Old School EverQuest

[Menkey]

Any old school EQ players here? Hola at me!

People that complain about how hard/annoying things in WoW might be make me laugh...they have NO idea how hard playing an MMO used to be!

Remember dieing in EQ? you didn't just die...you FUCKING died! You spawned naked, your corpse with ALL YOUR GEAR was left at the EXACT spot you died. You either had to A) Try to drag your corpse to a safe spot B) Find someone trustworthy to drag it for you/loot your stuff for you (oh because consenting someone to your corpse means they could actually loot ALL your items) or B) spend up to 100 plat, or whatever the Necromancer felt like charging/how desperate you were, to use one of his coffins to summon your corpse to him.

Remember races had different night visions? Dark elves and Dwarves lived in caves so they had excellent night vision...Humans however could literally not see 5 inches in front of them at night. You had to kill wisps in East Commons until one dropped a greater lightstone.

Remember trains? In WoW if you run to far from an enemy they eventually evade back, this is the very reason they do this. In EQ, enemies followed you forever, making infinite kiting possible (druids were very easy to level). However, in dungeons, if you agro a TON of shit and manage to make it to the entrance and outside, those mobs wipe you off their threat list and attack EVERYONE around them. Meaning one person could train a bunch of mobs to the zone and manage to get TONS of people killed (seen it numerous times...fuck you Solusek B!). This would suck if someone did it on accident, but players would of course able to do this on purpose as well.

Remember how each race had their own language? and you had to learn their language to communicate with them? (I believe there was a "common" language that all races shared, but each race also had their own language they could "switch" to). Honestly...I kind of miss this from an MMO, EQ was the only one that did it and it hasen't really been done since (correct me if I am wrong). I used to sell languages for 1 plat, you take the boat from Butcherblock to Freeport and just spam a couple text macros in the Halfling language. During the ride it looks like "GYDJDF HGDSJFJD GSJFJLS GSJYFJSDF" but once you zone to Freeport you had the language learned and could read what the person was saying and communicate with Halflings in their own language.

Remember how Kelethin bank was THE hotspot? either that or the spirs in Greater Faydark...this was the area ALL trades were done. Some servers it might of been Freeport. However players were able to attack ANY NPC they wanted, the important ones, such as bankers, were generally tough as fuck and would usually beat the crap out of whoever attacked him, but you were able to pull NPC"s away from their post and chain cast Root on them to keep them in place, no one would be able to use the bank until that player died/logged or a GM came and set things right. Eventually I believe they fixed this issue.

Remember how hard dungeons were? you literally HAD to hug the back wall otherwise shit would agro from OTHER rooms! And if your group wipes? you BETTER get back quick or your spot will most likely be taken. No instanced dungeons here my friend.

Remember when they came out with Epic weapons quests for every class? Each class had an elaborate quest to obtain some crazy ass stated weapons, BiS in the game at the time of course. Well I was a cleric...cleric epic weapon had a clickable res...cleric epic weapon was hands down the best epic weapon in the game...cleric epic weapon required an item off of an NPC that spawned behind a high level dragon...this NPC was a random 1-72 hour spawn...UGH!!!!

Remember no flight paths or any means of fast travel besides teleports/boats? So you could get a teleport to the general location of where you wanted to go, but in the end you would have to run BY FOOT the rest of the way. Sow plz!

Remember kill credit went to whoever got the killing blow? Meaning you and your friends could spend HOURS on a boss, a level 1 could hit it for 1 damage and get the killing blow AND looting rights.

EverQuest was such a great MMO at the time, but looking back today I realize how shitty it actually was. But for those of you who complain about WoW, trust me and any fellow old school EQ players here, you have it WAAAAAAAAAAY easy.

[Edge-]

Re-opening. But please keep the discussion civil and within the forums rules, I can see this thread going bad places quickly if not.

[Karteli]

Good times, good times. Never before was playing a computer game any scarier .. if something went wrong and you were near death, you felt fear .. running from city to city was dangerous - the penalty for dying was severe, like you said, but if felt so good when you made it to where you were going..

In some ways, it resembled closer to real life, in the sense that the goal is to stay alive, and dying is very bad ..

Oh I think you also missed a part on death where you were too drunk to remember where you died, I think you had to hire a bard to locate your body.

