EQ's self-policing community had a way of alienating griefers and shitheads.Everyone keeps saying server drama, but what you have to realize is that the fundamental game mechanics are what fueled it.
Open agro mechanics and mobs that chased you forever, the ability to KS named mobs from groups, shared (no instancing) dungeons/content along with scarcity of resources, 12 of the 16 classes relying on groups to do much of anything, etc...
Interaction was forced upon the community, and let's face it, a lot of people are shitheads. It was the wild west a lot of times and the game mechanics allowed people to "take matters into their own hands". The EQ official "Play nice policies" are the reason WoW was so dumbed down and streamlined. People just couldn't play nice, so WoW hard-coded their system to make the game world the opponent, rather than the other players.
I think what often gets lost in the nostalgia clouded retelling of EQ's past is how a very large majority of the playerbase was done with EQ shortly after PoP. They were tired of all the frustrations that came with the game. Fighting in Oasis and a sand giant steps on your head because he got trained, too bad, get your ass back on the boat from across the world. Hand in a quest and AI eats your item with no reward, too fucking bad, do it (camp it) again. It's one of the primary reasons why WoW blew up the way it did. It was specifically designed early to reduce or outright remove those timesinks and by 2004 everyone had enough.Everyone keeps saying server drama, but what you have to realize is that the fundamental game mechanics are what fueled it.
Open agro mechanics and mobs that chased you forever, the ability to KS named mobs from groups, shared (no instancing) dungeons/content along with scarcity of resources, 12 of the 16 classes relying on groups to do much of anything, etc...
Interaction was forced upon the community, and let's face it, a lot of people are shitheads. It was the wild west a lot of times and the game mechanics allowed people to "take matters into their own hands". The EQ official "Play nice policies" are the reason WoW was so dumbed down and streamlined. People just couldn't play nice, so WoW hard-coded their system to make the game world the opponent, rather than the other players.
Did the robe look like a FBR or SMR or something?My favorite/only scam was on where me and a buddy would auction to buy/trade for a robe from one of the mage guilds called Rohim's Robe. Then one of us would do the same trying to sell it. My only suspension in EQ was when we pulled off a major steal and got something like a cobalt breastplate and a few high end weapons for that shitty robe. That's another thing that was sweet about EQ, being young and lacking empathy.
I was solo exping on SZ with my 50-something Shaman in Traks Teeth when my gf at the time seriously cut her hand. I /q'ed out and took her to the Emergency room. I didn't get back to the game for like 3 hours. Turns out I didn't actually /q out at all and just left my char sitting there. Some guys from another team found me, killed me, then tracked me to my bind point in that zone. They killed me over and over, deleveling me (on sz you lose exp to pvp death). When I finally got back to my computer I found myself standing at my bind point, surrounded by a group of guildies. Somehow they figured out what was happening while I was gone (I didn't say a word before I left for the e-room), dropped what they were doing, ported to TT, found me and stood guard over me while I was afk. When I got back the cleric in the group rezzed most of my corpses. I still lost a level or so, but without those guys I would have lost way more.Fine. Falling asleep mid pull during flurry drakes in NToV (btw, I was the puller). I woke up like 4 hours later surrounded by various player corpses and no one in the zone. Somehow I had FD in my sleep and survived the (what I assume) was a multidrake pull.
It helped cement my nickname of "Cybsleep" ;/
To expound upon this and sort of tie it in with what Ponytail has been trying to say about SB.....it was a world of consequence.It was (at least at release) an unforgiving harsh world that punished mistakes and auto-weeded out dumbfuck idiots that couldn't play. There was nothing more terrifying than getting jumped by a yellow mob alone knowing that if you die you have a long ass corpse retrieval run along with 4 hours of grind XP lost unless you could find a high level cleric.
IMHO, EQ was killed for me once they removed the tension/risk and made travel, rezzing, and XP loss trivial.