My very very first character was a Vah Shir bard.

I had started to play EQ with my now former boyfriend who had played a little while at original launch and then stopped after a few months because RL got too busy and stuff. I had seen the game in the store and had been curious about it but, because of a very very bad experience with PvP in mudding, was very wary of the game having a PvP element. My former boyfriend was interested in playing a Vah and assured me that most of EQ was PvE with the PvP being purely consensual. So I decided to try the game, too.

He created a Vah beastlord and I created a Vah bard. His former character was a druid so he knew nothing about the bard class either. He also hadn't played in a few years, so wasn't too saavy on the game mechanics at that time either. So we were both essentially total newbies. We had been happily killing bugs under the city when we both got our first 'ding' to level 2 so we went back to the city to get new spells and songs. We were playing in the same physical location and I needed a quick trip to the loo so he was going to pick up the new stuff for both of us. I came back to see my bard dead on the floor at the feet of one of the grandmasters with all of them walking back to their positions. My former boyfriend said he tried the new song and wasn't sure what happened. I shrugged it off and we went back to bug hunting. I decided to sing the new song and it seemed like bugs came from miles around to swarm over us. We decided I should try that song again when we knew what PB AE meant. (Yes, the 2nd level song for a bard is a point blank area effect damage song and the bugs under the city have/had social agro with a pretty big range.) Thankfully, the "experiments" didn't de-level either of us. I later also learned to change my auto-attack key after getting murdered by the bard guildmasters.

The other newbie blunder that was totally him was with his druid. He had logged on to the druid to get a beastie spell that was some place not accessible to our very low level Vah that didn't know how to get through Padual Caverns safely yet (in the days of no in game map and no one having put a map online yet). So... his 20ish druid needed to cross Kithicor and night was falling in game. He didn't think anything of it, having stopped playing early after original release. He ran down the path and right into high level skeletons. As he put it, someone had changed that newbie area into a killing field at night (he had stopped playing -before- the battle in Kithicor).

When I switched to playing on Firiona Vie, shortly after it opened, I created a ranger 'cause I wanted to try a different class. I missed playing bard, but preferred playing on FV and got hooked on my new character. It was a 1 character per account server back in those early days... Several years after I left EQ, I heard that FV was changed to 4 characters per account. I needed a bit of a break from raiding and such in EQ2 so created a bard on FV and got her to mid-40s soloing (pre-merc) but life got busier and I left her behind. It wasn't until last year that I bumped that bard to 85 (I had a free token from somewhere) to join friends and now she's 120 and my main :) A few months ago, I created a second bard on another account and she's at 88 without a booster. I am resisting the urge to put a bard on my 3rd account *laugh* (I have 3 accounts because of the 1 character per account thing in FV's early days but didn't roll a bard either time I fired up a new account because I needed a specific type of character to help someone else, such as playing with my current sweetie when I got him into the game and he wanted to play a rogue.)

A long, long time ago I was a guide on Povar. Since we had to support the players in all zones, we received a copy of Scars of Velious and several of us went exploring the new zones with our guide powers. We saw all the dragons and new things, and it was breathtaking!!

Shortly thereafter the guides were asked (told) to stay in the Plane of Sky GM island building when we weren't helping players.

The awe of seeing these all of these new, giant dragons was really special.

My first character was a Wood Elf Druid, which meant she started in the Greater Faydark back in April of 1999. EverQuest was probably the first proper 3d game of its kind that I played (previously I had played the Ultima Online, which was 3d, but not the same). Being in first person view, with the music, and immersion was amazing! The world in front of me unfolded beautifully, and then I came across those HUGE, mysterious spires in the Faydark. It was really awesome. We take it for granted now, and have made peace with the low res textures, but back in 1999, this was a groundbreaking experience.

Many years ago I used to use a retired friend's account to run a bazaar trader. One day I saw the trader standing in the Plane of Knowledge, no longer level 1, but now level 20. I knew what was going on: level 20 is the minimum level to server transfer, and my trader had >15 million plat + dozens of items worth a few million more.

It's a scammer who somehow got my friend's account and is trying to steal my stuff.

I kicked the account offline and after I log in I see a pending character transfer window. Immediately kick requests started popping up, (I keep auto-kick turned off, but apparently they hadn't), but I denied them and transferred all of my plat and items off the trader. A few minutes later, the account is kicked offline by a GM (I found out later the scammer sent in a petition to get me kicked off).

