20 Reasons EverQuest Is the Greatest Game Ever
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- EverQuest is the greatest game ever made. Here's 20 reasons why. Nothing after the Velious expansion pack counts. My memory and storytelling abilities don't even come close to doing justice to how great the original EverQuest experience actually was. There are so many details and stories that I am forgetting that this video only scratches the surface.
#Project1999 #Everquest
My best friend IRL was a Rogue and I was a Ranger. He was doing his epic 1.0 where you had to turn in some items in Kithicor to spawn this raid level skeleton we had to kill for him. Something went wrong, and we all wiped. He was ready to just quit the game, because it was going to despawn. I told him to res me first and not give up hope. He was, understandably, completely despondent.
I ran around unbuffed, naked and with res sickness for nearly an hour kiting this named skeleton while the raid regrouped, got their corpses and got a few more people. I would run and sit to med every six seconds, and using SOW, snare, root, harmony and self heals I kept that whole zone at bay long enough to stay alive while they got ready to fight it again. The train I had on me by the end of it was insane. When they were ready I ran the train by a monk that was waiting for me and we managed to break off only the named mob so he pulled him back to the raid, while I ran the rest of the train to another zone and zoned out. They killed the mob this time, and my friend got his epic in the end.
It was the most intense gaming moment I've ever had and probably the most skillful, and it saved my friend dozens of hours and weeks of questing. That's why no game will ever measure up to this game. There's no real risk and your hand is held through everything. EverQuest is pure addiction.
Sounds like an amazing experience, helluva a ranger you were!
👍👍
Epic
Damn! I remember times like this! Miss those days. Great story!
This made me smile as a former rogue main who also has some crazy memories from getting epics back in the day. Mine was thankfully less dramatic but a 24hr+ camp for a monk friend and nearly losing it comes to mind...
@@Amberle38 it's funny how at the time, these events sucked... But looking back on them now 20 years later they were the best!
Man, I miss the EQ days!
No game had you just looking at your character inventory for countless hours in appreciation to the efforts made, like this game.
Indeed. The effort it took made you admire them for quite a while.
Shit that was one of the best things in EQ, was just standing in a main hub area and feeling like a badass
or your spellbook
EverQuest has ruined me for every other game since. I have not found a game since 1999 that has grabbed me like EQ did.
Same here, and thank god for that.
Same. Never found another.
Same here. ESO was okay for short period of time, but now back to EQ. I started in 1999 and there are still zones that I have not explored.
Same here. I tried WoW and missed EQ the whole time.
I started playing when I was around 5, and here we are 20 years later, im still judging every game on my memories from the early EQ days.
EQ: I was 11-12 years old throwin' down words like 'dubious'. When my teacher asked where I learned such words, she did not believe me one bit it was from a video game.
Also the zone loading times were so damn long I literally did my homework while playing.
It was a pretty epic experience for me. I was in a guild that was very much like a family. My RL best friend was also apart of that guild. A mix of people of all ages. Adults were extremely open and patient with us kids. I learned a lot. I read books because they were suggested by a guildmate. You could ask them questions you didn't want to ask your parents. I have a lot of really good memories from EQ. The lows of getting bulldozed by a gnoll train, the wonderful level ding being instantly snatched from you. Playing "find the talking tree for a prize" (I played a druid) with noobs. Escorting a low level character from Queynos to Freeport as wolves... just for fun.
WoW had the same feeling in the beginning. It's a feeling I haven't had about an MMO in a long time. And I feeling I'd love to have back.
Haha this is so true. That's what makes it so great man.. this game forced you to communicate and that's like the point of an MMO is to communicate with the players not solo your way through the whole game lol if we wanted to do that we can play a story mode of something else. I was around your age too when I started playing and the conversations that I had with older people really helped me learn a lot because the community was so sophisticated and it kind of forced me to pay attention so I didn't sound like an annoying little kid lol.. that's awesome to think that a video game was so educational and fun too
Amicable
I learned my english from this game, as a dutchman in my 15’s this was epic to me, blazed trough every english class from then on :)
One thing i miss about EverQuest is the socializing. EverQuest 2 was fast paced dungeon running with little or no time to chat. In the original, healing and regaining mana took time. While we were camped out and recovering, people would chat and get to know one another. Running a dungeon was more of a bonding experience.
I was so addicted to old EQ, I missed a lot of work. I remember calling in sick one morning because my mage fell in The Hole. I needed to find a necromancer to summon my corpse.
Worth it.
Same
They didn't call it 'Evercrack' for no reason 😊
The free world concept had weird things but those mechanics are what made it magical. For example, aggro-ing the banker in Kelethin and the banker leaves the bank, chasing you. Then everyone yelling "where's the banker?" "who aggro-ed the banker?". That was harsh and difficult but the fact that the game world was free enough to allow these things to happen *IS* the magic. They started restricting these things, tethering mobs, porting, eliminating corpse runs, etc. etc. But this was truly an open world and how we all operated within it is what made it our own virtual world.
Every game since then (even updated EQ) has taken all that freedom away so the games are not truly free open world games - they are built with "guardrails" all around you.
If any developer ever wants to recapture the magic, they need to understand this and have the courage to remove all the guard rails and, as you said "let the chips fall where they may."
I would absolutely have de-leveling. I agree it can be a problem and can cause death loops etc. But, without it, there really is no penalty. You can die a hundred times and never lose anything. If you ding level 30, then die five times trying to play as level 30, I say "go back and learn how to be level 30 again"
Just my opinion
Well said.
Hey, I attended the FIRST Everquest Party thrown by Brad and all the Devs. Does anyone else remember? Let me give you a little outline. You had to sign up for the party. There was no monetary entry, it was all free. It was held in either Santa Monica or Redondo Beach, california, at a public park. I lived in SoCal all my life, so it was easy to attend. I was 40 at the time and remember feeling so out of place, but hey it wasnt like that at all once I got there. There must have been 200 of us. We talked Everquest of course! We played volley ball and other park like sports for most of the afternoon. Food and Drinks were absolutely free and were served up by the Devs. LoL. This doesnt happen anymore. No, it doesnt. Brad was walking around our area and introduced himself to me. We shook hands. Just regular good people, all of them. They were grateful and wanted to show it, for Everquest success. They passed out T-shirts for free until they were gone. I miss those times and for sure going to miss Brad. (crocodile tear).
MrDrago1954 I was there! My fondest memory was discovering Loreena McKennitt that day. One of the devs was playing her music on a CD player; been a fan ever since. Oh and I ended up moving to San Diego the next year and working for Verant/SOE for four years as an EQ GM. Good times! 😊
Thank you for that trip down memory lane. EQ is the greatest game ever and you nailed why.
The hours I lived in this game was ridiculous. I remember the names of many players like it was yesterday. Thanks for the flashback.
same.. years
You nailed it. You said "The Hours I Lived In this Game", This is exactly right. We really lived in this game, everyone who played. Travel was long and difficult and could take days or hours or not at all until you either had help or leveled high enough to survive. A boat ride from Faydwer to Antonica would take 30 minutes and you hoped and prayed there would be no disconnect or that you didnt fall off the boat.
EverCrack 😁
I just came across this video and it makes me both happy and sad. I know there will never be anything that will give me the experiences that EverQuest did. It changed my life literally. I had never played a computer game, knew nothing about computers, had never interacted with another person online, and barely knew what the internet was. The journey from starting the game as literally the biggest noobie to ever play this game to a raid leader for a very renown guild and all the experiences beginning to end has taught me valuable life skills. Problem solving, preparation, research, people management, counseling, just to name a few life skills have led me to a successful career in the real world. I can 100% say if it were not for EverQuest I would not be where I am at today.
