@@fl3045 Only 100,000 hours? Not having a hand in the development of the game and involved with all play testing? You know you can't judge a game if you haven't had a hand in the development of the game and involved with all play testing.
My grandma played a lot of EQ! She started around Ruins of Kunark, but stopped around the time SOE was sold off. No matter how many memories I pushed out of my brain, I can't forget some of the stuff she and her sister (Twintime and Twinlet, on Torvonnilous pre-server-merge) did while I watched her play: - Grinding out beetles in the starting zone for wood elves (I don't know why she did this, she was a halfling) - Grinding out giants to get materials for making dyes (*the* moneymaking strat when she was playing) - Constantly getting drunk in-game while she leveled up her brewing skill to make said dyes - Selling Spirit of the Wolf (one of the earlier gaming memes was "sow plz", asking casters for a speed buff) and druid teleports - Burning through her Epic and Epic 2.0 weapon "quests" (when she played, quests weren't tracked, they were just a bunch of flags; this was the same thing for raid keys) - All of the downtime between pulls during raids! Raids were really neat to watch, all the people around and all the special effects back at the beginning of 3D gaming, but it was a lot of "blink and you miss it". - Her unlikely friendship with a dude named Danknugz. Kinnamon was also a friend of hers, I think? - Her rise to become one of the best, if not *the* best, druid on her server, geared to the nines and on top of progression with each expansion. A lot of raiders valued her and trusted her to heal better than the clerics, while also maintaining DOTs and stuff. She was a gamer. It wasn't without bad moments, of course (there was a lot of raid drama, including misallocation of DKP and preferential treatment between guildies and other stuff, as well as her being kinda cyberbullied for playing a halfling because they weren't "optimal" for playing a druid, and she should really change to being a wood elf), but it was some of the happiest time in her life (which, with age and my own similar experiences under my belt, I can say was an absolute horror show). She always said that gaming was what kept her brain sharp, and I guess she was right; she's still around, but not entirely... there. It hurts to watch. Anyways -- I don't know. Hug your grandma.
Basically the whole family on my mother's side played EQ.(except mine 🙃) Starting with my grandma's generation; her and two of her siblings(brother and sister), along with her eventual second husband(brother and late grandpa's best friend). Then my mom's generation; my aunt and her husband, and her one cousin from her uncle and two others from an aunt that didn't play. I know the wife of one cousin played, but I'm not sure if the other's had partners that played. Then my generation; my sister, cousin, and I. He played some, not sure how much, his family were computer gamers(not mine). My sister and I would play, or watch them play, whenever we spent the night at my grandma's or aunt's house from around '00-'05. We probably never got past level 15+. I remember one time watching my aunt and uncle playing, talking in teamspeak with the family. One of them would get up to do some house work, telling me I could hop on and help the group if they need it. The other would tell me what buttons to hit.
My gran was just an accountant for Habitat, I wish she gamed lol. She has Alzheimer's, now. I can agree, it's so sad to watch. I remember her being sharp as a tack when I was a kid, but now... well, you know.
It was really great to read about your grandma, I have similar memories from my parents playing. She sounds so fun and screw being meta, halfling druid is awesome! I wish you and her all the best, even though things may be different now. I'll definitely be sure to hug my grandma, too.
Rehd here. Thanks for the fun few hours mate, I still haven't had another social experience on the game and I'm level 60 now! Best of luck on your next deep dive, keep up the great content!
@@espygaming5101 It's such a shame to see because I really do feel that Everquest has such a great potential for adventure. I never played it when it first came out so I don't have any nostalgia to carry me. So when I'm running around, asking for parties and just getting no responses, it makes me want to log off.
I never played EQ too before deciding to check it out on a fresh TLP. One of the best gaming decisions ever made. Seeing the whole game's content in chronological order alongside people to play with is really great! It's still a jankful experience but it also provides a sense of camaraderie that modern solo-oriented MMOs don't. Levelling an alt character right now though, and it's this ghost town experience that Josh showed in this video. Had this been my first character, and not knowing where to go and what to do and without a tightly knit guild I'd probably stop playing soon enough.
I quit around level 34 when the game came out. I was a wizard, cast levitate, ran up the spire in North Karana, bound myself, and turned off levitate to see if it would spawn me on the ground or air. The answer is air... I went to lunch and when I came back, I was level 29 with a game moderator telling me my 100s of corpses started lagging the zone. Good times.
I was a dyslexic oger shaman that buffed everyone for free on a PVP server. After a year finally Prophets accept me in to there guild. But I only pulled 7 to 10 hours, so that hard core guild was not so happy with me. Long time a go I leveld a Troll shaman up to 60 on Project 1999. Just for fun. Human Bards are the best solo money makers.
@@pittypatterputzzler5311 That's something that's lost on these vids. EQ was a community. I was on Povar. And one of the effects of the tediously slow leveling system was whoever you leveled with today at 10, would be the same people you'd run into at 35. Players built reputations on their servers of being good pullers, nukers, crowd control, etc and that moniker stayed with you throughout your characters career. You couldn't just be a d*ck, because later you'd just never get a group again and your EQ experience would just end lol.
@@sarkmangaming8164 the whole group levelling process, moving through zones and even wait lists for groups in lguk and stuff was great - it was like a class of high school students or something - you saw eachother every day, or saw people in ooc/all chat - i still remember peoples FACES from the old character models - and most of their surnames. its wild. Prexus and Luclin - quit after SoV, hated the grind for keys - that corpse story is sad i hope it didnt make u quit :( nk was a cool zone with pretty music. peaceful. lots of druids to get SoW from. creepy trees though.
I get this strange sad feeling whenever I see Everquest. It feels like looking at a picture of an old pioneer town, then glancing at it now only to see overgrown ruins and frames of collapsed buildings. If you listen closely enough, you can just about hear the bustle of people long gone, but the truth is that you're alone and nobody's lived there for ages.
It makes me really sad. I'll never walk over to the Freeport Arena and see 35 people goofing around. I'll never see hundreds of players on EC or Oasis. I'll never see two people getting married in game with all their friends around. You can't even play on the same server for more than 30 minutes anymore. It might be mostly abandoned, but a lot of us lived there for years.
Ex Everquest Raider here. The everquest of today is just a different beast to what we knew back then. It was always a group centric MMO, unless you were a necro or bard who could kite entire zones of monsters around. In general you logged in, got into a group and went to your level area and killed mobs in the group. As peeps logged out you invited another in. And you did for this for hours on end. Being in a guild was obviously beneficial, and you progressed until you reached maxlevel and then went looking for raiding guilds. Then you started in the lower raiding guilds and worked your way up to the top server guilds. I raided with Anthem on Tunare for years. I've tried reloading it on and off during the years, but without the player base you're just a solo in a huge land with bugger all to do. No other MMO has come close to givingme the memories I have with Everquest, but I'm happy to leave them as memories.
Same. I also hated some guilds kill stealing and camp stealing etc. I saw both the best and worst in people in EQ, but I think it encouraged the worst more often. Also the community managers were annoying spin doctors and useless. Not that that part is any different today, I suppose. I was in it for 10 years, but happy to have moved on to the likes of FF14 etc. At least it doesn't bring out the worst in people.
@@StraightcheD yeh I have played ff14 still have a sub'd account there, but having to do that story does my head in, and having to do dungeons etc.. I'm not as good a player nor as socialable as I once was :D I know I can buy pass on the story, but then you're left not knowing class etc, maybe I'll load it up again
I have such nostalgia for EverQuest, it hurts. It was my first MMO, my first obsession. I skipped school (sometimes) to play. Hurried home during lunch hours, forsaking food for time in Norrath. This was during the era of dial-up. What Josh said in that RuneScape podcast he was on recently about *phenomenology* is ultra-true; it wasn't just a game, it was a whole experience. That experience involved dial-up internet, the horrible screeching connection and the blocking-off of the phone line (which my dad took exception to; mobile phones weren't a thing yet). It involved using disks to install, and not being able to tab out of full screen (the only format, windowed mode did not exist) to, say, look up information online.. and if you did look up info, you'd find ultra-simple maps made in MS Paint. And I did that. I *printed* those maps, using up our printer's ink. I wrote coordinates all over them, and filled blank sheets with coordinates of my own. You bet I cherished those damn maps and notes, it was as if I was an explorer, charting a new world. And then there was the social aspect. Josh is spot-on with how crucial, how intrinsic it was. Forming a guild with friends both online and off. Getting into my first online relationship, which started with helping my eventual in-game girlfriend recover hers and a friend of hers corpses from the depths of Blackburrow, which I knew inside and out and was just higher-level enough and better-geared enough to be able to be their hero. Exploring new areas and chatting with the guild while camping mobs for hours. The friends I had in there.. we weren't in touch in other spaces. Sure old ones like mIRC existed, but why would we need them, when we had EQ? They were clunky and full of weirdos anyway. And technologically it just wasn't feasible to tab out of the game anyway. I'm fully aware of my rose-tinted goggles. I've gone back to the game in recent years, playing both Project 99 and grabbing the current version of the game off Steam. The current game was a neat little binge, but Project 99 really grabbed me in the nostalgia, in the memories. I played feverishly for a little while... and then stopped. I had some friends in-game, but it wasn't the same. It can't be. Phenomenology. I'm sitting here with two screens, UA-cam and Discord and the wiki on my second monitor.. not perched on my chair in front of a CRT monitor, deeply focused on *understanding* and *immersing myself* into the game, like back then. Oh, I know lots of people still play and love Project 99, and I have fondness for it too, and will probably hop back in sometime to try again.. but the simple fact is, I have other options now. Other games. And my friends in Discord aren't really focused into any single spot, aside from our common interest in FFXIV. That's just how it is, now. This ramble's for me. I don't really expect anyone read it through to the end. It's a small way of paying tribute to my first video game addiction, my first video game love. I'd never try to sell someone on EQ.. I'm all too aware that Elvis has left the building. But.. I'm still heartened, by some of what Josh has noted. How the game still can be magical, with the right set of circumstances. It CAN still be someone's forever-game.. if they want it to be. If they join a community, a Discord, centred on it. If they get involved, collaborate, play together with these new friends. Immerse themselves.. have another little life, inside Norrath. It can be done, and not just by putting a lot of time in, but by engaging with people who are in it as well. We're in a modern era, so it's inevitable that if you try it now, if you try to get *in,* you'll have Discord and other stuff going on.. but if you like a slow, socially-oriented burn, and find pleasure in figuring out and mastering the arcane complexities of a game made in another time.. well, maybe it's the game for you.
I know you said no one would read this but I did and I loved every second of it I love reading comments like this, where people go into not what made games good, but how they made you feel I used to make maps and write down notes for all the games I played too and I wish I had kept them, I'd have them framed on my wall if I could haha
I read it all, glad I did, I can relate as eve online was my first mmo, I've tried time and time again to get back into it but RL simply won't allow me. It appears that's normal for our generation! what matters is this, I was told I was "wasting my time" on games, yet the truth is we made life long memories and friends in these digital wonderlands. I have no regrets.
I can relate to so much of this. The rush of finding a group to go deep into a dungeon in a dangerous zone knowing you could die and lose everything was incredible. Having the internet disconnect because your parents picked up the phone always a lingering threat in the background. Nothing like it.
Ultima Online was my first, but I played EQ alot more, remember I had to set aside my allowance to cover part of the phone bill because it got so excessive. Good times :)
It's most impressive. A game with outdated graphics, outdated combat, outdated level design, so-so story and it somehow has survived longer than many Zoomies who now roam the earth. And it did in one of the most volatile and energetic industries. Only Banking / Finance is more high intensity.
I think it's hilarious that I've never played any MMO more than a few hours and have no interest in playing one but I still get a lot of value out of your breakdowns because they apply to games as a whole.
MMOs to me are like Gatchas I always try to find one that will work for me so I can finally understand the buzz around it, only to drop it 5 hours in because "this just ain't it"
This game defined my childhood, I couldn't wait to run home and either play my halfling ranger or watch my dad on his enchanter do high end gameplay. I remember my mom and dad taking literal shifts to wait for a giant to spawn on an island so they could get the material it dropped to make the SoW boots. Even with all that nostalgia, I have tried countless times to get back into it and I came to the same feelings you did. I felt alone .. I wished I could find more people to go kill stuff with even if that's all we did. Really great video and thank you for putting in the 100 hours!
Not worth trying… You can’t replace five close friends with a pet, and everyone multi-boxes an entire group of characters instead. There’s not enough people to recreate the magic. Everyone there is already high-level. We’re really fortunate we got to enjoy it during it’s prime, with persistent servers. We actually got to know our whole servers. That’s not something that happens anymore. Everything is instanced. Even servers. EverQuest can’t be recreated, not in it’s original form.
This is such uninformed BS. You need to start a TLP within the first week of launch, not 3 expansions out. You're going to have an amazing time and see low level players everywhere. You won't feel alone. Do some dungeons and grind grind grind with other players you meet. Nothing like being level 6-10 in Crushbone again
@@Octanis0 Not flawed at all. The guy above wrote he loved the game and wanted to get that classic experience. I told him how. Source: I played on a new TLP from 2016-2018ish and it was amazing. You can't go to a mall in the middle of the night and say "dang this mall is empty, it's not good"
@@Octanis0He is right though. Day 1 TLP with 800 level 1s on the server is the way to play EQ and get close to the original game. Sadly by the 3rd expansion it kind of trails off and after that it is back to ghost town stuff. If you really want to try EQ properly just wait until a new TLP comes out they do it like 3x a year I think.
I LOVED this game and I can't stand playing it for more than 5 minutes today. I suspect we'll see another game like it one day, sometime in the next 30 years.
I think I had 300 days played Kaziem. IT was.... a lot... then again MMOs were totally new back then 8) And I sold my enchanter for the price of a very nice used Corolla. Add the rest of what I sold, a new one.
He did pretty much hit every nail on the head. I have also played 10,000 hour plus. Agree with him completely... And when my kids are older I will find time to play EverQuest again some how. Probably just make a necro and do what ever the hell I want when I want.
I have a suggestion@@theman6910. Lord of the Rings online. It's an EQ style game, but the art, storytelling, and classes are all better. Also probably the community.
I only have memories of other people playing EQOA when I was in Highschool. I never got to really play since my parents would not pay for internet and playing this is as close as I can get to that so I am not sure if that counts but I am enjoying the game. I hope this makes sense haha.
I really, really like the way you described the game as Elvis or the original Dracula movie. It’s so relatable and meaningful, and gets a profound point across clearly. I’d be happy with watching a well edited video of a knowledgeable player play an old MMO I’ve only heard of in a historical context, but I think that this sort of commentary is why your videos are really a step above.
@@bluexephosfan970 When people talk about EQ being the first 3D game, it's referring to how all characters and NPCs are made of polygons, rather than sprites. I see the 'BuT MeRiDiAn 59!!!!11eleven" response all the time, even though we all understand what was being referred to. 🙄
22:06 This is the kind of interaction that anyone who plays oldschool MMOs *desperately* craves. Running into an obviously new player doing something just so damn innocent and cute in its naivety, and being able to just smile and ask "What in the fuck are you doing?"
I love seeing people doing silly stuff in MMO's. Most of the time I end up join in and having fun. Music, dancing and emotes are usually fun. LOTRO is great for music with a plugin for it.
I agree, like I played some shitty f2p mmorpg through out the mid 2000s to early 2010s but even those game the random social interaction and friends you make was great. Now days everything so stream line you just rush to cap and then que up for instance with people you never talk to.
I was a big Everquest/SWG/UO player (at different times of course), and I haven't enjoyed an MMO since WoW flipped the genre on it's head, but I think DayZ is really what the MMO grew up to be. At it's core it's about what's happening with other players, every part of the game is in service to interactions, and it's worthless WITHOUT those players. I just had that experience of laughing at a new guy not knowing how to cook a chicken and running around in a high visibility vest, but after 6 or so hours of playing together I was doing things I simply couldn't have accomplished without my little buddy. I didn't get his info because I like those experiences to come and go naturally, but it's the only game where I've genuinely made a friend since I was like 12 years old.
@@MeatSnax Its interesting but the pure pvp nature of it all also just ensure you never going to get that much people on it due to nothing to stop new player being grief into quitting. It has potential for those moments but so much pain in between as well.
I still log onto Project 1999's server every now and then...I loved the original game which includes the Classic game with only the Kunark & Velious expansions. It was beautiful - the game is pure magic to me and I have never felt so strongly positive about any other game I have ever played!
This game played as a single player old school RPG is awesome. I play on Imperium server which is a solo/duo progression server and its amazing. If you want to play with people you can, if you want to go alone then its also perfectly viable too. I am loving this game as a single player old school game and i'm a new player
The Elvis analogy got me thinking about how playing old video games is different than a lot of other media. It’s not harder to listen to an Elvis song than a new song. Newer songs don’t have more features for ease of use or time-saving. They have new types of sounds, but having a synthesizer in a song isn’t quite the same as being able to see dialogue options you’ve already picked, or graphical mini maps. Elvis songs also don’t demand 100 hours of your time
All true, and that's just in the game design. When you get to actually playing them, there are thousands of variables. Music can be ripped from a CD, cassette, record, or any other storage format: the digital form sounds as good or better. Books lose more in translation, but the content stays intact. However, games need multiple pieces of very specific hardware that was only manufactured for a single decade. Even with computer games and emulators, getting an old one to run takes significant tinkering. MMORPGs have it even worse, since they're always-online games. A lot of the time, we can't preserve them at all: the community never gets the ability to host private servers. All of this still fails to capture the full experience of the community, the fan sites, the culture of the time.
It's easier to listen to the song in absolute terms, but I don't think it's easier to appreciate it because of that, or musicians would never lose popularity with new generations. Nobody's as into Elvis now as almost every young person was at the time. It's hard to even maintain that with new music as you get older--at least I can enjoy new *games* just as much as someone half my age, and I have as much trouble as they do with the old game jank.
