There was one time I was grouped with friends and we went into a zone with a house full of dark elves. There had to be some sort of undead. I think we were after a maid / butler or something for one person's quest. Anyhow, playing a cleric most of the time I just had heals and buffs loaded. This time I decided to load an AOE damage spell since clerics did decent damage against undead. We were fighting and had a couple adds and looked like we were going down. I fire off my shiny new spell and helpe save the day. Everyone's happy as we sit to rest and recover when all of a sudden, a huge train of mobs rush into the room from one side then another. We were toast. Turns out the spell aggroed the mobs on the floor above and I think below us. As they ran the path to us they brought their friends. LOL After we made it back I promised not to do that again. It was funny though.....
Or the time I was one my barbarian rogue Hilanea with a friend's monk and we accidently aggroed a red mob. I was all for running to the zone, but he was hell-bent on taking on the challenge. So with just the 2 of us, we took turns grabbing aggro. He'd tank, then FD dropping aggro. I'd tank and then step back and hide, dropping aggro, and heal with bandages and bind wound. Going back and forth, we actually killed it. Nice challenge.
Another time was actually managing to kill a Hill Giant solo with my druid. The giant was a somewhat rare spawn in North Karana near Qeynos. He was less buff than most HG's but still tough, think he conned red to me. Anyhow using the tried and true snare, root, DoT, rest, repeat method, I managed to take him down. Although it was a really close and long fight.
EQ was a game for exploring and taking chances, meeting random people, and learning as you go. It was not my first MMO, but it was the only one that had me logging in as soon as I got home or waking up at night to play with friends. I haven't played anything else that kept me nearly as interested.
My worst memory is extremly bitter, on my Warrior Warelorf silverblade ( barb ) i was turning in the items to get the scabbard for the warrior epic weapons, the NPC was bugged so didne hand the scabbard to me when i contacted GMs they said they coulden do anything and didne really care even tho i know they did it for another war on the server, so basicly as an unguilded Warrior ther was about to be the 3rd war on the server soon having the weapons, i only needed the sarnak blade from the queen to get the actual Blades the scabbard was the hardest part. I lost about 6 months of working on it we had terrible luck on our server with Green dragon scale drops reason it tok so long + heavy competition for the dragon when it spawned.
Most fun moment is when i played EQ1 early days at a internet cafe, a RL friend was hitting on a female character ingame without knowing it the female character was played by a guy across the table and neither knew it but me but god when i went Lol on my chair and my friend asket me why and i told him, he got so embarassed that he never came back to the internet cafe LOL.
Another fun moment was on my troll SK, i went to freeport with an Invis potion and blocked the bank door keeping 30 people on each side frustrating about not being able to leave or enter, even a GM showed up and kept running into my troll and kept saying wtf in /say HAHAHAH god it was hilarious.
one of the best times is when my guild Arms of Valor would do newbie drunk and naked runs through Karana( i think it was named that its been a long time).
grouping in highkeep killing gobbys or guild doing mistmoore and only my druid friend and i killing shit well everyone else was running backto us lol
I forget the name of the city, but for me one of the greatest thing in EQ was when I first visited the city in the trees. I've always like cities like that in novels and seeing it in the game was really amazing, untill I fell off=(
MMO's I am playing
Ether Saga Online (Closed Beta) Ultima Online (halted for now) World of Warcraft (Retired and never going back)
So many eq memories that are dredged up by posts like these every few months. I'll mention some of my favorite zones I leveled in.
First character was Barbarian Shaman on Prexus Server, started in 2000 just at the release of SoL.
Blackburrow: After getting lost in circles for a while in Everfrost, I end up in this pitch dark passage to my first closed area zone. Infested with loads of gnolls, traps and groups of bunched up mobs led by running players yelling Train.
Highkeep Hold: How can 20 people level in a small area consisting of only 3 rooms? This was primarily my first exposure to goblins, grouping mechanics and timing spawns. Here I also met the savior of many, Ran Flamespinner.
Solusek B: Huge dungeon with a cramped entrance littered with bodies. I spent so many levels here, Rune Mithril Bracers being my first source of Platinum. Pool Room, King Room, the dreaded LDCs with their Boiling Blood DoT. There was always someone here during any hour.
Karnors Castle: I was awed by the size and feel of this place. Ghosts, drovlargs and walking hands?!? Don't train to the left of entrance! One of my most memorable experiences was being primary healer for a group. I didn't think we would survive long without a real cleric or crowd control, but i really pushed my focus and the others in the group were on point as well. At the end of the night, I joined my group members Chunko and Kandora in my their guild Enchanted Dragons.
Chardok: What kind of zone has an entrance and exit being different?! I spent most of my 50's here, soloing the mobs along the entrance and exit passages. When we had a group, we would pull from the building, but we would never venture into it, that was where only higher level players went...
Velketor's Labriyth: I slipped off those damn walkways so many times. This was the place to be at the time, where you can make friends with higher level players who were solo-grinding AA's. Getting to be in the kobolds group always meant good exp.
My best experiences were in my early raids in my guild of mostly lvl 50s working to level or on our epic quests. Theres something special about getting 40+ people together to help just one or two persons a quest piece, not even the actual item! I can't imagine that act of selflessness in today's current game communities. You can literally feel the other person's joy even though there was no such thing as voicechat. Although I raided through all of Luclin and PoP content, my favorite moments all involved exploring new zones while leveling and meeting that next person that you will add to your friends list.
