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Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
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I honestly have a hard time picturing you training people. Is this Tuco?
I finished a quest in neriak4 and djdnt want to take any more faction hits from the mobs i had aggrod. I hadnt seen another person all night so i yolod out and dragged a drow army all over some dude.
 

kegkilla

The Big Mod
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I think it was the sense of wonder that the game presented. A lot of that probably has to do with it being the first major MMORPG and the Internet infrastructure not yet being in place for the min/maxers to datamine everything. You had to explore things for yourself and take chances. You would come across things and have no idea what they were or what they meant. You had crazy rare spawns like the ancient cyclops that people would hypothesize all sorts of crazy theories about how to spawn it. Basically you felt like you were in a whole new world that you knew nothing about other than there's some crazy shit out there that will kill you if you stray too far.
 
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Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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random GM events
best of the best fights
class defining epic quests (not given to every single person the second they start an expansion)
big fish in little ponds (griffon in east commons)
xp groups (a lost art) / static dungeons
pvp servers with different rulsets
original, interesting lore
cool procs and clickies
contested world targets
large and small races.. races being immersive (had to duck through door ways or jump up big steps)


*coming before the day and age of everything spoilered online*
 

Pemulis

Not Woke
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The community also carried over onto the messageboards. You could play at night and then continue your "character" all day from work on your server vnboard. The Povar vnboard could be hilarious and brutal at the same time.
 
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Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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oh one more thing





DARK NIGHT TIMES! Finding your way in the dark with a freakin' fire beetle eye or light stone (mayne if you had a greater lighstone tho)
 

Kuriin

Just a Nurse
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1,020
Randomly stumbling on places that you had never seen before. Actually having to take a boat from one continent to another before you realized there were teleport spells.
 
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Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Training people.

Fancy the bard agrees.

Running from Qeynos to Freeport at lvl 10 after begging for a SoW and hotkeying the /loc button so I could find my corpse later.
 
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Before playing Everquest, I played text based RPG games. My first text based game was Adventure Land and then I discovered Infocom and starting playing the Zork series. I don't know why I enjoyed the text based games more than the board games (D&D). By the time I heard about EQ, I was working for a Tech company providing support for Netscape users. It was a fun environment where we could play simple games on our computers in between support calls. A buddy of mine had remoted into his home computer so he could play EQ from work. As soon as I finished my shift I drove down to my local Wal-Mart and purchased Everquest, I wish I could say I started in 1999 but I didn't get in until Velious had just been released. I've always been a casual player, but I think what made EQ so great is the massive amount of people. I especially liked the segregation in the beginning. Wood Elves on one continent, humans on another. Long travel times to discover "new" lands and new races. It really felt like you were on a real adventure. With just enough "danger" to make it feel real.
 

Synj

Dystopian Dreamer
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I agree with kegkilla, it was the unknown that pushed me to learn more.

I remember getting a call from someone before Beta 1 asking me if I'd like to play in this new fantasy world called EQ and I remember feeling like I had won the lottery. There were 50 of us that were outside testers and we were given access to a private message board and of course there was an NDA in place. I wish I had stayed in contact with those guys but sadly I lost track of them. Some of them like Kendrick and Jalen went on to become prominent figures in EQ. Others like Toora and Arion are names that I'll remember as being the guys that helped me take down a werewolf in West Karana. I got stuck in a spawn/kill loop in Qeynos and when I /petitioned for help I got to talk with Ozymandias and Aradune who told me that the 3 levels I lost was "as intended". I cannot think of another gaming experience that filled me with wonder more than my initiation into EQ.

The World: No maps, no fast travel (other than boats), the world was large and it felt like there were hidden areas and secrets everywhere, and the lore held it altogether.

The Mechanics: Spells with nothing more than a name. Classes that looked or sounded cool but really no idea the extent of their skills or spells. Everyone understood what a warrior did but what the heck's the difference between a wizard and a magician? Enchanter? Wtf is that? A spell that does 1000 damage? Don't be ridiculous, that would kill a dragon in one shot!

