What Made EQ Great? Tell your stories to a filthy casual
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Xarpolis
Life's a Dream
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Haha, loved how BAD at the game we really were back then.
Yes, you could do a lot in a group, but when it came to raiding, we all started off so lost. Holy shit, a dragon! I'm going to lose my corpse forever! It was scary back then. My earliest Pick up Raid was doing fire giants. We saw that Naggy was up when we got to Rokyl, so we gathered a raid together. I shit you not, 90 people showed up. We crashed the zone at one point. It wasn't pretty.
Anyway, Naggy didn't die. We got him down to about 20% on our best attempt. Then giants began respawning and people said fuck this and left.
Good times. Then in Kunark, I became uber.
Yes, you could do a lot in a group, but when it came to raiding, we all started off so lost. Holy shit, a dragon! I'm going to lose my corpse forever! It was scary back then. My earliest Pick up Raid was doing fire giants. We saw that Naggy was up when we got to Rokyl, so we gathered a raid together. I shit you not, 90 people showed up. We crashed the zone at one point. It wasn't pretty.
Anyway, Naggy didn't die. We got him down to about 20% on our best attempt. Then giants began respawning and people said fuck this and left.
Good times. Then in Kunark, I became uber.
Arden
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Wiping to Naggy with 90 in Vanilla EQ is very, very possible. With that many people and 1999 internet connections, I'm sure there were scores of LD's and massive lag for those that didn't LD. Without the organized buffing, healing, and tanking strategies that guilds eventually learned to employ it would have been a clusterfuck zergfest of lagging people running around pell-mell and getting AOE feared and wasted by a breath weapon that probably killed most non-melee's within minutes. Add on top of that that many of the people could conceivably be upper 40's with shit vanilla gear and you have a situation where 90+ people could easily fail in an early Naggy attempt. Without proper management, the AOEs alone would have been enough to make the raid fail.
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Back in vanilla there wasn't serverside filtering and lots of people went linkdead in large fights. Also very early on LOTS of people that attended a dragon raid weren't lvl 50. Many were 46 to 50 and occasionally healers would be down to low 40's. Not to mention people with 0 fire/cold resistance and wearing a mix of gear, some of which they may have picked up at lvl 20-30 and hadn't replaced it yet.
cabbitcabbit
NeoGaf Donator
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My first naggy raid ever was at between 43 or 45. I can't remember. I bought out a bunch of mr/fr gear just for it hours in advance because the RL was a friend of mine. Still died though. I won the roll on a CoF that dropped but they decided that it would be better suited for some lvl 50 rogue that won the second highest. I wasn't mad, was just happy to be there.
I remember when I first started as my warrior, I had a little experience from messing around on a friends account but not a lot. By the time I was in my early 20's I was in full crafted, ssb etc(I had looted and sold anything and everything that dropped, and stayed in EC constantly waiting for a deal). I had got a group in HHP at gnolls and remember this guy calling me a twink..I responded that I had no idea what a twink even was and the guy just went berserk about my gear and there was no way I got it all by myself, pretty funny as time went on and I realized how well geared I was for my level and didnt even know it.
Playing on Veeshan was great just in itself for the amount of drama there was, even though I was never hardcore enough to be involved I always found it interesting to follow. I even remember when there was world announcements for duels and running to Sro when FoH would be dueling at the spire.
Playing on Veeshan was great just in itself for the amount of drama there was, even though I was never hardcore enough to be involved I always found it interesting to follow. I even remember when there was world announcements for duels and running to Sro when FoH would be dueling at the spire.
I think another big thing about EQ was when exactly you started. Because anyone who started in 1999 itself, tended to get a much tougher experience. There just wasn't any good loot for sale yet because nobody had reached it, and the few who had, wanted it for themselves anyway. The first 20 levels for most people was spent either completely naked, or with bits of cloth/rusty crap they found. It was only about about 20 that most people started getting 'something', but even then, it was still crap in hindsight. I remember my cleric friend being so happy he got a new mace from Highpass or something, but still, it was like 5/30 and thats about it. Gear had no procs and no real stats on it. Even the rings people wore were often just +2 ac or +2 agi or something like that. My bard had bits of of leather and chain, and then at 20 started getting bronze and finally got a full set of bronze. That was his big goal, but bronze was really quite poor. It had marginally better AC than just wearing nothing at all but it was so heavy that a full set left him hardly any room to carry loot.
