Getting misty eyed over a MMO: EverQuest veterans unite!

Rainsmercy wrote:

The only worse one for Trains was Black Burrow, I died tons of times to idiots training the gnolls.

Psssshh, Black Burrow trains were fun, sure, but they didn't hold a candle to the Mistmoore Express.

Mistmoore Express

Hug the wall, run like hell and don't look back.

You guys are starting to get me nostalgic... I wonder if Geleon is still lost in the wilds of Kunark on Drinal...

LockAndLoad wrote:
The first experience in the elf zone and I just can't remember the name of the first dungeon with the orcs but I still scramble in any game when someone shouts "Train to Zone"

I'll never forget that zone; it's called Crushbone. Always loved storming that castle and facing off against Lord Crush, his horde of Legionaires, Oracles, Slavers as well as the Dark Elf ambassador Dvinn and taking his treacherous heart as a prize. I spent way too much time in that zone. :)

I think everybody's spent too much time in that zone.. from what, level 5-6 to 15?

Rainsmercy wrote:

The only worse one for Trains was Black Burrow, I died tons of times to idiots training the gnolls.

BB was bad for trains, Mistmoore had epic trains though, you wouldn't just pull random mobs you'd pull every boss and mini boss in the zone to the zone line where they'd then spend the next half an hour slaughtering everyone that zoned in.

edit: damn Teneman stole my thunder.

The Estate of Unrest (always loved that name!) was no slouch in the train department, either! You knew you were screwed when you saw the hags out in the yard!

Yeah Unrest was pretty brutal. CB had trains, but Unrest had TRAINS. How many of you still have the old eqatlas maps printed up in a binder somewhere?

Velks Lab was fun for trains too. Not as epic as Mistmoore's, but definitely fun to see people diving to their deaths off the icy pathways to get out of the train track.

Nuean wrote:

Yeah Unrest was pretty brutal. CB had trains, but Unrest had TRAINS. How many of you still have the old eqatlas maps printed up in a binder somewhere?

Guilty as charged

Teneman wrote:

Velks Lab was fun for trains too. Not as epic as Mistmoore's, but definitely fun to see people diving to their deaths off the icy pathways to get out of the train track.

Nuean wrote:

Yeah Unrest was pretty brutal. CB had trains, but Unrest had TRAINS. How many of you still have the old eqatlas maps printed up in a binder somewhere?

Guilty as charged ;)

Let's just say I still use my "Got SoW" T-Shirt and my mousepad

you could make some nasty trains in Lguk

Khoram wrote:
Farscry wrote:

I agree; I enjoyed the combat, I hated the forced downtime.

I hated the forced downtime, in principle, but looking back on it now I realize how many good friends I made (and how much we talked to each other) because of it.

I guess original EQ was a lightning strike of mixed pain and awesome-sauce that will never strike again. *Sigh* So many good memories, though. So many more atmospheric, hilarious, organic memories than WoW or any other MMO.

I didn't mind it so much, but I've always been a laid back person, I liked the downtime to chat, obsess in my OCD way about organized inventory, or answer a question in chat.

I started EQ on Vallon Zek - Team PvP server. It was fun at first, in spite of the glaring imbalance - but even with that, it presented a challenge to some classes indeed. I guess from a 'realism' point of view - 'balance' is not a perfectly valid concept anyway, but from a game play point of view, it is indeed. The classes - like the Enchanter who would loose most all battles, except for against a few classes - they could easily beat - had to be very cautious and sometimes stay somewhat hidden. Druids were cake for enchanters though because of cast times. The enchanters mezz was faster than any of the Druids heals or nukes, so you could - if it was timed right, perma interrupt their casting just about.

Blackburrow brings back some fond memories - oddly, one of my most clear memories of EQ was the 2 hours corpse run there, a couple hour corpse run in Naggy's Lair, and then 2 hours of corpse summoning in Chardok, lol. Funny what sticks with you...

I played WoW for a good while, but I just couldn't take it. I think I had just had one too many groups where no one even talked at all. Dunno, but I started looking for a new game. I really needed something with a 'world' that required some exploration, a high level of challenge and all that. In spite of the bugs, I found Vanguard to be a pretty good game all in all. It's certainly buggy, but oddly, that lends to quite a bit of social interaction, indeed, lol. It has a lot more of the things I like about MMOS, like EQ than other games, at least in my opinion. The best part is that I just don't feel 'rushed' to get anywhere or get anything done real fast.