I see the trader log back in, and I send them a tell demanding to know who they are and wtf they think they're doing. (I knew it wasn't my friend and I had already texted them to get them to change their password).

So, the scammer messages me back, pissed, demanding I either give them back my platinum/items, or send them $25 for the transfer token they'd bought and if I don't they threaten to delete all the characters on the account.

I told them to go ahead, I'm not worried, (because by this point my friend had changed the account password so if the scammer logged the trader off to try to delete other characters, we could kick them off and they wouldn't be able to log back in again).

At that point they started spamming the general channel with "wts krono paypal" etc. to try and get the account banned for RMT.

Eventually, they were kicked off by a GM after my friend sent in a petition explaining what was happening.

 3rd day in EQ.. I was told to make a bard because I had bard personality.. ergo Ely.

about a month later and in FULL studded leather armor ( such a twink ya know) one of the druids goes I'm taking you to Twilight Sea to help you... we go out to TS.. he pulls EVERY mob in zone in a huge train.. only I dont know whats going on.. and I'm standing there in AMAZEMENT watching this outstanding mass of mobs run around me.. I start taking screenshots........ standing in FRONT of said train.. I'm like OMG SOO COOL! holy COW that's amazing... loading please wait appears on my screen.....

 As a raiding healer, perhaps the time Tide tried Tris Wallow in DPoB the first time and experimented with Echoing Madness for the adds. I was one of the more active healers, so I was at the top of heal aggro on all of the mezzed mobs. One of our Necros had put a DoT on a wurine add. There was a bug at the time, where every viral pulse of Echoing madness would also spread every other debuff on that mob. The necro DoT was spread to every add, did damage, woke them up, I was summoned about 12 times instantly, died and went LD from the game not knowing how to process being summoned in so many places at once.

Another thing in DPoB is when I had aggro on enough orc manservants during a trash clear, they all KB punched me at once and I was punted out of bounds which then lead to a lot of the zone aggroing onto the raid. I'm sure I still have a pic of that somewhere.

As a raid leader, perhaps the time Tide beat King Odeen as second serverwide and Absor was secretly watching us. That event was incredibly buggy on live resetting in all manner of ways. We persisted and eventually beat it, and the guild thought that in order to get the flag from Odeen that you had to hail him like you would in PoP. Every single hail spawned a chest, and as we realised this we told the guild to stop hailing him. Not only that, but the chests could also be aggroed and some where chasing and hitting people to death. I couldn't stop laughing, it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen in game with what must have been 20 chests with most sliding around attacking people. When we killed those chests and opened the others, we had loot from each. Absor said we could keep the loot as a reward for the insanity we went through in live testing that encounter. The gear mostly rotted as most were not upgrades, but some went to a few apps and mains.

As a player in the community? Having a spell line I worked hard on named after me. That meant a lot. Thank you Prathun.

I'm sure I could mention more interesting things but those are a few that come immediately to mind.

1st story: Last day of beta I was wandering around Neriak looking at stuff and I found the library. In that library was another player who was flagged. His name was Innoruuk. I was like "omg good thing its last day of beta cause he would never be allowed to keep that name". About an hour later we got word there was a closing event in Nektulos. So I head out there. Lag city. And as Im waiting Innoruuk comes out and transforms into his real form. Aaargh. If Id thought to attack in the library I might have been the first to kill Innoruuk - at level 9. Well I dont know if Id have won, but you never know.

2nd story: Just joined a guild! First night we have raid to the original plane of Hate. So we manage to break in, which in those days was not a given. Killed some stuff, found a ramp to the 2nd level. We were so weak we were pulling and killing right on the top of the ramp. I notice that the tank had a little push and it was getting closer to the drop off edge. Im thinking should I say something? But being my first day and never raiding before I figure they must know what they are doing so I dont say anything. Down falls the mob, then back up he comes with a dozen friends. Wipe. Now I know to say something. Sometimes I say too much but thats better than not saying anything.

Iven

Antonius Bayle

I cannot really remember a most interesting situation as there were so many but getting lucky or handling very challenging combat situations was always impressive. Like being the only player that survived a raid wipe and being able to drag all corpses to a safe spot and saving the raid hours of recovery time and the evening.

Or being able to do a LDoN run in less than 20 minutes or surviving multiple adds in a group of two (no mercs) with up to 7 mobs at the same time as a rogue tank with just a shaman as a healer in Howling Stones.