People had a hard road and it really made a difference. Just one round of attacks from a mob could remove half the HP from most characters. Tanks especially suffered because they were so reliant on gear but any kind of plate was so hard to come by. Rubicite was a huge deal but it was also quite rare.
Anyway, just a year or so later and it was a completely different experience. Things like the Skull Shaped Barbute, Mythril 2 Handed sword, Ykesha, Azure Sleeves, Enamelled Black Breastplate, etc.. even formerly top items like that were occasionally given away to newbies or just sold for cheap. And these were 10 times better than people used to have as a newbie. And they were top items, all the mid range stuff that used to be great, like a Polished Granite Tomahawk or Combine sword or whatever, that was just 'newbie junk' that people gave away for free without a second thought. The entire game got easier, forever, after about 2000. High level players wouldn't think twice about giving a newbie 50p as a little helping hand, but 50 plat was actually a massive amount of money that most new players never used to achieve until their 20's in the early days.
People had a hard road and it really made a difference. Just one round of attacks from a mob could remove half the HP from most characters. Tanks especially suffered because they were so reliant on gear but any kind of plate was so hard to come by. Rubicite was a huge deal but it was also quite rare.
Anyway, just a year or so later and it was a completely different experience. Things like the Skull Shaped Barbute, Mythril 2 Handed sword, Ykesha, Azure Sleeves, Enamelled Black Breastplate, etc.. even formerly top items like that were occasionally given away to newbies or just sold for cheap. And these were 10 times better than people used to have as a newbie. And they were top items, all the mid range stuff that used to be great, like a Polished Granite Tomahawk or Combine sword or whatever, that was just 'newbie junk' that people gave away for free without a second thought. The entire game got easier, forever, after about 2000. High level players wouldn't think twice about giving a newbie 50p as a little helping hand, but 50 plat was actually a massive amount of money that most new players never used to achieve until their 20's in the early days.
Ravishing
Uninspiring Title
- 8,452
- 3,577
AoE Fear made you show up as Linkdead. It was a common misconception that 1/2 the raid went LD when actually it was due to the fear. The raids were very laggy still and that fear lasted forever. The AoE Fear and Damage meant running 90 players at Naggy wasn't insta-win. Player gear sucked back then, nobody could do anything when feared. I always did Naggy where you pulled him to the doorway. Healers would stay down the hallway and heal the feared players as they ran toward them. There were probably waves used too but waves never seemed to go as planned and it was more like everyone just ran at him and did whatever dmg they could.
My fondest EQ moments were during PoP era. Progressing through the Planes was challenging and awesome. Every new zone was an accomplishment. Being in the top guild on the server was fun and added to the thrill but had added pressure of not wanting anyone to pass us up. We were #1 on Xev the entirety of our stay. (Xev opened late-Kunark, majority of guild stopped played around end of Gates of Discord).
After my group was planar geared in PoP, we went back to Kunark/Luclin and did all the old content with 4-6 players. It was soooo satisfying being able to shit-can content with a small group that use to take ~40+ and lots of deaths and time to master originally. I remember keeping Lord Inquisitor Seru on lockdown with 5 players, that fight lasted forever too, like 30-40mins I think. We would 5-man Vex Thal. This content was still relevant for a lot of the younger guilds too, which I did feel bad about sometimes... They had a calendar setup and we kinda fucked it up sometimes with our shenanigans.