You're ... wrong, in a way. Music is much harder to actually listen to it when it was released, after 10-30 years. Music is literally half the context, and quite often younger people just won't understand older songs to the point it's almost another language entirely. Games have for the most part, exceptional staying power. MP ones & MMOs are .. special beasties, but I could put my niece in front of one of my first games, and watch them play through it with the same light about the game world I had when I played it for the first time. Sure some things shift, and some games are exceptionally affected by social context, but there are still text based games that when given to a new player Now.... will end with the same kinds of experiences as when it was new. Modern Trends have don more long term damage to newer games... and some have left the face of the planet entirely now, existing only in the memories of those who played them. Will someone 10 years from now want to play all the COD games? No, or all the Zombie games? No, or all the Grind to unlock prestige levels in X game that was mostly MP focused.. No.
In terms of gaming I would say that good ideas won't age at all and good game design can catch players attention even decades after release. For example, the original DOOM will hit 30 years this December, soon it can have midlife crisis and yet it can still be entertaining and fun even for a new player provided they are ready to see old graphics maybe improved and cleaned with modern source ports
What I miss about Everquest is the ability to just camp something with a group of people where I have time in between combat to be social. In modern MMOS it's a speed run ADHD reward blast. Everquest felt more personable.
Even during LDoN, when I was maining my cleric hard and joining a half dozen PUGs a day, we had some downtime. 3-4 times per dungeon from a bad pull or just our mana running low, when we'd just sit and chat. Grouped up with one guy who only had the original game and only bought LDoN for the increased level cap, for example.
I have fond memories of camping for certain skeleton spawns and chatting with folks also camping them. One would run in to the spawn point and jump around, emoting "Does the dread dance" to summon the dread skeleton spawn. We swear it increased the spawn rate.
My god ... I worked at SOE back in the day. I can't believe this huge monstrosity of a game is still going. Your masochism, Sir Hayes, is rather remarkable.
This video got me nostalgic and now I've spent the last 2 weeks playing Project Quarm and falling behind on all my TV and other games. EverCrack is still alive and well.
The history of EQ is really interesting, as it was made from a decades spanning D and D story of a group of friends who then decided to make it an mmorpg, while not having any experience in game design.
I started playing EQ back when it first came out, and it was absolutely magical. I went back recently to see what it was like, and after spending a couple of hours trying to figure out how to get back to the old zones I knew and loved (I left after Planes of Power, so the new starting zones were foreign to me), it was just... bittersweet. The music and the scenery of Kelethin will *always* feel like home, and being there again in that tree city with no railings on the bridges (because wood elves don't have lawyers) tugged hard at my heart. Sneaking into Neriak to relive my time as a dark elf and revisit those super hot female dark elf models I used to lust over (all six polygons of them) was exciting and hilarious, and I was happy to discover that I still remembered all the secret passages. Doing the scary run from Freeport to Grobb, through the high-level zone of South Ro, as every low-level dark elf character had to do on the Team PvP server back in the day, was just as nail-biting as it was the first time I did it. But the emptiness hurt my soul. There was nobody in any of those old zones. Nobody at the dark elf newbie log in Nektulos, nobody camping around the entrance to Najena in Lavastorm, no trading/selling chat spam in the East Commonlands, nobody waiting for the boat in Freeport, nobody sitting outside Kithicor Forest waiting for the sun to rise so the super-high-level undead would despawn and they could make the run across toward Qeynos... I saw all the ghosts of those people, silent, transparent, separated from me by an age of time, never to return. I miss you, Everquest. I don't miss spending all day sitting, spamming my Direction Sense skill as I watched my HP slowly return, I don't miss raid wipes and 12-hour corpse recovery missions, I don't miss a lot of the nitty-gritty details, but I do miss being a part of that world, a part of that community. RIP, Everquest. You were loved.
You can actually experience this on p99 or the official game if you server start on a TLP, every year. It won’t be 1999, but you will have unrest groups, Freeport runs to EC, asking for ports to the hole, etc. Players in every old zone.
I miss old pvp days, getting to loot one unbagged item. My rogue with wine quest and DE elf mask, merking the newbie log lol. Hanging out in Neriak bank as a halfling, dark elves getting killed by guards if they attack me because I had better faction from the wine quest lol
You could experience all of this on P99 or better yet Quarm which just started a couple weeks ago. It's a new classic server, and had over 1k players when it opened. And yes people still camp EC tunnel and auction there.
I did it with retail WOW a few years back, leveled a character before all the fancy reworks and it took exactly 132 hours and I hated every minute of it. only did it so I could tell people I was allowed to have an opinion
This could be interpreted in many other ways as well, wanted to like it but didn't, didn't like it but was told it gets good later, hated it a little at first but progressively more towards the end, stuck with it to see if it does get better and didn't care for it. Or just played it to prove a point We would need more information to make a claim like yours and since there's no way to prove you wrong here on UA-cam, you are simultaneously right and wrong! So congrats.
as an original EQ player and off and on again for the past 25 years I was screaming at you, yelling "but you did it wrong", "You are using the wrong spell", "You can do it this way better" and so on, then it hit me LOL I am viewing your perspective! This is the perspective of what its like for new players. It is NOT your fault at all. it is the games and with its faults it does offer its charms as well. I am happy to see you got to experience the game for all its good and bad. You did an Outstanding job explaining it, going over the details and showing the world what its like with a fresh perspective like yours. EQ is a time capsule and opening it today, you can see what was and remains of how people used to play and do things. EQ never died and vanished. Its a story your grandfather told you about when he was younger! EQ lives in our memories and you got only a sample of it while playing it. There are much better designed, streamlined, fast paced games for the younger generation. EQ is the model T of the MMO's while games like fortnight and wow are the new cars with GPS and satellite radio that drives for you!
A bit similar here. When UI got changed to moveable windows on the screen I found it hard to setup my first UIs. Especially creating hotbar buttons can become very complex and provide you with mighty tools. Just a simple example. After 100 hours you say Everquest does not show if a friend is online. That's not true ... the game just don't tell you how to do. There is a friend list to which you can add a friend (/friend ...) and there is a command showing you people around (/who). Last command shows only your current zones population. Do it "/who all friend" will show your friends in all zones. Like you mentioned Everquest does not take your hand. You have to figure out yourself or digging for informations externally. Thank you for this nice and in my opinion objective view on this great game.
I dont think anybody today can truly enjoy the fun if they dont know what its like to change the auto attack key, or having to shout "Has anybody here seen my corpse?" and the fact that 99% of the quests were broken. I mean can original players forget the "lol" shouts everytime the Priest of discord shouted out about killing someone?
Peak Everquest was an experience that will never be replicated... it was the MMO equivalent of the transition from analog to digital...If you were there, it was communal experience unlike virtually anything else. I actually met my wife and most of my current MMO friend group playing EQ back in the day. I can't imagine returning to it now, as huge empty husk. It's kinda bizarre to hear the active player numbers... back in the Planes of Power days, a full raid was 72 people! We once downed an outdoor raid boss with 118 folks split between two raids...Thanks for making this video and reminding me of some very fond memories.
I was thinking the exact same thing. I ran an OPEN raid & downed Rallos Zek to get the final key to Plane of Time. It was a complete gong show. I couldn't believe we did it. Especially after the guild I was in failed 4x moments earlier. "Can I try RZ with my open raid group?" I asked. They laughed and said "Haha sure go for it." I took our main tank from our guild (we were friends) and she got the sword that dropped from him. We both found ourselves not in the guild the next morning. Hahaha, we didn't care, we joined a top guild and started farming Time.
Reminds me of the many hours of torture I endured leveling my characters. WTF was wrong with me?!? To those who didn't know, that at one time there was a thing called Hell Levels which started at level 25. then 30, then 35, etc till I think level 45. These levels were 100 times harder to gain than any other level before. This was cause by a code error which wasn't fixed for many many years.
Yeah but the level after them went fast, so it probably evened out, the problem was dying just after dinging out of a hell level, because you lost way more experience.
Funny enough something similar happened in EverQuest 2 for the first month after release. Then they nerfed everything a lot. Kind of got a bad taste in my mouth after that and turned me off MMO's from that time on.
This is pretty interesting to watch as someone who didn't play EQ personally (altho i did play EQ2), but literally have it to thank for my existance 😭 My parents met over the game back when it came out, and were hardcore raiders. I believe they still actively played when I was extremely young (Im 21 so its been quite a long time since then)
Funny enough, from as long as I had known him, my stepdad has played Everquest, and to this day is still his favorite game, alongside Gran Turismo(strange enough). Last year around Christmas, we checked his EQ playtime and it came up to just over 7 years spent in game. Incredible stuff.
Hey we're the same age- I was also playing this as a wide-eyed teenager back in 99-03ish. Defined my teenage years. We may have crossed paths a couple decades ago!
I LOVED this game when it launched (I was 11). I remember humming the loading screen music all the time because my PC sucked and loading into the game took 5ish minutes. My mother even learned the song and could recognize it. xD
I had a friend, somewhere around 1999 or 2000 that would make fun of me constantly for playing EQ. On his birthday that year, I gave him a gift card or money or something, but put it in my EQ retail box and wrapped that up; he opened the gift, rolled his eyes and then took the actual gift out. But that box struck a cord with him and he thought what he saw looked pretty cool, so not much later, he picked up the game and started playing. Anyway, almost 25-years later and he's still playing Everquest and is absolutely one of those enfranchised players you speak of in this video. EQ was amazing in 1999, when I was 15, hadn't experienced anything like it and had unlimited amounts of time to just explore, die and grind. But as you've noticed with this video, it is not something I will ever go back to. I have some nostalgia for it, but thankfully that nostalgia is colored by reality of what the game actually is.
I discovered your channel after 23 years of never playing an mmo and being pulled into starting a character on Project 1999 EverQuest. I’ve consumed a ton of your content and learned more about mmos sense then, but this was where it started.
These "sagas" where you randomly encounter other players are rare due to the nature of which MMOs you play, as in usually depopulated, but they’re always a treat. Cheers!
@@poisonated7467 Calling an outdated game with blocky visuals, very basic combat and zero Quality of Life features difficult to play, is not a spicy take. That's just factual and Josh was rather diplomatic about why the game may not be for most audiences. I mean there are games out there modernizing themselves. Everquest did no such thing.
@@Mayhzon You've clearly never played P99 EQ and compared it to Live EQ. Your comment is riddled with things that just aren't true. You dont think after 29 expansions SOE and Daybreak have tried to modernize their game? Give me a break. Play P99, TLPs, and live servers before you speak.
EverQuest created a foundation for the MMO genre(which was originated by the previously created single-player games of Ultima and others as such). It was originally an Social activity of talking to people, and THEN go on an adventure - some short others long - over the years that changed to be less of the talking(typing) when voice comms became an external thing. In the Prime days, there was ALWAYS someone to group with in low and mid - level areas. Sometimes you would spend WEEKS and/or MONTHS in these areas, and making acquaintances and eventually friends made for better enjoyment of this time. I do miss the days of MMO games actually being less individually grindy and more group grindy, encouraging us to find a full party of a proper mixture of various classes that would balance and compliment the combat. Current MMO are all about the DPS being the highlight of a group and NOONE wanting to be the beefy Tank or the linchpin HEALER. Whatever happened to the greatest of classes - Crowd Control - ? Anyways, great presentation of a great game, the fact you survived for 100 hours solo in a game intended for group play is a testament of your natural talents of a gamer to the core.
Aye I miss those days. It really saddens me what they turned EQ into - fast clicky travel everywhere, every class can do everything, death is meaningless, no longer do you see people spend weeks and months in areas because they are hard to get, no longer do you see people grouping and coming up with creative and unique strategies based on what classes they have - now you just hire a merc and do whatever or insta-group find from anywhere. It's just extremely sad that they tried to turn EQ into WoW, despite it being a superior experience back in the day. Then as if mercs were not enough, the promotion of multiboxing so they can make more $ from subs just killed it entirely. Planes of Power - or specifically POK removing the need to travel and look for other players to transport you via teleport or guide you through dangerous zones, was the beginning of the end. Luclin - for all it's faults - did it right with the spires - very limited locations, disadvantage of waiting for the port to activate - basically a boat without the boat.
I still remember coordinating times with other people who also happened to be farming those goblins whose drops got nerfed sometime after I quit, good times.
Ultima Online was a game about being a savage misanthropic goblin. Before they added item insurance, pretty much all I did was stealth around slapping people's weapons out of their hand and then stealing it from their inventory. They didn't add any group activities for years, that was all an afterthought.
I *hate* that people call Tanks/DPS/Healers the "Holy Trinity" as if that's the way things have always been. But it's not, there used to be a 4th pillar, Crowd Control. And because WoW did away with it, every other game after WoW did too. But Crowd Control was fun, a LOT of fun.
As an avid EverQuest player I appreciate this video and I applaud your honesty. I absolutely agree with with your sentiment. It was a very accurate and honest description. And your comments about the Run speed buff was hilarious! I had to replay it a couple times😅
As an original EQ (yes, zero expansions) player. This video was so amusing. You hit almost every nail on the head. There is a nostalgia that most of us cant shake, but then again I don't play live anymore. Instead I play Emulated servers (which I'm sure you can't cover other than p99 for legal reasons) and still you have to know what you're doing in order to enjoy those as well. Good video. I award this 10... out of Evercrack.
If you continue this 100 hours idea into a series with more games, I would like to see a timer or clock somewhere on the video so I know how far into the 100 hours you are while watching. I realized this @25:30 soon after you said you left the tutorial area. Cause you make no mention of how long the tutorial it's self took in relation to the 100 hours.
Man, this brings me back. I started playing when I was just a kid right when Velious came out. My entire family got into it, my mom, aunt, her boyfriend, 2 uncles. Even just within our household we always had people to play with. Then we all joined a guild, which did exist in EQ from the start, and that was a core community. But you're right about how important it is for the community to exist and how huge it was for the game. I'd go into the big grinding zones and shout around until a group had a spot open. Groups in the zone would all have their own camps, as in spawn camping, and it was a huge taboo to poach mobs from another camp. Honestly, a lot of times myself and everyone I knew would log in just to talk to people since it was more interesting than having to use msq or AOL chat. EQ was why I bothered learning to type as an 8 year old kid and why I got so good at it. I have great memories of the game, but it's just not that anymore. I tried Project 99 and the magic was gone. You're right, without people it's just a dead, slow, lonely world.
As a person that LIVED EQ for about 11 years...every day, all free time devoted basically, it's safe to say it was my favorite game at one time. I am not, however, a nostalgic person. Do I have a decade of memories? Absolutely. I miss the East Commonlands tunnel chats, the newbie log in Nektulous Forest, and and the days upon days of playing and exploring. Yes, true exploring, pre-wiki's and forums and using my physical Everquest Atlas book to get the backstories of all the zones and cool map layouts and the likes. It's so endearing to remember. Then, every few years since leaving, I log back in to try to grasp that feeling. Like you said, it's just not the same. Nobody sits at the newbie log for days or weeks grinding to get to level 5. The slow grind that would take months or a year to hit level 20 is gone. The prestige of seeing the rare 20+ character walk by and being in awe of their cool gear, is gone. The mystique of going to the Paludual Caves or the Estate of Unrest for the first time and the nervousness and the fear are all long gone. Having to adventure from Freeport to Qeynos passing through the mountains where you'd get 1-shot killed and sneaking past enemies or even hostile city guards just to get to that one cool zone you always wanted to see....gone. The extended boat rides where people were fishing or jumping off to go fight some sirens and the social aspect (as you described) are all gone. That was the magic of Everquest. Arguable, Planes of Power are what actually killed the game, because they directly removed all exploration and thus communication amongst people because you could follow those trails you were using and allowed you to teleport anywhere in the universe instead of meeting with wizards or druids to pay to teleport. It killed their economy. It killed classes almost entirely. It KILLED the cool factor and made it essentially an arena MMO. Even going back through these routes just feels dead now. I remember the routes through the Butcher Block Mountains to get to the boat from Freeport. I remember how to get to the Estate of Unrest without a guide still....but why? To top it off, they later tried to emulate WoW which was what buried the last vestiges of EQ by making everything raid-boss based. There were always bosses and dungeons, but now everything is just focused on Min/maxing. Back in the early days it was about experience and those you spent it with. The world of gaming now is far different than back then. That's why Morrowind is so different from Skyrim. Back in the early 00's and late 90's, RPGs were about the feeling you got playing them. They were about losing yourself in the character and experiencing a whole new world. Now, with 30-second attention spans, those types of games just fail miserably. Almost no one is willing to play a game where it can take days or even months to get 5 levels...or even years to get to the max level. The instant gratification NEEDS to be there. I view early mmo's like people viewed the 60's. The only way to know how it felt was to have felt it. There's no combination of nostalgia, flashback videos, emulations, or even really bad made nostalgia videos that will give you the feeling of being in that time and place except for actually being there. No matter if it's Project 1999 (which I've played and had the same feeling as I do with the current servers) or playing a SWGEmu server...you will NEVER get that feeling back because the world is not the same and YOU are not the same.
Other games would give you a steak dinner prepared to your liking. Everquest is the type of game to bring you to a cow about to give birth, have you help it give birth, and then raise that cow to be your steak. Also, dont forget to learn woodcutting and cooking as a side quest cause you'll need that to make the steak later on.
Everquest (well any MMORPG pre WoW) took the approach of making a world and the players just exsisted in it, WoW came along and made a game around the players instead and neglected the world and we been folliowing that path since then due to WoW success. We might see a return to the EQ approach of making a world first with ashes of creation. It seems that game is well focused on the creation of a world that we find out place in rather than a game for the player.
The game felt way more dangerous than others. Like you start in Elwynn Forest, go try to fight something, and it has a chance to completely kick your ass. Never had that experience in any other MMO. It always felt like what I was fighting was beneath me in WoW for example. But in EQ, every enemy was a threat. It pushed people into making friends and travelling together.