The Lore: Quests and factions that were shrouded in mystery. Rewards that were completely unknown. Is this a simple fetch quest or a quest chain that leads to some epic reward? The constant tease that you would uncover some awesome unknown reward that no one else had discovered. Oh hey, did you hear there are dragons in this game? I heard it takes like 1000 people to kill them.

Hell, half the game was figuring out was urban legend and what was legit. Running into a Level 50 and being awed at each and every gear slot and wondering what crazy adventures they had been on to get that gear and to look so different.

I know that part of what made EQ magic for me can never happen again, but I'm hopeful that some day there might be something that will give that same level of joy to my kids, but maybe without all the addiction =)
 
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Louis

Trakanon Raider
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Must stop checking this thread before I load some variation of this game back up.
 
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BrotherWu

MAGA
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Real wonder and real fear. That intensity made EQ the only game to ever drive me to punch a monitor and scream like a bitch. In many ways, it was love/hate.
 
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Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
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Real wonder and real fear. That intensity made EQ the only game to ever drive me to punch a monitor and scream like a bitch. In many ways, it was love/hate.

Early on in the game's life the sheer terror and potential repercussions of getting lost and killed. I remember wandering off the beaten path in wood elf land and getting attacked by an orc centurian. The rage at getting killed in the dark emptiness of the forest with little hope of getting my 3 levels worth of items back was sheer torment.
 

Hosix

All labs matter!
4,737
6,642
Must stop checking this thread before I load some variation of this game back up.


You will be disappointed. Don't do it. The nostalgia will last a few hours. You then realize how 16 years ago you had so much more time to put into a game like EQ was. You would log into a green and purple spam of people wanting to do things. Now? You log into barrens chat and cry a little tear.
 

Ravishing

Uninspiring Title
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EQ was great simply because of the many social layers. You had your close friends that you grouped with daily..you had your guild where maybe you didn't like everyone, but you all came together and raided, and you had your server community which had its unique quirks.

Then you had your personal rivals..usually of the same class as you, or the dick that ks'd you at some point. And you had your guild rivals.

You had the players renown for their kindness...or their hatred....or their power....

Everyone able to interact and meet everyone because hubs were real and instances didn't exist.

Guilds could be large and raids could require 40-70 people.

You just can't capture the eq magic again. That social structure was a requirement for dealing with the massive amount of "unfun" stuff in the game... such as weekly spawn timers, rare spawns, experience grinding, rare items, etc.

You can't make a game like that anymore.
 
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I agree with kegkilla, it was the unknown that pushed me to learn more.
Hell, half the game was figuring out was urban legend and what was legit. Running into a Level 50 and being awed at each and every gear slot and wondering what crazy adventures they had been on to get that gear and to look so different.

I know that part of what made EQ magic for me can never happen again, but I'm hopeful that some day there might be something that will give that same level of joy to my kids, but maybe without all the addiction =)

First time a Druid in wolf form ran up and started buffing my character, I thought it was a dev event or something. I didn't even know what the buffs even did at the time, and I liked it.
 
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Synj

Dystopian Dreamer
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First time a Druid in wolf form ran up and started buffing my character, I thought it was a dev event or something. I didn't even know what the buffs even did at the time, and I liked it.

I think Dark Souls taps into this a little bit. It was sort of frustrating but you didn't always know what spells or buffs did. Was it better to put all your points in str or sta? Don't get me started on all the theories behind charisma and charm. I remember in early beta I played a dark elf cleric and there were a ton of people that were terrified to even let me heal them because they thought they would take faction hits and become KOS (this was before the faction messages existed). There was a real sense of the unknown and just like anything else I think imagination filled in the gaps better than any reality ever could.

And yeah, the first time I saw a player in wolf form I was amazed...what class, what spell, how, how, how did you do that?
 
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KCXIV

Molten Core Raider
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I still have moments on Vallon Zek seared into my amygdela from when I was 12-14. I don't really have similar experiences from gaming from other games. Middle school me was concerned about getting into the good raid guild 12 prophets => Silent Souls/Vexare. Kids around me were joining gangs, I was trying to join raid guilds.
i did both. lol I hid everquest from my friends for so long. Then they found out and i got endless shit for wanting to go home and kill dragons. haha