There are just so many memories as others have stated. I played on Bristlebane/Saryrn pre-Kunark for 4+ years. I remember that first night after installing and "attempting" to talk to the 1st NPC in sight and instead auto attacking. Being a Dark Elf I ended up in the forest full of snakes that honest to God gave me goosebumps! I was frozen in place and didnt even know what keys to push next! Being lost in that world daily was just an describable feeling.
I truly miss the wonderful community as well. After playing WoW on and off for the past few years it just makes me cringe to think at what MMOs miss out on these days. The average player would gladly stop whatever they were doing just to help you out. I remember seeing a druid quad kite for the 1st time and asking him "How is that even possible?!" He spent the next several hours teaching me the art, a skill which I passed on to many other druid brethren over the years.
Also charm kiting frogs in PoS was so much fun. A RL buddy of mine just loves to tell the story of the raid that kept stealing my spawns while they were buffing to kill the giants. Too bad for them that next frog they "stole" had 1 too many buffs. :P
The nostalgia is great and all but just talking about classic EQ in a sense makes me very sad. It is the realization that I might never get that overwhelming sense of awe from a video game again. But yet I continue to wander from game to game, hoping something will give me that feeling again even if only for a moment.
Besides the complete, total experience, my best memory would be travelling and exploring. I probably spent a good amount of days (played time) travelling from Butcher Block to Freeport. I remember I somehow landed on an island when i was on the big huge ship going to Fironia Vie (sp). I waited on that island for about 7 hours til I contacted a CSR, as nothing came back to get me...
Shortly before or right after ROK came out my guild decided to PL my sorry human warrior butt on TZ at level 16. Now let's see where can we go on a PvP server. I know! Permafrost at the IGs. So there I am beating up on IGs and it was going ok till the cleric said to pull 1 mob. Ok. No problem. Peek around the corner after entering the door. POP! Magi. Agroed all the IGs. LOL Ok. They gate and are like RUN! So I take off runing. Get lost and manage to have most of the zone on me by the time I make it to one step from the EF zoneline and die just as some poor newbie zones in to see a massive train including IG's right in his face.
When I got resed found out he was flattened half a sec after I was. He sent me a tell laughing about it. He was like I zoned in looked up and couldn't even type OH ****! I was dead that fast. He and I ended up grouping a lot after that though so it was actually pretty cool.
I think my most embarassing memory was at lvl 52 as a shaman.I never played a melee class at the time and was grouping in karnor castle. Then a skeleton captain or commander was killed and dropped a "tranquil staff"; i won the roll. being clueless, i tought "well this staff is no good", even tho people in the group were telling me this was a great monk staff, but without going into details.
I auctioned it in the Dreadlands without a price and soon enough a high lvl ranger from the top guild on the server send me a tell "30k pp and jaundiced bone bracer?" Not knowing better, but knewing what JBB was for a shaman, i instantly accepted.
Days later, i found out that this staff was going for 60K pp at the time on my server, seeing it auctioned in Gfay (which was the trading hub of my server). Some weeks later, i started a Monk and after a few months of lvling i, incredibly, won a second Tranquil staff. I kept that one, and it was well worth the price for a monk!
My most striking memory is definitely going from Halas to Oasis of Marr. I had no maps, and only looked at the maps found in the game-manual. Players from Blackburrow told me it was a good exp spot for lvl 12+. And then i went, crossing the Karanas with that incredible midi music playing, escaping a hill giant, running away from Hypogryphs in north karanas, avoiding the cyclops in east karans, binding myself in Highpass and dying right after from the orcs constantly flooding the zone, crossing kithicor wood at night and OF COURSE dying from a deathtouch ( i ran right into the Dark elves...it seemed the fastest way to go straight!), discovering the commonlands and realizing that i crossed an entire continent and was discovering new lands, new players... then finally arriving at the oasis of marr, and running right into a sand giant rampaging trough the dock.
If i was to name a third memory... it would be something many people must have experienced: a failed plane of fear raid. Basically, the entire raid wiped out far from the portal and the multiple attemps to recover our corpses naked were a total failure: our corpses and exp loss were piling up dangerously. I remained online for 23 hours straight: i just couldn't go and abandon my corpse. Eventually on of the higher guild wnet up, cleaned the area and dragged our corpse, did the rezzes and we called it a day...
Then, aside from a mistell involving sex tells, many personnal memories and random visions of my adventures trough norraths.
My addiction History: >> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore >> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual >> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
Comments
There are just so many memories as others have stated. I played on Bristlebane/Saryrn pre-Kunark for 4+ years. I remember that first night after installing and "attempting" to talk to the 1st NPC in sight and instead auto attacking. Being a Dark Elf I ended up in the forest full of snakes that honest to God gave me goosebumps! I was frozen in place and didnt even know what keys to push next! Being lost in that world daily was just an describable feeling.