Back in the day, when that happened, you died, and ALL of your equipment was still on your corpse. You had to run back to your corpse and loot it. That absolutely added to the "Dangerous" feeling that it provided. Modern MMOs don't and never will replicate that.
@@JeffTomasek Yep, I remember that! There were plenty of times where I either couldn't get to my corpse or just couldn't find it and never was able to recover my stuff. So exploring and such felt really dangerous.
It also didn't hold your hand. I got my behind handed to me battling a wisp, and it wasn't until I talked to other players ingame that I figured out that I needed to use a magical weapon to damage it. The way it relied on player interaction was really nice. I think this is the 'high' that WoW classic players are chasing.
God, this game saved my damn life back in 1999. I was about to finish Highschool, I had retreated so far inside myself by that point I didn't see myself ever opening up. But holy crap did I open up, I had so many friends a wife, friends who I played with for 15 years across multiple games etc. I can never forget you Erolisi Marr!!! Edit: Regarding strafing and stuff you can use the Left Control periodically to help you circle strafe.
To this day i know the exact aggro range of every mob in EQ up to planes of power and the exact pathing for nearly every mob in most common zones, because if you didn't you would get gored by a wandering mammoth and lose 3 days worth of experience. Expecting any new player to get to this level obsessive knowledge without any community around them to absorb it from? That is obviously too much to ask but i am grateful that it still exists. This game may have been the most important part of my childhood, it is the only reason I am capable of social interaction today and I still play every once in a while for nostalgia's sake. I can still go back to where I learned that I actually could be a part of a social group and that has helped me many times in the last 20 years. That said everything josh just said is fair and mostly true, I appreciate you giving EQ your time and putting a genuine effort into getting as much of the experience as you possibly could, this game means a lot to many people and you treated it with respect. Keep it up man. and because i can't help myself: /who friend /who (name of a zone) /who all (the whole server) /who guild will give you a list of people online in any of those groups, you can even get a player count for a zone before you head there to know if you're likely to find a group. Guess what inspired my curiosity around terminal commands and gave me a career 😂
this last bit is so true.. i played a druid solo and rogue for grouping, so i often played my druid until i noticed there were groups in my rogues leveling zone. Often reading what classes was there, figuring out how many tanks healers etc there was and understanding if there was room for dps. Or if you simply knew someone in the zone, someone you grouped with before, you just send a message and asked how the situation was. What game in todays world work like this? not a single one... none. Games today are built so you don't even have to communicate with people, you are auto grouped, play the instance, and dissolved to most likely never meet again.
one of the strange things about EQ was that there was an utter imbalance in the starting cities (P99 era). So the high elf city is 2 zones. real nice. all the shops you could ask for. the troll city was a long ditch with several horrible little buildings and ...some features. the barbarian city was 'okay' but you had to wait on this weird boat to leave. anyway, it could be humorous to see you start a guy on the (early progression server) of each race and review the town.
You mean the starting cities represented their races and the troll and orge cities looked like caves and swamps compared to the HIGH ELFS? No way? How weird, why would that be?
dark elf city - neriak - just get lost for your entire play session, find the necro guild? good luck, cant alt tab out of game to use your pre-Google search engine
@@joelwillis2043 Back in the day very early on there was already a website with a guy who uploaded handdrawn maps of every zone. I had a whole book of printed zone maps. Finding your position relative to that printed map as a young teen was an experience.
Josh, thank you for giving P99 a chance later on, it's a VERY different "Immersion heavy" experience and honestly it feels more what us Nostalgious people love. thanks for that man!
I restarted on Live a few months ago. Got to lvl 8 with a full set of gear really fast. Ended up restarting again on project 1999. It's a much better experience, grueling sometimes and very unforgiving, but so much more gratifying. For instance, I got my Barbarian Shaman to lvl 14, got some new spells. Fired up the game the following night, died twice, while bound on another continent. LOST a level back to 13 and about a full bubble worth of exp. What keeps me going though is the promise of of potential. Once I get to higher levels, I'm valuable, and I earned every bit. The community on P99 is amazing so far, and you know everyone there has invested at least as much effort into just getting the thing installed (fairly big PITA, if not impossible for your average user nowadays) so there really aren't casual trolls taking away from the experience. P99 FTW.
@@neviander Tried P99 a couple years ago. Felt dead to me. Still nothing like the old newly released EQ. Its only the best that anyone has to offer., and thats not a bad thing. Just the people that remember the old days and yearn for it are still probably going to be disappointed.
I grew up playing Champions of Norrath on the PlayStation 2 and I had literally no idea it was set in the universe of an existing mmorpg !!!!This is so exciting, knowing the time I spent on Guild Wars later in my teenage years, i would have loved Everquest
@@almightyk11 In case you aren't aware, Dark Alliance, Champions of Norrath, and Champions: Return to Arms were all developed by Snowblind. If you enjoyed DA, you may give one of the Champions' games a try, as they are very similar gameplay wise.
@@Demonrifts I actually had Champions of Norrath, not DA. I just assumed it to be a knock off or spin off because I didn't have internet at the time. XD
@@almightyk11 Ah, gotcha, that's fair. I played DA first then got Champions. I ended up looking at the back of the cases and realized they were both from Snowblind.
Ahhh, good old EverCrack! Had a lot of fun back before WoW released with this gem. Memories of people begging my enchanter for crack (Clarity or Haste, depending on their class), yells in chat of "TRAIN TO ZONE!" which is a phrase with a whole other meaning these days if you're familiar with ZoneToons, the impromptu bazaar at the East Commons Tunnel, and my favorite hero moment when I saved an entire hodge-podge Chardok raid mid-wipe when the entire Library got pulled by mistake and all the other raid enchanters died followed by much Mezzing and joining the Purple Club twice before everything was locked down enough for rezzes to begin on the half-killed raid. But yeah, without the sense of community? ummmm.... yeah that's gonna show it's age pretty badly. I'm honestly surprised it's still developed and happy for those still playing away.
I played it a year after it came out, it was an amazing experience that I will never forget. Being a woodelf in the tree city, fighting orcs with "people online". Truly happy I got to experience it in its trend setting glory.
My first roll was a Wood Elf. Putting on the Kelethin music brings tears to my eyes. I disabled music when I got to level 15 or so, so it was the music I was easily the most familiar with. It snaps me right back to that exact moment in Everquest where I felt that everything was magical. I saw hundreds of other people running around. Wisps and orcs and guards. It was a real fantasy world, with real people, I couldn't believe it.
@@a_doggoMy favorite bit about Kelethin was, not surprisingly, an experience with a friend. I'd started playing a little before them, and had learned my way around the city; this meant I saw a bunch of the pathways as 'optional,' by which I mean that jumping from higher levels to lower was often my preferred way to get to my destination. It's not always the best for showing people around, though...
@@boobah5643 I'll never forget the moment I was sitting at the "Crossroads" in Butcher Block Mountains. I watched groups run by and thought . These are other people from all over the world sitting in their rooms all while being in this online world playing with each other.... my mind was absolutely blown. back then it was amazing, these days it is common place.
I loved this review. I really really cherish the magic that I got to experience when EQ first came out but I also recognize that it was a once in a lifetime experience. I can try to convey how incredible it was at the time but it's really something you had to be there for in the moment to enjoy. You were able to understand that and articulated it so well. Great video.
Asheron's Call was so much better to me than EQ, but i understand your feelings about your game. The first 2 years of AC (2000-2001) were my best gaming experience ever. And i'm sad because i know i will never have such a joy to play a video game ever again.
Yes great point in splitting the product from the circumstance. I think thats why everybody has such a fun experience when Classic WoW re-released back in 2019 because it was the nostalgia plus the ability to share that with 1000's of other fans on the server. Just going through it alone would turn that nostaliga in to sadness most likely because it will only remind you of how great it once was and thats its all gone now. And thats even besides the impact on the gameplay itself, like the abiltity to easily find a group for dungeons or benefit from a thriving economy on the auction house.
Oy Josh, I finished the video now, and I gotta say that this is probably your most enjoyable format. I know that it is probably a tremendous amount of work, but please keep making these. I love them.
I grew up in Ultima Online and EverQuest; they were the games that helped me connect socially with people, because I was an awkward nerdy kid and young adult. I have a lot of nostalgia for them, but I moved on from Everquest when it was no longer the place I got my social connections from; I moved to other games that were more enjoyable as games, and connected with people elsewhere. Going back to Everquest... wouldn't bring me back to anything I enjoyed, because i've moved on and that "me" no longer exists. As you said, it was an amazing foundation for the genre, and MMOs are greater because of it --- but it's time has passed for me. I don't get anything from going back, it's a game that tries to provide something I no longer need. Thank you for your sacrifice for this review :)
There’s a reflection video here on UA-cam which explores this same type of thought, and it talks about how EverQuest was much more than just a game. It was a world for people at the time, and to be able to connect with people was such a grand idea it was just ground breaking. I was there too, in the servers back in 98; wouldn’t give any of that time back.
Ya, but there is a lesson in it still. The ghost of what we've lost is noticeable.. and the very fact that it can support that kind of audience and still be viable to maintain commercially, as one of THE LARGEST MMOs still, & active development... means it's doing something... modern MMOs aren't, and no I don't mean being sluggish. Think about it.. I've alot of love for the game, it's races, and all the quirks, but I wouldn't be under any illusions about the pacing. Seriously, it's memories I cherish and know I could never revisit... but when the ghosts that are missing are kind of appealing to modern players as they were back then.... That's a deafening message to hear. You can't reasonably claim all the remaining players are original players still, there is something it is doing that can't or wasn't talked about in this video.
You and me both! This game saved my life. I look back at it for teaching so many lessons, but going back to play it? Those friends and experiences are still with me even though a few of them are no longer living.
I played EQ (and still play EQ2 occasionally) for YEARS. was in a high end riding guild on my server (XEV). i still have EQ installed on my computer, and once a year I fire it up, look around and quickly camp. this game gave me life long experiences no other game has ever replicated. i can still close my eyes and 'travel' through most of the maps and know the enemy positioning in a lot of them. i fire up the Kelethin music to relax to this day. I've tried almost all the MMOs after, but non ever grabbed me like EQ did (maybe EQ2 but that was because my entire guild decided to move to it). thanks for this video Josh, it reminded me of both the best and worst of playing. to summarize your Elvis comparison: You just had to be there.
Your experience with Rehd is exactly why we loved it. Logging in after work or school and typing /friend and seeing your bros and broettes on and talking, explaining areas and just killing enemy after enemy (specifically in a spawn point like Derv 2) while chatting about life and the game as well as DND. It wasn't about all the content modern games have, it was about living at the time, being smart enough to get on the internet and other system's barrier of entry etc. If you were smart enough, had this thing called a credit card and could install a Voodoo2 in your computer and update drivers, you were given a whole new world with people you could have never met otherwise to explore and figure out. Modern slang started getting spread through EverQuest, everything from INC to WOOT all started there.
Watching this as I'm grinding level 70 on Mischief TLP. Great effort, Mr. Hayes! Having played EQ back in 2001-2003, I couldn't imagine starting fresh today without the knowledge base from back then. The key to window management in Everquest is to rebind all the window shortcuts. Watching Josh fighting with all those windows open gives me OCD vibes lol
My parents played everquest when I was a kid (I destinctly remember getting my mom's gnome killed...she was gracious about it and I got my own toons to kill instead). Every once in a while I end up back in, and it always occurs to me that the fixes are small; shorter regen times, tighter wilderness maps, more heavily quest populated cities (Josh is right about the comedy of the everyone loves someone else quest set. Every quest that has you exploring the cities is about the best fun in the world). A lot of things about EQ are still really cool; your toon has starting faction (good, neutral or evil) but you can alter that...to a point. The robot zoo in Accanon is the funniest thing to me. The twisted and nested lore that would take any other series years just to catch up (meet Zelda and...WOW.)
My parents made many friends on Everquest I in the early 2000's. They would meet up for a weekend in the summer and I even got to go one year. I remember them really enjoying the game at the time.
Everquest is a historical masterpiece. I think that is what I got from your feed back. lol. Although, maybe it does need a few tour guides to walk someone through it, much like an old historical site, pointing out how older systems started and make key points of what was adopted by modern games. I will always enjoy my memories of Everquest and like you said, nostalgia is a big part of that.
Quality video. I played as an early teen in the early 2000s and taught me so much about online/internet/communities even as early as the first "dungeon" Gnoll Hill. Then going on to raiding and being enthralled with "boss/Gods" killing and giant raids of so many people. With honestly the best flagging system for raid proggression I have ever experienced in PoP raiding. And the "Traning!" God the Plane of Justice Trains!!! I fell in love with the pet systems with equipping end game weapons and shields and buffs on level 8-12 mage or skeleton pets turning them into mini-dieties. Then, I fell in love with the support classes enchanter and bards. I have never experienced anything like that class wise in 27 years of mmoing. Really wish those useless on your own, but required classes still existed. Best boat music and voyage all in open worlds! You fall you swim or die!
Did you know ? : You can turn OFF the combat music in the sound options. Yes, they have a combat music option. You were not the first one to get tired of it. 😁
It's amazing how trippy listening to you describe everquest while playing Final Fantasy 11 is. Basically everything you've said about everquest is also true about FFXI with the exception of the progression servers.
That's the main thing keeping me from trying Everquest, even as just a 'tour through a historical monument' thing. I played FFXI back in the day solo, and it was both really fun and utterly painful. Even coming back to it years later and being able to use the Trust system, there's so much old design in that game it just drags the whole experience down. I really want to be able to experience the story of the game and get more in-depth with its systems, but I know if I try to play it again the fun will get worn down and I'll quit before I get anywhere.
Everquest was amazing for it's time. I played nearly 20+ years ago. Right on the cusp of having 56k dial-up internet and a dedicated cable connection. You're right in your assessment EQ just can't be popular in today's environment of MMO and game choice. I always look back on EQ fondly as my first MMO, and even selling my maxed out character for $500 each was a nice chunk of cash for me at that time.
My friend was the first person on Ayonae Ro server to get Palladius' axe of slaughter, and promptly sold his account for 2,000 on playerauctions. He then purchased the first car in the friend group, a 88 Toyota Tercel, and we went everywhere in that thing.
I found this video so interesting. I grew up playing this game and I think the last expansion I played was Omens of War and that was because EQ2 launched and I moved on. You kept my attention this whole video because of showing me all the things that have changed. This is such a different game than when I last played. We had no mercenary, no quest journal, and definitely none of those pay to progress systems (gross!).
I also quit at OoW and came back like 2 years ago. For the most part, the QoL improvements from then to now have been really good. Yeah, it took a while to get back up to speed (both remembering the old stuff and learning the new stuff). But I'd say the biggest change is exactly what's missing from this video - Guilds are the social hub of EQ way more than they used to be. PUGs rarely happen anymore, but since most players continue to level alts, getting groups and stuff does happen easily - but only if you're grouping with guildies.
I actually ran into you when you where doing research for this on Mischief and said hi in the open channel and got kinda fanboyish lol, gotta respect the great work you do on all your videos, its top notch! Thanx for covering EQ and doing it the justice it deserves, its a old game but man does it hold a special place is alot of mmo players hearts that got to play it as ther first mmo
Also Everquest came out back in 99 and the internet was still a new thing for people. So it wasn't just the game. The whole MMO was new, Social Gaming was new, Internet was new. it just came out at the perfect time. Also the best time to enter a Progression Server is when it first comes out and you have a ton of people playing at level 1.
@@cattysplat lol I remember those days. Before you could embed pictures so had to post links, half the time the Links did not go to the pics it said it would. I miss the early days of ezboard.
After some cognitive damage from ME/CFS, I really struggled to be able to play alot of "current" games. It's a mix of the speed at which its played, the amount of interaction required and a how much information is needed to be processed at a time. But I'm still a young guy at 33 I cant just relegate myself to playin solitaire so I spent alot of the last year trying to play alot of different games to find something that was within my new pace and I could engage in with my limitations. I had family members that multi-boxed and played together back in the day of EQ's prime when I was just a kid, took many years before I was allowed to make a character and dink around but it's got ALOT of memories. So randomly gave it a go 3 weeks ago to see if I could handle it and I've been in love and happily playing as much as the brain damage will let me. I've got several people playing the game again with me now this week and I'm able to power level them a bit and hook them up with gear. It's the closest I've felt to be being "back" to really gaming in awhile so thank you Everquest! Highly recommend people check out the Godfather of MMO's!
I'll always have a soft spot for EQ. I played it from release, was the first person on my server to hit the level cap and made some great online friends and had some incredible experiences exploring a world that at the time, no one knew anything about. This was so long ago, before spoiler sites like Allakhazams ruined a lot of the magic in these virtual worlds and I don't think I'll ever get to experience anything like that ever again. The only negative thing I have to say about your video is that you'll never really get the "real" EverQuest experience until you've been flattened by a train in Blackburrow, Unrest or Lower Guk - just the hilarity of having so many newbie scrubs jammed into a non-instanced world all stepping on each others dicks, ALL THE TIME. Modern game design won't let that happen again, but it was actually pretty hysterical.
Played EQ back from just before RoK released up until until DoN... then WoW happened for the next 15+ years. But Back in the day EQ was a lot of fun, made a lot of friends, had a lot of sleepless nights, many raids and even dabbled in multi-boxing. Primarily played a Bard or Necromancer... and was even part of the Guide program when it was run (thus getting the game for free during that time), and had a lot of fun interactions with players either socially or helping them out (probably in ways I really shouldn't have at times). But, alas, all good things eventually came to an end. Haven jumped in occasionally to check things out but its so quiet these days. And if I am brutally honest, probably had a negative effect on my school grades at the time. Wasn't called EverCrack for nothing. If you think that screen real estate is bad, you should check the classic UI. It's funny watching you gripe about things that were, back in the day, considered new and 'cutting edge.' But I totally agree though, what was good then, isn't now. Still, I think if you had chosen a DPS class you'd have enjoyed things more.