Or to win the raid lotto against other rogues for a rare weapon drop like the Dart of Immobility from Mithaniel Marr and receiving tells like "Do you know how %$* lucky you are ?".

I have 3 memories in classic/kunark era that still stick out to me for whatever reason.

On my first character ever I was somehow able to create a character with the same name as an already existing one. One time I changed zones a half elf druid and loaded in as a dark elf shadowknight halfway across the world.

And speaking of petitioning GMs, I had my druid bound next to Hadden's spawn to try and keep fishbone earring on lockdown. One time I died I appeared naked behind this guy who was trying to camp him. I didn't say a word cause I was just hanging out waiting for a res but he decided I was going to KS him and called a GM saying I said all this stuff that I didn't. The GM got a kick out of me just kind of silently trolling him and we talked about silly people for a while. I feel like the poor GM was just really sick of dealing with whiny entitled people.

And then when epic quests were new and everything wasn't a guide on the internet... I was in a raid that killed Inny and he dropped the ranger epic quest item, no one really knew what it was for but it sounded naturish I guess so they decided maybe it was for a druid quest, so druids rolled and I won, and it just sat in my bank. One day I was talking to this ranger and he was talking about needing this one hard to get item for his epic and then he had everything. I was like... wait a second.. is that... and then we were able to multiquest it and he got his epic and I felt really happy that I was able to do that big a thing for someone, just based on a series of coincidences.

A screenshot which is dated 2005-08-02 but which should be from the event. Firiona Vie with her father. Both are paladins.

 Back in the late aughts.. I was standing on the docks, Butcherblock I think, waiting for a boat and a mild earthquake occurred where I live. Adrenaline rushing through me, I blurted in game /say that an earthquake just happened. There was another person, who I did not know, waiting for the boat, too, who heard me and we had a lovely discussion about it that then went into other game/character stuff. We then adventured with each other for several levels.

 Easily my most stand out memory and probably the coolest thing i ever took part of in an MMO was being on for the invasion event thing where GMs controlled mobs.

I will never forget. Someone in the guild said something strange was happening in Dreadlands or Firiona Vie i forget which so we went to check it out. It was this huge NPC army and they attacked us from a really long distance so we ran like crazy to zone. We where all trying to figure out wtf was going on when suddenly the mobs where there with us! They had zoned with us! It was madness.

Who remembers that? What was it for? OoW pre launch?

As a young warrior in Blackburrow, I made friends with a kindly high-elf cleric named Windeye. This was back in high school circa 2001(ish); a time of endless raiding, farming, and grinding with a close circle of friends. Windeye and I got to know each other and would group up when we were both on. Eventually we lost touch, but I would think back fondly as I moved on. Later on, in life, after school/marriage/kids I rerolled on the Corinav server (I played on each TLP for classic and Kunark nostalgia then would promptly quit). As I was running around in the Commonlands looking for some orcish foes, I came across a high-elf Cleric by the name of Windeye, This could not have been a coincidence, so I sent a tell and to my surprise it was him after almost 18 years! This was remarkable to the both of us, and we chatted for quite a bit to see how much our lives have changed!

Memories from 2005

Time's Up, Quarm
 10/31/2005
Having moved thru Phase 5 of Time (where Inny decided to be a jerk about the whole "killing you" thing), the Legion of Scales decided to Explore Phase 6; Home of Old Quarm Himself.

And 20 minutes later, Quarm's 4 heads joined the various other trophies on the Wall of LoS's Guild Hall! The Legion of Scales has conquered the Plane Of Time!

With Time Backflags about finished, and Time Farming in Full Swing, LoS looks to it's next Target; Anguish.

Excellent work, members of LoS. Who says a Family Guild can't beat Time? 

Memories from 2005

 The Wrath of Rathe; And Legion Of Scales, A TIME Guild Located on the 7th Hammer.

 9/25/2005
This one only took 5 tries. And each time, we got closer. And Closer. And Closer.

The final time, with seconds left on the clock, 2 Mobs gated back. Throwing Caution, and probably Common Sense, to the 4 winds, LoS rushed the Rathe Council's Podium and finished off the last Mob.

And then, right in the middle of the Raid, the Avatar Of Earth showed his face. By this time, LoS had had quite enough, thank you very much, and jumped on the Avatar full bore. And Won.