Not to mention the amazing friendships. The late night groups that took you to the sun came up when you had to work the next day. Spending all day at work on Allakhazam looking for the next Uber item I wanted to get. The excitement driving home from work each day to be able to play. The even more excitement when I knew I was off the next day and would be playing 36 hours straight. The feeling when I was interviewed and accepted into my first raiding guild. The pure amazement seeing my first dragon. Going to my first planar raid. I could go on and on.
With all said I have a deep love for EverQuest that will never die. I have gotten to relive some of it by playing Project 99 pretty hardcore a couple times. But the love I have for this game will never leave me.
By the time I ended my Everquest time I had over 400 days played on my main over the 15 years I played.
Each expansion I met new friends I lost friends that passed away... each had memories and things that will stick with me. Such a great game.
I've never heard the phrase "power looting", we used to call it "ninja looting".
In everquest specifically
@@Sidiciousify Yes, this video and that comment are about Everquest specifically.
I had 3 ring binders full of maps for the different zones and I would mash /loc when running in unfamiliar areas and refer to the map to see where I was in the world. And playing a healer, having to stare at my spellbook while medding and asking my group to look out after me so nothing would roam up and eat me while I couldn't see.
I still have my binders. lol
LOL lost mine ...I'm redoing them again...for p99.
Yup still have my binders from EQ. Thinking about playing again.
Raul Gonzalez p99 still growing strong? I’m thinking about fixing my computer and busting out my 54 Druid. Hopefully people didn’t strip him
p99 prob has the highest population it's ever had right now. It's usually around about 1100-1800 people online most of the time, with an average of like 1700 on during peak hours, it's immensely healthy.
It is the greatest game ever made period.
Facts
The element you can't get back in modern games is the community. Everquest had downtime. It was in these moments that we actually chatted with each other and got to interact with human personalities. Players had reputations, friendships, feuds, debts, demerits, alliances, talents, honor, bravery, virtue, determination, humor... It was like your real life character was as important as your in game stats. I remember the people I played with. They all had a story and it was more interesting than all the lore and fiction woven into the game. A bartender from Vegas, a husband and wife duo from Baltimore, a young lawyer from Chicago, a 19 year old wiz kid working for America Online, regular people with other interests. We talked about gardening, philosophy, home improvement, music, art, literature, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Everything. EQ wasn't just a game, it was a place to live. If you can name a modern game with all these elements, I just might dedicate another 20 years playing it.
I really enjoyed EQ. My "claims to fame" (I played a rogue) was doing "impossible" corpse retrievals, and "expert" pulling (including Hate solo, no monk). As you said, your personal rep mattered. I got personal invites to various events and raids. I also recall one time (before they re-balanced rogues) I was working on my lock picking in Befallen and I had a GM show up and ask what I was doing, I explained and he got ahold of the guy in charge of the class rebalance and he and I talked for a while about the upcoming (everyone knew it was in the works) re-balance.
I also spent a LOT of time working on my factions (I was a dark elf) and eventually got to the point I could safely go almost anywhere. I loved the way folks reacted when I, as a dark elf, waltz'd thru the high elf city.
WoW, I played vanilla for about a year or so but never got the same feelings of adventure and accomplishment.
wow you're awesome
Pfffft
I just played, had some good in-game friends, and occasionally got lucky.
Yeah, that dark-elf faction thing would have been impressive because it was so hard to do! I really like a game where there's lots of hard stuff which isn't raid based! I think in wow all the really challenging things required masses of others.
Yeah, I spent a "few" days (not hours, days) grinding faction but in the long run it was well worth it.
But I was also glad I was a rogue because there was a couple NPCs at the entry to Rivervale (the halfling starting town) that had some odd faction I never figured out that still KOS'd me so I had to sneak past them. The rest of the town wasn't a problem.
But as you say, these sorts of things are what made the game fun and gave you a sense of accomplishment.
@@gdolson9419 Halfling bigots!
From one Joe to another, I couldn't agree more! Kunark and Velious to me was the greatest era of gaming in my life.
same
@@fazooleq1523 same
Same, and I was only maybe 12-13? It. Was. GLORIOUS.
I loved the social aspect of EQ. I played a Bard and some of my best memories were helping people recover their corpse in the Karanas, or taking people from Qeynos to Freeport at Bard speed.
People like you contributed to the magic of this game every bit as much as the developers did. Good on you.
Me too! I'd ferry low level characters to the Lake of Ill Omen past all the driders for tips. Good times
The run from Qeynos to Freeport was treacherous, especially that East Karana ramp. A bard and someone spamming languages was legit
This is why Everquest 1 was way better than EQ2 and WoW:
I was a Cleric adventuring in that zone that's two Frozen Towers with a group. We fought our way up to the top and crossed over to the other tower, and were working our way down. We pulled too many spiders and our wizard often overnuked, which got him aggro, then when I healed him, I'd end up with massive aggro instead of him. The wizard cast Evac, which teleports everyone to the start of the zone, but since I had so much aggro, I had to throw up my Divine Barrier, which makes me immune to all damage... I didn't realise though, that it makes me immune to everything, including the Evac.
So there I am, standing there, while everyone else vanishes and I'm getting attacked by Spiders, with my last few seconds of the invulnerability ticking away.
A moment of clarity came to me - I jumped off the ledge and fell to the bottom, still protected from the falling damage by invulnerability. I sat down to memorise my Teleportation spell (Gate), but got aggro off a spider down there. I rooted it in place and moved away and sat down to memorise Gate... And all the while the chittering spiders got closer and closer.. I stood up, cast Gate and "SHAZAM" I vanished.
Everyone was talking in the group chat "Where's Holden? Oh shit he must have died. We'll have to go back and get his body and his gear"... And then I just swagger in like a fucking boss, fully clothed.
Greatest moment I ever had in an MMO.
Tell me something that even comes close to that kind of game dynamics in World of Shitcraft, or Everquest 2.
Yeah you can do all that as a paladin in World of Warcraft. It's called a bubble hearthing, it's very common, you're being incredibly over dramatic.
@@GDWII Maybe that's a new thing, but you couldn't do it back in the day.
Also, how is putting up a shield and casting your Hearthstone even close to all that I said in that post. Fucksake, man. If I'm being overly dramatic, you're being cognitively deficient.
@@childofthesun32 yeah you could, I only play classic.
@@childofthesun32 don't get me wrong, love EQ and I guess we all have our specific moments and reasons, I just didn't see it with that. Good story telling on your part though, you might have a knack there, loremaster lol
ChildOfTheSun32 No he’s right you’re being overly dramatic. You cast a spell and jumped off a ledge then rooted a spider to cast a spell. You’re a fine storyteller but it’s your imagination that makes it what it is, not the game.
waiting for Pantheon ! I loved this video, I was a druid on Zeb and a guide on Rodcet, all the memories came flooding back, thank you !
One of my favorite moments in Everquest... there was a zone called Paludal Caverns for players 13-35 or something and it houses all sorts of reptiles, shrooms, and had these valuable little bandit mobs that would spawn around camps and there was like an A-B camp that groups would claim/farm exp.
Anyway, I was a lowly noob in this zone but I was soloing one of said bandit camps. I had full claim to it. Then out of nowhere a group runs in and takes over. They told me to leave.
Naturally I was angry but there was little I could do so I called my friend, a bad ass level 60 Druid. He decided to help me get revenge so he summoned his horse and took a nice long trip around the ENTIRE ZONE, putting a low level spreading swarm on every mob he passed by.
I sat there and eagerly waited, watching as the group repeatedly killed the bandits I'd claimed, pausing periodically to laugh at me. That is until my Druid friend returned while they happened to be in the middle of a big fight.