I just have to say that this thread has given me a huge amount of nostalgia toward EQ. I have spent hours now just searching the net for as many friends and guilds as I could remember. It is depressing how many friends I made and lost in EQ. I would love to be able to go back and make sure to get contact info for many of them. I managed to find a couple on guildmates.com but there are so many more I will probably never meet again.
I was on Solusek Ro until Ayonae Ro opened, then I moved there. Most of my closest friends were on Ayonae Ro and left long before the server merged with The Tribunal. It was saddening to see so many leave without a word or to return from a break myself and find that many would never be seen nor heard from again.
If anyone remembers a human cleric named Vorrin, that was me. I also later played a Vah Shir Beastlord named Voredor.
If any of my old friends are out there, I hope you're doing well and I miss you guys!
You are talking about HighKeep I'm pretty sure, and I have a lot of fond memories of that zone as well. The first time I went there and saw those RED goblins (red to me anyway) I remember being actually scared to death. I just knew I was gonna die there and never find my corpse. It was one of the most interactive, real moments I've ever experienced in a game. I was sweating and wanted to run like hell, but my in-game friend reassured me we'd be fine, all we needed was to get into a group. We eventually did, and I spent a good 2 weeks there levelling and enjoying the various people who came and went. The most fun I've ever had in any MMO by far.
Yes! It was High Keep. They were fucking goblins and the first two rooms were awesome, and then it went down a rough stairway cut in the stone and there were two other rooms down there.
The awesomeness of that game has all to do with its risk factor. No pain, no gain and no fun. You got to lose something real (time, experience and items) when you die or it's senseless.
OMG that zone... how could any modern MMO beat that or even come close to it?
With those shitty monsters, who dont even aggro each others...
in EQ if you did a bad pull you had the whole zone running after you LOL
and that RULED !!!
you had to zone out at each bad pull you did
if you had the luck to outrun the mobs, because the fuckers ran faster than you anyway !!
LOL
OMG that's a game made by gamers, i'm incensed when i read people on web forums argueing that EQ is old school from the time when people didnt know how to make games, that noone would go through what the EQ gamers went through, that a real game has to bring quick rewards and easy too... fuck that !!!
i'm bored shitless in silkroad compared to EQ.... i have to fight boredom all the time, in fact it's the real monster of the game, the real challenge, the only one besides social relations.
stupid social excuses-for-games.
socials + boredom, these are the challenges of today's games??
Let me be scared, let me risk losing half an hour of gametime if i make a mistake at low level!
what are nowdadays' games? fastfood where you eat shit but... you dont have to wait!!!
Downloading update on a dail-up connection loging into game as a Elf-Ranger in Kethlien and using arrow key taking a few steps and dieing, After Several log ins figuring out i was falling out of the Tree city. The next finally figuring out how to use the lifts and steping off the first time i was killed by a horrent. I was hooked for life.
" Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Those Who Would Threaten It " MAGA
Mine is actually kind of a weird one heh. I believe it was in Nagafens lair ( The fire/lava dungeon with all the goblins at the beggining , sorry It's been a long time since I last played so my memory is a bit iffy ) And it was either a magician/enchanter/wizard that would cast that spell that created an eyeball that you could use to look around and explore without getting hurt. My first time experiencing that was in NL and it always made laugh my head off. There was just something about a giant eyeball being controlled by another player that moves it around to explore and spy on things that I found absolutely hilarious. I would always rofl when I saw someone summon that thing...good times Oddly enough that is my favorite memory because it would just give me such a good laugh when I saw players using it.
Man EQ was a great game though , and there was so many good times to be had.
My fav memory, spending hours and hours in Qyenos on one of my many alts (I was a mere 12-14 at the time and didn't know much about MMO's as I had barely any help) and just searching through the endless merchants, and going to the bar, and losing some of my exp to group, for turning in War noob quest. Just so much time wasted in Qeynos without doing ANYTHING at all. Now a days, you can barely do that, cept I'm seeing it being possible in EQ2.
Wow! Reading this stuff is bringing back so many memories! I have said for years now, there will never be another experience like that first online gaming. It was more of a feeling. Hard to explain but you all know what I mean. After beta testing the one that started it all, (Meridian 59) I remember sitting at my computer and hitting "log on" key for a very long time to finally get on. I was breathless! Unbeleiveable graphics. Got my Paladin up to level 54 but I remeber mostly taking like 8 days of fighting bats before venturing to East commons? and being scared of the bears. and the Griffins? oh my... Those were the days. <sniff sniff> Nothing will ever be that feeling again.
Here here, would you like a hanky? But seriously I sniff as well. You know what starts the memories? When you learn how to do something. By relearning an mmo all over again that could give you the found memories again. I am trying to currently do that with my own mmo idea. Check it out, It's called Twilight Mirage on Devolpers Corner.