I'm not sure - if there was a 'classic EQ' out there, I might play it. A year ago I would have without question, but this new game's got me pretty hooked, to be honest, heh.

What do you mean by "classic EQ"? The original EQ is out there still running and being updated. It is exactly as you remember it, except the old zones you remember are completely devoid of PCs except you, and there's all the PoK crap and gnome teleporters in place of boats and stuff. If you really want classic EQ, as in, EQ1 + Kunark + Velious, I think the Mac EQ server was never updated after that. Hmm actually I think it was updated through PoP and never after that. So it's kind of stuck in a time-warp, which apparently some people actually prefer. Then of course there's the EQemu stuff, but I haven't tried any of it.

Ohhh, I forgot about the bugs of Mistmoore! That place truly did have epic trains to the point that most people that went there were really hardcore. It was so damn buggy and the developers swore they would fix it.

One of my favorite zones was Unrest.

I don't even know how exactly I stumbled over this forum but I somehow did and just reading your posts I had to create an account and post.

I don't know which servers you guys are on but a lot of players are returning to EQ and plenty of new ones are as well. I came back about a year ago and I've been loving it. It was a bit of a shock at first but now I'm used to the changes and it's still the best MMO out there in my opinion. I started on Druzzil (well I started on another server but that was truely dead for newbies so I changed to the Combine which merged onto Druzzil) and I've just moved to the Antonius Bayle server because I'm in the UK and I want to try raiding

Anyway lots and lots of people are creating new toons and I've never found it a problem to find groups. I'm in the Legacy of the Ravens guild if any of you feeling like swinging on by...

You can never truly quit EQ...

That's awesome, though! Did you have a hard time jumping back into EQ after taking a break? I can't fathom starting up again and how long it would take me to become group-worthy, and much less raid-worthy which would be the ultimate goal...

Plus, I'd feel all of my accomplishments over those three-years would be all for not when I see my awesome Plane of Time dagger on the auction house for 5 plat.

I'd play again, but I'm spoiled by newer MMOs...meaning, I'm used to healing my target, and if it is a foe, having it heal its target. Also, EQ seems harder to play 3rd person, I try and click on my target and end up clicking on me all the time. Oh, and conning, I'm so used to just hovering over my target to see its con level. Still, I do miss my first MMO.

Khoram wrote:

What do you mean by "classic EQ"? The original EQ is out there still running and being updated. It is exactly as you remember it, except the old zones you remember are completely devoid of PCs except you, and there's all the PoK crap and gnome teleporters in place of boats and stuff. If you really want classic EQ, as in, EQ1 + Kunark + Velious, I think the Mac EQ server was never updated after that. Hmm actually I think it was updated through PoP and never after that. So it's kind of stuck in a time-warp, which apparently some people actually prefer. Then of course there's the EQemu stuff, but I haven't tried any of it.

Guess I was thinking just the original stuff prior to Luclin. Yeah, the zones exist and all, but no one there.. I have thought about trying it again a few times, but Age of Conan's just got me too hooked. It's got it's bad parts, but the combat system is cool, no auto attack makes things interesting and keeps you involved the whole time - no yawning while playing, heh.

So Steam has a deal running. $2.50 for their EQ Starter Pack, which has pretty much everything you need if you haven't played in the last couple of years.

Did anyone bite?

I did. I'm 31% into updating EverQuest. I figure I'll give it a one month whirl, mainly because I'm very curious to see what kind of game it is today versus five years ago.

I keep asking myself: is this a horrible idea? I'll post some impressions later.

Wow. For $2.50 I almost want to bite! Too many games being played right now though and I can barely fit those in! That and the fact that I hopefully will be spending a good amount of time on home improvements this year (5 months so far in the house) means getting hooked on another game would be bad right now.

... but then again, it's only $2.50!

Elycion wrote:

It was then that I re-encountered my old friend Jarik. He was the leader of a guild named The Pantheon and was playing a new character at this time as his main, an Erudite wizard he'd bought on Ebay named Gallenite. Yes, it was the same Gallenite who would later go on to lead both the EQ and EQ2 dev teams. At this point in time though he didn't yet work for Sony. Despite the eventual interpersonal conflicts that would tear it apart, The Pantheon was without question the greatest guild I have ever yet had the honor to be affiliated with.