.. and if you did something really stupid and died in a horrible spot, you needed your guild to clear stuff to get your body back. If you walked into the Plane of Fear by accident .. umm ..

It was fun though .. pretty immersive

[Deleted]

Wow, from what you described EverQuest sounds awesome. Hard, but awesome.

WoW is relatively easier than EverQuest sounds.

[Judge Malthred]

I played EQ but never at max level it was more of a casual thing I was trying out as other friends were into it. I may have missed it but did you forget to mention that when you died you also lost XP? That was AWFUL!

[Deleted]

Hey.

Old EQ1 vet here, if you can call yourself that :P

Used to play on Sullon Zek, was in Hate - good times, it is till this date, the most unforgiving MMO I have played - God I miss it sometimes.. god, I could write a 1000 page novel about my time there, was just epic every damn day.. Never found the same feel again, guess I never will

[Karteli]

The day and night cycle was amazing though. It was very acceptable to not travel at night .. everything was literally pitch black except in cities & outposts where torches were everywhere (unless you had night vision or a lightstone, then it was slightly better) .. lanterns actually worked (unlike WoW), but even then you could only see maybe a dozen feet around yourself - just enough to see the path at your feet and a couple bushes and trees around you.

.. shadows of mountains and trees would be black in the distance, against the deep bluish sky with stars... strange sounds were everywhere..

The moon moved across the sky as the night progressed, giving way to dusk, and in a brilliant red haze, the sun would rise and also slowly move across the sky as time passed..

It's was time to adventure!

[Einzweidrei]

Like old-school EQ?

Google "project 1999" and you'll be able to relive it, more or less.


A bit more on topic though, what I miss most about old EQ is the NON-homogonization of the classes. Sure, it sucked when you were trying to get your group deep down inside some dungeon and you didn't have a CCer or whatever, but it sure made everyone appreciate what each different class did, and it made it a lot of fun to play each different class knowing you did something that no one else could.

God, I miss my enchanter so much.

[sinisterwyvern]

Oh man, EQ and the memories it brings me. Monk Epic.. damn, 4 rare spawns that could have you camping hundreds of hours for it.

In addition to the dying thing. Say you died and couldn't make it back in game for a while. You lost that stuff entirely.

Raid nights weren't the "let's zone in and go kill our bosses". First you had people scouting to see what bosses were actually up. Then you had to beat other guilds to said bosses. Of course, a lot of drama could come from that as well. Like when my guild stomped over another in Ssraeshza.

Our hotspot for trading on Tarrew-Marr was the cave in East Commonlands.

I was a monk so I remember feign deathing my way into bad places. I had a quest turn in in the dark elf city, haha. I also remember a time where me and 2 friends were exploring a newly opened section in Sol B, both of them died while I managed to FD. I had to FD hop my way back to the entrance pulling both their bodies back at the same time.

[Einzweidrei]

Necromancers in EQ had the early (and cooler, but just as not-very-useful) version of warlock's soulshards. They were created by casting sacrifice on another player which killed them AND stuck them with the XP loss.

[Leafcast]

EQ was a fantastic game. I have more nostalgic moments from EQ than from any other game that i've ever played. The Tower of Frozen Shadows still scares me, thinking about dying on the top floors and trying to figure out how to get back toyour corpse through the maze of undead.

[Einzweidrei]

You EQ vets should seriously check out p1999. When I most recently quit wow for several months, I spent 2-3 of them playing on p1999 and had a blast. It is amazing how well those guys reverse-engineered old-school EQ. It was in the vanilla stages when I was playing earlier in the year, but now they've released Kunark and I believe are working on putting epic quests into the game.

It was so much freaking fun to re-explore all those old cities and zones and trek on foot all over the world just to do the stein of moggok quest on my level 8 dark elf enchanter alt so I could give it to my necro, etc etc. Only weakness of p1999, as I see it, is that it lacks a lot of the grouping element from 10+ years ago. Great for solo, good if you have a group that plays at scheduled times and only at scheduled times, pretty crappy if you're trying to /lfg your way into an exp group at any level before, like, 58.