This is bad, really bad. But I did chuckle quiet exensively after this happend. We was flagging new probation members and doing PoNb. We was slaughtering the Raid. We had a 2 minute break before we pulled Terris Thule. I think that's whats her name. Anyways, I thought it would be funny to shout in /ooc "If you type /EX you will see the amount of experience you have obtained in the raid." Right after I said that, the MT pulled because everyone was ready. Half of the raid logged off because thats a macro for /exit game lol. Oh man, I got a licken from the Raid Leader/MT. It was bad! I seriously didn't think people would do it. The worst part of it was, the Guild Leader fell for it too. Damn pink paladin! lol
So many memories. This was my first mmorpg. I beta tested and so nobody knew what they were doing. Taking my mage out of freeport at level 5 with my pet for the first time into east commons, back then those damn pets aggro'd everthing so it took a couple tries to explore. Seeing the houses and the griffon for the first time. Tunnel to Ro standing at the cave entrance and looking around some fighter walks over and says" Hey guy group up with us" I reply "Umm ok" a minute passes "Hit accept Blak..." Me "Oh ok sorry never did this before" "You see us on your screen to the upper right Blak?" "Yea ok I see everyone" Spent the next 8 hours in Ro near the temple ruins fighting mummies had to have been one of the top 5 most fun experiances I ever had in a MMORPG. I had no idea what I was doing just set my pet on whatever the fighter was fighting and blast away, none of us really knew what we were doing back then. It was a unorganized chaos and we were talking, forming plans, tactics etc. Some worked, some got us all killed but we kept plucking away. Everything was so new for everyone back then.
You just described what could have been the very first player gathering in the Common's/Ro Tunnel. The fondest of memories for most EQ veterans was the epic gathering of players in that long passage that connected a once great and sprawling city to the dangerous deserts where the dreaded Sand Giant preyed on many. Under that cold stone ceiling they would trade items, /random bet, duel and assassinate 'A Shady Swashbuckler'; (of course) all within the confines of a meager tunnel.
Long before the player colonization of Luclin, this is where it happened, and you were quite possibly, one of the first EC Tunnel settlers.
As others stated, the best memory was the total experience. Back when I played EQ, i wasnt a Meta-gamer. I didnt powerlevel, didnt grind for hours on end...I had fun. When I left EQ, I lost the idea of playing for fun, and became a meta-gamer. Maybe due to joining meta-guilds, and PvP power houses, but I started playing MMOs to get max lvl asap, and not having fun with the lore and world.
When I played EQ, I seriously spent about a month and a half between level 30 to 40, and thats playing 6+ hours a day. Why? For one, there wasnt SoL and PoK, but I enjoyed sometimes just sitting in HHK and bs'ing with people while looking for a group, or spend hours on end pickpocketing nobles while Monks solo them. In EQ, i was never a meta-character, I didnt care. I played to have fun. When SoL came, I spent a lot of time in the bazaar, and around the portals doing what I do best, bs'ing with people.
In short, my play style, and the entire environment/experience was my best memory...
So many for me and these posts just remind me of others I had. Sorry for the length but I blame all of the previous posters for making me remember all of these.
Part of what made it was there was so little known. When EQ was released none of us knew much about the mechanics, agro management, which mobs were agro, how people roles would turn out. There was little to no content in spoiler websites so you would take notes or possibly even make your own map. Everything was so dangerous and there was typically a 'killer' mob in zones that was more powerful than any of the others. I can't count how many times Dorn killed me in North Ro. We'd have a full group of people sitting there and for some reason he'd always make a bee line straight to me while everyone else scattered.
On to a few of my favorite memories;
1)Those first steps into North Ro. Remember in early 1999 the most amazing looking games were Quake 2 and the original Unreal. So when I went from killing rats in Freeport out into the vastness that was North Ro my jaw literally dropped. In fact I remember the first part was somewhat lush where you first zoned in but it was when you climbed that first dune past the small hut and guards or saw the sand and ocean from that little fishing hut over the water.
2)Making the run across Oasis to get to the swamp and upper Guk for some of this 'mesh' armor I had heard about for my monk. At the time, no one was in Oasis as it was too high level of a zone but there was this enteprenierial troll that would sell mesh armor from the swamp to us Monks that had little choices for light armors. This was back in the day where banded armor was pretty much the best you could get and the only magic items people had were derv rings. We had no idea which things were agro and of course there was no map online or anywhere but I had heard of others making it safely across Oasis but seeing the crocs, orcs and occasional sand giant was thrilling. I was able to make it but each of those early runs would really get the heart pumping.
3)Fear break in and my first piece of blighted armor. I remember our guild as being one of the few that could consistently break into fear. At that time there were only a few guilds on the server (Karana) that could so several times we'd help out others after they would wipe. Not that we didn't have wipes from time to time but got to be pretty good at it. When the first pieces of blighted armor dropped including a robe I think my hands were shaking I was so excited/nervous. Also learned how to pull the temple with my necro. We had a monk that did most of the pulling but the temple was full of SK mobs with harm touch so the necros job was to load up the invulns and do a quick circle around the temple and then run out and let the monk tag off me once the HT's were used up.
4)The first Vox and Naggy raids. These were also a blast and my favorite part was always the congo lines when the AE fears hit. Seeing a single file line of 20-40 people running out of those rooms always cracked me up. Sort of the 'Sir Robin' from Holy Grail experience, bravely ran away. Back then the only places to exp at higher levels were SolB which had the added benefit of Kobold enchanters that would charm PC's. Funny to see one of your party run off after a runner only to come back and start hitting people in your group. I also remember a warrior at the zone line after some bad trains that was hitting everyone that had run there, spent the next 10 minutes apologizing to everyone outside the zone that she had been beating on. Then there was lower Guk. I remember doing /who totals down there and many times there would be 90+ people in lower guk. The comraderie was great!