Thus, Legion Of Scales now joins the ranks of 7th Hammer's Time Guilds.

Many, Many thanks to everyone that made this possible. Now on to Anguish.  

Vet Forum Memories.

I've gotten 2 duped corpses in my time.

One was in Chardok in 2001 when I was like level 57. The server was lagging and cashing all day. We were raiding in Chardok and the server crashed and I must have died. When the servers came back up, there was a pretty heavy rollback and I was back at the Chardok zone in, alive and well. Raids were over so I left. I got a tell from another guild's leader asking for consent to drag and he'd bring my body to the zone in. I was confused because I didn't die. So I go there and there was a body that looks naked. He was the one who realized the body probably had a full boat of gear and stuff on it, so he made me check and no doubt, it was packed with all the fixins a level 57 warrior has. He was all over me to plunder the body and hook him up with some duplicate items; Cobalt Greaves, Amulet of Necropotence, etc... but being the honest Joe that I am, I didn't take anything, I petitioned it and the GM came and took it away. I was rewarded for my honesty though!

Back then, when you made a surname, that was set in stone; no changing it, no removing it. I didn't like my first selection of my surname that I had for 30 levels and I figured this was a good opportunity to get it changed all proper. So I asked the GM to change it up in light of my boy scout deed here and after thinking about it for a while he changed it from Zired to Xired. Happy day.

Pretty much the same exact scenario happened again only this time on my cleric in MPG during OoW. Running through, server crashed, she died, rollback, duped body, petitioned it and again for my boy scoutiness I asked the GM to change her unfortunate and horrible name from Galadriiel to Keylala and he did.

Crime doesn't pay!

Qxx

Memories from the Vet Forums. March 2023

 Once upon a time a certain ranger on Stromm had figured out a serverside cache glitch involving alts in zone with the same 6 characters in their first name and a bad resolution upon a player's death in zone.

The crash was caused by killing a lowbie (with a modrod) and because serverside couldn't name resolve the death past 6 characters.

He was griefing the server by crashing the guild lobby during raid times, etc. I actually called San Diego and got a senior executive on the phone while he was on with me while a dev account was ingame banning his characters. The dude just kept reappearing on alt after alt, then.... silence... it never happened again and we never saw the player again, Hid old name is banned on the name list.

Joules_Bianchi-March 2023

Memories from the Vet Forums. March 2023

 Many years ago I used to use a retired friend's account to run a bazaar trader. One day I saw the trader standing in the Plane of Knowledge, no longer level 1, but now level 20. I knew what was going on: level 20 is the minimum level to server transfer, and my trader had >15 million plat + dozens of items worth a few million more.

It's a scammer who somehow got my friend's account and is trying to steal my stuff.

I kicked the account offline and after I log in I see a pending character transfer window. Immediately kick requests started popping up, (I keep auto-kick turned off, but apparently they hadn't), but I denied them and transferred all of my plat and items off the trader. A few minutes later, the account is kicked offline by a GM (I found out later the scammer sent in a petition to get me kicked off).

I see the trader log back in, and I send them a tell demanding to know who they are and wtf they think they're doing. (I knew it wasn't my friend and I had already texted them to get them to change their password).

So, the scammer messages me back, pissed, demanding I either give them back my platinum/items, or send them $25 for the transfer token they'd bought and if I don't they threaten to delete all the characters on the account.

I told them to go ahead, I'm not worried, (because by this point my friend had changed the account password so if the scammer logged the trader off to try to delete other characters, we could kick them off and they wouldn't be able to log back in again).

At that point they started spamming the general channel with "wts krono paypal" etc. to try and get the account banned for RMT.

Eventually, they were kicked off by a GM after my friend sent in a petition explaining what was happening.


Don't ever share your account info.     

Beimeith- 2023

Memories from the vet forums.March 2023

 

            As a raiding healer, perhaps the time Tide tried Tris Wallow in DPoB the first time and experimented with Echoing Madness for the adds. I was one of the more active healers, so I was at the top of heal aggro on all of the mezzed mobs. One of our Necros had put a DoT on a wurine add. There was a bug at the time, where every viral pulse of Echoing madness would also spread every other debuff on that mob. The necro DoT was spread to every add, did damage, woke them up, I was summoned about 12 times instantly, died and went LD from the game not knowing how to process being summoned in so many places at once.