Holy crap, hi Elycion! You may not remember me but I played Cygnet and was a member of the Pantheon, (just as the guildbaby -- after a year of playing, I topped out at 39). I met Desitny making metal studs for her every now and then, got her hand-me-down bronze armor as she got upgrades... this was back when I was in my teens and she wasn't much over 20. Occasionally I'd match up with various guildie alts as they flew by and remember healing Ash at KFC once. I even have hazy memories of driving some alt-account max-level cleric for a short while during the odd guild run but that was when I'd semi-quit.

Holy cow, what are the odds? I certainly remember you, now it's got me trying to remember the name of the mage that used to play with you/your account. Was it Canda? I remember him camping the Oggok guards way back in the day helping others get XP and cash from the drops.

That was one of the great things about The Pantheon. There were no members you'd "just forget", even those who were casual players were part of the family.

Name rings a bell, yeah. Didn't play with him that often though... my pocket tank was Vuplar, and we levelled most of the way together.

Other fond memories: camping Najena with a couple of Pantheon folks and a couple of strangers during all all-nighter jboots effort. Finally getting them one day off one of the giants in Ro. Taking an afternoon early on when I scored a dirk of Dvinn and going all the way to... jeez, now I can't even remember the name of the Halfling town... to sell it for more than they were going for in Faydark (worked too, got 50pp for it instead of the 15-20 in Gfay). Being one of the major banded armor suppliers in Kelethin a couple of months after launch. Explaining the pricing of said armor being based on mats, not AC (as people seemed to expect).

I agree with a few of the sentiments so far about the downtime. We griped about it at the time, but what I wouldn't give for a slower pace in today's MMOs. Time to chat, goof around, etc. between pulls. Having healing be more about stretching your mana pool that little bit more, gambling with the tank's life... waiting for that perfect second to land your CH instead of SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAM...

Sigh. Good times.

Anyone check out Project 1999? Still can't get used to controlling the 11 year old engine with a mouse and WASD... Don't think this would be much fun without a dedicated group, though.

Khoram wrote:

Anyone check out Project 1999?

I'd never heard of this one. Makes it very tempting to install and give it a look for nostalgia's sake.

Yup I'm playing on Project 1999 myself, wow old names. http://www.project1999.org

Look up an enchanter named Shimm

I recreated Elycion the Wood Elf Ranger a few days ago. Haven't really played much yet. It's a shame I didn't know about this server earlier since it's already too late for me to start in the same timeline that I originally did. Rubicite, Boxes of Abu Kar, Manastones, Guise of the Deceiver are already nerfed and gone.

Hiya Elycion, good to see some of the old names still floating around.

Doc! Good to see you post. At this rate in a few more months we'll have enough folks around for a Pantheon reunion.

Sadly I haven't logged any more time in the Project 1999 server. Life's just too busy to play MMOs anymore it seems. Perhaps in the winter when being outside isn't so much fun that will change a bit.

"Everqwest has defeated Yourlife in a duel to the death. Your life has fled like a cowardly dog!"

I liked this a lot, so I, too, had to register and comment.

I started playing EQ in April of 2000, just after Ruins of Kunark came out. I was 14 at the time. Leveling was slow going for me, but I was hooked. I made a human monk in Qeynos named Sevlore on the Morell-Thule server. If I remember correctly I had 20 points to work with when I made him. Not knowing what this meant, I put 15 into charisma and 5 into intelligence. I wanted a smart, good-looking monk. I didn't catch this mistake until I had played him up to lvl 46 or so and just didn't have the heart to reroll him.

I really missed being a newbie. It was fantastic and exciting to go exploring and find "new" things. The first time I ran from Qeynos to the Druid and Ranger starting zone on the other side of Qeynos Hills I was so pumped. I followed the wall all the way to Blackburrow and then my mom needed me for something. While I was gone my younger brother who had been watching me play with a friend got on the computer and started running around to check things out in this new zone. Sure enough he got caught in the middle of a train, started running around frantically and thought it would be a good idea to jump into the water at the bottom of the pit to get away, just to be attacked by razorgills. In a panic he swam my monk to shore, made sure I was safe, and waited for me to come back downstairs. When I did, his eyes were huge and frightened as he explained to me what he had just done. So I sat down and began poking around for a safe way to get out. Finally I saw a group of people running through and asked if I could follow them out. We all wiped in the green room, I think is what it was called. The one with the Gnoll Commander. It was so terrifying and fascinating that I was hooked and spent the next several weeks learning my way around Blackburrow. Because I knew it so well I was able to make quite a bit of coin finding and either dragging out or looting the corpses of people who had fallen through the trap at the top or into the razorgill pool (back when /consent would let you loot corpses, too).