They did NOT see him coming with his train of 200+ monsters. In fact, they only noticed him when he was halfway through casting his portal spell as the mob was a few yards from catching up to him. It was like a fucking movie. He poofed, and immediately, as if they ran right through the fog of his now departed body, the giant train charged head first into this group of campstealers and slaughtered them all within seconds.
I sat there at a safe distance watching, laughing my fucking ass off the entire time. Once the train had cleared I took back my camp, my friend had made it back to the zone by then and when the others showed up to reclaim it he just gave them a solid /no. They looted their corpses and went to find another camp.
Only in fucking Everquest, man.
Btw if anyone knows the name of the zone I'm talking about it's driving me fucking crazy. It's underneath a city of some kind.. and as I said, there's bandits, shrooms, and some sort of reptile monsters. The main entrance is a sort of tunnel that has level 13-14 shrooms and when you get past the tunnel it's a wide open area that forms sort of a donut shape around a lake. Anyone know the zone I'm talking about?
Nevermind I finally remembered. The Paludal Caverns.
@@sirdamned9272 Was that the one with the "beetle" named Ringo?
That was why I loved playing a monk, if a group did that to me, I'd just do a zone train then FD at their group.
Also I'd aggro the giant shroom boss of PC with my druid to scare the noobies at the bandit camp. Then just let them kill it while keeping them alive. Fun times.
where was that one place where people always farmed those beer steins from goblins (maybe). Remember spending hours doing that.
What I love basically runs down to 1) sense of danger 2) tangible world that you have to for most part physically traverse 3) level-mixed zones 4) non-instanced dungeons 5) the loads of non-bound items that you could buy and sell 6) the spell effects on items(haste, regen , whatever) 7) the game doesn't get better simply because you're max level but rather begins for real with your first group 8) ability to get utterly and completely lost 9) the spells and their poweful effects (invis, levitate, charm, turn into another race etc)
Same for me and many of my old friends. Everquest was the best game we ever played. I played it for 5 years and now, 15 years later, I'm still searching for a game that would give me the same feeling. No game since has ever been able to reach that which we felt back then. I have high hopes for Pantheon - Rise of the Fallen, which will finally be the spiritual successor to Everquest. Everquest 2 was too different from the first game. Anyway, if you never experienced Everquest back in the day, I don't think you will ever understand. It's just so hard to put into words.
Mortac they will never understand
Having a GM do me and my wife's in-game wedding ceremony in the courtyard of Highkeep is a great memory from EQ for me. Loved the GMs in that game. I remember when we asked our favorite one that would usually answer our tickets on Povar to do the honors, she was really happy and excited that we'd asked her. Don't think I've ever really felt more friendly/close to a GM in another MMO. Just EQ.
I love EQ so much
I worked for Verant/SOE for four years as an EQ GM. Glad you had a great time. ❤️
Nice I saw a ceremony in the waterfall and surefall
Love that!
I will never forget the sound a Skeleton made when it hit you ! And killed you. It was like a Bone crushing sound! LOL
oe it's cackling laff
Oh shit that one has a cracked staff! Thats 1pp
That crunching sound was terrible! You knew you could be in trouble
We called that "ninja looting".
The Ranger's Glade was the best site for everything Ranger. Bowyer info, fletching...all kinds of arrows. I loved that site. No other game has captured the magic and mystery for me since.
I had hundreds of posts there. It was crazy the last time I went back and finding out that some of the regulars have since passed on irl.
I use to go on the safe house for rogues monkly business for monks and others
Has anyone seen my corpse? No, but I can help you find it, do you know where you were?
People would help you out in EQ, which was always cool. I've made many friends on corpse runs. ;)
Or you could go to town and buy a Bone Chipped Rod, that will give you 3 chances to find your corpse. It would basically turn your character to face where your corpse was in that zone, and you did your best, to run in that straight line to find it, and if you still couldn't find it, you clicked the Rod again, and you faced where your corpse is again. You would run along, spamming a button that summoned your corpse to you if you were close enough to it. When you found it, you looted it, and it wasn't auto loot. You had to pick each piece off your corpse and reequip it onto yourself. Imagine trying to do that in a hostile environment. You could die again. Now you have 2 corpses, with each having some gear on them. LOL
The other options to get your corpse back was, ask a Shadow Knight, or Necromancer. If they are high enough in lvl, they can use a coffin to summon your corpse right to them.
When I started playing EQ in like 2001, you couldn't loot someone else's corpse, even if you gave consent, if given consent you could only drag it, nothing more. A Rogue I believe, was the only class that could drag 3 corpses at the same time. They really came in handy during a raid wipe. Everyone give consent to the Rogue's!
everyone could pull corpses the same. Rogues were just the only ones to set up a macro to pull multiple at once.
Some of my favorite memories from EQ:
An invisible bridge going across a chasm in a zone I can't remember the name of, waiting for the raid leader to figure out how to get 40-50ish people across the bridge no one can see without people falling off and dying, further delaying the raid with CR and rezzing. I had a map, and as a mage, dropped these little summoned flashing red thingies that would stick around for a few minutes. As I arrived to the other side of the bridge, someone asked in /raid: "Hey, who put the little red flashing things on the ground?" The entire raid walked across the bridge without losing anyone, as if it were an airport runway. :)
13 hour long corpse recovery in Plane of Fear. 13 FUCKING HOURS. Fuck Plane of Fear.
Soloing the top of Velk's Labyrinth for thousands of hours, farming crystalline spiders for AA and enough bricks of velium to buy myself several very fast horses for several characters.
Gornit. That damn hill giant had some DEEP pockets...
Soloing seafury cyclopses at 4am local time, along with maybe a dozen other people who could solo them, and together reciting most of the script of the "Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail" movie in /ooc during the med time.
Kedge Keep. I'd rather be waterboarded for real than have to drag another group in to deal with that goddamn fishy bastard Phinigel Autropos one more time.
Hitting level 49 as a cleric, and suddenly becoming everyone's bestest friend.
Soloing in a goblin mining stronghold zone in the Burning Woods (I think?) until the creatures in Chardok worshiped the ground I stood on.
The epic romance between Bassor the barbarian warrior and Chelestra the elvish wizard... which apparently was beginning to carry over into the real world... until the IRL dude playing Bassor finally found out IRL Chelestra was ALSO a dude...
Got SoW? Got SoW? Gimme SoW. Hey, can you run all the way across the zone to give me a free SoW?
Being berated for 30 minutes because I was "rude" and didn't respond to a rez demand right away, while I was AFK taking a piss.
Getting priority invitations to High Keep goblin camps because I figured out the timing on the respawns, and could literally tell the group, TO THE SECOND, how much time they had to use the restroom or get drink/food before the next warrior/raider popped.
Being a level 36 enchanter before I finally figured out what enchanters were for. What, you mean I'm not just a really shitty wizard with crack and a braindead pet?
Out-DPSing all the guild wizards, as a magician, thanks to loads of nuke focus AAs.
Out-DPSing most of the melee classes with my mage pet, thanks to focus AAs, flurries, berzerk, and critical hits.
Crowd control in LDoN as a mage. "WTF, mages can mez??"
Surviving Y2K, sitting on a beach in Erud's Crossing, killing will-o-wisps for LSs and GLSs.
Logging in 10 years after quitting the game, still having my mains and all their stuff intact, and not having a clue how to play the game anymore... lol
Chanter was the best RPG experience ive ever had. The utility was just unreal, pacify, mez, memblur, Debuffs and Buffs just the idea of enchanters and also bards was so awesome.
