like flies if we didn't kill them fast enough. There was no "summon corpse" yet and there was an unrecoverable corpse rot timer (you lost all your gear permanently if you couldn't reach your corpse in 7 days), so you consented some poor rogue/monk to drag your corpse from under the dragon's feet, or to the wall in a fully populated Plane of Fear.

On my eventual server (The Tribunal) there were two raid alliances by late 1999: The Elitists and The Vagrants (EV), brutally efficient hardcore guilds who eventually combined into one guild, and The Alliance (TA), a dysfunctional group of about six guilds I was part of. By the middle of 2000, our guild was strong enough to raid on its own, which was a revelation. That formed the path for our guild and others for the rest of EQ.

Velious and Kunark had a lot of zones just for exploring (or no use at all)

Not really. Most were useful when they launched. The Iksar race was added with Kunark and travel from such a big continent was difficult, so some of the big empty Kunark zones you saw were used for low levelling at the time. Others were where we levelled 51-60 (the levels added with Kunark) because there was nowhere else at that time. Many of the zones you experienced as non-challenging later on were actually quite challenging even in PoF/PoH gear as a level 51-60 group. The mobs in Kunark had way more hitpoints than in the old world. Velious had some less useful zones as it didn't introduce a new race or levels, but it was FULL of things to do for people around level 60.

There was a progression of many raiding targets, repeated to equip your guild over many months in each of Kunark and Velious before it became possible to raid the zones you're describing as the "one mega-dungeon" (Veeshan's Peak and Sleepers Tomb). Much like the progression through PoP, though not as linear.

Certainly my fondest experience was forming a group of friends and levelling together almost entirely in dungeons.

Ours too. Solusek A was full of good times, where my levelling group for the 30s and 40s formed. But we were levelling up with dreams of seeing Naggy, Vox, PoF, PoH, Phinigel Autropos (Kedge), etc.

The original had so many hidden away dungeons. Some of them off the beaten path, intricate and threatening enough they were rarely used, which just seemed like some designer having fun. Places like befallen, the town sewers

Befallen was one of the busiest low level dungeons in 1999 - many people's first experience of a dungeon. The town sewers under Qeynos were too far away for everyone except people who started in that city, and neglected because Blackburrow was a better levelling dungeon nearby.

and the dungeon off the field of bone (Kaesora, Dalnir?, in which the entire group needed rescue due to the boss constantly proccing charm, didn't even have the option to die).

Those were added with Kunark and not part of the original. There were still a lot of people levelling up through the 30s and 40s around that time, when the only options were original or Kunark, so these got some use in their era (but not heaps).

[Merusk]

I was on the same server as Tale and remember it the same way he's relating. (People's Front of Norrath/  Mithril Heart Brigade, here.)  MHB wasn't one of the 'cutting edge' guilds.  We came in after everyone had moved on and were doing old content because it was finally available. (World spawns, remember)   

When I joined around the end of the Luclin era they were just getting in to VP and the Ice Giant bosses because Elitists/ Vagrants and the others had moved-on and we were able to kill them during our weekend raid times because they were finally around at those times.   As Planes opened-up we were able to move on to Luclin and as they moved on to the higher planes, we were able to get in to the lower ones like POI and we went back and did the Ssra temple grind as well.

(Hey, think it sucks grinding rep in WoW?  Imagine having to grind faction at 1-3 points per mob just to be able to raid a zone.  Each aggressiveness level was at least as long as Revered->exalted in WOW and the mobs that gave it spawned less frequently.  I remember spending about 4 weeks of 4+ hours a night just killing the same room of mobs.  )(

Why did we do this? Because we had to progress that way.  Even though we had the new expansions and were at the new level caps, gear was still the master.  Well.. gear and ability to field a large raid, levels made up for the last one but not the first.   You HAD to do VP->Luclin->PoP, there was no "gear reset"  WoW introduced that, along with instanced raiding. (Which is yet another reason to laugh when people say WoW didn't innovate or move the genre forward.)

I also remember going back to my warrior for a few days some time around PoP and laughing that she had what had been an awesome weapon when I last played her, towards the release of Kunark.. doing a massive 7.7 dps; the Short Sword of Ykesha.  I replaced it with some common world drop that did only 2x the damage.  Yes, it took the release of 4 expansions to be able to replace a group-only (Blue/ low purple) drop in EQ with a common world drop akin to the greens of WoW.

[Scold]

I was on the same server as Tale and remember it the same way he's relating. (People's Front of Norrath/  Mithril Heart Brigade, here.)  MHB wasn't one of the 'cutting edge' guilds.  We came in after everyone had moved on and were doing old content because it was finally available. (World spawns, remember)   

When I joined around the end of the Luclin era they were just getting in to VP and the Ice Giant bosses because Elitists/ Vagrants and the others had moved-on and we were able to kill them during our weekend raid times because they were finally around at those times.   As Planes opened-up we were able to move on to Luclin and as they moved on to the higher planes, we were able to get in to the lower ones like POI and we went back and did the Ssra temple grind as well.

(Hey, think it sucks grinding rep in WoW?  Imagine having to grind faction at 1-3 points per mob just to be able to raid a zone.  Each aggressiveness level was at least as long as Revered->exalted in WOW and the mobs that gave it spawned less frequently.  I remember spending about 4 weeks of 4+ hours a night just killing the same room of mobs.  )(

Why did we do this? Because we had to progress that way.  Even though we had the new expansions and were at the new level caps, gear was still the master.  Well.. gear and ability to field a large raid, levels made up for the last one but not the first.   You HAD to do VP->Luclin->PoP, there was no "gear reset"  WoW introduced that, along with instanced raiding. (Which is yet another reason to laugh when people say WoW didn't innovate or move the genre forward.)

Reading this makes me very glad I played UO instead of EQ.  That's a lot of free time down the drain over a period of years.  (update, btw: glad I did the 14 day free trial instead of the f2p, I was able to roll my halfling druid and promptly quit and uninstall after the first kill-ten-rats quest)