Nothing comes quite close to sparking a massive amount of nostalgia as the that original EQ cover art with Firiona Vie on it. It was so inspiring that was literally the first server I made a character on back in 2001!
Fantastic breakdown of the game that defined my childhood. You nailed it, EQ was a chatroom with a game attached. Back when the internet was brand new, that was the magic. You had to talk to all these people and form connections in a novel way because solo wasn't an option (unless you were a Necro, but even then it was risky) But now, it's standard fare to play MMO's solo and the internet isn't magical anymore. We have better games, Discord exists, and attention spans are lowering. Great work covering such a nostalgic piece of my life.
The transition of MMOs from social games to being more solo-oriented is what really killed the Magick of the Internet for me. It feels like an entirely different world than the one I grew up in.
I love that you can tell your natural baseline is RuneScape, like how you point out that NPCs can't detect items in your inventory and must be manually used on them, and how the animation doesn't line up with attacks, etc. I've been looking into Quarm a lot the last two or three days and this was awesome as a guy whose main game is OSRS. Perfect comparisons particularly for us haha
@@aaeve5676agreed. Guild Wars 2 is probably the best modern MMO on the market right now with its systems and design. WoW and FF14 are more populous sure but their systems are not as friendly as GW2. WoW is approaching GW2 though with each update. I wish GW2 copied some of WoW's better designed systems and aspects.
I grew up on EverQuest, and it will always have a special place in my heart. But, it's so old now, and it definitely shows its age. If we got an EverQuest 3, with all the QOL updates and amenities of modern MMOs, but with the spirit and atmosphere of old EverQuest, it would be a dream come true.
thats what i hate about new MMOs they baby you, they take your hand and guide you step by step. Hell in the beginning EQ did not even have a tutorial, it literally plopped you down in the world and said go on then, survive. If you made a high elf caster back in the day, you died. immediately. because if you didn't know to turn up the gama in the game you did not see the pool of water infront of you in the darkness and you fell in. and not knowing how to swim ended up drowning lmao. now days these new mmos treat you like an infant and take your hand and guide you from quest to quest to quest to quest til its guided you to max level and you've done no exploring of your own. its just done. then you get to sit an wait for it to tell you to do something else.
@@MakoRuu daybreak is hinting at an eq 3 that spose to supposedly be released in 2025 or somethin like that, but just like pantheon:rise of the fallen i doubt its gonna be released anytime soon
I love coming back every so often for the TLP's, join a guild, and go do raids i either didnt do when i was younger, or redo the ones I loved. It's a fun side hobby to pick up every so often, and just play classes I never really did before.
I’m so happy Josh gave EQ a go! I think joining a guild would’ve helped, but that said there is A LOT, but Elvis has left the building. That said I’m having loads of fun on the Quarm server playing classic EverQuest. 😺👍
I played Everquest for... I don't know, 6 or 7 years, starting in 1999... it just dominated my time around then. I had thousands of hours racked up on multiple characters, so as a 'veteran' of the game, I feel qualified to critique your critique of the game. And you're basically spot on. The experience you had with your bard friend was what the game used to feel like; everything was unknown, and it felt like an adventure, and having two people made you exponentially more powerful than one, and you could do things together you couldn't dream of alone, and it felt great... but really, the game was a chat room, and it just doesn't hold up. My best friend, still, is someone I met playing Everquest. We still reminisce about it, and occasionally, he'll point out a new progression server that's starting up soon, and ask if I want to go play it for a while with him, and I just can't help but think about how *bad* the game inherently is. It's slow, it's fairly boring, it doesn't respect your time *at all*, but invariably, when he asks if I want to go play it again, in spite of all that, I find that I do, and we do. And a few months later, we quit again, remembering why we quit the first time, but the next time a progression server rolls around, we're right there again. The Elvis Presley analogy is honestly great, because that's what it's like. The nostalgia is what keeps us going back to the game; I can't imagine a new player having anything but an awful time trying to go play it now, and it honestly surprised me that you had as not-terrible of a time as you did. Anyone who gives you shit for your opinions here is clearly viewing it through rose tinted glasses and refuses to admit that, objectively, EQ is a bad game, and the fact that some of us still, for some reason, enjoy it doesn't change that.
I've played EQ for ~12,000 hours between retail and emu servers and this is the best modern take on Everquest I've heard. Great content Josh, as always
I remember the days of keeping a spare set of armour and weapons in the bank to put on to help you try and recover your body so you could get your gear back. Sneaking through Crushbone, being seen and just flat out running, targeting your corpse and running back for the zone line while spamming a macro to drag your body behind you. :D Good times. Painful, too. Was so glad when you could summon your corpse!
The most important thing about Everquest were the friends we made along the way. I was a Warrior. If I died, I was helpless. I had no spells or crowd control. I had no healing. I had to rely on a group at all times, and it turned me from a social outcast into a social butterfly. That's pretty incredible. The first 2 expansions were amazing, but it started to fade after that. Levelling up with LOTS of other people, all at the same time, was one of the keys to Everquest. You had a persistent server, and you'd actually get to know EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON YOUR SERVER. All 3,000 of them or so. It was amazing and it cannot be recreated over the current internet. I made friends for life in there, and played over 300 days.
There was a learned intimacy to forced grouping. Pushing a bunch of socially inept nerds together to accomplish a shared goal. With no tools to group finding it forced you to bridge the gap with words, which inevitably leads to conversation during downtime and spending so much time together. Today there are tools for everything, so random people on the internet are "used" more like tools and then disposed of. It's a completely different way of experiencing online games.
100 hours is just dipping your toe into the game. The progression servers are where it is at, play one at a launch. It's about the closest thing you can get to the nostalgia of the original game. In terms of today, you won't get far unless you are a boxer and play multiple toons or have a steady group of friends to play with. Put it this way I have played off and on for years, I played from day one launch over a crappy 36K dial up connection, my account has 24 years 233ish days on it, and one of my toons has almost a decade of played time. The game is still going on strong after 24ish years. If you have a good core group of friends then this is a great game for you and 12 friends to get together form a guild and destroy stuff, level up and have a lot of fun. Solo you're not going to get too far, it's a MMO not a Single Player game.
I played this in middle and high school. I finally got to level 60, got all the best gear. When I checked my total play time it equaled just over a year, when all added together. I put a year straight into that game over 4 years of my life. I quit immediately and said never again. Two months later I was playing WoW.
Oh man, wow. I quit wow in cataclysm. I was in a guild called "We PVP FOR FOOD". Kraftman was our leader. Oh the glory days on burning steppes server, rallying in orgrimmar to raid all the alliance cities. It was glorious.
@@terranaxiomuk Ever quest was pretty wild, especially PVP. In the PVP servers there was no gear protection. The killer could loot one piece of gear from someone and if the corpse was not recovered by the player for 1 week the corpse would rot and the player would lose ALL their gear. Speaking of this, there was a massive war that took place between the player killing guilds versus all of the raiding guilds (including the one I was in). We would fight battles that contained over 100 players. And we were losing, even though we had the better gear from raiding they had more experience fighting players. Losing that war meant that the player killing guilds would have full control over all noob areas, being able to slaughter new players trying to join the game, not letting anyone level up. It would have stagnated the whole game and economy. And we had almost lost. We ended up hatching a scheme. We used a mole in the player killing guilds to convince all of their leaders to gather together for a meeting. When they did the best of us were there in secret and we ambushed and killed them all. From there our guilds had around the clock guards of at least 50 or so players guarding the corpses of these player killing guild leaders for one week straight. This included guarding the zone entry points because there were ways to summon corpses to various locations on the map. Anyways, after a week the corpses rotted and the guild leaders lost all of their gear, everything. Some of them left the war, most of them quit the game, and the guilds became leaderless. And we were able to win. By the end of it there were only 10 or so formidable player killers left. They would still sneak around for the next year or so, often times in the astral planes were it was harder to get to them. But from then on the server was much safer to play in. All 100% true. It was wild times.
Everquest is a game where you definitely have to reach out to people using /who and you can find people your level to group with. There's tons of zones, so most people are spread out when they level. if you're proactive and reach out to people, you'll have an awesome time even to this day.
Big mood. Mine was never really in MMOs, but all the same. Small 12 year old me with a disproportionately deep voice snuck my way into a clan server that did entmod on Sven Coop, and by the end, those guys were just about like the big brothers I'd never had.
If you want a similar experience try project quarm, its a new free server with a big and lively population, ive had little trouble finding people at any level of the game
Wonderful, yet sad video. Sooo many great memories of EQ, but it is the people AND the currency (of level and progression); that makes it special, it's a whole lot of empty loneliness otherwise as you say :( that said, I'd love to restart EQ from level 1 as it was when I first played (2000) WHAT a journey!!!
Hey! I play the character Rehd. I've been having a blast on bards, I feel like I could really be a great asset to parties and can bring a lot of utility and support, but I've been levelling up so quickly that I have a huge abundance of songs that I simply haven't tried yet. I do enjoy the idea of kiting swarms of mobs!
Really appreciate you taking the time to learn this game! You really are an MMO historian. Do Project 1999 or Quarm next PLEASE! 😃😃😅😅 Part of the magic of this game comes from playing with other people. Derailing a gigantic train of mobs with just 6 skilled people is PEAK EverQuest. Raiding is also fun.
So much of this video would have been different if someone had just told him to join a guild, though. I thought his review was fair, it's just a shame so much of the criticism based on lack of social interaction could have been avoided in, like, 10 seconds with a simple message to /general or /newplayers.
I cannot fully express how much I enjoy seeing you hold the mic in your mug It's just really, really great Edit: wait you didn't answer the question of ''should we play EverQuest for 100 hours", you just told us what to expect if we do decide to play EverQuest. Great video still, absolutely love your stuff, but just something I observed
Everquest was definitely the best MMO of the 90's. The best part of the game though were the people playing it. After many raids, and hours and hours of helping people out while playing it with my then wife we became the best in game as we brutalized the Gods without having to be in the most elite guilds/clans. It was fun having a territory in the game named after my character which was dope =) Lots of love to my old crew from Bristlebane Server!
Not sure if it counts for your series or if it's been mentioned before. Asherons call would be such a trip to cover, it's held together by an emulator now but is still an amazing experience.
I started playing EQ back in 99. I have 16 accounts, years of in game play time, played all server types (live, test, pvp, rp, tlp, p99) and I truly have no idea why anyone would ever try this game for the first time at this point in its life cycle. Just a sad truth, but it was true magic when it was new.
@@sorenvcWorld of Warcraft classic progression servers or FINAL FANTASY XIV would be my recommendations. Though they both approach MMOs differently they’re both incredibly solid games, the free trial of FFXIV is massive and covers both the base game and the first two expansions while the progression servers of classic WoW only require you have a sub - no box price required. WoW progression servers are currently on Wrath of the Lich king, with Cataclysm coming out around nine months from now.
@@mixtysix8541 I play Guild Wars 2 instead. I stopped playing OSRS and Tibia because it's waste of time. With Guild Wars 2 I can play Call of Duty and Counter-Strike 2 along with it.
@@mixtysix8541 i just made up my mind. I will play call of duty and counter-strike 2 and when I'm too tired of fps I will switch to guild wars 2 and old school runescape. For me, OSRS is so chill to play just clicking stuff and getting level ups. And guild wars 2 I already spent a ton of money on and it's pretty good even though I only finished main story... Am doing living world 1 and all the other dlcs next. I am a Firebrand Norn level 80.
@@mixtysix8541 i do skip all cutscenes and dialogue in guild wars 2 though. I don't want to waste time with that to be honest, it's too boring I just want completion grind. That's why i like OSRS. I also tried everquest p99 and it's not my thing, because 1 no updates 2 you can lose levels and inventory on death OSRS and Guild Wars 2 to me are the best MMOs right now especially since you can play other games too with them... I'm not gonna lie, once Call of Duty doesn't interest me I will skip a year of CoD and only play OSRS with membership.
Really enjoyed this video. Eq was my first MMO and I played it for years. Have also played p99 and several progression servers. You are absolutely correct that the worst thing about EQ is the massive time sink to just “do something”. Travel/forming a group will eat up at least 30-60 minutes. Dungeon crawling to your desired camp will take another 10-30 minutes. And by then you’re probably 90 minutes into your session before you’ve actually “accomplished” anything. There are the odd times where it goes much faster but on average the game is just such a drawn out process. It will forever hold a special place in my heart, and by god I always consider starting the new progression server for a solid minute before remembering how much of my life will be erased from attempting it 😂
Only 100 hours? Not 10,000? You know you can't judge a game if you haven't invested 10,000 hours into the game.
Only 10,000 hours? Not 100,000? You know you can't judge a game if you haven't invested 100,000 hours into the game.
#triggered
@@fl3045Only 100,000 hours? Not 1,000,000 hours? You know you can’t judge a game if you haven’t invested 1,000,000 hours into a game.
@@fl3045 Only 100,000 hours? Not having a hand in the development of the game and involved with all play testing? You know you can't judge a game if you haven't had a hand in the development of the game and involved with all play testing.
@@fl3045Only 100,000 hours? Not 1,000,000? You know you can't judge a game if you haven't invested 1,000,000 hours into the game.
My grandma played a lot of EQ! She started around Ruins of Kunark, but stopped around the time SOE was sold off. No matter how many memories I pushed out of my brain, I can't forget some of the stuff she and her sister (Twintime and Twinlet, on Torvonnilous pre-server-merge) did while I watched her play:
- Grinding out beetles in the starting zone for wood elves (I don't know why she did this, she was a halfling)
- Grinding out giants to get materials for making dyes (*the* moneymaking strat when she was playing)
- Constantly getting drunk in-game while she leveled up her brewing skill to make said dyes
- Selling Spirit of the Wolf (one of the earlier gaming memes was "sow plz", asking casters for a speed buff) and druid teleports
- Burning through her Epic and Epic 2.0 weapon "quests" (when she played, quests weren't tracked, they were just a bunch of flags; this was the same thing for raid keys)
- All of the downtime between pulls during raids! Raids were really neat to watch, all the people around and all the special effects back at the beginning of 3D gaming, but it was a lot of "blink and you miss it".
- Her unlikely friendship with a dude named Danknugz. Kinnamon was also a friend of hers, I think?
- Her rise to become one of the best, if not *the* best, druid on her server, geared to the nines and on top of progression with each expansion. A lot of raiders valued her and trusted her to heal better than the clerics, while also maintaining DOTs and stuff. She was a gamer.
It wasn't without bad moments, of course (there was a lot of raid drama, including misallocation of DKP and preferential treatment between guildies and other stuff, as well as her being kinda cyberbullied for playing a halfling because they weren't "optimal" for playing a druid, and she should really change to being a wood elf), but it was some of the happiest time in her life (which, with age and my own similar experiences under my belt, I can say was an absolute horror show). She always said that gaming was what kept her brain sharp, and I guess she was right; she's still around, but not entirely... there. It hurts to watch.
Anyways -- I don't know. Hug your grandma.
Basically the whole family on my mother's side played EQ.(except mine 🙃)
Starting with my grandma's generation; her and two of her siblings(brother and sister), along with her eventual second husband(brother and late grandpa's best friend).
Then my mom's generation; my aunt and her husband, and her one cousin from her uncle and two others from an aunt that didn't play. I know the wife of one cousin played, but I'm not sure if the other's had partners that played.
Then my generation; my sister, cousin, and I. He played some, not sure how much, his family were computer gamers(not mine). My sister and I would play, or watch them play, whenever we spent the night at my grandma's or aunt's house from around '00-'05. We probably never got past level 15+.
I remember one time watching my aunt and uncle playing, talking in teamspeak with the family. One of them would get up to do some house work, telling me I could hop on and help the group if they need it. The other would tell me what buttons to hit.
My gran was just an accountant for Habitat, I wish she gamed lol. She has Alzheimer's, now. I can agree, it's so sad to watch. I remember her being sharp as a tack when I was a kid, but now... well, you know.
My grandma played single-player video games all day every day, her desk was drowning in notes.
The people who were fanatical min/maxers were obnoxious. That seemed to get worse over the years.
It was really great to read about your grandma, I have similar memories from my parents playing. She sounds so fun and screw being meta, halfling druid is awesome!
I wish you and her all the best, even though things may be different now. I'll definitely be sure to hug my grandma, too.
Rehd here.
Thanks for the fun few hours mate, I still haven't had another social experience on the game and I'm level 60 now! Best of luck on your next deep dive, keep up the great content!
such a good example of what this games lacks as a modern experience.
@@espygaming5101 It's such a shame to see because I really do feel that Everquest has such a great potential for adventure.
I never played it when it first came out so I don't have any nostalgia to carry me. So when I'm running around, asking for parties and just getting no responses, it makes me want to log off.
Come home to project quarm!
@@hellob1s0n I miss what you're looking for in EQ1 and knowing it doesn't really exist anywhere is kinda a bummer
I never played EQ too before deciding to check it out on a fresh TLP.
One of the best gaming decisions ever made. Seeing the whole game's content in chronological order alongside people to play with is really great! It's still a jankful experience but it also provides a sense of camaraderie that modern solo-oriented MMOs don't.
Levelling an alt character right now though, and it's this ghost town experience that Josh showed in this video. Had this been my first character, and not knowing where to go and what to do and without a tightly knit guild I'd probably stop playing soon enough.
I quit around level 34 when the game came out. I was a wizard, cast levitate, ran up the spire in North Karana, bound myself, and turned off levitate to see if it would spawn me on the ground or air. The answer is air... I went to lunch and when I came back, I was level 29 with a game moderator telling me my 100s of corpses started lagging the zone. Good times.
You forgot the part of the story where level 29-34 took you weeks.