I'm a little late, like the vid and completely agree, but it's not Power Looting, it's called Ninja Looting.:) Subbed
Hundred percent. It's ninja looting. Dude probably confused it with power leveling. Although different servers often had their own lingo but I never heard the term "power looting" in my 20 years (on again, off again) of everquesting. In my very early days, we also had a korean ninja looter. He was a bard by the name of "Billysiu". He jumped on every single gnoll fang that dropped but we put up with him because his terrible english was entertaining.
Been listening to this for days while I fall asleep. The nostalgia is amazing. I really love this video.
You explained very well! Everquest is my all time favorite too. I played the original and Everquest 2 a few years later. Then went back to Everquest 1. Difficulty made it more immersive because there were consequences. As you said, when you accomplished something it was more meaningful. You had to actually find your way, sometimes ask others for help, because there was no map to begin with. If you wanted to go somewhere far away you needed help from a wizard or a druid. If you died you had to find your corpse or else you'd lose everything, and you lost enough experience to make it matter. So you felt emotions, you were afraid to die lol (not like real life of course but you know what I mean). I still remember high level characters/people who helped me along the way, they were great.
EQ is the best game for one reason, and one reason alone: Fippy Darkpaw.
Yap yap yap
I second that...
"you are hit for 10hp by Fippy Darkpaw!" ... 😊
Mynthi charmed my ranger once while i was bleeding out on the floor of the ballroom. Her necro buddies healed me up enough to survive when the charm broke and I made it to the zoneline!
I once met a GM in everquest that gave me a quest to do something and when I finished it I got a really good item for it.
Classic, Kunark, and Velious. Those were great times.
Man I loved EQ so much even though it was brutal. I remember spending all night breaking plane of fear and us having try to corpse run fighting naked except for newbie weapons out of the bank.
I remember being down to no more armor and using my old ass whips and I deleveled so much I almost wasn't able to meet the level requirement. Another guild had to help us and we wound up working together that night and raided together a lot afer that.
Called off work that morning cause it was literally an all night thing. Also called out the day my friends and I got attunement for Howling Stones. No regrets lol
I can relate to it all. Everquest flied straight into my heart like an arrow and it's still lodged in there. It's an affection that just won't let go. Even though I'm not playing too actively any more, I still log in to the game now and then just because. It's a longing.
And oh! Speaking about trains.. you forgot Karnors Castle. The trains was none other than epic there.
I used to love training.people and competing with other guilds to kill some monsters. It was who gets there first gets the kill
Unrest had gnarly trains too.. You know it was a good one if the festering hags and the named ghost from the basement were at the zone line
When I started playing you could drop money on the ground, and items and so on. The problem was anyone could pick it up.
In EQ everything had a weight to it, and your character could only carry so much weight. If your grinding somewhere, and your bags are full, or close to it, you'll find that your character is now moving much slower. You might even have to run for your life, and start throwing things out of your bags to lower your weight so you can run at full speed again. It's funny, seeing a character leaving a trail of loot behind though.
EQ didn't use to have shared bank accounts. So, if you had a alt character, and you wanted to give that character money, or items, you would either have to give them to someone you trust that will give it back to you, or run off to a empty part of the zone, and like hide behind a tree, and drop the money, and items on the ground and log off really fast. Items on the ground would fade away after 5mins. It took 30 seconds to logoff. EQ was a big game, and it was slow to start, or shut down. Plus you're on dial up. 3k a second bandwidth. You had to cross your fingers, and hope to God that you could log back into the game fast enough, to loot your stuff off the ground before it faded. :)
Eventually, they made shared banks, and removed the ability to drop items on the ground that way. Now, if you drop a item on the ground, it was the same as deleting it.
VRIceblast ever write profanities in copper?
@@alexanderdol No, I guess because it wouldn't last very long.
There were high lvl guys, that would drop a pile of copper in a low lvl zone, you pick it up, and you were so overweight, you couldn't move, or barely move. I remember just pointing my character towards town, and hitting autorun, and taking like a hour and a half to get to a bank. I lmao when it happened.
I played Iksar on a pvp realm. Was kill on sight to more or less every single faction in-game. Once went and farmed crushbone belts and had so many that I couldn't even walk at normal speed, I was like a snail just barely moving. Had to walk on foot all the way back to Cabilis. Probably took me around four hours just to walk back though i made it the entire way without ever dying. d
I remember giving items to my alts that way. Id try and find a hidden spot drop it, hope nobody saw it log off and back on with the other character and grab it.
I remember I messed up one time by doing that in Ak’Anon.. and those damn cleaners ate my gear!!! I was so sad hahah
Still remember my first enchanter having to get his enchant silver spell in Neriak. I was a high elf who worshipped one of the good gods, probably a mistake thinking back. Didn't occur to me to either buy it off a dark elf or roll my own dark elf. I used my illusions and invis to work my way ever so carefully to the vendor. After a few deaths non rezzed of course I did eventually get my enchant silver spell which helped start my life long obsession with Tradeskills.
The very first person I enchanted some silver for I charged 1pp I think for 10 bars and she went Link dead on me and I carried those enchanted bars around for 6 months when we finally met up again and she recognized me She demanded not only the bars back but her money also. Then she had the audacity to say she paid me the princely sum of 3 pp I was outraged of course and she backed off and just took the 1pp I offered.
Now I started replaying since September and was astonished how powerful tradeskills have become, I have 30ish mill in the bank 6 krono and an inventory of tradeskill supplies that would take probably a dozen toons to max level in all tradeskills. I can't seem to stop myself hoarding more and more tradeskill supplies. I keep my two sellers shops constantly full and keep one barter buyer up at all times. I always strive to learn new useful recipes to make. Such a wonderful game that never stopped growing.
I LOVED EQ back around 2000. I'll always remember growing up in Everfrost and fighting my first spiders by the tunnel and then venturing out onto the plains and being to happy taking down my first mammoth. I remember hating them damn orcs there for the longest time. Oh such fond memorys. I really miss those days before they screwed it all up and made everything to easy. Begging for ports or a rez, going on corpse runs, everything was an adventure, some good, some bad. God i miss it.
get on P99 !
@@Rick-pm5zt I tried installing P99. Coulda get it working so I ended up installing the latest version of todays EQ. To my surprise my account was still there, turned the key on my 90 shaman and to my surprise it started right up. Made some friends, joined a guild and now I'm level 120, raid geared and having as much fun as I did 20 yrs ago and just as addicted. Yup after 8 years clean I'm back using Evercrack again. Impressed what they have done with the game since and latest expansion just came out 3 months ago
I remember running from qeynos to Freeport and I followed the road, instead of the shore. I saw something in the distance running towards me and it was in a full sprint as I was running. I tried running around it a little bit, but it wound up heading straight for me. I died as it ran into my camera. It was a werewolf lol
I played from 99 to 04 and the game was so hard for me. I just socialized and roamed around. I had a level 24 shaman and a level 40 monk lol
I remember on the test server you could kill anything with /testeq. It would instantly heal you up. We could kill the priests of discord and ice giants at level 20.
Also on the test server we could play with the AA points to summon fiery phoenixes as a mage. We used it so much that a GM told us to stop.
I also remember getting stuck in Halas behind some rocks by the lake, where the raft transported you. A GM told me to not get stuck again, otherwise he'd leave me there.
Id play with my step bro mostly, but my dad played too. We would revere bandl, the guard in ever frost that killed the mammoths we couldn't kill. Lol
I remember a girl I was hitting on when I was 9 and she was 13. She was my girlfriend for a week lol. We ran around blackburrow together.
I remember going to the west commons and trading things for other things that were more valuable. I spent 8 hours bargaining and I started with 20 Plat, ended with over 1000 Plat.
I spent countless hours getting lost in eq. I was never the highest level, but I had the best memories.
I used to spend days and days trading in the west commons. I loved trading. I traded my way from a few K plat to a fungal tunic over a few weeks.