Another thing in DPoB is when I had aggro on enough orc manservants during a trash clear, they all KB punched me at once and I was punted out of bounds which then lead to a lot of the zone aggroing onto the raid. I'm sure I still have a pic of that somewhere.

As a raid leader, perhaps the time Tide beat King Odeen as second serverwide and Absor was secretly watching us. That event was incredibly buggy on live resetting in all manner of ways. We persisted and eventually beat it, and the guild thought that in order to get the flag from Odeen that you had to hail him like you would in PoP. Every single hail spawned a chest, and as we realised this we told the guild to stop hailing him. Not only that, but the chests could also be aggroed and some where chasing and hitting people to death. I couldn't stop laughing, it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen in game with what must have been 20 chests with most sliding around attacking people. When we killed those chests and opened the others, we had loot from each. Absor said we could keep the loot as a reward for the insanity we went through in live testing that encounter. The gear mostly rotted as most were not upgrades, but some went to a few apps and mains.

As a player in the community? Having a spell line I worked hard on named after me. That meant a lot. Thank you Prathun.

I'm sure I could mention more interesting things but those are a few that come immediately to mind.     

Lluianae-March 2023 

Memories from the Vet Forms. 2023

 

            1st story: Last day of beta I was wandering around Neriak looking at stuff and I found the library. In that library was another player who was flagged. His name was Innoruuk. I was like "omg good thing its last day of beta cause he would never be allowed to keep that name". About an hour later we got word there was a closing event in Nektulos. So I head out there. Lag city. And as Im waiting Innoruuk comes out and transforms into his real form. Aaargh. If Id thought to attack in the library I might have been the first to kill Innoruuk - at level 9. Well I dont know if Id have won, but you never know.

2nd story: Just joined a guild! First night we have raid to the original plane of Hate. So we manage to break in, which in those days was not a given. Killed some stuff, found a ramp to the 2nd level. We were so weak we were pulling and killing right on the top of the ramp. I notice that the tank had a little push and it was getting closer to the drop off edge. Im thinking should I say something? But being my first day and never raiding before I figure they must know what they are doing so I dont say anything. Down falls the mob, then back up he comes with a dozen friends. Wipe. Now I know to say something. Sometimes I say too much but thats better than not saying anything.     

Svann2-March 2023 

Memories from the Vet Forums. March 2023

 

            As a young warrior in Blackburrow, I made friends with a kindly high-elf cleric named Windeye. This was back in high school circa 2001(ish); a time of endless raiding, farming, and grinding with a close circle of friends. Windeye and I got to know each other and would group up when we were both on. Eventually we lost touch, but I would think back fondly as I moved on. Later on, in life, after school/marriage/kids I rerolled on the Corinav server (I played on each TLP for classic and Kunark nostalgia then would promptly quit). As I was running around in the Commonlands looking for some orcish foes, I came across a high-elf Cleric by the name of Windeye, This could not have been a coincidence, so I sent a tell and to my surprise it was him after almost 18 years! This was remarkable to the both of us, and we chatted for quite a bit to see how much our lives have changed!   

 Alarya EQ Vet forums-March 23

Former EverQuest developer discusses Legacy of Ykesha/Brad McQuaid.

 

Random memories from the EQ forums March 2019

Back around PoP I got my Emp horse (Stampy was his name) and challenged my bard friend to a race in Tranquility. We got in position and ready to go and when the referee said "RUN" my evil plot unfolded. What no one else realized was that I had converted 100k platinum to copper and I split it at that moment. The bard couldn't move, I won the race, and then I promptly walked down some stairs and fell to my death. Tada!
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I purchased EQ when it first came out, thinking it was an single player RPG. Opened the box to find out it required a credit card to play. I was terrified at the idea, so the box sat for a few weeks before i got brave enough to sign in.

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So we had, Win 97, DIal up modems, 12 inch CRT monitors, no voice chat, no maps, no group finder, no quest finder. & dead bodies everywhere(most of them mine).

Dec 99 it all started, I picked Sullen Zek server (What was I thinking) anyways I make a Wood Elf Druid, spawn in a hut next to the trainer, It took me some time just to open the doors, I proceed to run out & up the ramp to just fall off the side and die, respawn in the hut run out the door & run off the ledge again ugh...I run out again instead of falling off the ledge I get lost on all these platforms. It takes me a few hours & many, many, many, deaths aka suicide just to restart at the stupid hut... I finally find one of the lifts and stand there waiting for it to move..... someone from below runs up and lift goes down I take 2 steps off the lift and a players necro pet one-shots me, well I'm back in the hut again, Started to rage!!!! slammed some stuff, threw something across the room. UGH..this time it only took me 30 to 40 minutes to find the lift ( maybe a few deaths in there somewhere). general chat is going off, necro farming newbs at orc lift.