The moderators could take over NPCs one of them freaked me out one day
I was a dyslexic oger shaman that buffed everyone for free on a PVP server. After a year finally Prophets accept me in to there guild. But I only pulled 7 to 10 hours, so that hard core guild was not so happy with me. Long time a go I leveld a Troll shaman up to 60 on Project 1999. Just for fun. Human Bards are the best solo money makers.
@@pittypatterputzzler5311 That's something that's lost on these vids. EQ was a community. I was on Povar. And one of the effects of the tediously slow leveling system was whoever you leveled with today at 10, would be the same people you'd run into at 35. Players built reputations on their servers of being good pullers, nukers, crowd control, etc and that moniker stayed with you throughout your characters career. You couldn't just be a d*ck, because later you'd just never get a group again and your EQ experience would just end lol.
@@sarkmangaming8164 the whole group levelling process, moving through zones and even wait lists for groups in lguk and stuff was great - it was like a class of high school students or something - you saw eachother every day, or saw people in ooc/all chat - i still remember peoples FACES from the old character models - and most of their surnames. its wild. Prexus and Luclin - quit after SoV, hated the grind for keys - that corpse story is sad i hope it didnt make u quit :( nk was a cool zone with pretty music. peaceful. lots of druids to get SoW from. creepy trees though.
I get this strange sad feeling whenever I see Everquest. It feels like looking at a picture of an old pioneer town, then glancing at it now only to see overgrown ruins and frames of collapsed buildings. If you listen closely enough, you can just about hear the bustle of people long gone, but the truth is that you're alone and nobody's lived there for ages.
the recent EQ emulated Server Project Quarm has 1200-2000 people at any given time.
Progression Time Locked servers are the way to go.. a new server should be announced for anniversary. Best of adventures !
@@nigralurker
This was eloquently written.
@@nigralurker why are you bringing up a private server? I don’t think this guy even mentioned one lol
It makes me really sad. I'll never walk over to the Freeport Arena and see 35 people goofing around. I'll never see hundreds of players on EC or Oasis. I'll never see two people getting married in game with all their friends around. You can't even play on the same server for more than 30 minutes anymore. It might be mostly abandoned, but a lot of us lived there for years.
Ex Everquest Raider here. The everquest of today is just a different beast to what we knew back then. It was always a group centric MMO, unless you were a necro or bard who could kite entire zones of monsters around. In general you logged in, got into a group and went to your level area and killed mobs in the group. As peeps logged out you invited another in. And you did for this for hours on end. Being in a guild was obviously beneficial, and you progressed until you reached maxlevel and then went looking for raiding guilds. Then you started in the lower raiding guilds and worked your way up to the top server guilds. I raided with Anthem on Tunare for years. I've tried reloading it on and off during the years, but without the player base you're just a solo in a huge land with bugger all to do. No other MMO has come close to givingme the memories I have with Everquest, but I'm happy to leave them as memories.
Totally this... "you can never go home again," I believe the saying is
EQ P99 classic up to velious is def a good shard. Brings the good ole days back and really shows you what is missing in MMOs now adays
@@uhhhpvp4691 yeh but after crushbone, you really need group play to adavance in any constant manner. Is there a large newbie base?
Same. I also hated some guilds kill stealing and camp stealing etc. I saw both the best and worst in people in EQ, but I think it encouraged the worst more often.
Also the community managers were annoying spin doctors and useless. Not that that part is any different today, I suppose.
I was in it for 10 years, but happy to have moved on to the likes of FF14 etc. At least it doesn't bring out the worst in people.
@@StraightcheD yeh I have played ff14 still have a sub'd account there, but having to do that story does my head in, and having to do dungeons etc.. I'm not as good a player nor as socialable as I once was :D I know I can buy pass on the story, but then you're left not knowing class etc, maybe I'll load it up again
I have such nostalgia for EverQuest, it hurts. It was my first MMO, my first obsession. I skipped school (sometimes) to play. Hurried home during lunch hours, forsaking food for time in Norrath. This was during the era of dial-up. What Josh said in that RuneScape podcast he was on recently about *phenomenology* is ultra-true; it wasn't just a game, it was a whole experience. That experience involved dial-up internet, the horrible screeching connection and the blocking-off of the phone line (which my dad took exception to; mobile phones weren't a thing yet). It involved using disks to install, and not being able to tab out of full screen (the only format, windowed mode did not exist) to, say, look up information online.. and if you did look up info, you'd find ultra-simple maps made in MS Paint. And I did that. I *printed* those maps, using up our printer's ink. I wrote coordinates all over them, and filled blank sheets with coordinates of my own. You bet I cherished those damn maps and notes, it was as if I was an explorer, charting a new world.
And then there was the social aspect. Josh is spot-on with how crucial, how intrinsic it was. Forming a guild with friends both online and off. Getting into my first online relationship, which started with helping my eventual in-game girlfriend recover hers and a friend of hers corpses from the depths of Blackburrow, which I knew inside and out and was just higher-level enough and better-geared enough to be able to be their hero. Exploring new areas and chatting with the guild while camping mobs for hours. The friends I had in there.. we weren't in touch in other spaces. Sure old ones like mIRC existed, but why would we need them, when we had EQ? They were clunky and full of weirdos anyway. And technologically it just wasn't feasible to tab out of the game anyway.
I'm fully aware of my rose-tinted goggles. I've gone back to the game in recent years, playing both Project 99 and grabbing the current version of the game off Steam. The current game was a neat little binge, but Project 99 really grabbed me in the nostalgia, in the memories. I played feverishly for a little while... and then stopped. I had some friends in-game, but it wasn't the same. It can't be. Phenomenology. I'm sitting here with two screens, UA-cam and Discord and the wiki on my second monitor.. not perched on my chair in front of a CRT monitor, deeply focused on *understanding* and *immersing myself* into the game, like back then. Oh, I know lots of people still play and love Project 99, and I have fondness for it too, and will probably hop back in sometime to try again.. but the simple fact is, I have other options now. Other games. And my friends in Discord aren't really focused into any single spot, aside from our common interest in FFXIV. That's just how it is, now.
This ramble's for me. I don't really expect anyone read it through to the end. It's a small way of paying tribute to my first video game addiction, my first video game love. I'd never try to sell someone on EQ.. I'm all too aware that Elvis has left the building. But.. I'm still heartened, by some of what Josh has noted. How the game still can be magical, with the right set of circumstances. It CAN still be someone's forever-game.. if they want it to be. If they join a community, a Discord, centred on it. If they get involved, collaborate, play together with these new friends. Immerse themselves.. have another little life, inside Norrath. It can be done, and not just by putting a lot of time in, but by engaging with people who are in it as well.
We're in a modern era, so it's inevitable that if you try it now, if you try to get *in,* you'll have Discord and other stuff going on.. but if you like a slow, socially-oriented burn, and find pleasure in figuring out and mastering the arcane complexities of a game made in another time.. well, maybe it's the game for you.
I know you said no one would read this but I did and I loved every second of it
I love reading comments like this, where people go into not what made games good, but how they made you feel
I used to make maps and write down notes for all the games I played too and I wish I had kept them, I'd have them framed on my wall if I could haha
I read it all, glad I did, I can relate as eve online was my first mmo, I've tried time and time again to get back into it but RL simply won't allow me. It appears that's normal for our generation! what matters is this, I was told I was "wasting my time" on games, yet the truth is we made life long memories and friends in these digital wonderlands. I have no regrets.
I can relate to so much of this. The rush of finding a group to go deep into a dungeon in a dangerous zone knowing you could die and lose everything was incredible. Having the internet disconnect because your parents picked up the phone always a lingering threat in the background. Nothing like it.
Ultima Online was my first, but I played EQ alot more, remember I had to set aside my allowance to cover part of the phone bill because it got so excessive. Good times :)
Read this all the way through and though I've never played this game I can understand you're love for this game. Awesome comment my man
"new players cannot play through your memorys" what a line
That’s a tough Y there buddy
Ugh. It's just so true 😂😢
Honestly the fact that EQ remains a) propped up and b) has a player base at all is, to me, remarkable. Good for them. Quest on.
It's most impressive.
A game with outdated graphics, outdated combat, outdated level design, so-so story and it somehow has survived longer than many Zoomies who now roam the earth.
And it did in one of the most volatile and energetic industries.
Only Banking / Finance is more high intensity.
@@Mayhzon Agreed most impressive, I would never touch this pos with a 10 foot pole.
It has an honorary status as "The Godfather" of MMO's@@Mayhzon
I mean sure the graphics are dated, the combat is fine, the level design is as I would desire. @@Mayhzon
@@pilsplease7561I would argue it is very dated combat. Not to say that you can't enjoy it but it is a very dated game
I think it's hilarious that I've never played any MMO more than a few hours and have no interest in playing one but I still get a lot of value out of your breakdowns because they apply to games as a whole.
same. i wish there was a game out there hiring @JoshStrifeHayes to optimize their game design and oversight
the only mmo i played more than 10 hours in was wurm lol because it was basically minecraft
MMOs to me are like Gatchas
I always try to find one that will work for me so I can finally understand the buzz around it, only to drop it 5 hours in because "this just ain't it"
Why would that be hilarious?
@@zedorian6547Why wouldn't it
"Limitations breeds creativity"
*Puts normal mic in coffee mug*
Well played sir
"coffee mug"
He's a britbong, it's a tea mug!
How else would he show off that he has been hitting the gym lol.
I put my toaster in the bathtub, do I get any points?!?
@@davidt3563depends who was in the tub honestly
@@cfrogers0208 Gym bros do use a lot of stimulants like caffeine as "pre workout" haha 🌈
This game defined my childhood, I couldn't wait to run home and either play my halfling ranger or watch my dad on his enchanter do high end gameplay. I remember my mom and dad taking literal shifts to wait for a giant to spawn on an island so they could get the material it dropped to make the SoW boots. Even with all that nostalgia, I have tried countless times to get back into it and I came to the same feelings you did. I felt alone .. I wished I could find more people to go kill stuff with even if that's all we did. Really great video and thank you for putting in the 100 hours!
Not worth trying… You can’t replace five close friends with a pet, and everyone multi-boxes an entire group of characters instead. There’s not enough people to recreate the magic. Everyone there is already high-level.
We’re really fortunate we got to enjoy it during it’s prime, with persistent servers. We actually got to know our whole servers. That’s not something that happens anymore.
Everything is instanced. Even servers. EverQuest can’t be recreated, not in it’s original form.
This is such uninformed BS. You need to start a TLP within the first week of launch, not 3 expansions out. You're going to have an amazing time and see low level players everywhere. You won't feel alone. Do some dungeons and grind grind grind with other players you meet. Nothing like being level 6-10 in Crushbone again
@@jamesjohnson1094 Ah yes, how dare you join the game at the wrong time? This is all your own fault! Flawless logic there bud.
@@Octanis0 Not flawed at all. The guy above wrote he loved the game and wanted to get that classic experience. I told him how. Source: I played on a new TLP from 2016-2018ish and it was amazing. You can't go to a mall in the middle of the night and say "dang this mall is empty, it's not good"
@@Octanis0He is right though. Day 1 TLP with 800 level 1s on the server is the way to play EQ and get close to the original game. Sadly by the 3rd expansion it kind of trails off and after that it is back to ghost town stuff.
If you really want to try EQ properly just wait until a new TLP comes out they do it like 3x a year I think.
My appreciation for you taking the time to play this game for 100 hours.
You should play EverQuest for 100 hours. But do it on Project 99.
@@RosefMudson1414 I love P99 but I think he got the jist of it already. Group play is very fun, solo play is not.
@@nickstinger4709 depends on teh class you play (shamy and necro ae graat and were my mains)
mmo isn't for solo play@@nickstinger4709
About 10c an hour
As someone who has played 10,000 hours or more of Everquest - This was incredibly fair, honest, and poignant.
I LOVED this game and I can't stand playing it for more than 5 minutes today. I suspect we'll see another game like it one day, sometime in the next 30 years.
It will be some sort of AR or VR or some other new magic thing I suspect@@Lunsterful
I think I had 300 days played Kaziem. IT was.... a lot... then again MMOs were totally new back then 8)
And I sold my enchanter for the price of a very nice used Corolla. Add the rest of what I sold, a new one.
He did pretty much hit every nail on the head. I have also played 10,000 hour plus. Agree with him completely... And when my kids are older I will find time to play EverQuest again some how. Probably just make a necro and do what ever the hell I want when I want.
I have a suggestion@@theman6910. Lord of the Rings online. It's an EQ style game, but the art, storytelling, and classes are all better. Also probably the community.
"New players can't play through your memories." Well...shit. 💀that one hit home.
Hey look, its Redbeardflynn.😀
@@nickstinger4709 everquest video and Josh strife Hayes? You knew I had to be here!
when does he say this in the video?
I only have memories of other people playing EQOA when I was in Highschool. I never got to really play since my parents would not pay for internet and playing this is as close as I can get to that so I am not sure if that counts but I am enjoying the game. I hope this makes sense haha.
@@sgoyco20 20:03
I really, really like the way you described the game as Elvis or the original Dracula movie. It’s so relatable and meaningful, and gets a profound point across clearly.
I’d be happy with watching a well edited video of a knowledgeable player play an old MMO I’ve only heard of in a historical context, but I think that this sort of commentary is why your videos are really a step above.
EQ was the 1st MMORG to employ a 3d engine and the fact its still going is a big accomplishment.
2nd game, the first was meridian 59
@@bluexephosfan970 I think that's more of a 2.5d thing like doom than it is "true" 3d
meridian used sprites, EQ used 3d models @@bluexephosfan970
@@bluexephosfan970 When people talk about EQ being the first 3D game, it's referring to how all characters and NPCs are made of polygons, rather than sprites. I see the 'BuT MeRiDiAn 59!!!!11eleven" response all the time, even though we all understand what was being referred to. 🙄
yeah, there were a bunch of others, but i think they all used 2d sprites for characters
22:06 This is the kind of interaction that anyone who plays oldschool MMOs *desperately* craves. Running into an obviously new player doing something just so damn innocent and cute in its naivety, and being able to just smile and ask "What in the fuck are you doing?"
I love seeing people doing silly stuff in MMO's.
Most of the time I end up join in and having fun.
Music, dancing and emotes are usually fun.
LOTRO is great for music with a plugin for it.
I agree, like I played some shitty f2p mmorpg through out the mid 2000s to early 2010s but even those game the random social interaction and friends you make was great. Now days everything so stream line you just rush to cap and then que up for instance with people you never talk to.
I was a big Everquest/SWG/UO player (at different times of course), and I haven't enjoyed an MMO since WoW flipped the genre on it's head, but I think DayZ is really what the MMO grew up to be. At it's core it's about what's happening with other players, every part of the game is in service to interactions, and it's worthless WITHOUT those players. I just had that experience of laughing at a new guy not knowing how to cook a chicken and running around in a high visibility vest, but after 6 or so hours of playing together I was doing things I simply couldn't have accomplished without my little buddy. I didn't get his info because I like those experiences to come and go naturally, but it's the only game where I've genuinely made a friend since I was like 12 years old.
@@MeatSnax Its interesting but the pure pvp nature of it all also just ensure you never going to get that much people on it due to nothing to stop new player being grief into quitting.
It has potential for those moments but so much pain in between as well.
@@RexZShadow You fundamentally misunderstand the genre if you think that is the case.
So cool that you ran into Ghoulhopper again after all that time!
I still log onto Project 1999's server every now and then...I loved the original game which includes the Classic game with only the Kunark & Velious expansions. It was beautiful - the game is pure magic to me and I have never felt so strongly positive about any other game I have ever played!
This game played as a single player old school RPG is awesome. I play on Imperium server which is a solo/duo progression server and its amazing. If you want to play with people you can, if you want to go alone then its also perfectly viable too. I am loving this game as a single player old school game and i'm a new player
The Elvis analogy got me thinking about how playing old video games is different than a lot of other media.
It’s not harder to listen to an Elvis song than a new song. Newer songs don’t have more features for ease of use or time-saving. They have new types of sounds, but having a synthesizer in a song isn’t quite the same as being able to see dialogue options you’ve already picked, or graphical mini maps. Elvis songs also don’t demand 100 hours of your time
All true, and that's just in the game design. When you get to actually playing them, there are thousands of variables. Music can be ripped from a CD, cassette, record, or any other storage format: the digital form sounds as good or better. Books lose more in translation, but the content stays intact. However, games need multiple pieces of very specific hardware that was only manufactured for a single decade. Even with computer games and emulators, getting an old one to run takes significant tinkering.
MMORPGs have it even worse, since they're always-online games. A lot of the time, we can't preserve them at all: the community never gets the ability to host private servers. All of this still fails to capture the full experience of the community, the fan sites, the culture of the time.
It's easier to listen to the song in absolute terms, but I don't think it's easier to appreciate it because of that, or musicians would never lose popularity with new generations. Nobody's as into Elvis now as almost every young person was at the time. It's hard to even maintain that with new music as you get older--at least I can enjoy new *games* just as much as someone half my age, and I have as much trouble as they do with the old game jank.
You're ... wrong, in a way. Music is much harder to actually listen to it when it was released, after 10-30 years. Music is literally half the context, and quite often younger people just won't understand older songs to the point it's almost another language entirely.
Games have for the most part, exceptional staying power. MP ones & MMOs are .. special beasties, but I could put my niece in front of one of my first games, and watch them play through it with the same light about the game world I had when I played it for the first time.
Sure some things shift, and some games are exceptionally affected by social context, but there are still text based games that when given to a new player Now.... will end with the same kinds of experiences as when it was new.
Modern Trends have don more long term damage to newer games... and some have left the face of the planet entirely now, existing only in the memories of those who played them. Will someone 10 years from now want to play all the COD games? No, or all the Zombie games? No, or all the Grind to unlock prestige levels in X game that was mostly MP focused.. No.