BINGO, great rundown. Everquest is incredibly nostalgic in my family.
I will ever, ever, ever forget the amount of people who helped me to get my 10th Coldain ring on my monk. It seemed like my entire guild and dozens of others all showed up to help me out.
It was a blast, it was nerve racking and it was memorable.
I hope we have quests like that in pantheon
The EQ community was amazing. I had one high level Shaman friend on my first character, a Half Elf Paladin on the Cazic-Thule server. Started my Soulfire quest-line super early on, even though everyone told me to start in my 40s.
Dude wound up scrounging together most of his guild and people from one or two of the alliance guilds to help with the hard parts. Got my Soulfire at 17 (If I remember correctly).
There are so many details and aspects of Everquest that I will never, ever, ever forget.
PKTEK never?”
The game that made you feel like you and your friends were transported right into a d&d campaign.
"affected me and stayed with me. the way Everquest has"........that statement says it all
This is by far the best, most succinct and detailed videos of this kind I have ever watched. I thoroughly enjoyed this trip down memory lane. It’s hard to convey to others what a thoughtful well made game EQ was at a time when the genre was first being defined. The complexity of the game design and the attention to detail you sometimes needed to employ just to overcome some of the challenges boggles the mind.
Thanks for your continued content. While I am most interested in Pantheon going forward, the reminiscent trips down memory lane in EQ is enjoyable. God’s blessings to you.
It definitely gave you a rush when people yelled "TRAIN!!" in Blackburrow. Also, finding your corpse may have been broken at times but I seriously loved that aspect.
This game is so rewarding for time you put into it. yes raged a bit when de-levling due to dying, but the brutal world made it worth doing. you made friends and helped them as they helped you. I play again on p99 , only 2 days in but getting that evercrack feeling again!
um the background you chose at the very beginning is all I needed to see to agree :) That is where I started April 19, 1999 as a blind human ranger, then switched to a half elf so i could freaking see lol.
Awesome video, really appreciate making this for us! Hope to see you all on march 16th for the new servers Selo & Mangler for Everquest's 20th Anniversary!!
I think the best thing about EQ was the community feeling, alot of which certainly came from the survival hardships the game impossed. I have many many great memories from back in the day, from as you say running blind from the skeletal minstrals in the Halas tunnels , the epic trains in Blackburrow, the feckin' Karanas werewolf....
My main chars were Enchanter, Shaman and Paladin, though I played all classes at one point or other.
The amazing thing was EVERY class was viable and had its place in a group. I saw in some other posts about the so called "holy trinity" . This in my experience was never the case in EQ. All classes, especially at mid to higher levels brought something important and unique to the park. I had more fun shutting down dungeons with stuns on my enchanter than I have had in any other game. Everyone was important, I needed the tanks to protect me while I cancelled out the adds or put protection rune spells on the healers, Many many great times..
As for loot ninjas, a guild mate of mine pulled a classic on a guy who had tagged into our party looking for a particular weapon , sadly he also "needed" and took almost every other decent drop there was. When finally the sword he wanted did drop, my friend who was playing a magician picked it up and promplty equipped it on his elemental pet. Never have I seen justice served so admirably.
All told, a game I will have very fond memories of, sadly just don't have the time to invest anymore. Still my most cherished memory is from my paladin , having completed the Soulfire quest, I emerged with the new sword and almost all assembled characters in the vicinity applauded me. THAT is community in a game, something I have found very sadly lacking in recent times.
Many thanks Joe for stirring old memories . Ever Crack it will steal your life, but damn it was a grand trip.
I dunno if Fortnite does this shit, but Everquest was where I experienced consequences and emotional bonds through gaming. Lost it's magic at EQII, which I felt even as a teen . Thanks for the nostalgia!
Great video. Another thing that people often miss out on were the immutable laws of the world. It made the world a lot more immersive and convincing that there were things in the world that you couldn't avoid, even if you didn't like them. In candyland MMORPG's of today the players complain enough and the Dev's change the game, give them their stuff back, spawn a named mob etc. If it's not a bug then there should be this unbreakable wall between the residents and the creators (like the real world). You can *HATE* the laws of the universe but they are consistent and unwavering and, whether you like them or not, they were predictable and you lived in that world. EQ had that. There were terrible things but that was the world we had. There was this mysterious wall between the residents and the creators.
FWIW, I agree with deleveling. It doesn't end the game for the player and there needs to be some XP loss and if you are at .01% experience, you have nothing to lose. The only other option is XP debt, but like corpse runs, re-leveling was a significant penalty.
And yes, travel was half the experience of living in this world. The boat theme was my alarm clock ringtone for years! Those boats were magical.
And EQ PTSD was a very real thing.
I said once elsewhere: People who were never in Norrath can never understand what that experience was.
Again, great discussion.
I'm going to jump in the discussion here about de-leveling and say I think it was actually a good thing. I mean, sure, we all hated it when it happened, and I get the point made in the video seeing it from a game programmer's perspective (that it could result in bugs). But I think that de-leveling contributed to the feeling of harshness upon dying, and that harshness was a major component in making the game as great as it was.
One of the positive benefits I remember was that often people would stick around in groups for longer after leveling, to "buff your level" I think is what it was referred to. So you'd stay on another hour, or more, to ensure that if you died you wouldn't then lose the level again. Sometimes people would 'level and run' (and apologize to the group for it) too. But there were times when people would stick around longer just to get that extra xp buffer.
I don't know what EQ you played but in 99 plenty of devs would help you out. Plenty of fear breaks failed where they would depop the zone so everyone to get their stuff back, etc. If you complained enough in the early days devs would do all kinds of unfair things. Some even got fired over it.
@@kant12 But what? They shouldn't get fired. The world is a nice, fair, and easy place where everyone wins and gets trophies and money and women and loot.
My favourite memory of early EQ which I played on Rallos Zek server was a time when a huge number of dark race players gathered in Nekt Forest to zone into West Commonlands for a pre arranged mass pk fight with the light races. Spent about an hour gathering, buffing and getting ready then when everyone zoned into WC the server crashed big time and I spent the rest of the night unable to log back in.
This was really fun to watch and brought back a lot of memories. Also, exactly how I feel when I try and describe my memories of the game and what it meant to me. I remember so many different occasions, pieces of gear, locations, fun times, frustrating times...you name it. It's hard to synthesize all of those things into something meaningful that someone who never played it would understand. In some ways, EQ was one of those times where you just had to be there!
Love your passion for the game and love the video. I can’t watch it all now but I guarantee I will. I have a few early horror stories as well. The fact that this game could emotionally and physically distress you to the point it did is what made early EQ so great. I’ve had times my heart would pound to the point it scared me. There never has been or ever will be a game this great. Awesome video and I look forward to watching the rest of it when I get time.
Adso Melk that fear of dying at high level somewhere very remote, and that sinking feeling when you did die and had no chance/hope of a Cleric rez, and realised you’d just lost days/weeks worth of experience. And then trying to work out how you were going to get to (as you were naked), and loot your corpse, so you didn’t lose everything you’d acquired over the last x months of gameplay. It was a bit too brutal at times, especially considering most people early on were playing over dial up modems. But boy, did it focus your concentration. ;j
I remember my cousins always were on everquest. I remember the gnolls and the best of the best. Thanks for the nostalgia man
I'm currently back into an EverQuest kick, but this time I discovered the EQEMU community and am working on tweaking a custom server for myself, getting everything just right to balance the nostalgia fix as well as quality of life. However, like you said, even if I managed to make a 1 to 1 recreation of the game as it was in 1999, you'll never quite capture the same magic as your first encounter with everything. Allakahzam and similar sites were still growing, not everything was documented, and maps were harder to come by in the early days. Now, everyone knows exactly where to go, who to kill, the exact percentage chance for an item to drop, etc. But just because we know all this, doesn't mean we can't just login to a world we love and enjoy the simplicity of hitting "A" and hearing the crunch of skeleton bones in the newbie zones or exploring the vast world of Norrath without PoK books or the Nexus.