Good Times...

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My wife and I were still relatively new players at the time, less than 6 months. LDoN was the most recent expac. We had to be late 30's to mid 40's. She played an SK and I was a Necro. We were in the great divide grinding wyrms in the cave.Kite, fear, and dirty heals baby! A bird flw into the cave and we we had never seen that happen before. The bird hovered above us and began talking. Told us to gather other adventurers and provided a quest that would reward us with a coin pouch. It was a GM. We /ooc and found 1 other player and that was good enough lol.

BTW I really miss the undead army spawns during the anniversary at night.

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The best story I have begins way back in 1999 or early 2000. I was playing a barbarian warrior named Shenendoah. So I was new to this game and 2 friends I had in school convinced me to start playing because they were playing. Well, back then traveling was crazy difficult and I was trying to navigate from the frozen tundra of Halas to Freeport. The journey was long and treacherous and I died a few times having to start the whole trip back over. This was one of my fondest early game moments but here is where the story truly becomes interesting. So, being new to this game and not that familiar with traveling outside of Halas, when we finally made it to The Eastern Plains of Katana. I was running up the mountain path to get to the zone in for High Pass Hold, when all of a sudden my friend said RUN!!!! next to me because we were playing in the same room telling me that I aggroed the dragon that lives in the chasm. So I immediately hoof it running as fast as my slow barbarian legs would go not wanting to turn around and face certain death and that journey again. I ran like there was no tomorrow and finally zone into High Pass. Mean while my friends are laughing hysterically at watching me fall for this ruse. Welcome to EQ. I have played on and off for years since. Through good times with the guild I helped create to bad times when I was fed up with things and left the game for a period. I am still playing today, not because I have to but because there is an inherent part of this game that I grew up with and playing reminds me of when I was younger and life was easier. I remember my first time raid and how it took us 2 nights to complete it. And just recently with my monk how I soloed the time raid. This game has been amazing and I wish I had the money and time off from work to go this years celebration. I appreciate the memories and the friends I have made and lost in this game. I truly appreciate the things I was able to accomplish and the things yet to come. I have never been a super serious EQ'er but certainly some of my ex-girlfriends and my current wife would argue. The hardest part was that when I got on to play was the time it took to accomplish a raid usually 2 -3 hours, but even that I appreciated. Thank you Everquest and all those who are apart of the game.

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I had been invited to a pug in Direwind. There was another mage in the group, for some reason mage spells were dropping a heap at this camp. We were really good at sharing them. After a while the other mage left when a replacement arrived. People came and went but there always seemed to be the right class lfg just when we needed them. The group was motoring along and before I knew it I had been at this camp for 18 hours. Thought I had better go to bed, looked to see who was lfg and the mage who had been in the group at the start was there. He had been to bed and work and came to replace me. Never found out how long that group lasted.

The other thing that sticks in my head. I had never been a pc gamer, moved into a share house. One of my house mates starting playing one night. I was glued to the screen, I had never even knew anything like this had existed. Stayed up til 5am just watching. Slept in and was over 4 hours late to work. That was the first of many late eq nights.

Short EQ history

So, I'm an amateur game historian who likes to go around and do write-ups about video-games I enjoyed. I also like informing people about the history of a game or development studio they may not have known about. Between EverQuest & StarCraft, you basically have both games that molded my childhood experience and made me the gamer I am today - it wasn't until I would reach adulthood that I'd start looking behind how these games were created, by who, and what inspired them.
Released on March 16th, 1999—nobody expected EverQuest to make history—but it did, thanks in part to the passion and enormous efforts of the team responsible for its creation; John Smedley, Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover & Bill Trost.

In 1993, two virtually unknown developers, Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover, released their first game; WarWizard.

WarWizard was a fantasy based roleplaying game created in their spare time—and although it never found mainstream appeal, their experience creating the game would be a vital stepping stone towards future projects.
2 years after the release of WarWizard, they previewed a demo for a sequel to their game, WarWizard 2, and caught the attention of John Smedley, now in charge of Sony Interactive Studios America.