EQ was great because it forced you to group. That in turn created a VERY strong community which is lacking in virtually every MMO post WoW. People have hit the nail on the head in this thread about how fear and risk are what made this game great. There was a sense of accomplishment that most of the new games are missing. EQ was not a perfect game, there were plenty of things that could have been done better but it's frustrating that every company thinks because of WoW's popularity, the only games that are going to make it are the solo centric, linear quest line, no death penalty, instanced and easy games. I don't consider myself a WoW hater, it brought a lot of new people into the genre which I think is a good thing and hopefully some of them are branching out and looking for more of a challenge. For those of us that cut our teeth on EQ, we've dealt with hard and complex and I for one didn't want to take a step back with WoW. The problem is not many companies will risk taking a step forward.
Scariest Moment: Being stranded alone in Lower Guk during my first visit because my entire party is killed, but being hidden as a rogue I survive and have to creep my way back.
Second Scariest Moment: Upon exiting Rivervale to Kithicor Forest, i spotted a corpse of a ghoul a few feet a way near a tree apparently unlooted. As I run over and loot it I turn to see a high level undead commanded standing behind said tree, he Harm's Touches me killing me instantly. (At that time I did not know the undead come out in Kithicor at night)
Fondest Moment: Finding a piece of banded mail armor on the ground fairly early into launch. (Everyone was soooo jealous I had shiny pants)
Second Fondest Moment: Being recognized as the most powerful and well known merchant on my server (Brecca Bargainhunter Tunare).
Third Fondest Moment: Drunken raids on Neriak with my first guild "The Pygmey Coalition"
Most aggravating moment: When they released Moon of Luclin. (The Bazaar forever ruined my ability to trade with players one on one.)
My cousin and I were in Lake Rathe and some new player ask if we could join our group, we said sure.
Well when he and I played we use to talk on the phone while playing. Well we decided to have some fun with this new guy....
We told him of the stories we had heard about the Sea Monster that was in Lake Rathe, so my cousin was in control of the boat and I acted as if I had to leave, I popped levitae and ran accross the water. Then I started casting damage spells on my self and talking in group chat, saying taht the sea monster was attacking me. We had the new guy so scared, this was back when if you died in a bad spot you might just lose your char, no graveyards yet!
My cousin made up some story about having to log and left the poor guy in the middle of the lake.
I still wonder if he ever left that boat in the middle of the lake or just /camped lol
I played EQ from 1999ish-2007 on and off. I have so many memories from the start to the end of my EQ career. One of my favorite was on Stromm in a small guild called Asylum of Insanity. I was a babarian warrior named Therinn. I would say that for the most part my memory of EQ is small fragments of my best and worst memories.
When I first started I was about 13 years old and about 18-19 when i quit. I spent so much time on this game 5+ hours a day and if I couldn't play I freaked out:)
Now to my memories.
Its honestly the simple things that I remember best! I fondly recall hunting Black burrow gnolls to turn in fangs. Back then everything seemed so epic to me since it was my first MMO. I looked upon those camping the elite gnolls with envy wondering how great it must be to be able to hunt them . I also remember hunting bandits in the Karanas and turning in their sashes! I'm not sure why but I recall these events so fondly even though they are the most simple of memories.
But I must admit I miss the old auction system before the bazaar in the commonlands! I use to get up at 5am or stay up all night! then I would offer half of what players wanted for their items because they were so tired of trying to sell an item all night then I would turn around and sell it for double what I paid. I loved doing this and as a newb the money was really good and the more I did it the more I could buy and the more I could make. After doing this a bit I got a full set of bronze armor... and I had a bronze axe... I thought I was so godly. I was a cocky dwarf with my bronze shell.
I miss Everquest I know its changed but perhaps its time for me to come home... Everquest will always be my home among MMOs nothing will ever feel the same.
Hard to say, but I think my two fondest memories from EQ are....
First is going back to right around the time immediately after Vellious launched, everyone in the guild who was of a level had been working on Epics and I was down to the last raid to finish my shaman epic. I had hit a personal low point in the game and was ready to just walk away for a while when some friends in the guild formed and led the raid to finish my epic and *insisted* I come along and get it.
Second one is shortly after that, the guild I was in had formed out of an alliance of smaller guilds and independents who were sick of getting treated like garbage by the bigger guilds...we were a fairly unorthodox bunch with some very skilled players and loved doing things with class/level mixes that were "impossible" (like a successful trakanon raid with a 54th ranger as 2nd tank lol).
Late one weeknight, we heard in guildchat through some "friend of a friend" sort of thing that a large PUG raid had just totally wiped out trying to break into the Plane of Fear and had no hope of corpse recovery. We did a quick survey and mustercall and went to help them out, no charge - no bs, just being nice guys. We managed to break the entry in record time with like 10 or 11 people, only one cleric and one enchanter among them, pulled off the rescue and left...was just an incredible night.
Or perhaps it should be one of my earliest memories as a very young shaman, desperately sneaking across the seeming endless plains of karana trying to get to FreePort to buy smithing supplies....(and snake scales to sell back in Everfrost!)
I miss those elements of risk, loss and player interdependency....
we had just got the internet at home and my wife bought me EQ1 after reading about it (what a sweetie). I was sceptical at 1st but tried it and got totally hooked. Boy did she regret that lol.
First character was a erudite wizard......i would skill stuff in sight of the guards so i could always run back. the tall tree and dense wood scarey stuff.
Then the troll warrior , i was so proud i have made myself a full suit of patchwork leather. Not really understanding the lore i went to visit the orges, i opened a door to the wrong room and cheif or chef killed me. My corpse with my love new armour on was lying at this ubber KOS NPCs feet......dam it
Then the Barb shaman, going into black burrow. Hmm not lightvision and at that time if you didnt have nightvision or a torch the tunnels were totally black.