I once had a GM come after I made a petition because my Vah Shir (cat humanoid character) was stuck in a tree and the GM could not stop laughing - CAT STUCK IN A TREE!!! And taking screenshots of my poor, stuck toon. I did get out, with the GM's help, but it really stuck with me. Asshat, but I can see the humor in it. Oh, and a GM once gave my gnome rogue a gnome (meat) sandwich. In character, I cried like a baby and told him that wasn't NICE to do! He gave me some nice goodies after that.
I have a lot of memories as a 15-16 year old. First time I ever logged in was as a human warrior and I remember seeing Qeynos Hills. I rerolled as a Wood Elf warrior, I took that character into the mines in Kaladim, it was so dark and I got so lost, I ended up just deleting that character. Rerolled another WE War. Some higher levels gave me a suite of all the visible pieces of bronze armor, I was so stoked. I remember watching a group of around 50 level 50 players decide to try and kill the Priest of Discord in Kelethin. They all got wrecked lol. I finally became knowledgeable enough to know that Wood Elves make terrible warriors, so I rerolled as a Barbarian War, and did the infamous Halas to Freeport run. Some random guys invited me to their guild on the Tunare server, it was called "Shadow Chasers". A group of us were trying to get to the Oasis and we got wiped in South Ro by a desert madman or some shit. Had to have one of our high levels come help us retrieve our corpses. I also did have the chance to watch those Best of the Best duel tournaments in the arena in Lake Rathe. Ahhh. Good times.
Oh man I forgot about the best of the best tournaments I saw one of those as a wee rogueling
Stumbled across this via UA-cam's weird algorithm and sent me down the tunnel of nostalgia...
Things that I feel need honorable mentions:
-Hell Levels. 30, 35, 40, 45
-Skill/casting leveling...who hated to see a lvl 40 fizzling like mad or a rogue that couldn't sneak and you IMMEDIATELY knew they were power leveled
-Languages; yea, WoW had the language thing, but EQ let you LEARN other languages
-Some spells couldn't be obtained unless you got a random drop/farmed or got as a quest reward
That being said, I miss this game and would love to link up with people to play it again via steam or whatnot....
Was called "Ninja looting" on my server not power looting. That's another thing about EQ each server had its own sub culture
Charm was MUCH STRONGER in EQ than the similar "Mind Control" from WoW. For starters IIRC only humanoids can be MC'd where as any mob in EQ aside from a few exceptions can be charmed. But the biggest difference is a WoW priest's Mind Control was a channeled ability. This means the priest would be completely out of the fight while they control the mob directly. It was nice to be able to use all of the mobs spells on demand instead of random casts because your hot bar would actually turn into the mobs spells, but at the same time that means you are completely unable to move or cast any spells, no heals, no dps, no threat reduction, no repositioning, you just sat there while the mob did all the work. If you want to do ANYTHING you need to break the MC. In EQ you still have complete control of your character, and the charm was more like a pet than a direct control. In alot of ways charm is much more akin to a warlocks Enslave Demon or Hunter's Tame Beast, as in those scenarios you can still control your character while simultaneously controlling the pet, but again those were limited to only certain Demons or Beasts respectively. Also the random duration of charm made for way more memorable encounters when compared to the permanent control of hunter pets or the static duration of MC/Enslave Demon
Karnor's Castle:- Serving Trains since 1999
Hehe 2000, April. Thats when Kunark came out. But!!! You're 100% right in that this place was grand central station....!
Have you hugged your iksar today?
I remember getting enough exp to level up during a fight ... and then dying before the fight was over and de-leveling. But I completely agree that the difficulty was part of what made the game great.
Great video! I have a similar lost in the dark story from the first toon I made. It was Dec '99 and I had just got the game. I picked human Ranger so I started in Surefall Glade, right in front of that building in your background. Being a noob, I didn't know that I needed to equip that newbie candle in order to be able to see. So, like you, I was not able to find my way through the pitch black tunnel from Surefall to Qeynos Hills. Frustrated, I rerolled as a warrior in Freeport. I played that toon for a couple weeks until, while grouping at the Orc Highway in Oasis, I saw a high level Paladin with Soulfire killing spectres with a nearby group. As soon as I found someone to replace me in that group, I logged out and rerolled again as a human Pally. I played that character exclusively for the next 4 1/2 years.
EQ is the GOAT of MMORPGs! I would give anything to find another game that made me feel as immersed in the world and had as great of a community as old school EQ.
Watched the whole thing, such a great game - Thanks for covering so many familiar memories!
I think EQ was so Memorable, because you had to think about your actions, because death was a real threat. Also, your actions could cause the deaths of others, and no one wants that on their conscience.
When you went on a big trip, you had to make sure you had enough food and water, because that's something you had to have in EQ. You had to take all the items you might need for your trip. In WoW, that was something you didn't have to worry about, at least I can't remember that being something you had to worry about.
The great thing about EQ was you and your group overcoming the odds, basically fighting back to back to survive. You having to rely on others.
That's where Reputation really comes in. Your Reputation as a player, how good you could play your class really meant something.
EQ was hard, not hard as in, you had to do everything perfectly to win, just hard as in, if you don't work together, the mob will grind you down, and kill you.
EQ was hard to solo, but grouping with just 1 other player, made the game easier. So, you and 1 friend could have a awesome time playing EQ. That's how EQ encouraged grouping. They made you want to group with others, which encouraged you to talk to others, and make friends, add them to your friends list, and look from them the next time you logged on. I've never experienced that again since EQ.
You could right now, have the time of your life play EQ, with just 1 or 2 other friends. You could all hire Mercenaries, making a full group, and tackle the world of EQ, all by yourself. Raiding wasn't something everyone like to do. The group content was awesome, and the gear you got was pretty close to raiding gear.
Make your account silver on EQ, with 8 character slots, and you could play for free, and have Access to the majority of the game. Though the Cleric Mercenaries will no longer be good enough after lvl 85 or so, unless you paid for monthly access, and can get Heroic Mercenaries, the normal ones, just can't heal you fast enough, or just don't have the mana long enough to keep you alive for long.
You can have a ton of fun getting to lvl 85 though, and if one of you are playing a Cleric, then Heroic Mercenaries aren't as Necessary. Also, in EQ, getting to 85, isn't something you can do normally in a few days. It could take you a few months, or longer, depending on how you play the game.
That's what's so great about EQ, you don't need a huge player Population, you just need 1 or 2 other players to have a great time.
In Vanilla WoW you had to have food and water but they got rid of the RPG part of that game pretty quickly.
@@jacobmurphy8419 ok, didn't know that, I've play WoW a few times, but it wasn't near the beginning of the game. I was quite happy with EQ at the time WoW came out, it wasn't till years later, that a friend talked me into trying out WoW. At that time, I don't remember Food and Drink being required, though you could use them to gain stats.
Yup, if you had no food and water, you'd constantly get spammed with "You are thirsty, find something to drink", or what not, and you couldn't regen mana/health at the same speed. @@VRIceblast
Anyone who was there will know and appreciate this game.
My own magical memory was the first time we broke into the NTOV. Had no idea how huge that zone was until we made it in.
Oh and of course there was the first time you visit the plane of fear and find out it lives up to its name.
You use to be able to kill the banker. I remember seeing in chat, "Someone killed the banker again!" You'd have to wait like 30 mins for him to respawn.