It was also a lot of fun discovering & using in-game exploits (no MQ bs). A necro guildie found most of the good shit cause necros were always broken. In Plane of Earth B we could skip everything before Rathe Council, in Vex Thal we could run on the roof and get to any of the bosses (which is how we easily 5-man it). It was all geometry exploits and usually had to do with mounts, basically you could find a crease in the geometry where after enough jumping/crouching/etc you would be able to get through the world. The reason you use a necro is cause there was some clicky for Necro/Sks that insta-cast DMF (dead man floating) and if you spam-click it, while on a mount, while auto-running at a wall, you actually RISE instead of FALL, you pop through the ceiling of the zone-in to PoEB then float over to the Rathe Council area, use summon corpse on your mage and start CoHing the raid. In Vex thal you do the same thing until the necro is standing on the VT roof, summon mage, (or corpses of your group, and necro can simply rez them all).
Also some weird "bugs" later in the game due to Sony's excellent scripting. I remember in the last zone of GoD all the mobs had crazy bad scripting and 1 boss in particular would spawn adds a certain way and the doors would lock and all kinds of bullshit, well this 1 boss we wiped on I was able to FD in a corner, I always had a revive staff on me (would sell & re-buy to recharge them), and I got our raid revived back up... thing was, the door was still locked and the boss stopped spawning adds (and the adds despawned) and once our raid was all back up, we were able to kill the boss without it ever fighting back. Seemed cheap-as-fuck but whatever, this was the kinda shit that was memorable to me
The next expansion with the simon-says zone and epic 2.0s was the end for me. Both GoD and whatever that other xpac was ruined EQ for me. The zones/mobs/lore/everything were so disconnected from the EQ I've known & loved for so long. I also didn't leave for WoW like everyone else... Ended up trying EQ2 but damn, they ruined everything with the lore/world/graphics. Everything was SO restricted unlike EQ where you were free to do so much. I don't advocate exploits but the fact you had levitate and free-roaming throughout the world allowed so much non-exploit freedom.
As a monk I loved exploring EQ. I also remember FD'ing my way to the PoM entrace in NToV before anyone ever cleared NToV. It was hard with all the AoE and shit in that zone. Caster mobs would fuck everything up, and there were tons. Had to get to the entrance, with a mage corpse, too, then make sure you were standing snug against the cubby wall where the PoM entrance was while the mage CoH'd and hope no roamers would come fuck you up. Once we got my group into PoM we all bound ourselves in PoM and lived there for weeks. The exit took you to that Othmir zone (Cobalt sea?) and was actually a nice place to be bound. Was fortunate to be able to bind there as a melee, too.
My fondest EQ moments were during PoP era. Progressing through the Planes was challenging and awesome. Every new zone was an accomplishment. Being in the top guild on the server was fun and added to the thrill but had added pressure of not wanting anyone to pass us up. We were #1 on Xev the entirety of our stay. (Xev opened late-Kunark, majority of guild stopped played around end of Gates of Discord).
After my group was planar geared in PoP, we went back to Kunark/Luclin and did all the old content with 4-6 players. It was soooo satisfying being able to shit-can content with a small group that use to take ~40+ and lots of deaths and time to master originally. I remember keeping Lord Inquisitor Seru on lockdown with 5 players, that fight lasted forever too, like 30-40mins I think. We would 5-man Vex Thal. This content was still relevant for a lot of the younger guilds too, which I did feel bad about sometimes... They had a calendar setup and we kinda fucked it up sometimes with our shenanigans.
It was also a lot of fun discovering & using in-game exploits (no MQ bs). A necro guildie found most of the good shit cause necros were always broken. In Plane of Earth B we could skip everything before Rathe Council, in Vex Thal we could run on the roof and get to any of the bosses (which is how we easily 5-man it). It was all geometry exploits and usually had to do with mounts, basically you could find a crease in the geometry where after enough jumping/crouching/etc you would be able to get through the world. The reason you use a necro is cause there was some clicky for Necro/Sks that insta-cast DMF (dead man floating) and if you spam-click it, while on a mount, while auto-running at a wall, you actually RISE instead of FALL, you pop through the ceiling of the zone-in to PoEB then float over to the Rathe Council area, use summon corpse on your mage and start CoHing the raid. In Vex thal you do the same thing until the necro is standing on the VT roof, summon mage, (or corpses of your group, and necro can simply rez them all).