All great moving stuff.
The best momory , joining a "defenders of the realm" guild and on the first raid my necro skeleton got the last blow on the raid mob. I want to raid "Go Boner!" in chat channel but instead typed "got boner!". All went very silent and 3 years later i still hadn't lvied that down
Comments
Can't really pick a best one.....
There was one time I was grouped with friends and we went into a zone with a house full of dark elves. There had to be some sort of undead. I think we were after a maid / butler or something for one person's quest. Anyhow, playing a cleric most of the time I just had heals and buffs loaded. This time I decided to load an AOE damage spell since clerics did decent damage against undead. We were fighting and had a couple adds and looked like we were going down. I fire off my shiny new spell and helpe save the day. Everyone's happy as we sit to rest and recover when all of a sudden, a huge train of mobs rush into the room from one side then another. We were toast. Turns out the spell aggroed the mobs on the floor above and I think below us. As they ran the path to us they brought their friends. LOL After we made it back I promised not to do that again. It was funny though.....
Or the time I was one my barbarian rogue Hilanea with a friend's monk and we accidently aggroed a red mob. I was all for running to the zone, but he was hell-bent on taking on the challenge. So with just the 2 of us, we took turns grabbing aggro. He'd tank, then FD dropping aggro. I'd tank and then step back and hide, dropping aggro, and heal with bandages and bind wound. Going back and forth, we actually killed it. Nice challenge.
Another time was actually managing to kill a Hill Giant solo with my druid. The giant was a somewhat rare spawn in North Karana near Qeynos. He was less buff than most HG's but still tough, think he conned red to me. Anyhow using the tried and true snare, root, DoT, rest, repeat method, I managed to take him down. Although it was a really close and long fight.
EQ was a game for exploring and taking chances, meeting random people, and learning as you go. It was not my first MMO, but it was the only one that had me logging in as soon as I got home or waking up at night to play with friends. I haven't played anything else that kept me nearly as interested.
My worst memory is extremly bitter, on my Warrior Warelorf silverblade ( barb ) i was turning in the items to get the scabbard for the warrior epic weapons, the NPC was bugged so didne hand the scabbard to me when i contacted GMs they said they coulden do anything and didne really care even tho i know they did it for another war on the server, so basicly as an unguilded Warrior ther was about to be the 3rd war on the server soon having the weapons, i only needed the sarnak blade from the queen to get the actual Blades the scabbard was the hardest part. I lost about 6 months of working on it we had terrible luck on our server with Green dragon scale drops reason it tok so long + heavy competition for the dragon when it spawned.
Most fun moment is when i played EQ1 early days at a internet cafe, a RL friend was hitting on a female character ingame without knowing it the female character was played by a guy across the table and neither knew it but me but god when i went Lol on my chair and my friend asket me why and i told him, he got so embarassed that he never came back to the internet cafe LOL.
Another fun moment was on my troll SK, i went to freeport with an Invis potion and blocked the bank door keeping 30 people on each side frustrating about not being able to leave or enter, even a GM showed up and kept running into my troll and kept saying wtf in /say HAHAHAH god it was hilarious.
one of the best times is when my guild Arms of Valor would do newbie drunk and naked runs through Karana( i think it was named that its been a long time).
grouping in highkeep killing gobbys or guild doing mistmoore and only my druid friend and i killing shit well everyone else was running backto us lol
I forget the name of the city, but for me one of the greatest thing in EQ was when I first visited the city in the trees. I've always like cities like that in novels and seeing it in the game was really amazing, untill I fell off=(
MMO's I am playing
Ether Saga Online (Closed Beta)
Ultima Online (halted for now)
World of Warcraft (Retired and never going back)
So many eq memories that are dredged up by posts like these every few months. I'll mention some of my favorite zones I leveled in.
First character was Barbarian Shaman on Prexus Server, started in 2000 just at the release of SoL.
Blackburrow: After getting lost in circles for a while in Everfrost, I end up in this pitch dark passage to my first closed area zone. Infested with loads of gnolls, traps and groups of bunched up mobs led by running players yelling Train.
Highkeep Hold: How can 20 people level in a small area consisting of only 3 rooms? This was primarily my first exposure to goblins, grouping mechanics and timing spawns. Here I also met the savior of many, Ran Flamespinner.
Solusek B: Huge dungeon with a cramped entrance littered with bodies. I spent so many levels here, Rune Mithril Bracers being my first source of Platinum. Pool Room, King Room, the dreaded LDCs with their Boiling Blood DoT. There was always someone here during any hour.
Karnors Castle: I was awed by the size and feel of this place. Ghosts, drovlargs and walking hands?!? Don't train to the left of entrance! One of my most memorable experiences was being primary healer for a group. I didn't think we would survive long without a real cleric or crowd control, but i really pushed my focus and the others in the group were on point as well. At the end of the night, I joined my group members Chunko and Kandora in my their guild Enchanted Dragons.
Chardok: What kind of zone has an entrance and exit being different?! I spent most of my 50's here, soloing the mobs along the entrance and exit passages. When we had a group, we would pull from the building, but we would never venture into it, that was where only higher level players went...
Velketor's Labriyth: I slipped off those damn walkways so many times. This was the place to be at the time, where you can make friends with higher level players who were solo-grinding AA's. Getting to be in the kobolds group always meant good exp.