Big Classes, like Troll or Ogre could stand in the doorway, and they would block the entrance to the banker. You can't walk through other people.
Eventually, they gave certain npc's the Death Touch. Because if you accidentally attacked one, they would kill you with one touch. That really solved the killing of npc's like Bankers, and Merchants problem. Some npc's, would just ignore all damage, so you can't even attack them. It was a pain though to be in a hurry, and run to the banker, to find that someone killed him!!!!
"You had to win, run, or die"
Anyone else remember when they were learning to raid, and they first heard the advice "Stand and die, we'll drag and rez you later"?
Yep, my favorite game ever also. I still remember logging on for the first time in "99", and running around freeport thinking omg there are other real people here! After a week of being afraid to actually work my way out to the commonlands, I finally did make my way to the EC cave. There I met my guild who I am still friends with irl today.
This video truly sums up why EQ was so special. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I just started playing P99 and it’s all coming back to me. Good times.
I was a 14 year old kid who trained everyone intentionally if I wanted the spot they were camping, and I was a fairly geared Rogue so I could KS entire groups if they pulled a named mob. I remember joining a raid for that dragon outside of Plane of Growth and realizing that my damage was higher than any other groups, so I just left my party and stole a Crescent Blades of Luclin off of the dragon we killed, and gave all of the other items to the raid and pretended like the dagger never dropped and got caught selling it later. People still talk about me 22 years later on the facebook group for our server (I've changed a lot since then). But I ended up being so hated that I not only had to re-roll, I eventually had to leave the server completely when our server split from Tunare to Drinal and my reputation was so bad that even on Drinal, people from a completely different server (Mithaniel Marr) would not group with me. Now as an adult who isn't toxic, I find myself longing for a similar system in WoW because I'm tired of having to deal with toxic players and blatant ninja looters who face no consequences for terrible behavior.
I played from 2000 to 2004. Such memories of a less stressful time of my life
Best game ever made been playing off and on for 20 years luckily I found project1999 to me Velious was the peak of the game.
Dude, this video hits me in the feels big time. So on point and a great watch to hit al those nostalgia feelings. Great post!!
this game really is crazy at making memories. I recently came back to play again for the 20th anniversary and ran into someone I frequently grouped with and later guilded with after 15 years. who also decided to come back around to check out the 20th anniversary. I just happened to catch him talking in general chat and recognized the name and he recognized mine when i asked i think my monk pulled Lucan for your Soulfire. Absolutely crazy.
28 years ago I watched Maelfyn the ranger die at the spire in Dreadlands, and now this...
@@civrev I love you man. I will always remember our times on Everquest. I still recall the first night you installed the game on my PC. I watched you video beginning to end, and as if those days were yesterday. When you said memorable places, my mind snapped to Chess Board, and you said it right there! EWB 7/21. SSoY 8/24. FBSS. GEBs. Maid and Butler fangs, NSW. Those were the days!
@@civrev I love this. For all the flack the internet and social media gets... It rocks when you can reconnect with old friends/gaming buddies that you lost touch with! Good times!
Damb! It's been that long ago!
Best memories of my childhood was playing with my dad and brother. Dad was a warrior brother was a bard and i was a cleric. Was 8 years old then im 27 now and i still play. Nothing like it used to be but ill always hold EQ close to heart. So sad to see it dying out. 😯
Thank you for taking the time to make a video about one of my favorite games!
I also played it back at release, and you're right about so maybe things. Item names is a really good point. I played WoW during BFA a little while back, and I don't recall the name of any item I looted except the heart of Azeroth which we all got. I do remember the ones you mentioned from over 20 years ago though.
I have a couple of additions to your navigation topic. If you drop a rusty dagger, or any weapon I think, the point always faces north, there was a spell called True North that spins you around to face that way, and Mapquest was a great source for maps back then. It was common for players to print out zone maps and keep them in a binder. I would then add points of interest.
Also, do you remember when they first allowed name changes? They were against allowing people to escape the bad things they did, so they created a website that listed the name history of anyone who used the service. I think it listed the guilds they had been in as well, but I could be wrong. I don't think we'll see anything like that again either.
Soo many good memories from EverQuest
I was super young and never played it serious, but 12 year old me had a blast training those dark elf kos npcs to the bank in Freeport
100% agree. I hope they can recapture some of this with pantheon. I put down 600 to support the game.
Everquest is one of my all time favorites (ultima online is my favorite). If the game could kept that feeling it had early on I may have never quit playing as I loved the mystery and the difficulty of the game and the need for cooperation and the fact that death could be a real pain if you weren't careful. After the numbers of high level wizards increased to the point where you could go anywhere easily it sort of lost that regional feel it had going. I was a qeynos resident and spent half my game time in blackburrow and out in the karanas and still remember the first time I saw a dark elf for the first time. Now the game is basically empty except for some key locations where people go to solo since there is no need to group anymore. I also miss the unique weapons and equipment that allowed you to twink a new character without so much emphasis on what level you were that is so key to gaming nowadays. It's time is gone but I have many fond memories from those early days and I can't say that about most games I've played since.
EC'I refugee... The one game that I will never forget.
PTSD - brownies... MFing brownies.
The boat, you could fall off that thing zoning. You could just fall through it.
Drowning when zoning. One of the most screwed up bugs. East commons to west commons the dry land drowning spot.
The glory of the song... has anyone here seen my corpse... lol ugh... every day someone would lose their corpse.
The legend of fancy the bard, I tip my hat.
Oh god... is that where "me no reroll" came from?
I dont know how many coffins and tiny coffins I went through and I got dicked out of the summon corpse robe.
GM events I saw.
Oasis GM controlled sandgiant.
Dreadlands GM controlled driachnid
An Intersction I had a GM give me crap one day for killing the treants in east karana. Dude went on about deforesting karana.
I will be in pantheon.
Joe, I admire your mental fortitude for being able to go back to this game. I havent played since 2002 and today i stumbled across your videos. Only someone like you can relate to What I feel right now. I have the craziest anxiety about how this world is gone forever for me. I spent almost every waking hour for 3 years living and breathing Everquest and I to this day remember so much of it. I played on Mithaniel marr server in the rival guild to legendary Afterlife, led by Thott and Hobben.
And if you can believe it, I still have a ton of regret from this time. Things that slipped out of my hands, like botb, losing the last man standing event due to GM rooting me in 1v1 vs my rouge guildmate. My god, this whole thing is such a blast from the past rushing through my head right now.
Hey, I was watching this video on my Roku and it hit me so hard I had to get on the comp just to comment:
This is the end-all be-all of UA-cam videos about the glory that was EQ. As someone who was there (my wife and I gladly accepted eventual homelessness for the sake of being a part of this history), I can tell you that Joe Leonard nails just about every single thing you could want to know on the subject, and he's spot on at every turn. This is the definitive retro-review of EQ, no question in my mind. I wish I could give this a million thumbs up. If you weren't there, you can't do better than listening to Joe here if you really want to know why people go on and on about "those days." And if you were there, it's just the only retrospective you'll ever need. In other words, this is the REAL DEAL scoop on Everquest. If I had my choice between this and some documentary with interviews from Brad McQuaid, et al, I would choose this every time.
Fantastic, Joe. Thank you.
You accepted homelessness for a video game. A game that lasted a handful of years, and is now essentially gone. I can only pray that you didn't have children at the time. Your post is exactly what was so wrong with Everquest. It was addictive, and adults made very poor decisions in order to devote more and more time to the game. Families were broken. Children were neglected. And apparently someone was made homeless because of it. And it's all going to happen again with Pantheon. It's very sad.