John Smedley had been tasked with the creation of an online roleplaying game, John—a huge fan of table-top RPGs, like Dungeons & Dragons—wanted this new game to have the same feel as Dungeons & Dragons, but didn’t exactly know where he wanted to go with it. He recognized the creative talents of Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover and formally invited them to join the team. John hired Bill Trost shortly after, and around this time they formed Verant Interactive.
Over the next few years the team of Verant Interactive refined the concepts John Smedley began with and started to create the robust world of what would later be called EverQuest. Bill Trost and his friend, Tony Garcia, would frame the world's history based on their Dungeons & Dragons campaigns--altering them to form the foundation for the world that would eventually be named Norrath.

In 1997 Ultima Online took the MMO world by storm. Emboldened by Ultima Online’s success, Verant Interactive pushed forward with their project, attempting to create a 3D version of text based MUDs, which they were all very fond of playing. The project proved to be enormous; Bill Trost is largely created for developing the history and lore of the world. Programmers Steve Clover and Brad McQuaid continued development, eventually hiring on Geoffrey Zatkin, who made the spell system of the game & artist Milo Cooper, who made the original character models. Brad McQuaid moved from lead developer to producer and then to lead designer over the entire project.

EverQuest released on March 16th, 1999—by the end of that same year, subscription numbers soared past Ultima Online and it became the most popular MMO in the world. EverQuest gained quite a bit of main-steam attention after that, most of it incredibly negative about how addictive video-games could be, but none could deny how great a game it was.

PC Gamer named Brad McQuaid one of the “Next Game Gods” in its November 2000 issue, boasting that he would become one of the biggest giants in the video-game industry. Sony Online Entertainment acquired Verant Interactive shortly after that and Brad McQuaid was promoted to Vice President of Premium Games and Chief Creative Officer. In 2001, he left Sony to create Sigil Games, taking many of the EverQuest developers with him in the process.

On April 24th, 2000 - the Ruins of Kunark expansion released, quickly followed by the Scars of Velious that same year—which added an impressive depth of content to an already, enormous game. EverQuest faced a lot of competitors after release, but subscriber numbers stayed strong up until around 2004—when Blizzard’s popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft, came onto the market. Subscriber numbers for EverQuest tanked, quickly. In an effort to keep remaining players connected with one another Sony Online Entertainment made two big changes: the first, they encouraged players to start in the new HUB city of Crescent Reach. Previously, all the races would start in their home cities and then have to meet up for dungeons, but they didn’t have the subscriber numbers to effectively allow existing players to group. Second, they introduced the NPC controlled “mercenaries,” to make leveling easier for existing players. The NPC mercenary would allow you to group up and effectively duo enemies, making sure you had someone close to your level range to form a party with.

In 2012 EverQuest went free-to-play, under enormous pressure from the MMORPG market, including long-time-competitor World of Warcraft. EverQuest 2, created as a direct-sequel to EverQuest in 2004, also went free to play.

In 2010, they attempted to reboot the EverQuest franchise in the title for EverQuest: Next, and EverQuest Next: Landmark. EverQuest: Next was going to follow along the same lines of EverQuest, set in Norrath, but in an alternate timeline. EverQuest Next: Landmark, was the game’s world-building tool, which would also be accessible to players! The top maps and builds would be implemented into the game. Unfortunately, despite fan excitement for both projects, they were scrapped in 2016. Music composer of Elder Scrolls fame, was slated to be the game’s composer. EverQuest Next was also supposed to be released for the PS4. The official release for the statement came directly from Daybreak Games president, Russell Shanks, “As we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun.”

In 2015 Sony Online Entertainment sold the license for EverQuest to private equity group, Columbus Nova, who would later become Daybreak Games. Daybreak Games still runs the server to this day and development on new expansions is always ongoing—although the game hasn’t seen a true graphics update since Shadows of Luclin in 2001.
When will EverQuest finally close the doors of Norrath for good? That’s hard to say at this point—I can’t imagine a world without EverQuest, same for a lot of other players. I was 10 years old when I first began my journey in Norrath and I’ve loved this game ever since.
Though I stopped playing in 2004, EverQuest was the game that I compared every other MMO to. It had so many incredibly, unique features and memorable worlds that I was sure I’d be playing the EverQuest franchise for years to come

Though Daybreak Games owns the license for the official EverQuest game, a small, fan community has arisen around the game, titled: Project 1999. Project 1999 is a classic EverQuest emulation server that evokes a time when the game was still at the height of its popularity--it's worth checking out if you've not read up on it or played it before.
Thank you for indulging me!