My best experiences were in my early raids in my guild of mostly lvl 50s working to level or on our epic quests. Theres something special about getting 40+ people together to help just one or two persons a quest piece, not even the actual item! I can't imagine that act of selflessness in today's current game communities. You can literally feel the other person's joy even though there was no such thing as voicechat. Although I raided through all of Luclin and PoP content, my favorite moments all involved exploring new zones while leveling and meeting that next person that you will add to your friends list.
I just have to say that this thread has given me a huge amount of nostalgia toward EQ. I have spent hours now just searching the net for as many friends and guilds as I could remember. It is depressing how many friends I made and lost in EQ. I would love to be able to go back and make sure to get contact info for many of them. I managed to find a couple on guildmates.com but there are so many more I will probably never meet again.
I was on Solusek Ro until Ayonae Ro opened, then I moved there. Most of my closest friends were on Ayonae Ro and left long before the server merged with The Tribunal. It was saddening to see so many leave without a word or to return from a break myself and find that many would never be seen nor heard from again.
If anyone remembers a human cleric named Vorrin, that was me. I also later played a Vah Shir Beastlord named Voredor.
If any of my old friends are out there, I hope you're doing well and I miss you guys!
All I have to say is
Coldain Ring Quest
Yes! It was High Keep. They were fucking goblins and the first two rooms were awesome, and then it went down a rough stairway cut in the stone and there were two other rooms down there.
The awesomeness of that game has all to do with its risk factor. No pain, no gain and no fun. You got to lose something real (time, experience and items) when you die or it's senseless.
OMG that zone... how could any modern MMO beat that or even come close to it?
With those shitty monsters, who dont even aggro each others...
in EQ if you did a bad pull you had the whole zone running after you LOL
and that RULED !!!
you had to zone out at each bad pull you did
if you had the luck to outrun the mobs, because the fuckers ran faster than you anyway !!
LOL
OMG that's a game made by gamers, i'm incensed when i read people on web forums argueing that EQ is old school from the time when people didnt know how to make games, that noone would go through what the EQ gamers went through, that a real game has to bring quick rewards and easy too... fuck that !!!
i'm bored shitless in silkroad compared to EQ.... i have to fight boredom all the time, in fact it's the real monster of the game, the real challenge, the only one besides social relations.
stupid social excuses-for-games.
socials + boredom, these are the challenges of today's games??
Let me be scared, let me risk losing half an hour of gametime if i make a mistake at low level!
what are nowdadays' games? fastfood where you eat shit but... you dont have to wait!!!
what's that??
Downloading update on a dail-up connection loging into game as a Elf-Ranger in Kethlien and using arrow key taking a few steps and dieing, After Several log ins figuring out i was falling out of the Tree city. The next finally figuring out how to use the lifts and steping off the first time i was killed by a horrent. I was hooked for life.
MAGA
Mine is actually kind of a weird one heh. I believe it was in Nagafens lair ( The fire/lava dungeon with all the goblins at the beggining , sorry It's been a long time since I last played so my memory is a bit iffy ) And it was either a magician/enchanter/wizard that would cast that spell that created an eyeball that you could use to look around and explore without getting hurt. My first time experiencing that was in NL and it always made laugh my head off. There was just something about a giant eyeball being controlled by another player that moves it around to explore and spy on things that I found absolutely hilarious. I would always rofl when I saw someone summon that thing...good times Oddly enough that is my favorite memory because it would just give me such a good laugh when I saw players using it.
Man EQ was a great game though , and there was so many good times to be had.
My fav memory, spending hours and hours in Qyenos on one of my many alts (I was a mere 12-14 at the time and didn't know much about MMO's as I had barely any help) and just searching through the endless merchants, and going to the bar, and losing some of my exp to group, for turning in War noob quest. Just so much time wasted in Qeynos without doing ANYTHING at all. Now a days, you can barely do that, cept I'm seeing it being possible in EQ2.
WoW: Uncleleo - 80 lock Gul'dan
Elainebennis: 74 DK Gul'Dan
EQ2: Barthais 5 Paly Blackburrow
Here here, would you like a hanky? But seriously I sniff as well. You know what starts the memories? When you learn how to do something. By relearning an mmo all over again that could give you the found memories again. I am trying to currently do that with my own mmo idea. Check it out, It's called Twilight Mirage on Devolpers Corner.
This is bad, really bad. But I did chuckle quiet exensively after this happend. We was flagging new probation members and doing PoNb. We was slaughtering the Raid. We had a 2 minute break before we pulled Terris Thule. I think that's whats her name. Anyways, I thought it would be funny to shout in /ooc "If you type /EX you will see the amount of experience you have obtained in the raid." Right after I said that, the MT pulled because everyone was ready. Half of the raid logged off because thats a macro for /exit game lol. Oh man, I got a licken from the Raid Leader/MT. It was bad! I seriously didn't think people would do it. The worst part of it was, the Guild Leader fell for it too. Damn pink paladin! lol
The one with the Shawl in Velious?
You just described what could have been the very first player gathering in the Common's/Ro Tunnel. The fondest of memories for most EQ veterans was the epic gathering of players in that long passage that connected a once great and sprawling city to the dangerous deserts where the dreaded Sand Giant preyed on many. Under that cold stone ceiling they would trade items, /random bet, duel and assassinate 'A Shady Swashbuckler'; (of course) all within the confines of a meager tunnel.
Long before the player colonization of Luclin, this is where it happened, and you were quite possibly, one of the first EC Tunnel settlers.
