Everquest - Live Servers

Valderen

Space Pirate
<Bronze Donator>
4,453
2,623
- The ability to attack any NPC (just don't bind it to a key you'll accidentally press). If I want to turn against my friendly city guards, why not? It was the player's choice--not the developers'--and that made all the difference.

EQ had so much freedom, and especially the freedom to make mistakes.

God dammit how often I died just trying to Hail an NPC. :)
 

Szeth

Trakanon Raider
2,198
997
Yeah but honestly, even just following a guide made for a quest line far, far more interesting than anything WoW or other newer mmos ever did. Just REACHING some of the places, even at a higher level, could be an adventure in itself in EQ, especially if you did it solo. And a lot of the epic stuff could be started earlier on. I know I was doing some of my monk epic stuff in my 30s and 40s to prep for it later.

EQ just had awesome, complicated, involved questlines that made you do research and think about it at least a bit, which is more than you can say for anything post-WoW.

I remember doing the Spirit of Garzicor quest in Velious. Shit took me like 50 hours of serious time, plus raid groups for some of the steps. Crazy in depth. And that was with a guide, without it had to have taken hundreds of hours to figure out.
 

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
14,110
15,614
Did anyone ever participate in those server best of the best PvP battles?

PvP in EQ was shit, it was pretty funny to watch.

Yes. I was a "favorite" for Wizards on Tarew Marr, because I outgeared everyone else. My resists were all in the 300 range, while still having a ton of health and mana. Well, all those resists meant shit. Constant attacks of Lure of Ice and Lure of Lightning kept resisting on my opponent, where as his Draught of Ice and Draught of Jiva managed to easily land on me. It was a shit show. I probably should have moved into melee range and hit him with the Primal Velium Brawl Stick. Oh well.
 

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
<Nazi Janitors>
28,326
43,169
What made Everquest great? - I was 21 years old and doing a lot of drugs.
 
  • 6Like
Reactions: 5 users

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
24,641
31,992
Yes. I was a "favorite" for Wizards on Tarew Marr, because I outgeared everyone else. My resists were all in the 300 range, while still having a ton of health and mana. Well, all those resists meant shit. Constant attacks of Lure of Ice and Lure of Lightning kept resisting on my opponent, where as his Draught of Ice and Draught of Jiva managed to easily land on me. It was a shit show. I probably should have moved into melee range and hit him with the Primal Velium Brawl Stick. Oh well.

The ranger one sucked ass on my server. It was on patch day and the freaking server crashed like 10 times and the GM was like go ahead gotta do it. Only had a total of 2 rangers show up because of all the crashes.
 

Grim1

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
4,864
6,821
What made Everquest great? - I was 21 years old and doing a lot of drugs.

Lol, my extensive unplayed steam library would love to go back in time and be noticed by the purple hazy guy the mirror said I use to be.
 

Miguex

The lad himself
<Gold Donor>
2,216
1,738
Tanking PoF on my cleric without another healer, or tank, in the group was the endgame highlight for me. Building your rep was indeed one of the biggest parts of the game and being in a top end raiding guild and being nice to other people while also being able to push boundaries was a sure fire popularity booster. Still miss my main and its been 10 years since I logged in.
 

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
14,110
15,614
I was the same. As an "end game" Wizard, I would play a lot. On random nights where we had already beaten everything, I would help lower level guilds clear some shit just because I wouldn't be bored any loinger. Granted, I was just damage, but I was a LOT of damage.

There was a time early into NToV where we nearly wiped on Vulak. I believe of our entire raid only 2 groups survived. That fight lasted a little over an hour, and I used around 200 peridots (400k damage) in that single battle. Holy shit was that crazy. Everyone that died was SO BORED waiting for the rest of us to wipe, but we pulled it out and won. Pretty awesome shit. I believe the kill was a result of an enchanter, 3 clerics, bard, shaman, warrior, wizard, rogue and a magician. It was a legendary battle. I did so much damage because I didn't need any healers. Just hide from the AE damage, throw a nuke and hide again to continue meditating. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe we regrouped early on after the majority had wiped to maximize the bards benefit on healers. The bard was the best, but the shaman had to maintain malo & turpor, while enchanter had to rebuff KoE mid fight, as well as keeping haste on the rogue, bard and warrior. What a silly long fight. I'm not 100% on the magician, but I believe they were able to hide the entire time, sending out Epic pets for damage (in addition to damage shield buff on the warrior) while doing a chain of mod rods for the healers.
 