In terms of gaming I would say that good ideas won't age at all and good game design can catch players attention even decades after release. For example, the original DOOM will hit 30 years this December, soon it can have midlife crisis and yet it can still be entertaining and fun even for a new player provided they are ready to see old graphics maybe improved and cleaned with modern source ports
@@DePhoegonIsleyounger people do still understand older songs my guy
What I miss about Everquest is the ability to just camp something with a group of people where I have time in between combat to be social. In modern MMOS it's a speed run ADHD reward blast. Everquest felt more personable.
Even during LDoN, when I was maining my cleric hard and joining a half dozen PUGs a day, we had some downtime. 3-4 times per dungeon from a bad pull or just our mana running low, when we'd just sit and chat. Grouped up with one guy who only had the original game and only bought LDoN for the increased level cap, for example.
Nowadays all of these games are MMO-simulators. Nothing to do with MMORPG's... And yes, "speed run ADHD reward blast" fits perfectly.
I like adhd reward blasts that's why I love hack n slash.
I have fond memories of camping for certain skeleton spawns and chatting with folks also camping them. One would run in to the spawn point and jump around, emoting "Does the dread dance" to summon the dread skeleton spawn. We swear it increased the spawn rate.
Every MMO back in the day was much more about just being social. With a lot of social bunny's.
My god ... I worked at SOE back in the day. I can't believe this huge monstrosity of a game is still going. Your masochism, Sir Hayes, is rather remarkable.
Thanks for helping make my life epic!
Had a lot of fun with EQ in the early days of the game. Thanks for all your hard work.
Which guild did you hate most, and why was it fires of heaven?
This was my very first mmo, thanks for the addiction 😂
Hey I used to work there as well! I was a game master.
This video got me nostalgic and now I've spent the last 2 weeks playing Project Quarm and falling behind on all my TV and other games. EverCrack is still alive and well.
The history of EQ is really interesting, as it was made from a decades spanning D and D story of a group of friends who then decided to make it an mmorpg, while not having any experience in game design.
From what I remember it was based off of MUDs, which were very popular before games like EQ came out.
I started playing EQ back when it first came out, and it was absolutely magical.
I went back recently to see what it was like, and after spending a couple of hours trying to figure out how to get back to the old zones I knew and loved (I left after Planes of Power, so the new starting zones were foreign to me), it was just... bittersweet. The music and the scenery of Kelethin will *always* feel like home, and being there again in that tree city with no railings on the bridges (because wood elves don't have lawyers) tugged hard at my heart. Sneaking into Neriak to relive my time as a dark elf and revisit those super hot female dark elf models I used to lust over (all six polygons of them) was exciting and hilarious, and I was happy to discover that I still remembered all the secret passages. Doing the scary run from Freeport to Grobb, through the high-level zone of South Ro, as every low-level dark elf character had to do on the Team PvP server back in the day, was just as nail-biting as it was the first time I did it.
But the emptiness hurt my soul. There was nobody in any of those old zones. Nobody at the dark elf newbie log in Nektulos, nobody camping around the entrance to Najena in Lavastorm, no trading/selling chat spam in the East Commonlands, nobody waiting for the boat in Freeport, nobody sitting outside Kithicor Forest waiting for the sun to rise so the super-high-level undead would despawn and they could make the run across toward Qeynos... I saw all the ghosts of those people, silent, transparent, separated from me by an age of time, never to return.
I miss you, Everquest. I don't miss spending all day sitting, spamming my Direction Sense skill as I watched my HP slowly return, I don't miss raid wipes and 12-hour corpse recovery missions, I don't miss a lot of the nitty-gritty details, but I do miss being a part of that world, a part of that community.
RIP, Everquest. You were loved.
Try TLP you WILL get groups for hundred of hours !
You can actually experience this on p99 or the official game if you server start on a TLP, every year. It won’t be 1999, but you will have unrest groups, Freeport runs to EC, asking for ports to the hole, etc. Players in every old zone.
I miss old pvp days, getting to loot one unbagged item.
My rogue with wine quest and DE elf mask, merking the newbie log lol. Hanging out in Neriak bank as a halfling, dark elves getting killed by guards if they attack me because I had better faction from the wine quest lol
I will never miss the 6" viewport and staring at the book to meditate though.
You could experience all of this on P99 or better yet Quarm which just started a couple weeks ago. It's a new classic server, and had over 1k players when it opened. And yes people still camp EC tunnel and auction there.
The 100 hours thing makes me think he partialy did this out of spite - wich im all here for
He absolutely did
I did it with retail WOW a few years back, leveled a character before all the fancy reworks and it took exactly 132 hours and I hated every minute of it.
only did it so I could tell people I was allowed to have an opinion
@@kreenbopulusmichael7205so you went into it wanting to hate it. I’m sure you opinion was fair and balanced.
@@Purriahbro 💀
This could be interpreted in many other ways as well, wanted to like it but didn't, didn't like it but was told it gets good later, hated it a little at first but progressively more towards the end, stuck with it to see if it does get better and didn't care for it.
Or just played it to prove a point
We would need more information to make a claim like yours and since there's no way to prove you wrong here on UA-cam, you are simultaneously right and wrong!
So congrats.
as an original EQ player and off and on again for the past 25 years I was screaming at you, yelling "but you did it wrong", "You are using the wrong spell", "You can do it this way better" and so on, then it hit me LOL I am viewing your perspective! This is the perspective of what its like for new players. It is NOT your fault at all. it is the games and with its faults it does offer its charms as well.
I am happy to see you got to experience the game for all its good and bad. You did an Outstanding job explaining it, going over the details and showing the world what its like with a fresh perspective like yours. EQ is a time capsule and opening it today, you can see what was and remains of how people used to play and do things. EQ never died and vanished. Its a story your grandfather told you about when he was younger! EQ lives in our memories and you got only a sample of it while playing it.
There are much better designed, streamlined, fast paced games for the younger generation. EQ is the model T of the MMO's while games like fortnight and wow are the new cars with GPS and satellite radio that drives for you!
A bit similar here. When UI got changed to moveable windows on the screen I found it hard to setup my first UIs. Especially creating hotbar buttons can become very complex and provide you with mighty tools. Just a simple example. After 100 hours you say Everquest does not show if a friend is online. That's not true ... the game just don't tell you how to do. There is a friend list to which you can add a friend (/friend ...) and there is a command showing you people around (/who). Last command shows only your current zones population. Do it "/who all friend" will show your friends in all zones. Like you mentioned Everquest does not take your hand. You have to figure out yourself or digging for informations externally.
Thank you for this nice and in my opinion objective view on this great game.
This and figuring out the trigger words to start/continue quests vs. yellow exclamation points.@@cw7325
I dont think anybody today can truly enjoy the fun if they dont know what its like to change the auto attack key, or having to shout "Has anybody here seen my corpse?" and the fact that 99% of the quests were broken. I mean can original players forget the "lol" shouts everytime the Priest of discord shouted out about killing someone?
Peak Everquest was an experience that will never be replicated... it was the MMO equivalent of the transition from analog to digital...If you were there, it was communal experience unlike virtually anything else. I actually met my wife and most of my current MMO friend group playing EQ back in the day. I can't imagine returning to it now, as huge empty husk. It's kinda bizarre to hear the active player numbers... back in the Planes of Power days, a full raid was 72 people! We once downed an outdoor raid boss with 118 folks split between two raids...Thanks for making this video and reminding me of some very fond memories.
I was thinking the exact same thing. I ran an OPEN raid & downed Rallos Zek to get the final key to Plane of Time. It was a complete gong show. I couldn't believe we did it. Especially after the guild I was in failed 4x moments earlier. "Can I try RZ with my open raid group?" I asked. They laughed and said "Haha sure go for it." I took our main tank from our guild (we were friends) and she got the sword that dropped from him. We both found ourselves not in the guild the next morning. Hahaha, we didn't care, we joined a top guild and started farming Time.
Nostalgia is hell of a drug
3:17 BLESS YOU VOICE IN THE BACKGROUND
I can't believe you heard that lol
berd!!
Dam, impressive lol
Reminds me of the many hours of torture I endured leveling my characters. WTF was wrong with me?!? To those who didn't know, that at one time there was a thing called Hell Levels which started at level 25. then 30, then 35, etc till I think level 45. These levels were 100 times harder to gain than any other level before. This was cause by a code error which wasn't fixed for many many years.
Yeah but the level after them went fast, so it probably evened out, the problem was dying just after dinging out of a hell level, because you lost way more experience.
49 was a hell lvl too, and imo this is mostly blown out of proportion by filthy casuals.
Man this brought back memories
I remember back when lvl 60 was the max I spent a whole 10 hours grinding and only got 60% of the way through the level.
Funny enough something similar happened in EverQuest 2 for the first month after release. Then they nerfed everything a lot. Kind of got a bad taste in my mouth after that and turned me off MMO's from that time on.
This is pretty interesting to watch as someone who didn't play EQ personally (altho i did play EQ2), but literally have it to thank for my existance 😭 My parents met over the game back when it came out, and were hardcore raiders. I believe they still actively played when I was extremely young (Im 21 so its been quite a long time since then)
Very cool :)
Wow, you must be pretty young then, after all 1999 was only... 25... years ago... D:
Funny enough, from as long as I had known him, my stepdad has played Everquest, and to this day is still his favorite game, alongside Gran Turismo(strange enough).
Last year around Christmas, we checked his EQ playtime and it came up to just over 7 years spent in game. Incredible stuff.
As a 13 year old playing this on release, it was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen. Still the pinacle of all my gaming experiences.
Hey we're the same age- I was also playing this as a wide-eyed teenager back in 99-03ish. Defined my teenage years. We may have crossed paths a couple decades ago!
Agreed, I'm playing Project 1999 as he mentions in the video. Honestly, it is still amazing.
I wish I could go back and experience EQ for the first time again.
rallos zek best server
I LOVED this game when it launched (I was 11). I remember humming the loading screen music all the time because my PC sucked and loading into the game took 5ish minutes. My mother even learned the song and could recognize it. xD
I had a friend, somewhere around 1999 or 2000 that would make fun of me constantly for playing EQ. On his birthday that year, I gave him a gift card or money or something, but put it in my EQ retail box and wrapped that up; he opened the gift, rolled his eyes and then took the actual gift out.
But that box struck a cord with him and he thought what he saw looked pretty cool, so not much later, he picked up the game and started playing. Anyway, almost 25-years later and he's still playing Everquest and is absolutely one of those enfranchised players you speak of in this video.
EQ was amazing in 1999, when I was 15, hadn't experienced anything like it and had unlimited amounts of time to just explore, die and grind. But as you've noticed with this video, it is not something I will ever go back to. I have some nostalgia for it, but thankfully that nostalgia is colored by reality of what the game actually is.
Damn you cursed him with a lifelong addiction as punishment for making fun of you, that could be seen as Evil from some perspectives
He doesn’t sound like much of a friend honestly.
I discovered your channel after 23 years of never playing an mmo and being pulled into starting a character on Project 1999 EverQuest. I’ve consumed a ton of your content and learned more about mmos sense then, but this was where it started.
These "sagas" where you randomly encounter other players are rare due to the nature of which MMOs you play, as in usually depopulated, but they’re always a treat.
Cheers!
Josh's super power is articulating exactly how and why something is boring or frustrating.
I hope he never spends an evening with me, for I am both.
He's got the clean corporate speak down to a T. A great presenter definitely.
More like he looks for the bad side of whatever he's talking about and then strawman's it to make spicy content.
@@poisonated7467
Calling an outdated game with blocky visuals, very basic combat and zero Quality of Life features difficult to play, is not a spicy take.
That's just factual and Josh was rather diplomatic about why the game may not be for most audiences.
I mean there are games out there modernizing themselves. Everquest did no such thing.
@@Mayhzon You've clearly never played P99 EQ and compared it to Live EQ. Your comment is riddled with things that just aren't true. You dont think after 29 expansions SOE and Daybreak have tried to modernize their game? Give me a break. Play P99, TLPs, and live servers before you speak.
EverQuest created a foundation for the MMO genre(which was originated by the previously created single-player games of Ultima and others as such). It was originally an Social activity of talking to people, and THEN go on an adventure - some short others long - over the years that changed to be less of the talking(typing) when voice comms became an external thing.
In the Prime days, there was ALWAYS someone to group with in low and mid - level areas. Sometimes you would spend WEEKS and/or MONTHS in these areas, and making acquaintances and eventually friends made for better enjoyment of this time.
I do miss the days of MMO games actually being less individually grindy and more group grindy, encouraging us to find a full party of a proper mixture of various classes that would balance and compliment the combat. Current MMO are all about the DPS being the highlight of a group and NOONE wanting to be the beefy Tank or the linchpin HEALER.
Whatever happened to the greatest of classes - Crowd Control - ?
Anyways, great presentation of a great game, the fact you survived for 100 hours solo in a game intended for group play is a testament of your natural talents of a gamer to the core.
Aye I miss those days. It really saddens me what they turned EQ into - fast clicky travel everywhere, every class can do everything, death is meaningless, no longer do you see people spend weeks and months in areas because they are hard to get, no longer do you see people grouping and coming up with creative and unique strategies based on what classes they have - now you just hire a merc and do whatever or insta-group find from anywhere. It's just extremely sad that they tried to turn EQ into WoW, despite it being a superior experience back in the day. Then as if mercs were not enough, the promotion of multiboxing so they can make more $ from subs just killed it entirely.
Planes of Power - or specifically POK removing the need to travel and look for other players to transport you via teleport or guide you through dangerous zones, was the beginning of the end. Luclin - for all it's faults - did it right with the spires - very limited locations, disadvantage of waiting for the port to activate - basically a boat without the boat.
@@Volkaer Multiboxing and things like RMT were already a thing back in the original days especially as the cost of computers kept coming down.
I still remember coordinating times with other people who also happened to be farming those goblins whose drops got nerfed sometime after I quit, good times.
Ultima Online was a game about being a savage misanthropic goblin. Before they added item insurance, pretty much all I did was stealth around slapping people's weapons out of their hand and then stealing it from their inventory. They didn't add any group activities for years, that was all an afterthought.
I *hate* that people call Tanks/DPS/Healers the "Holy Trinity" as if that's the way things have always been.
But it's not, there used to be a 4th pillar, Crowd Control. And because WoW did away with it, every other game after WoW did too.
But Crowd Control was fun, a LOT of fun.
As an avid EverQuest player I appreciate this video and I applaud your honesty. I absolutely agree with with your sentiment. It was a very accurate and honest description. And your comments about the Run speed buff was hilarious! I had to replay it a couple times😅
As an original EQ (yes, zero expansions) player. This video was so amusing. You hit almost every nail on the head. There is a nostalgia that most of us cant shake, but then again I don't play live anymore. Instead I play Emulated servers (which I'm sure you can't cover other than p99 for legal reasons) and still you have to know what you're doing in order to enjoy those as well.
Good video. I award this 10... out of Evercrack.
Don't you mean "Evercrack out of 10"? Clearly you don't know his phrase.
@@Dyanosis Nope. Said what I said. 😁
Everquest doesn't show specific value numbers as I just learned. So I guess it is a "100% out of Evercrack".
If you continue this 100 hours idea into a series with more games, I would like to see a timer or clock somewhere on the video so I know how far into the 100 hours you are while watching.
I realized this @25:30 soon after you said you left the tutorial area. Cause you make no mention of how long the tutorial it's self took in relation to the 100 hours.
he does tell you that he stops playing on live around 55 hours in at which point he is between level 21 and 29.
Man, this brings me back. I started playing when I was just a kid right when Velious came out. My entire family got into it, my mom, aunt, her boyfriend, 2 uncles. Even just within our household we always had people to play with. Then we all joined a guild, which did exist in EQ from the start, and that was a core community.
But you're right about how important it is for the community to exist and how huge it was for the game. I'd go into the big grinding zones and shout around until a group had a spot open. Groups in the zone would all have their own camps, as in spawn camping, and it was a huge taboo to poach mobs from another camp.
Honestly, a lot of times myself and everyone I knew would log in just to talk to people since it was more interesting than having to use msq or AOL chat. EQ was why I bothered learning to type as an 8 year old kid and why I got so good at it.
I have great memories of the game, but it's just not that anymore. I tried Project 99 and the magic was gone. You're right, without people it's just a dead, slow, lonely world.
Yo, EQ taught me to type with 1 hand (so I could continue running with arrow keys) when I could barely type with 2.
As a person that LIVED EQ for about 11 years...every day, all free time devoted basically, it's safe to say it was my favorite game at one time. I am not, however, a nostalgic person. Do I have a decade of memories? Absolutely. I miss the East Commonlands tunnel chats, the newbie log in Nektulous Forest, and and the days upon days of playing and exploring. Yes, true exploring, pre-wiki's and forums and using my physical Everquest Atlas book to get the backstories of all the zones and cool map layouts and the likes. It's so endearing to remember. Then, every few years since leaving, I log back in to try to grasp that feeling. Like you said, it's just not the same. Nobody sits at the newbie log for days or weeks grinding to get to level 5. The slow grind that would take months or a year to hit level 20 is gone. The prestige of seeing the rare 20+ character walk by and being in awe of their cool gear, is gone. The mystique of going to the Paludual Caves or the Estate of Unrest for the first time and the nervousness and the fear are all long gone. Having to adventure from Freeport to Qeynos passing through the mountains where you'd get 1-shot killed and sneaking past enemies or even hostile city guards just to get to that one cool zone you always wanted to see....gone. The extended boat rides where people were fishing or jumping off to go fight some sirens and the social aspect (as you described) are all gone. That was the magic of Everquest. Arguable, Planes of Power are what actually killed the game, because they directly removed all exploration and thus communication amongst people because you could follow those trails you were using and allowed you to teleport anywhere in the universe instead of meeting with wizards or druids to pay to teleport. It killed their economy. It killed classes almost entirely. It KILLED the cool factor and made it essentially an arena MMO.