I truly miss the wonderful community as well. After playing WoW on and off for the past few years it just makes me cringe to think at what MMOs miss out on these days. The average player would gladly stop whatever they were doing just to help you out. I remember seeing a druid quad kite for the 1st time and asking him "How is that even possible?!" He spent the next several hours teaching me the art, a skill which I passed on to many other druid brethren over the years.
Also charm kiting frogs in PoS was so much fun. A RL buddy of mine just loves to tell the story of the raid that kept stealing my spawns while they were buffing to kill the giants. Too bad for them that next frog they "stole" had 1 too many buffs. :P
The nostalgia is great and all but just talking about classic EQ in a sense makes me very sad. It is the realization that I might never get that overwhelming sense of awe from a video game again. But yet I continue to wander from game to game, hoping something will give me that feeling again even if only for a moment.
I will keep it short:
Besides the complete, total experience, my best memory would be travelling and exploring. I probably spent a good amount of days (played time) travelling from Butcher Block to Freeport. I remember I somehow landed on an island when i was on the big huge ship going to Fironia Vie (sp). I waited on that island for about 7 hours til I contacted a CSR, as nothing came back to get me...
I have quite a few memories, however I thought I'd share a few images from when the game went live:
Very First Screen Shot when the game went Live: img515.imageshack.us/img515/8435/eq000000.png
img38.imageshack.us/img38/8928/eq000001.png
img6.imageshack.us/img6/3365/eq000002.png
img195.imageshack.us/img195/1034/eq000003.png
img223.imageshack.us/img223/6685/eq000004.png
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Shortly before or right after ROK came out my guild decided to PL my sorry human warrior butt on TZ at level 16. Now let's see where can we go on a PvP server. I know! Permafrost at the IGs. So there I am beating up on IGs and it was going ok till the cleric said to pull 1 mob. Ok. No problem. Peek around the corner after entering the door. POP! Magi. Agroed all the IGs. LOL Ok. They gate and are like RUN! So I take off runing. Get lost and manage to have most of the zone on me by the time I make it to one step from the EF zoneline and die just as some poor newbie zones in to see a massive train including IG's right in his face.
When I got resed found out he was flattened half a sec after I was. He sent me a tell laughing about it. He was like I zoned in looked up and couldn't even type OH ****! I was dead that fast. He and I ended up grouping a lot after that though so it was actually pretty cool.
I think my most embarassing memory was at lvl 52 as a shaman.I never played a melee class at the time and was grouping in karnor castle. Then a skeleton captain or commander was killed and dropped a "tranquil staff"; i won the roll. being clueless, i tought "well this staff is no good", even tho people in the group were telling me this was a great monk staff, but without going into details.
I auctioned it in the Dreadlands without a price and soon enough a high lvl ranger from the top guild on the server send me a tell "30k pp and jaundiced bone bracer?" Not knowing better, but knewing what JBB was for a shaman, i instantly accepted.
Days later, i found out that this staff was going for 60K pp at the time on my server, seeing it auctioned in Gfay (which was the trading hub of my server). Some weeks later, i started a Monk and after a few months of lvling i, incredibly, won a second Tranquil staff. I kept that one, and it was well worth the price for a monk!
My most striking memory is definitely going from Halas to Oasis of Marr. I had no maps, and only looked at the maps found in the game-manual. Players from Blackburrow told me it was a good exp spot for lvl 12+. And then i went, crossing the Karanas with that incredible midi music playing, escaping a hill giant, running away from Hypogryphs in north karanas, avoiding the cyclops in east karans, binding myself in Highpass and dying right after from the orcs constantly flooding the zone, crossing kithicor wood at night and OF COURSE dying from a deathtouch ( i ran right into the Dark elves...it seemed the fastest way to go straight!), discovering the commonlands and realizing that i crossed an entire continent and was discovering new lands, new players... then finally arriving at the oasis of marr, and running right into a sand giant rampaging trough the dock.
If i was to name a third memory... it would be something many people must have experienced: a failed plane of fear raid. Basically, the entire raid wiped out far from the portal and the multiple attemps to recover our corpses naked were a total failure: our corpses and exp loss were piling up dangerously. I remained online for 23 hours straight: i just couldn't go and abandon my corpse. Eventually on of the higher guild wnet up, cleaned the area and dragged our corpse, did the rezzes and we called it a day...
Then, aside from a mistell involving sex tells, many personnal memories and random visions of my adventures trough norraths.
Some pics:
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/2119/2000guld2.jpg
img197.imageshack.us/img197/4420/2000ishvarobe.jpg
img195.imageshack.us/img195/6557/2001nagafen.jpg
img36.imageshack.us/img36/4657/2002trakdead.jpg
My addiction History:
>> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore
>> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual
>> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.