Last edited:

Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
Fun stuff for me was one grouping halls of testing when that was legit good gear, like SBoS etc. As a SK, I was like offtank, puller, dps and crowd control at random parts. Shaman, Rogue, Warrior, Cleric, SK, Bard group. Kind of brokespec and -way- slow killing, but it was hilarious that we kept clearing while random guildies were talking about 2+group "raiding" HoT up to Doze to complete parts. Good times.

There's was a few times while I was stuck in a solo deal or hybrid-only group for some raids, and I'd/we'd end up getting killing blows or xp on mobs during raids. That 2hander boost made paladins and SKs so much more effective during Velious.
 

Zehnpai

Molten Core Raider
399
1,245
I was the same. As an "end game" Wizard, I would play a lot.

I had an auto-fire joystick I programmed for some NToV fights. I remember going to Burger King during at least one of the dragons and coming back to find myself still nuking away at it. I forget which one by name. It was the one where you could stand just below the edge of the ramp and you'd be able to hit the dragon but you'd be out of LoS for the AE's.
 

Xequecal

Trump's Staff
11,559
-2,388
Vanilla EQ was basically a roguelike and with that came the sense of danger that accompanies most roguelikes. No, you didn't lose your character when you died but the death penalty was so large that it still pretty much counts. They pretty much designed it along roguelike lines, where basically everything you did had a chance to randomly fail and kill you. Invis just randomly broke, gate/evac spells sometimes just failed, same went for feign death/harmony. On top of that the game was full of enemies that could just randomly kill you. The rush was that the random instadeath abilities didn't ALWAYS outright kill you when they went off, so you always had a chance of living. Sometimes ghoulroot broke right away and you didn't die, or the scareling random teleport didn't cause you to aggro anything. It was funny how they constantly did this throughout the entire game. Not only did low levels have to deal with the random instadeath griffons and Dvinn, but you also had shit that looked benign that would still just instakill you. Anyone remember dry bones skeletons vaporizing you instantly with that proc?
 

Chukzombi

Millie's Staff Member
71,704
213,022
Vanilla EQ was basically a roguelike and with that came the sense of danger that accompanies most roguelikes. No, you didn't lose your character when you died but the death penalty was so large that it still pretty much counts. They pretty much designed it along roguelike lines, where basically everything you did had a chance to randomly fail and kill you. Invis just randomly broke, gate/evac spells sometimes just failed, same went for feign death/harmony. On top of that the game was full of enemies that could just randomly kill you. The rush was that the random instadeath abilities didn't ALWAYS outright kill you when they went off, so you always had a chance of living. Sometimes ghoulroot broke right away and you didn't die, or the scareling random teleport didn't cause you to aggro anything. It was funny how they constantly did this throughout the entire game. Not only did low levels have to deal with the random instadeath griffons and Dvinn, but you also had shit that looked benign that would still just instakill you. Anyone remember dry bones skeletons vaporizing you instantly with that proc?
i remember when kithicor changes first went through and you werent safe even if you ran along the walls. the pathing was shit as always and those nasty HT skellies bunched up along the walls. if you didnt have invis v undead you would get blasted by like ten of those fucks at once and no matter how badass you were you were going to die. people no longer even zoned in there because they werre camping the HHP zoneline. i rememeber a huge pile of bodies therr. necroes would try to help peeps out but you couldnt get your corpse til day light or somebody was able to train them away. no way were you geting a rez. loot up and gtfo. and i knew several people who did lose their corpses forever and some quit the game over it.
 

Synj

Dystopian Dreamer
<Gold Donor>
7,886
34,488
i remember when kithicor changes first went through and you werent safe even if you ran along the walls. the pathing was shit as always and those nasty HT skellies bunched up along the walls. if you didnt have invis v undead you would get blasted by like ten of those fucks at once and no matter how badass you were you were going to die. people no longer even zoned in there because they werre camping the HHP zoneline. i rememeber a huge pile of bodies therr. necroes would try to help peeps out but you couldnt get your corpse til day light or somebody was able to train them away. no way were you geting a rez. loot up and gtfo. and i knew several people who did lose their corpses forever and some quit the game over it.

I could not imagine losing a corpse, especially early in the game. I'm pretty sure that would have caused me to quit too.

I remember people taking up donations for gear and plat fir people that lost their corpse to bugs. Was another reason EQ was great.

Thinking on that, they were probably just scamming people. Another reason EQ was great.