[Makronette]

EQ is an awesome game still and yes it was hard as hell, loved my Iksar Necro, he wasn't end level and didn't get particulary high but I was only about 11 when it came out and I started playing on my parents account, Everquest 2 is easy in comparison and WoW is even easier than that!

[skeebopshapow]

giant guild wars in the desert just past ECL and SSoY... ahh memories

[Coldpro]

Wow, from what you described EverQuest sounds awesome. Hard, but awesome.

WoW is relatively easier than EverQuest sounds.

You have no idea my friend, WoW is about 1000x easier than Classic EverQuest was, which is one of the reasons it has so much staying power for young kids.

[FallenSystm]

Wow, from what you described EverQuest sounds awesome. Hard, but awesome.

WoW is relatively easier than EverQuest sounds.

relatively is not even close to the right word. incredibly isn't even the right word.

[Lenerien]

i played a shadow knight and Epic 2 weapon rocked. 7 years i played that game. Loved it. Only when progression became the goal and if you missed a raid you where out of sinc with everyone and couldnt progress. If someone was kill stealing id train them. Loved FD

[Spade]

Wow....

I played EQ for a long time. I started as a necromancer, then played a Bard. I remember alot about EQ that was simply fantastic, and some aspects ( later on) that were horrible.
I played alot in the Karanas area. The wide open zones were great for fear kiting, or circle aoe'ing on my bard.

Karnors Castle trains were well known as group demolishers lol. Plane of Fear corpse runs....aggroing the 2nd level of Hate....wiping on Lady Vox ( 4hr corpse run lol). Cazel in the oasis used to somehow sneak up on me alot and smash my face in.

There was alot about EQ that was a time-sink...but well worth it. The T-boots..monk epic spawns (raster? ) hell i even learned to make "special" lures on my bard that helped your fishing skill haha.

I used to like sebs alot tho. as a necro, it was fun just to solo the first few frogs as you waited for hours looking for a group because no one wanted a necro ( tho the spectre pet was WAY cool ) And as a necro..you could always train someone that pissed you off and just FD under them lol ( evil eh ?)
Bards were pretty fun too, and almost always needed,least when an enchanter or shammy wasnt around lol. My bard collected all the "form changing" items...he was a Wood Elf...but could change forms into Erudite/high elf...even a werewolf ( lute of the howler woot) I used to like the armor as well....click for special effects lol.

Boss kills were all about the race and assemble first.On our server, we actually kept the sleeper,sleeping...until a guild of misfit rejected/ninja/kids decided to waken him.It was a "pact" for many of the higher guilds that we wouldnt waken it...but oh well.

Luclin was a HUGE timesink...and Planes of power was "decent". Overall i think i liked Kunark best...SoV next....the giant/dorf/dragon faction was interesting.

I stopped playing when it was simply too much new content too fast. It felt like sony was ramming it down yer throat. I recall the original EQ as being Verant ( correct me on that...i just remember the little patcher)

Good times....makes WoW look like an X-box game with a walk-through and cheat-codes as far as depth and difficulty goes.

[Warcite]

I was about 13 when I first started playing during the year 2000. The game blew my mind away; it was one of the first games to have a 3d engine and what now and the worlds were simply breath taking. Going from one end of a area to another took hours...days if you had no idea where you were going. And like the OP said, monster would chase you! Even in cities you had to be on your toes!

In order to get "quests" you had to actually type out a sentence containing a key word to advance the dialogue. In the game, the "a" button would make you auto attack. I can't tell you how many times I would be talking to a guard and forget to press "enter" and hit "a", only to get smacked to death. You would also lose levels if you died. So going from level 44 to 43 could happen. Ohhh the grind....But it was such a cool game! So glad I was a part of it!

[Karteli]

I stopped playing when it was simply too much new content too fast. It felt like sony was ramming it down yer throat. I recall the original EQ as being Verant ( correct me on that...i just remember the little patcher)

Good times....makes WoW look like an X-box game with a walk-through and cheat-codes as far as depth and difficulty goes.

Yeah I agree with the fast content .. 2 expansions a year with bugs towards the arrival of WoW was a bit much for people .. on Verant ..

Heres an old G4 Icons show on Everquest, it's evolution, and creation via Verant & Sony Online Entertainment .. a good watch for it's history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1bDyskyRmQ