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!