Also some weird "bugs" later in the game due to Sony's excellent scripting. I remember in the last zone of GoD all the mobs had crazy bad scripting and 1 boss in particular would spawn adds a certain way and the doors would lock and all kinds of bullshit, well this 1 boss we wiped on I was able to FD in a corner, I always had a revive staff on me (would sell & re-buy to recharge them), and I got our raid revived back up... thing was, the door was still locked and the boss stopped spawning adds (and the adds despawned) and once our raid was all back up, we were able to kill the boss without it ever fighting back. Seemed cheap-as-fuck but whatever, this was the kinda shit that was memorable to me
The next expansion with the simon-says zone and epic 2.0s was the end for me. Both GoD and whatever that other xpac was ruined EQ for me. The zones/mobs/lore/everything were so disconnected from the EQ I've known & loved for so long. I also didn't leave for WoW like everyone else... Ended up trying EQ2 but damn, they ruined everything with the lore/world/graphics. Everything was SO restricted unlike EQ where you were free to do so much. I don't advocate exploits but the fact you had levitate and free-roaming throughout the world allowed so much non-exploit freedom.
As a monk I loved exploring EQ. I also remember FD'ing my way to the PoM entrace in NToV before anyone ever cleared NToV. It was hard with all the AoE and shit in that zone. Caster mobs would fuck everything up, and there were tons. Had to get to the entrance, with a mage corpse, too, then make sure you were standing snug against the cubby wall where the PoM entrance was while the mage CoH'd and hope no roamers would come fuck you up. Once we got my group into PoM we all bound ourselves in PoM and lived there for weeks. The exit took you to that Othmir zone (Cobalt sea?) and was actually a nice place to be bound. Was fortunate to be able to bind there as a melee, too.
People used to get sincerely angry at twinks in EQ. I remember a crowd harassing this dude who was sitting outside Crushbone decked out in a bloodstained tunic and SSB.
The one thing about EQ that I don't really remember is how gear was adjusted to a player's level. One of my alts still had a bunch of "old world" items and I was surprised that they didn't have level requirements.
The one thing about EQ that I don't really remember is how gear was adjusted to a player's level. One of my alts still had a bunch of "old world" items and I was surprised that they didn't have level requirements.
Angelwatch
Trakanon Raider
- 3,053
- 133
Most items through Luclin didn't have level requirements on them. I remember killing Vindi with a single group to get someone's level 20 paladin twink a BP. However, some items did have restrictions on them. Kunark Items, as an example, had clicky effects on all of the pieces. You could equip the armor at level 1 but needed to be level 36 (I think) to use that clicky. Planar gear (including POP stuff) didn't have level requirements on them per say but had effective item levels based on not being able to enter a planar zone until you were a certain level.
The Earring of the Solstice was the first item they added that had stats which scaled based on your level and capped at level 50 or 60. Originally the earring was static but the stats were much weaker than the end product (no Flowing Thought as an example). Then they changed it to a Druid only earring with a clickable port to Dreadlands. My Cleric was wearing the earring when the change went through and the click didn't work but being Druid Only I knew that as soon as I died I wouldn't be able to reequip it. I wrote their support team and explained how a number of people did the quest (it was billed as a tradeskill quest and not a druid quest) and got screwed when it went Druid Only. I also posted on a couple of sites back then and forwarded the letter to a couple of sites where I knew devs hung out (The Druid's Grove was a big one). Not even 4 hours later the earring got changed to the one that everyone could where with FT1. I'm not sure that my campaign was what got the earring changed but I strongly suspect it was an influence.
Basically VI and Sony just took the approach that if they made an item No-Drop that most people wouldn't go through the trouble of getting an item for a twink. I don't really remember a level requirement to enter the Temple of Veeshan (for example) so I don't think there was anything to really stop a group from twinking someone with those drops beyond the sheer difficulty of getting a low level twink into the zone. I could be wrong though about the number of zones that were level locked. I basically remember the only level locked zones were the planes.
Xarpolis
Life's a Dream
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You're right, I had it backwards. I do remember an old graphic and it being changed at one time. But I was a caster, so I didn't cherish SSoY's the way melee did.