Even going back through these routes just feels dead now. I remember the routes through the Butcher Block Mountains to get to the boat from Freeport. I remember how to get to the Estate of Unrest without a guide still....but why? To top it off, they later tried to emulate WoW which was what buried the last vestiges of EQ by making everything raid-boss based. There were always bosses and dungeons, but now everything is just focused on Min/maxing. Back in the early days it was about experience and those you spent it with. The world of gaming now is far different than back then. That's why Morrowind is so different from Skyrim. Back in the early 00's and late 90's, RPGs were about the feeling you got playing them. They were about losing yourself in the character and experiencing a whole new world. Now, with 30-second attention spans, those types of games just fail miserably. Almost no one is willing to play a game where it can take days or even months to get 5 levels...or even years to get to the max level. The instant gratification NEEDS to be there.
I view early mmo's like people viewed the 60's. The only way to know how it felt was to have felt it. There's no combination of nostalgia, flashback videos, emulations, or even really bad made nostalgia videos that will give you the feeling of being in that time and place except for actually being there. No matter if it's Project 1999 (which I've played and had the same feeling as I do with the current servers) or playing a SWGEmu server...you will NEVER get that feeling back because the world is not the same and YOU are not the same.
I don't understand the draw to this game at all.
Other games would give you a steak dinner prepared to your liking.
Everquest is the type of game to bring you to a cow about to give birth, have you help it give birth, and then raise that cow to be your steak. Also, dont forget to learn woodcutting and cooking as a side quest cause you'll need that to make the steak later on.
Hahaha RuneScape as well
Everquest (well any MMORPG pre WoW) took the approach of making a world and the players just exsisted in it, WoW came along and made a game around the players instead and neglected the world and we been folliowing that path since then due to WoW success. We might see a return to the EQ approach of making a world first with ashes of creation. It seems that game is well focused on the creation of a world that we find out place in rather than a game for the player.
The game felt way more dangerous than others. Like you start in Elwynn Forest, go try to fight something, and it has a chance to completely kick your ass. Never had that experience in any other MMO. It always felt like what I was fighting was beneath me in WoW for example. But in EQ, every enemy was a threat. It pushed people into making friends and travelling together.
Beneath you? You never tried to take the wrong candle did you? 😂
Back in the day, when that happened, you died, and ALL of your equipment was still on your corpse. You had to run back to your corpse and loot it. That absolutely added to the "Dangerous" feeling that it provided. Modern MMOs don't and never will replicate that.
@@JeffTomasek Yep, I remember that! There were plenty of times where I either couldn't get to my corpse or just couldn't find it and never was able to recover my stuff. So exploring and such felt really dangerous.
It also didn't hold your hand. I got my behind handed to me battling a wisp, and it wasn't until I talked to other players ingame that I figured out that I needed to use a magical weapon to damage it. The way it relied on player interaction was really nice. I think this is the 'high' that WoW classic players are chasing.
@@angry_zergling Could've hired a bard. I got them speedy bongos 🥁🏃♂💨
God, this game saved my damn life back in 1999. I was about to finish Highschool, I had retreated so far inside myself by that point I didn't see myself ever opening up. But holy crap did I open up, I had so many friends a wife, friends who I played with for 15 years across multiple games etc.
I can never forget you Erolisi Marr!!!
Edit: Regarding strafing and stuff you can use the Left Control periodically to help you circle strafe.
To this day i know the exact aggro range of every mob in EQ up to planes of power and the exact pathing for nearly every mob in most common zones, because if you didn't you would get gored by a wandering mammoth and lose 3 days worth of experience. Expecting any new player to get to this level obsessive knowledge without any community around them to absorb it from? That is obviously too much to ask but i am grateful that it still exists.
This game may have been the most important part of my childhood, it is the only reason I am capable of social interaction today and I still play every once in a while for nostalgia's sake. I can still go back to where I learned that I actually could be a part of a social group and that has helped me many times in the last 20 years.
That said everything josh just said is fair and mostly true, I appreciate you giving EQ your time and putting a genuine effort into getting as much of the experience as you possibly could, this game means a lot to many people and you treated it with respect. Keep it up man.
and because i can't help myself:
/who friend
/who (name of a zone)
/who all (the whole server)
/who guild
will give you a list of people online in any of those groups, you can even get a player count for a zone before you head there to know if you're likely to find a group. Guess what inspired my curiosity around terminal commands and gave me a career 😂
this last bit is so true.. i played a druid solo and rogue for grouping, so i often played my druid until i noticed there were groups in my rogues leveling zone. Often reading what classes was there, figuring out how many tanks healers etc there was and understanding if there was room for dps. Or if you simply knew someone in the zone, someone you grouped with before, you just send a message and asked how the situation was.
What game in todays world work like this? not a single one... none. Games today are built so you don't even have to communicate with people, you are auto grouped, play the instance, and dissolved to most likely never meet again.
one of the strange things about EQ was that there was an utter imbalance in the starting cities (P99 era). So the high elf city is 2 zones. real nice. all the shops you could ask for. the troll city was a long ditch with several horrible little buildings and ...some features. the barbarian city was 'okay' but you had to wait on this weird boat to leave. anyway, it could be humorous to see you start a guy on the (early progression server) of each race and review the town.
You mean the starting cities represented their races and the troll and orge cities looked like caves and swamps compared to the HIGH ELFS? No way? How weird, why would that be?
You didn't have to wait for the boat to leave Halas. You could literally just swim for 30 seconds and climb out of the water. lol
That was a great part of it's Charm. Starting a new character in Neriak and promptly getting lost was an experience you can no longer get :*(
dark elf city - neriak - just get lost for your entire play session, find the necro guild? good luck, cant alt tab out of game to use your pre-Google search engine
@@joelwillis2043 Back in the day very early on there was already a website with a guy who uploaded handdrawn maps of every zone. I had a whole book of printed zone maps. Finding your position relative to that printed map as a young teen was an experience.
Been playing for 23 years, and will probably be playing every day for 23 more. I love Everquest.
Yup.
Josh, thank you for giving P99 a chance later on, it's a VERY different "Immersion heavy" experience and honestly it feels more what us Nostalgious people love. thanks for that man!
Project Quarm
I restarted on Live a few months ago. Got to lvl 8 with a full set of gear really fast. Ended up restarting again on project 1999. It's a much better experience, grueling sometimes and very unforgiving, but so much more gratifying.
For instance, I got my Barbarian Shaman to lvl 14, got some new spells. Fired up the game the following night, died twice, while bound on another continent. LOST a level back to 13 and about a full bubble worth of exp. What keeps me going though is the promise of of potential. Once I get to higher levels, I'm valuable, and I earned every bit.
The community on P99 is amazing so far, and you know everyone there has invested at least as much effort into just getting the thing installed (fairly big PITA, if not impossible for your average user nowadays) so there really aren't casual trolls taking away from the experience. P99 FTW.
@@neviander Tried P99 a couple years ago. Felt dead to me. Still nothing like the old newly released EQ. Its only the best that anyone has to offer., and thats not a bad thing. Just the people that remember the old days and yearn for it are still probably going to be disappointed.
I grew up playing Champions of Norrath on the PlayStation 2 and I had literally no idea it was set in the universe of an existing mmorpg !!!!This is so exciting, knowing the time I spent on Guild Wars later in my teenage years, i would have loved Everquest
Same!
I assumed it was just a random Dark Alliance knock off
@@almightyk11 In case you aren't aware, Dark Alliance, Champions of Norrath, and Champions: Return to Arms were all developed by Snowblind. If you enjoyed DA, you may give one of the Champions' games a try, as they are very similar gameplay wise.
@@Demonrifts I actually had Champions of Norrath, not DA. I just assumed it to be a knock off or spin off because I didn't have internet at the time. XD
@@almightyk11 Ah, gotcha, that's fair. I played DA first then got Champions. I ended up looking at the back of the cases and realized they were both from Snowblind.
Ahhh, good old EverCrack! Had a lot of fun back before WoW released with this gem. Memories of people begging my enchanter for crack (Clarity or Haste, depending on their class), yells in chat of "TRAIN TO ZONE!" which is a phrase with a whole other meaning these days if you're familiar with ZoneToons, the impromptu bazaar at the East Commons Tunnel, and my favorite hero moment when I saved an entire hodge-podge Chardok raid mid-wipe when the entire Library got pulled by mistake and all the other raid enchanters died followed by much Mezzing and joining the Purple Club twice before everything was locked down enough for rezzes to begin on the half-killed raid.
But yeah, without the sense of community? ummmm.... yeah that's gonna show it's age pretty badly. I'm honestly surprised it's still developed and happy for those still playing away.
I played it a year after it came out, it was an amazing experience that I will never forget. Being a woodelf in the tree city, fighting orcs with "people online". Truly happy I got to experience it in its trend setting glory.
My first roll was a Wood Elf. Putting on the Kelethin music brings tears to my eyes. I disabled music when I got to level 15 or so, so it was the music I was easily the most familiar with. It snaps me right back to that exact moment in Everquest where I felt that everything was magical. I saw hundreds of other people running around. Wisps and orcs and guards. It was a real fantasy world, with real people, I couldn't believe it.
@@a_doggoMy favorite bit about Kelethin was, not surprisingly, an experience with a friend. I'd started playing a little before them, and had learned my way around the city; this meant I saw a bunch of the pathways as 'optional,' by which I mean that jumping from higher levels to lower was often my preferred way to get to my destination. It's not always the best for showing people around, though...
@@boobah5643 I'll never forget the moment I was sitting at the "Crossroads" in Butcher Block Mountains. I watched groups run by and thought . These are other people from all over the world sitting in their rooms all while being in this online world playing with each other.... my mind was absolutely blown. back then it was amazing, these days it is common place.
This is some top tier masochism, Josh
Why you stealing my profile picture
@@sttthr🤨
Whoa. I was going to say the same thing.
I do now have a huge expectation regarding the cleanliness of your homes!
I loved this review. I really really cherish the magic that I got to experience when EQ first came out but I also recognize that it was a once in a lifetime experience. I can try to convey how incredible it was at the time but it's really something you had to be there for in the moment to enjoy. You were able to understand that and articulated it so well. Great video.
Asheron's Call was so much better to me than EQ, but i understand your feelings about your game.
The first 2 years of AC (2000-2001) were my best gaming experience ever. And i'm sad because i know i will never have such a joy to play a video game ever again.
Yes great point in splitting the product from the circumstance. I think thats why everybody has such a fun experience when Classic WoW re-released back in 2019 because it was the nostalgia plus the ability to share that with 1000's of other fans on the server. Just going through it alone would turn that nostaliga in to sadness most likely because it will only remind you of how great it once was and thats its all gone now. And thats even besides the impact on the gameplay itself, like the abiltity to easily find a group for dungeons or benefit from a thriving economy on the auction house.
Oy Josh, I finished the video now, and I gotta say that this is probably your most enjoyable format. I know that it is probably a tremendous amount of work, but please keep making these.
I love them.
I grew up in Ultima Online and EverQuest; they were the games that helped me connect socially with people, because I was an awkward nerdy kid and young adult. I have a lot of nostalgia for them, but I moved on from Everquest when it was no longer the place I got my social connections from; I moved to other games that were more enjoyable as games, and connected with people elsewhere. Going back to Everquest... wouldn't bring me back to anything I enjoyed, because i've moved on and that "me" no longer exists. As you said, it was an amazing foundation for the genre, and MMOs are greater because of it --- but it's time has passed for me. I don't get anything from going back, it's a game that tries to provide something I no longer need.
Thank you for your sacrifice for this review :)
There’s a reflection video here on UA-cam which explores this same type of thought, and it talks about how EverQuest was much more than just a game. It was a world for people at the time, and to be able to connect with people was such a grand idea it was just ground breaking. I was there too, in the servers back in 98; wouldn’t give any of that time back.
Ya, but there is a lesson in it still. The ghost of what we've lost is noticeable.. and the very fact that it can support that kind of audience and still be viable to maintain commercially, as one of THE LARGEST MMOs still, & active development... means it's doing something... modern MMOs aren't, and no I don't mean being sluggish. Think about it.. I've alot of love for the game, it's races, and all the quirks, but I wouldn't be under any illusions about the pacing.
Seriously, it's memories I cherish and know I could never revisit... but when the ghosts that are missing are kind of appealing to modern players as they were back then.... That's a deafening message to hear. You can't reasonably claim all the remaining players are original players still, there is something it is doing that can't or wasn't talked about in this video.
You and me both! This game saved my life. I look back at it for teaching so many lessons, but going back to play it? Those friends and experiences are still with me even though a few of them are no longer living.
Project 1999 still keeping the classic EQ experience alive.
@@Zairn12345i think i know the video you mean.. but i cannot find it!
I played EQ (and still play EQ2 occasionally) for YEARS. was in a high end riding guild on my server (XEV). i still have EQ installed on my computer, and once a year I fire it up, look around and quickly camp. this game gave me life long experiences no other game has ever replicated. i can still close my eyes and 'travel' through most of the maps and know the enemy positioning in a lot of them. i fire up the Kelethin music to relax to this day. I've tried almost all the MMOs after, but non ever grabbed me like EQ did (maybe EQ2 but that was because my entire guild decided to move to it). thanks for this video Josh, it reminded me of both the best and worst of playing. to summarize your Elvis comparison: You just had to be there.
Your experience with Rehd is exactly why we loved it. Logging in after work or school and typing /friend and seeing your bros and broettes on and talking, explaining areas and just killing enemy after enemy (specifically in a spawn point like Derv 2) while chatting about life and the game as well as DND. It wasn't about all the content modern games have, it was about living at the time, being smart enough to get on the internet and other system's barrier of entry etc.
If you were smart enough, had this thing called a credit card and could install a Voodoo2 in your computer and update drivers, you were given a whole new world with people you could have never met otherwise to explore and figure out. Modern slang started getting spread through EverQuest, everything from INC to WOOT all started there.
Cannot be understated how technical and cost prohibitive having an gaming PC online pre 2004 was.
Watching this as I'm grinding level 70 on Mischief TLP. Great effort, Mr. Hayes! Having played EQ back in 2001-2003, I couldn't imagine starting fresh today without the knowledge base from back then.
The key to window management in Everquest is to rebind all the window shortcuts. Watching Josh fighting with all those windows open gives me OCD vibes lol
Lol watching him in combat with every bag open killed me
My parents played everquest when I was a kid (I destinctly remember getting my mom's gnome killed...she was gracious about it and I got my own toons to kill instead). Every once in a while I end up back in, and it always occurs to me that the fixes are small; shorter regen times, tighter wilderness maps, more heavily quest populated cities (Josh is right about the comedy of the everyone loves someone else quest set. Every quest that has you exploring the cities is about the best fun in the world).
A lot of things about EQ are still really cool; your toon has starting faction (good, neutral or evil) but you can alter that...to a point. The robot zoo in Accanon is the funniest thing to me. The twisted and nested lore that would take any other series years just to catch up (meet Zelda and...WOW.)
My parents made many friends on Everquest I in the early 2000's. They would meet up for a weekend in the summer and I even got to go one year. I remember them really enjoying the game at the time.
Everquest is a historical masterpiece. I think that is what I got from your feed back. lol. Although, maybe it does need a few tour guides to walk someone through it, much like an old historical site, pointing out how older systems started and make key points of what was adopted by modern games. I will always enjoy my memories of Everquest and like you said, nostalgia is a big part of that.
Quality video. I played as an early teen in the early 2000s and taught me so much about online/internet/communities even as early as the first "dungeon" Gnoll Hill. Then going on to raiding and being enthralled with "boss/Gods" killing and giant raids of so many people. With honestly the best flagging system for raid proggression I have ever experienced in PoP raiding. And the "Traning!" God the Plane of Justice Trains!!!
I fell in love with the pet systems with equipping end game weapons and shields and buffs on level 8-12 mage or skeleton pets turning them into mini-dieties. Then, I fell in love with the support classes enchanter and bards. I have never experienced anything like that class wise in 27 years of mmoing. Really wish those useless on your own, but required classes still existed. Best boat music and voyage all in open worlds! You fall you swim or die!
Did you know ? : You can turn OFF the combat music in the sound options.
Yes, they have a combat music option.
You were not the first one to get tired of it. 😁
It's amazing how trippy listening to you describe everquest while playing Final Fantasy 11 is. Basically everything you've said about everquest is also true about FFXI with the exception of the progression servers.
That's the main thing keeping me from trying Everquest, even as just a 'tour through a historical monument' thing. I played FFXI back in the day solo, and it was both really fun and utterly painful. Even coming back to it years later and being able to use the Trust system, there's so much old design in that game it just drags the whole experience down. I really want to be able to experience the story of the game and get more in-depth with its systems, but I know if I try to play it again the fun will get worn down and I'll quit before I get anywhere.
Everquest was amazing for it's time. I played nearly 20+ years ago. Right on the cusp of having 56k dial-up internet and a dedicated cable connection. You're right in your assessment EQ just can't be popular in today's environment of MMO and game choice. I always look back on EQ fondly as my first MMO, and even selling my maxed out character for $500 each was a nice chunk of cash for me at that time.
My friend was the first person on Ayonae Ro server to get Palladius' axe of slaughter, and promptly sold his account for 2,000 on playerauctions. He then purchased the first car in the friend group, a 88 Toyota Tercel, and we went everywhere in that thing.
I miss these days. I almost failed high school because of this game lol. 1999 was a hell of a year!
I found this video so interesting. I grew up playing this game and I think the last expansion I played was Omens of War and that was because EQ2 launched and I moved on. You kept my attention this whole video because of showing me all the things that have changed. This is such a different game than when I last played. We had no mercenary, no quest journal, and definitely none of those pay to progress systems (gross!).
I also quit at OoW and came back like 2 years ago. For the most part, the QoL improvements from then to now have been really good. Yeah, it took a while to get back up to speed (both remembering the old stuff and learning the new stuff).