As others stated, the best memory was the total experience. Back when I played EQ, i wasnt a Meta-gamer. I didnt powerlevel, didnt grind for hours on end...I had fun. When I left EQ, I lost the idea of playing for fun, and became a meta-gamer. Maybe due to joining meta-guilds, and PvP power houses, but I started playing MMOs to get max lvl asap, and not having fun with the lore and world.
When I played EQ, I seriously spent about a month and a half between level 30 to 40, and thats playing 6+ hours a day. Why? For one, there wasnt SoL and PoK, but I enjoyed sometimes just sitting in HHK and bs'ing with people while looking for a group, or spend hours on end pickpocketing nobles while Monks solo them. In EQ, i was never a meta-character, I didnt care. I played to have fun. When SoL came, I spent a lot of time in the bazaar, and around the portals doing what I do best, bs'ing with people.
In short, my play style, and the entire environment/experience was my best memory...
So many for me and these posts just remind me of others I had. Sorry for the length but I blame all of the previous posters for making me remember all of these.
Part of what made it was there was so little known. When EQ was released none of us knew much about the mechanics, agro management, which mobs were agro, how people roles would turn out. There was little to no content in spoiler websites so you would take notes or possibly even make your own map. Everything was so dangerous and there was typically a 'killer' mob in zones that was more powerful than any of the others. I can't count how many times Dorn killed me in North Ro. We'd have a full group of people sitting there and for some reason he'd always make a bee line straight to me while everyone else scattered.
On to a few of my favorite memories;
1)Those first steps into North Ro. Remember in early 1999 the most amazing looking games were Quake 2 and the original Unreal. So when I went from killing rats in Freeport out into the vastness that was North Ro my jaw literally dropped. In fact I remember the first part was somewhat lush where you first zoned in but it was when you climbed that first dune past the small hut and guards or saw the sand and ocean from that little fishing hut over the water.
2)Making the run across Oasis to get to the swamp and upper Guk for some of this 'mesh' armor I had heard about for my monk. At the time, no one was in Oasis as it was too high level of a zone but there was this enteprenierial troll that would sell mesh armor from the swamp to us Monks that had little choices for light armors. This was back in the day where banded armor was pretty much the best you could get and the only magic items people had were derv rings. We had no idea which things were agro and of course there was no map online or anywhere but I had heard of others making it safely across Oasis but seeing the crocs, orcs and occasional sand giant was thrilling. I was able to make it but each of those early runs would really get the heart pumping.
3)Fear break in and my first piece of blighted armor. I remember our guild as being one of the few that could consistently break into fear. At that time there were only a few guilds on the server (Karana) that could so several times we'd help out others after they would wipe. Not that we didn't have wipes from time to time but got to be pretty good at it. When the first pieces of blighted armor dropped including a robe I think my hands were shaking I was so excited/nervous. Also learned how to pull the temple with my necro. We had a monk that did most of the pulling but the temple was full of SK mobs with harm touch so the necros job was to load up the invulns and do a quick circle around the temple and then run out and let the monk tag off me once the HT's were used up.
4)The first Vox and Naggy raids. These were also a blast and my favorite part was always the congo lines when the AE fears hit. Seeing a single file line of 20-40 people running out of those rooms always cracked me up. Sort of the 'Sir Robin' from Holy Grail experience, bravely ran away. Back then the only places to exp at higher levels were SolB which had the added benefit of Kobold enchanters that would charm PC's. Funny to see one of your party run off after a runner only to come back and start hitting people in your group. I also remember a warrior at the zone line after some bad trains that was hitting everyone that had run there, spent the next 10 minutes apologizing to everyone outside the zone that she had been beating on. Then there was lower Guk. I remember doing /who totals down there and many times there would be 90+ people in lower guk. The comraderie was great!
EQ was great because it forced you to group. That in turn created a VERY strong community which is lacking in virtually every MMO post WoW. People have hit the nail on the head in this thread about how fear and risk are what made this game great. There was a sense of accomplishment that most of the new games are missing. EQ was not a perfect game, there were plenty of things that could have been done better but it's frustrating that every company thinks because of WoW's popularity, the only games that are going to make it are the solo centric, linear quest line, no death penalty, instanced and easy games. I don't consider myself a WoW hater, it brought a lot of new people into the genre which I think is a good thing and hopefully some of them are branching out and looking for more of a challenge. For those of us that cut our teeth on EQ, we've dealt with hard and complex and I for one didn't want to take a step back with WoW. The problem is not many companies will risk taking a step forward.
My all time favorite memory was waaay bak when i started playing in 2003.
I had just started a monk in qeynos and i was doing the starting quests for the GMs.
I found this guy surrounded by mobs and he was dying, there was a much higher level person standing near him and was being asked for help.
The higher level guy just stood there and said "welcome to the game noob"
and i just laughed xD
A bunch of EQ nostalgia in the FOH forums,
www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/39153-evercracked-everquest-documentary.html
Scariest Moment: Being stranded alone in Lower Guk during my first visit because my entire party is killed, but being hidden as a rogue I survive and have to creep my way back.
Second Scariest Moment: Upon exiting Rivervale to Kithicor Forest, i spotted a corpse of a ghoul a few feet a way near a tree apparently unlooted. As I run over and loot it I turn to see a high level undead commanded standing behind said tree, he Harm's Touches me killing me instantly. (At that time I did not know the undead come out in Kithicor at night)
Fondest Moment: Finding a piece of banded mail armor on the ground fairly early into launch. (Everyone was soooo jealous I had shiny pants)
Second Fondest Moment: Being recognized as the most powerful and well known merchant on my server (Brecca Bargainhunter Tunare).