@@dustinhunt6569 Pfft, no we didn't have kids, and it was homelessness in Portland, OR. Do you know that homelessness in Portland is like? VACATION, lol. Our three months of homelessness was chicken soup for the soul, buddy -- and it was absolutely worth it, you bet your azz. We look back on our time in EQ with a lot of pride, so kindly stfu and keep your platitudes to yourself, protestant boy. Listening to you, you'd think we were heroin addicts or something. Christ, fk off.
lol heroin addicts? The only person here talking about heroine addiction is you. If you enjoyed your time of being homeless, then good on you. No children around to neglect? Even better! It doesn't change the fact that EQ ruined families based on peoples lack of ability to regulate themselves. The game mechanics required the vast majority of people's free time. EQ widows are a real thing, and many of them had children. So, no fking off for me. I'll speak the truth when I please.
@@dustinhunt6569 yup beta bitch confirmed
@Darrin Crose Wow, what a wonderfully thought out argument! "You ate a pathetic idiot". It's like poetry! I'm sure you meant "are" instead of "ate" of course. I'm going to guess that you're so butthurt because you are one of those neglectful fathers or husbands that I mentioned in my post. I bet you spent all of your free time on a game, and now you're embarrassed that you chose a game over your family. It's okay to be embarrassed, I'm embarrassed for you.
Now, to answer your absolutely ignorant questions. "Why are you even here?" I would guess that I am here for the same reason you are here. To listen to the reasons this youtuber gave as to why EQ was the greatest game ever.
Now, if you would like to point out some kind of flaw that you see in my absolutely factual argument, please feel free to do so. Or, in all of your ignorance, just keep on resorting to personal insults. That's how truly pathetic idiots argue.
Another thing I distinctly remember as an EPIC high was when my cleric (level 56) non-guilded, asked in every zone I passed through to help me kill Mordac Ragefire for the coveted cleric rez stick. Arguably the most useful item in the game. After repeatedly asking people to help...three "family" guilds came to Skyfire mountains. (No raid window) . It was amazing....We all got coordinated. Each guild had their best tanks, healers, dps, and when I did my final hail, the tank in my group got aggro, while I healed and the other dps in my group ensured that our group was able to be the only ones loot. Then the other guilds joined in the fight. 78 (level 50-60 people) killed him in a realtively short amount of time. Got the item and did the turn in. Then returned to SM and used my newly gotten rez stick to help rez the rest of the players. Since no other cleric had one. I was the first in that group of people.
The feeling that you got your EPIC was awe-inspiring. Then a few weeks later I was asked to go on this raid or that raid or given a lot of pp for rezzing. I would litterally sit just outside Karnor's Castle and about every 20-40 minutes there would be a train...I would make hundreds of pp just rezzing and buffing people. Was great times.
That was what made the game great...The class EPIC item.
When I first installed Everquest, I made a Hobbit and left the starting area to grind the very first orc camp, and I literally stayed right there for 6 weeks straight grinding those same orcs.
I was so used to games like Quake were the game just had a couple maps that you grind over and over, I didn't even realize there was more to the game than the starting city and the very first orc camp that I encountered.
I started between Velious and Luclin and had a buddy guide me though Antonica, Odus and Kunark. I was a wonderful and I still loved it with Luclin. PoK changed everything and it's been what it is since then, but it's still fun to play after 20 years.
This game was both perfect and imperfect beautifully.
Great video man!! One detail i always tell people about and probably one of my favs, you touched on a little with the pets. But was when we camped a named mob for hours to get a certain item say the ykesha, when they spawned you knew they had that item just from them holding it. Never have i seen a game use that since. It was so exciting!! Again great video i really enjoyed going down memory lane! Thank you!!
I remember having to go into plane of fear doing corpse runs for other guilds making lots of money for people to get there items back from plane of fear
Thank you for all the memories! Blast from the past!!! 30 minutes in, gonna come back to watch the rest! love it!!
So, after 15 years, I came back to playing EQ. I forgot about that trap in Blackburro. I was watching this vid while I was palying. Not even an hour after I fell in that trap, you talk about it on the vid. My wife was watching when I fell down that hole and was laughing at me. Just think what her reaction was when just a little while later she hears you talk about it.
Loved EQ. For multiple reasons. You touched on some of them. Some of which make me laugh now when I hear "gamers" complaining about grinding. Sometimes I speak up.
What you have to wait 20 minutes to get the item you wanted. Try waiting 5 days for a mob to spawn, and you better hope there isn't a reset of the server during that period or your right back to day 1 of the wait.And hopefully you where the 1st to that specific mob. Spending a whole week getting your exp up so you can raid on a Saturday night, only to lose all that exp from the week during that raid. Epic weapons taking months to complete. Not done in 30 minutes with 2 buddies...actually needing 50 plus people to get 1 single piece and hoping the mob dropped it.
GMs on MT we had GM-Linus who was fantastic. Not only would she help you when you needed it she would hang around after chatting. And sometimes when she was really bored she would just run around the zone(s) handing out fun things like cake! Something truly missing from modern day MMOs...no in game instant help. At best you have to log out and go to some support page and hope there is help in the forums or submit a ticket and then just wait and see.
18. Training. I use to camp my necro in whatever zone I was farming in just for that or my druid. Both top tier at the time. If someone or people started kill stealing from me. The train that would arrive on their doorstep where epic to say the least. The higher the zone the more epic they would be. Wasn't unusual to dump 30 or more on top of people who deserved it.
When you finally got into raiding. The learning curve hand holding was gone. You where expected to know your spells/skills combos. Top guilds on MT would actually assign you class mentors. And during your probation time you had to actual prove you knew what you where doing. On a side note, as a former druid how I hated being put into the clerics healing rotation. Having to spam heal for an entire raid along with the macros to go with....ewwww.
20. You mentioned NPC that where memorable. As a gnome necro who spent more time in Everfrost then I should have farming giants. Martar! That barbarian bastard. Kiting 3 giants and he comes up out of no where and just starts to beating on you.
What I really loved about EQ which you didn't mention. Nothing was handed to you. There was no in store to buy top level from. There was no in store purchase to buy weapon X, Y or Z from There was no, if you buy this expansion you can start at top level. You had to actual earn it. All while paying 9.99 for that privilege. But there was a community. You made friends, some many would think of as life long friends.
I recently logged in EQ after roughly 14 years away from it. I was shocked to find my characters alive and intact. Was even more shocked when I used /ooc to find out there where still people from back then on and playing still. Even managed to chat the rest of the night with a few just catching up on life stuff.
My first experience with EQ. Losing my body/gear in the tunnels of Permafrost. Spent hours trying to recover. Finally got lucky and a threesome of people helped. All level 55, A shaman, Necro, and A Paladin. Still took them over an hour to get the bodies out because of how deep me and my friend had managed to get in. And not knowing which body actual had gear on it.
(Back when this happened 55 was top level)
I kind of wish that Sony would buy back this game from Daybreak. And revamp it with new graphics. I think I would be happy to return to the game and pay a subscription for it. But I would really want the mechanics to stay old school. All the things that made EQ great in the first place.
/hotkey 1. /OOC Train to zone, don't be there when I get there.
wait for reply in /ooc of which zone
/hotkey 2 /OOC whatever one is closest!!!
I remember how you could get drunk from drinking ale in the taverns. The way the screen swayed as you ran. omg. we would drink ale in kelithin and race on those ramps through the city and see how far you could go before you fell off. Just another example of detail added to this awesome game. good times. :-)
But what if you de-leveled! Oh my goodness!!
Lol, i played a bard and use to work a taxi service in my off time running people from Qeynos to Freeport. It was more dangerous than getting a warp, but I had the shortest route memorized and had the speed and invisibility songs so we could hide and outrun most things. Good times, had a few nail biting moments.