But I'd say the biggest change is exactly what's missing from this video - Guilds are the social hub of EQ way more than they used to be. PUGs rarely happen anymore, but since most players continue to level alts, getting groups and stuff does happen easily - but only if you're grouping with guildies.
I actually ran into you when you where doing research for this on Mischief and said hi in the open channel and got kinda fanboyish lol, gotta respect the great work you do on all your videos, its top notch! Thanx for covering EQ and doing it the justice it deserves, its a old game but man does it hold a special place is alot of mmo players hearts that got to play it as ther first mmo
Also Everquest came out back in 99 and the internet was still a new thing for people. So it wasn't just the game. The whole MMO was new, Social Gaming was new, Internet was new. it just came out at the perfect time. Also the best time to enter a Progression Server is when it first comes out and you have a ton of people playing at level 1.
The game itself was also new, undiscovered and undocumented, in an internet era that 90% of online forums was trolling with 0 moderation.
@@cattysplat lol I remember those days. Before you could embed pictures so had to post links, half the time the Links did not go to the pics it said it would. I miss the early days of ezboard.
After some cognitive damage from ME/CFS, I really struggled to be able to play alot of "current" games. It's a mix of the speed at which its played, the amount of interaction required and a how much information is needed to be processed at a time. But I'm still a young guy at 33 I cant just relegate myself to playin solitaire so I spent alot of the last year trying to play alot of different games to find something that was within my new pace and I could engage in with my limitations.
I had family members that multi-boxed and played together back in the day of EQ's prime when I was just a kid, took many years before I was allowed to make a character and dink around but it's got ALOT of memories. So randomly gave it a go 3 weeks ago to see if I could handle it and I've been in love and happily playing as much as the brain damage will let me. I've got several people playing the game again with me now this week and I'm able to power level them a bit and hook them up with gear. It's the closest I've felt to be being "back" to really gaming in awhile so thank you Everquest!
Highly recommend people check out the Godfather of MMO's!
I'll always have a soft spot for EQ. I played it from release, was the first person on my server to hit the level cap and made some great online friends and had some incredible experiences exploring a world that at the time, no one knew anything about. This was so long ago, before spoiler sites like Allakhazams ruined a lot of the magic in these virtual worlds and I don't think I'll ever get to experience anything like that ever again. The only negative thing I have to say about your video is that you'll never really get the "real" EverQuest experience until you've been flattened by a train in Blackburrow, Unrest or Lower Guk - just the hilarity of having so many newbie scrubs jammed into a non-instanced world all stepping on each others dicks, ALL THE TIME. Modern game design won't let that happen again, but it was actually pretty hysterical.
train coming through CHOO CHOO!!! Those where the days lol. I remember farming forest loops in the new area of the first xpac
Played EQ back from just before RoK released up until until DoN... then WoW happened for the next 15+ years. But Back in the day EQ was a lot of fun, made a lot of friends, had a lot of sleepless nights, many raids and even dabbled in multi-boxing. Primarily played a Bard or Necromancer... and was even part of the Guide program when it was run (thus getting the game for free during that time), and had a lot of fun interactions with players either socially or helping them out (probably in ways I really shouldn't have at times). But, alas, all good things eventually came to an end. Haven jumped in occasionally to check things out but its so quiet these days.
And if I am brutally honest, probably had a negative effect on my school grades at the time. Wasn't called EverCrack for nothing.
If you think that screen real estate is bad, you should check the classic UI. It's funny watching you gripe about things that were, back in the day, considered new and 'cutting edge.' But I totally agree though, what was good then, isn't now. Still, I think if you had chosen a DPS class you'd have enjoyed things more.
Nothing comes quite close to sparking a massive amount of nostalgia as the that original EQ cover art with Firiona Vie on it. It was so inspiring that was literally the first server I made a character on back in 2001!
Fantastic breakdown of the game that defined my childhood. You nailed it, EQ was a chatroom with a game attached. Back when the internet was brand new, that was the magic. You had to talk to all these people and form connections in a novel way because solo wasn't an option (unless you were a Necro, but even then it was risky) But now, it's standard fare to play MMO's solo and the internet isn't magical anymore. We have better games, Discord exists, and attention spans are lowering.
Great work covering such a nostalgic piece of my life.
chatroom with a game attached... ff14 vibes uwu
The transition of MMOs from social games to being more solo-oriented is what really killed the Magick of the Internet for me. It feels like an entirely different world than the one I grew up in.
@@SanguivoreThat's because it is, especially in gaming. The casuals took over, and devs and publishers started catering to them.
@@vewyscawymonsta Oh heavens, not the casuals!!!!!
@@jimjimson6208 I didn't say it was a good thing or a bad thing. I said exactly what it is. Josh himself points this out in the video.
I love that you can tell your natural baseline is RuneScape, like how you point out that NPCs can't detect items in your inventory and must be manually used on them, and how the animation doesn't line up with attacks, etc. I've been looking into Quarm a lot the last two or three days and this was awesome as a guy whose main game is OSRS. Perfect comparisons particularly for us haha
What MMO do you recommend to play right now???
@@sorenvc UOAlive.
@@sorenvc Guild Wars 2 was consistently fun
@@aaeve5676agreed. Guild Wars 2 is probably the best modern MMO on the market right now with its systems and design. WoW and FF14 are more populous sure but their systems are not as friendly as GW2. WoW is approaching GW2 though with each update. I wish GW2 copied some of WoW's better designed systems and aspects.
Mr Strife Hayes, watching you play an MMO I played 20 years ago may be my new favorite thing on UA-cam right now :)
I grew up on EverQuest, and it will always have a special place in my heart.
But, it's so old now, and it definitely shows its age. If we got an EverQuest 3, with all the QOL updates and amenities of modern MMOs, but with the spirit and atmosphere of old EverQuest, it would be a dream come true.
thats what i hate about new MMOs they baby you, they take your hand and guide you step by step. Hell in the beginning EQ did not even have a tutorial, it literally plopped you down in the world and said go on then, survive. If you made a high elf caster back in the day, you died. immediately. because if you didn't know to turn up the gama in the game you did not see the pool of water infront of you in the darkness and you fell in. and not knowing how to swim ended up drowning lmao. now days these new mmos treat you like an infant and take your hand and guide you from quest to quest to quest to quest til its guided you to max level and you've done no exploring of your own. its just done. then you get to sit an wait for it to tell you to do something else.
@@Styxx405 Bro, I miss Asheron's Call.
@@MakoRuu daybreak is hinting at an eq 3 that spose to supposedly be released in 2025 or somethin like that, but just like pantheon:rise of the fallen i doubt its gonna be released anytime soon
I love coming back every so often for the TLP's, join a guild, and go do raids i either didnt do when i was younger, or redo the ones I loved. It's a fun side hobby to pick up every so often, and just play classes I never really did before.
I’m so happy Josh gave EQ a go! I think joining a guild would’ve helped, but that said there is A LOT, but Elvis has left the building.
That said I’m having loads of fun on the Quarm server playing classic EverQuest.
😺👍
I played Everquest for... I don't know, 6 or 7 years, starting in 1999... it just dominated my time around then. I had thousands of hours racked up on multiple characters, so as a 'veteran' of the game, I feel qualified to critique your critique of the game. And you're basically spot on. The experience you had with your bard friend was what the game used to feel like; everything was unknown, and it felt like an adventure, and having two people made you exponentially more powerful than one, and you could do things together you couldn't dream of alone, and it felt great... but really, the game was a chat room, and it just doesn't hold up.
My best friend, still, is someone I met playing Everquest. We still reminisce about it, and occasionally, he'll point out a new progression server that's starting up soon, and ask if I want to go play it for a while with him, and I just can't help but think about how *bad* the game inherently is. It's slow, it's fairly boring, it doesn't respect your time *at all*, but invariably, when he asks if I want to go play it again, in spite of all that, I find that I do, and we do. And a few months later, we quit again, remembering why we quit the first time, but the next time a progression server rolls around, we're right there again.
The Elvis Presley analogy is honestly great, because that's what it's like. The nostalgia is what keeps us going back to the game; I can't imagine a new player having anything but an awful time trying to go play it now, and it honestly surprised me that you had as not-terrible of a time as you did. Anyone who gives you shit for your opinions here is clearly viewing it through rose tinted glasses and refuses to admit that, objectively, EQ is a bad game, and the fact that some of us still, for some reason, enjoy it doesn't change that.
I've played EQ for ~12,000 hours between retail and emu servers and this is the best modern take on Everquest I've heard. Great content Josh, as always
Only 12k hrs????? oh well i guess you n00bs will eventually become experienced players at one point in time:)
I'll find my way out of Antonica one day
Yes you will, at about 15 k hrs played the escape reveals itself:)@@Nephron_
I remember the days of keeping a spare set of armour and weapons in the bank to put on to help you try and recover your body so you could get your gear back. Sneaking through Crushbone, being seen and just flat out running, targeting your corpse and running back for the zone line while spamming a macro to drag your body behind you. :D Good times. Painful, too. Was so glad when you could summon your corpse!
hahaha I forgot about dragging corpses!
As a Necro, I made sooo much money summoning corpses on weekend nights. Ahh, good times.
I'm glad you don't have to stare at your spellbook anymore while meditating!
The most important thing about Everquest were the friends we made along the way. I was a Warrior. If I died, I was helpless. I had no spells or crowd control. I had no healing. I had to rely on a group at all times, and it turned me from a social outcast into a social butterfly. That's pretty incredible. The first 2 expansions were amazing, but it started to fade after that. Levelling up with LOTS of other people, all at the same time, was one of the keys to Everquest. You had a persistent server, and you'd actually get to know EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON YOUR SERVER. All 3,000 of them or so. It was amazing and it cannot be recreated over the current internet. I made friends for life in there, and played over 300 days.
There was a learned intimacy to forced grouping. Pushing a bunch of socially inept nerds together to accomplish a shared goal. With no tools to group finding it forced you to bridge the gap with words, which inevitably leads to conversation during downtime and spending so much time together. Today there are tools for everything, so random people on the internet are "used" more like tools and then disposed of. It's a completely different way of experiencing online games.
100 hours is just dipping your toe into the game. The progression servers are where it is at, play one at a launch. It's about the closest thing you can get to the nostalgia of the original game. In terms of today, you won't get far unless you are a boxer and play multiple toons or have a steady group of friends to play with. Put it this way I have played off and on for years, I played from day one launch over a crappy 36K dial up connection, my account has 24 years 233ish days on it, and one of my toons has almost a decade of played time. The game is still going on strong after 24ish years. If you have a good core group of friends then this is a great game for you and 12 friends to get together form a guild and destroy stuff, level up and have a lot of fun. Solo you're not going to get too far, it's a MMO not a Single Player game.
I played this in middle and high school. I finally got to level 60, got all the best gear. When I checked my total play time it equaled just over a year, when all added together. I put a year straight into that game over 4 years of my life. I quit immediately and said never again.
Two months later I was playing WoW.
Oh man, wow. I quit wow in cataclysm. I was in a guild called "We PVP FOR FOOD". Kraftman was our leader. Oh the glory days on burning steppes server, rallying in orgrimmar to raid all the alliance cities. It was glorious.
@@terranaxiomuk Ever quest was pretty wild, especially PVP. In the PVP servers there was no gear protection. The killer could loot one piece of gear from someone and if the corpse was not recovered by the player for 1 week the corpse would rot and the player would lose ALL their gear.
Speaking of this, there was a massive war that took place between the player killing guilds versus all of the raiding guilds (including the one I was in). We would fight battles that contained over 100 players. And we were losing, even though we had the better gear from raiding they had more experience fighting players. Losing that war meant that the player killing guilds would have full control over all noob areas, being able to slaughter new players trying to join the game, not letting anyone level up. It would have stagnated the whole game and economy. And we had almost lost.
We ended up hatching a scheme. We used a mole in the player killing guilds to convince all of their leaders to gather together for a meeting. When they did the best of us were there in secret and we ambushed and killed them all. From there our guilds had around the clock guards of at least 50 or so players guarding the corpses of these player killing guild leaders for one week straight. This included guarding the zone entry points because there were ways to summon corpses to various locations on the map.
Anyways, after a week the corpses rotted and the guild leaders lost all of their gear, everything. Some of them left the war, most of them quit the game, and the guilds became leaderless. And we were able to win. By the end of it there were only 10 or so formidable player killers left. They would still sneak around for the next year or so, often times in the astral planes were it was harder to get to them. But from then on the server was much safer to play in.
All 100% true. It was wild times.
Everquest is a game where you definitely have to reach out to people using /who and you can find people your level to group with. There's tons of zones, so most people are spread out when they level. if you're proactive and reach out to people, you'll have an awesome time even to this day.
Watching this makes me sad that the experiences I had no longer exist and can’t be shared anymore.
Project 1999 green server TLP is where the classic experience is at. Blue server is basically dead, lots of people still play but not like green.
Big mood. Mine was never really in MMOs, but all the same. Small 12 year old me with a disproportionately deep voice snuck my way into a clan server that did entmod on Sven Coop, and by the end, those guys were just about like the big brothers I'd never had.
@@paddington1670 Green and Blue are both dying, everyone is switching to Quarm.
@mushafasa what's that?
If you want a similar experience try project quarm, its a new free server with a big and lively population, ive had little trouble finding people at any level of the game
Wonderful, yet sad video. Sooo many great memories of EQ, but it is the people AND the currency (of level and progression); that makes it special, it's a whole lot of empty loneliness otherwise as you say :( that said, I'd love to restart EQ from level 1 as it was when I first played (2000) WHAT a journey!!!
I'm a new player on P99 with a level 26 Barbarian warrior and I've enjoyed my time so far
1:01:00 Bards are actually amazing at soloing but they need a lot of time and space. They can kite huge swarms of enemies and DoT them all.
Hey! I play the character Rehd.
I've been having a blast on bards, I feel like I could really be a great asset to parties and can bring a lot of utility and support, but I've been levelling up so quickly that I have a huge abundance of songs that I simply haven't tried yet. I do enjoy the idea of kiting swarms of mobs!
Really appreciate you taking the time to learn this game! You really are an MMO historian. Do Project 1999 or Quarm next PLEASE! 😃😃😅😅
Part of the magic of this game comes from playing with other people. Derailing a gigantic train of mobs with just 6 skilled people is PEAK EverQuest.
Raiding is also fun.
So much of this video would have been different if someone had just told him to join a guild, though. I thought his review was fair, it's just a shame so much of the criticism based on lack of social interaction could have been avoided in, like, 10 seconds with a simple message to /general or /newplayers.
@@jeffkoenig7402 same with just starting out on P99, Quarm, or a brand new progression server
I cannot fully express how much I enjoy seeing you hold the mic in your mug
It's just really, really great
Edit: wait you didn't answer the question of ''should we play EverQuest for 100 hours", you just told us what to expect if we do decide to play EverQuest. Great video still, absolutely love your stuff, but just something I observed
Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis
I wish someone held me the way Josh holds his mug.
- Adûnâi
Everquest was definitely the best MMO of the 90's. The best part of the game though were the people playing it. After many raids, and hours and hours of helping people out while playing it with my then wife we became the best in game as we brutalized the Gods without having to be in the most elite guilds/clans. It was fun having a territory in the game named after my character which was dope =)
Lots of love to my old crew from Bristlebane Server!
Ultima Online was the best MMO of the 90's!!!
Not sure if it counts for your series or if it's been mentioned before. Asherons call would be such a trip to cover, it's held together by an emulator now but is still an amazing experience.
I started playing EQ back in 99. I have 16 accounts, years of in game play time, played all server types (live, test, pvp, rp, tlp, p99) and I truly have no idea why anyone would ever try this game for the first time at this point in its life cycle. Just a sad truth, but it was true magic when it was new.
What MMO do you recommend to play right now???
@@sorenvcWorld of Warcraft classic progression servers or FINAL FANTASY XIV would be my recommendations. Though they both approach MMOs differently they’re both incredibly solid games, the free trial of FFXIV is massive and covers both the base game and the first two expansions while the progression servers of classic WoW only require you have a sub - no box price required. WoW progression servers are currently on Wrath of the Lich king, with Cataclysm coming out around nine months from now.
@@mixtysix8541 I play Guild Wars 2 instead. I stopped playing OSRS and Tibia because it's waste of time. With Guild Wars 2 I can play Call of Duty and Counter-Strike 2 along with it.
@@mixtysix8541 i just made up my mind. I will play call of duty and counter-strike 2 and when I'm too tired of fps I will switch to guild wars 2 and old school runescape.
For me, OSRS is so chill to play just clicking stuff and getting level ups. And guild wars 2 I already spent a ton of money on and it's pretty good even though I only finished main story... Am doing living world 1 and all the other dlcs next. I am a Firebrand Norn level 80.
@@mixtysix8541 i do skip all cutscenes and dialogue in guild wars 2 though. I don't want to waste time with that to be honest, it's too boring I just want completion grind. That's why i like OSRS. I also tried everquest p99 and it's not my thing, because
1 no updates
2 you can lose levels and inventory on death
OSRS and Guild Wars 2 to me are the best MMOs right now especially since you can play other games too with them... I'm not gonna lie, once Call of Duty doesn't interest me I will skip a year of CoD and only play OSRS with membership.
Really enjoyed this video. Eq was my first MMO and I played it for years. Have also played p99 and several progression servers. You are absolutely correct that the worst thing about EQ is the massive time sink to just “do something”. Travel/forming a group will eat up at least 30-60 minutes. Dungeon crawling to your desired camp will take another 10-30 minutes. And by then you’re probably 90 minutes into your session before you’ve actually “accomplished” anything.
There are the odd times where it goes much faster but on average the game is just such a drawn out process. It will forever hold a special place in my heart, and by god I always consider starting the new progression server for a solid minute before remembering how much of my life will be erased from attempting it 😂