Third Fondest Moment: Drunken raids on Neriak with my first guild "The Pygmey Coalition"
Most aggravating moment: When they released Moon of Luclin. (The Bazaar forever ruined my ability to trade with players one on one.)
Current MMO: Aion
MMO Watch: Warhammer 40k Online, SWToR, GW2.
Played: Planetside, SWG, EQ, EQ2, L2, WoW, RFO, KAL, MxO, Voyage, RO,Vanguard,Tabula Rasa, Horizons, CoH/CoV,, Lotro, FFXI
First MMO: Everquest (Tunare Server, Ronin/Tide Guild)
My favorite memory;
My cousin and I were in Lake Rathe and some new player ask if we could join our group, we said sure.
Well when he and I played we use to talk on the phone while playing. Well we decided to have some fun with this new guy....
We told him of the stories we had heard about the Sea Monster that was in Lake Rathe, so my cousin was in control of the boat and I acted as if I had to leave, I popped levitae and ran accross the water. Then I started casting damage spells on my self and talking in group chat, saying taht the sea monster was attacking me. We had the new guy so scared, this was back when if you died in a bad spot you might just lose your char, no graveyards yet!
My cousin made up some story about having to log and left the poor guy in the middle of the lake.
I still wonder if he ever left that boat in the middle of the lake or just /camped lol
I played EQ from 1999ish-2007 on and off. I have so many memories from the start to the end of my EQ career. One of my favorite was on Stromm in a small guild called Asylum of Insanity. I was a babarian warrior named Therinn. I would say that for the most part my memory of EQ is small fragments of my best and worst memories.
When I first started I was about 13 years old and about 18-19 when i quit. I spent so much time on this game 5+ hours a day and if I couldn't play I freaked out:)
Now to my memories.
Its honestly the simple things that I remember best! I fondly recall hunting Black burrow gnolls to turn in fangs. Back then everything seemed so epic to me since it was my first MMO. I looked upon those camping the elite gnolls with envy wondering how great it must be to be able to hunt them
. I also remember hunting bandits in the Karanas and turning in their sashes! I'm not sure why but I recall these events so fondly even though they are the most simple of memories.
But I must admit I miss the old auction system before the bazaar in the commonlands! I use to get up at 5am or stay up all night! then I would offer half of what players wanted for their items because they were so tired of trying to sell an item all night then I would turn around and sell it for double what I paid. I loved doing this and as a newb the money was really good and the more I did it the more I could buy and the more I could make. After doing this a bit I got a full set of bronze armor... and I had a bronze axe... I thought I was so godly. I was a cocky dwarf with my bronze shell.
I miss Everquest I know its changed but perhaps its time for me to come home... Everquest will always be my home among MMOs nothing will ever feel the same.
Hard to say, but I think my two fondest memories from EQ are....
First is going back to right around the time immediately after Vellious launched, everyone in the guild who was of a level had been working on Epics and I was down to the last raid to finish my shaman epic. I had hit a personal low point in the game and was ready to just walk away for a while when some friends in the guild formed and led the raid to finish my epic and *insisted* I come along and get it.
Second one is shortly after that, the guild I was in had formed out of an alliance of smaller guilds and independents who were sick of getting treated like garbage by the bigger guilds...we were a fairly unorthodox bunch with some very skilled players and loved doing things with class/level mixes that were "impossible" (like a successful trakanon raid with a 54th ranger as 2nd tank lol).
Late one weeknight, we heard in guildchat through some "friend of a friend" sort of thing that a large PUG raid had just totally wiped out trying to break into the Plane of Fear and had no hope of corpse recovery. We did a quick survey and mustercall and went to help them out, no charge - no bs, just being nice guys. We managed to break the entry in record time with like 10 or 11 people, only one cleric and one enchanter among them, pulled off the rescue and left...was just an incredible night.
Or perhaps it should be one of my earliest memories as a very young shaman, desperately sneaking across the seeming endless plains of karana trying to get to FreePort to buy smithing supplies....(and snake scales to sell back in Everfrost!)
I miss those elements of risk, loss and player interdependency....
EQ 1 was a cruel master but super addictive.
we had just got the internet at home and my wife bought me EQ1 after reading about it (what a sweetie). I was sceptical at 1st but tried it and got totally hooked. Boy did she regret that lol.
First character was a erudite wizard......i would skill stuff in sight of the guards so i could always run back. the tall tree and dense wood scarey stuff.
Then the troll warrior , i was so proud i have made myself a full suit of patchwork leather. Not really understanding the lore i went to visit the orges, i opened a door to the wrong room and cheif or chef killed me. My corpse with my love new armour on was lying at this ubber KOS NPCs feet......dam it
Then the Barb shaman, going into black burrow. Hmm not lightvision and at that time if you didnt have nightvision or a torch the tunnels were totally black.
All great moving stuff.
The best momory , joining a "defenders of the realm" guild and on the first raid my necro skeleton got the last blow on the raid mob. I want to raid "Go Boner!" in chat channel but instead typed "got boner!". All went very silent and 3 years later i still hadn't lvied that down
My first Xanamech raid in PoInnovation.
/autoassist off
Oh, and thankfully I was a monk so I could fd the aggro I got on the npc gnome because I was such a newb to raiding.