The first time I ran from Qeynos to Freeport, all the time spent in Highhold Pass/Keep, the first player run bazaars set up in West Commons (all the other servers had it in GFay, which I always thought was weird. Morell-Thule did theirs in the cave in West Commons), camping dervs in Ro.

I spent about 12 hours camping the goblins in the Rivervale newbie zone and in Beholder to get these lame monk gloves, the Treant Fists. I worked so hard on them that I vowed I would only switch them out with my epic when I got it. Raster camp was ridiculous maximus. I have 75 hours logged on that guy. That's right. 75. I'm positive there are people who have more, but I personally never met one on my server.

So many people say that the camping of monsters was the downfall of Everquest. I disagree. As awful as it was, I wouldn't trade my 75 hours of bragging rights for anything. I was also sorely disappointed when they removed the lvl 30, 35, 40, and 45 hell levels. If you ask me the new MMO's these days are too easy. They've been dumbed down to be made more accessible to the masses. It's all about money. I wish they would do a remake of Everquest the way it used to be with revamped graphics and all that. Make MMO's challenging again. I've only played a few different ones since EQ, but none of them could really capture and hold my attention for very long. It seems to me that the companies have tried to make it possible to solo in their games. You can play through on most characters and never have to interact with anyone. Group reliance was part of what made the game so dang fun. When you got your character built up to the point it could solo stuff it was a treat, a reward for lots of hard work. Soloing in Crystal Caverns for 15 levels is what taught me truly how to be a monk, how to sneak around, how to feign pull and split groups of mobs, how to time FD against spell caster mobs, when was the most strategic time to use mend. It seems that that kind of challenge is all but missing any more. Bring it back! It felt so good to be good!

Anyway, I'll stop now. This post is already longer than I planned, but it was a lot of fun to relive those memories. Thank you for starting and contributing to this thread. You are all my heroes.

Oh, and I was cleaning out my room at my mom's house a year or so ago and found my notebook with the maps and diagrams and how-to's for several different zones, including Crystal Caverns, and the monk epic guide off of Monkly Business. That stuff really took me back.

________________________________________________________
Sevlore Fisti`cuffs ◌ 60 Monk ◌ Morell-Thule (now Erollisi Marr, I guess)

Like a dark elf necromancer, I raise you from the dead, thread! (hope that's ok... I searched but this was the only thread I could find remotely related to Project 1999).

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Well this was a fun thread to re-read. Anyway, I just installed and started to play Project 1999 a week ago. It has recently received some form of quasi-official "blessing" from Daybreak Games (owners of EQ now that SOE is gone).

What a blast. The server is full pretty much every night, around 1500-1700 players, with pretty much every zone having level appropriate characters leveling and grouping. It's been trapped in Kunark era for like 3-4 years though, so the high levels/raiding game/powerguild/EC Tunnel crowd seems a bit starved, but Velious is opening in August.

I have a level 8 barbarian shaman going who's a blast so far. Name's Waymar if anyone wants to check out the game and wants some help/buffs/friendly voice to talk to. It was insane coming into the newbie area in Everfrost - from as far as you could see to the left to the right was littered with newbie corpses, definitely a LOL moment. Nothing like bleeding to death from a wooly spiderling. It's amazing how quickly it all came back to me though, I've only died a small handful of times. I think I've died more while grouped in EC doing orcs than I have solo so far. There have been a lot of very friendly and helpful people, though there are a lot of snobby/entitled jerks too. Pretty much exactly like EQ in 99 :).

I don't have a lot of time to play a lot, but I'm on for an hour or so now and then. Come check it out! It's been amazingly fun. I finally figured out the thing that has been driving me nuts about the original EQ client all these years I've tried to get back into it. The horizontal x-axis rotation speed has always been WAY TOO slow even with mouse sensitivity turned all the way up. I just thought this was some limitation in the 16 year old EQ client software. Well I finally read on a forum you can fix this by limiting the game to 60 fps in the graphics options, and after setting that it does handle pretty much as you've come to expect a 3D engine to.

I remember shortly after launch hanging out just inside the entrance of a dungeon (darkpaw gnoll or something like that), there must've been 50 other players in the area when someone yells, "TRAIN"!!! then a few more players yell, "TRAIN"!!.

Someone bolts by me and all the other players as we stared wondering what was going on, right behind him must've been 100 gnolls who turn around at some point and start slaughtering everyone who had been loitering around. Within maybe 3 minutes there were 50 dead players littered around the entrance. After that the chat was filled with "Rez"? and "Rez plz"? and variations