Nickadimoose Reddit Nov 2018

EQ Memories June 2018 (EQ Forums Part 2)

-Back before shared banking, running into houses in South Qeynos and dropping items in a corner hidden from sight, logging out and logging into another character to pick it up. Praying you don’t ha e connection issues and disconnect and lose said items

-I started right before Luclin cane out. Didn’t get the expansion right away so was stuck in original, Kunark, and Velious. Had a druid, think that was my fondest memories. Root/dot killing hill giants for plat. Quad kiting in Eastern Wastes. The game seemed so huge then.

Fast forward to GoD era, my guild was attempting to break into elementals, but we had skipped VT. This of course was very difficult to pull off. RZtW was our thorn. When we finally beat it people were yelling and cheering. Had same experience when we finally beat Coirnav. Had about 120 people in zone, and I was on dial up. I crashed at some point but interestingly the chat channels didn’t lag, so I could see people saying we beat it, meanwhile I was still fighting mobs and had died at some point. Regularly I would die but only know because someone would say it in chat, while on my screen I was 5 minutes behind, then disconnect.

As far as a specific event, I remember my first time in Crushbone. Another druid in the group, probably realizing my newbie ways, cast invis on the entire group except for me. I ran around looking for everyone and was very confused. They laughed and told me about invisibility. I had no idea that was a thing.

-I think the first time I saw a giant around the plains of Karana - Froon or Choon? I forget which but I'm pretty sure I died. I have a lot of fond memories from EQ back then. That is one of the reasons I am back on the forums as I am now toying with the idea of creating an account again. I might just read the forums and live through you guys though

-I remember my first toon being a Human Bard, outside Freeport, with absolutely no clue, in the very early days of Everquest. I started playing at 7:29 PM, and when I looked up, it was 2:30 AM, and I had to be at work by 9. Fortunately, I was the lead tech in a computer store, and they understood, when I told them I may be "less than optimum today". I went to bed at level 11. I got addicted to the <DING> sound!

-Barely an hour old, my first ever mmorpg, no idea what I was doing, my baby bard zooted into...East Commonlands? Hey, no one told me the difference between pc and npc...I hailed Dragoon Zytl. Not quite a one-shot but close.

-One of my favorite memories was when I was working on the eyepatch of plunder quest waiting for Lodizal to pop. Been after him for quite some time and id just hang out on the beach fishing. Some of my guildees came and hung out for the heck of it. Couple days of this and one night Lodi actually pops. Me being SK and leader o this mess i grab aggro and tanked away. We killed it and they all grats'd me, then they all started ribbing me cuz I was tanking the turtle with my fishing pole in hand the whole time.

-I think my best memory was from when Kunark came along and it was so much harder than classic so it became very serious to do dungeons like Sebilis when you were still wearing group gear from classic. Some of the battles I had in there were amazing because my class was amazing, and I got into a group that had great people and we pushed it to see how much we could do. Nearly wiping is fun when you can turn it around at the last second.

My other favorite memories are of classic at release in 1999. I remember exploring in G Fay and not knowing much about anything. I saw a beautiful blonde Elf lady chilling on a hill and I walked up to her and asked, "Are you a real person?" It took me a while to figure out what was a mob, what was an NPC, and what was a player.

I also made some friends and went on an adventure for a Mino Axe and we did some exploring of various other zones that was terrifying and funny. I also remember when duel messages were broadcast on the entire server and after a particularly bad few days of server crashing and whatnot, there were a lot of: Commonsense has defeated Verantsupport in a duel to the death!

Also my other favorite memory was playing on one of the PVP servers. I think it was a FFA server and I had some great moments on there. I didn't play it for that long because I was already burned out with the game but it was really fun.

-Running from Rivervale to East Commons at night as a wee halfling.........Alwasy scared me to death and usually how it ended with the zone line in sight.

-during beta someone playing a bard had tree stuck a group of sand giants in oasis and that caused them to release summoning from mobs giving it to Cazel to stop that sort of easy experiencing and money gain

the first time fear didnt work on my necro while trying to quad fear kite with my necro fun time nerfs

giving away over 100 druid 1.0s when you could give loot to mobs and watching level 1 druids and toons in misty freak out over it