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.
This brings back memories, I really miss the early EQ. I loved things like the faction systems, or learning languages in groups with others. I also loved how realistic things are. Like I made a dark elf warrior and my friend made a human monk. We grouped alot, but if we went somewhere dark he could not see a single thing. Elves with night vision could, so I loved how realistic that was. Good thing there was torches to see a little bit, or spells to give night vision. I loved virtually every part of EQ, even the corpse runs. The only thing I did not like was losing exp on death. I get corpse run punishments and all the other. I just wish it was more of damage your equipment to have to pay to be repaired.
ReplyDeleteIts been too long to remember all the details anymore of every thing...but I also loved how big the world was, and the ships that took forever to cross oceans, there was not shortcut to get from one side of the planet to the other. If you happened to fall off a ship, good luck. Many games these days don't even have underwater zones or you can't swim underwater. I actually played a bard and loved singing as my main character, that I played to the highest level. I remember running for hours just to cross giant zones while things were chasing my bard...giants I think.
The current selection of online games, seem like theme parks...can get anywhere pretty fast, death isn't really an issue and you could solo your way to most things. I made a lot of friends in EQ, even if I never met them in RL, but we could have.
I don't even play online games anymore, because I cannot find anything even close to how the original EQ was. With much of what I listed above. Even after all the years I played, I never did get to explore all of the original world. There were zones that I still never fully explored or did all the quests in...speaking of which, I did play on a roleplaying server for my bard main. I loved having to talk to NPC to see if they might have some 'work' I could do for them. None of this crap these days where there is a arrow over a NPC head saying talking to me.