Help Us Celebrate 18 Years!

Started in June of 1999. So much has already been talked about..Drunk races in Kelethin, boat watching, "Griff to Tunnel!". Unlike in todays MMO worlds your server was a close nit neighborhood. You kind of knew what was going on between guilds and raids...etc/ *cough* SA and the Sleeper *cough*. I still talk with people I met in game. Nothing has ever come close to the family feel of EQ.

Everquest lets my imagination run free......... I should make a shirt on that lol. Id be rich

I was such a clueless noob in May 2002 that I freaked when I zoned out of Gfay into Lfay. I didn't know what "zoning" was! After the initial shock wore off, I began to explore those spooky woods, and Equestrielle the Corrupted ran up out of nowhere and murdered me in the face. She hit me for over 400 points of damage! That was unfathomable!

I played my ranger until about 2004, I guess, until my guild fell apart. Last year on a whim I decided to see if my old toons were still there, and was amazed to find that they were. I've been moloing and having a blast since then.

Oh, and one of the first things I did upon my return was hunt down that black unicorn in Lfay. I keep her eye in my house.

I remember my very first character back in May of 1999... Gird (was gonna be Strongarm), a male barb warrior on Quellious server. Gimped him hard only because I was familiar with DnD and figured that warriors needed strength more than anything. Running around half blind in Everfrost, "Hail"ing every NPC I could see. Did several 'player' quests that had many of us running around collecting rusty weapons and ruined pelts for bronze armor. Getting really excited when someone would craft us backpacks if we could get high quality polar bear skins. Terrified to leave Everfrost because I thought that you needed to be at least level 15 to even think about venturing to the next zone. Finally getting a Fine Steel sword from a player that was UBER (level 25 I think LOL) and deciding to finally get out of the cold and do some exploring. Wandering into Blackburrow and after avoiding 3 "TRAIN TO ZONE"s falling prey to the dreaded tree trap, and dying almost immediately. I tried 10 times in vain to get my beloved corpse with all that bronze armor, a fine steel 2hnd sword and 2 backpacks... I sadly had to delete that character and start a new one. I still have the original disks to install the game with the very first tutorial on it. I will have to try and install it again to get the UI that we all grew to love (loathe).

My favorite thing about EverQuest was the original spell effects between 1999-2001. I found this photo online as an example. My favorite zone was greater faydark because I love kelethin and the music.

Here is the oldest screenshot I could find, which features Benton of Triton, later known as Bentos, who has a velious item named after him: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=6893

This was during Vox prep in summer 1999.

My best memory of old EQ is probably Grobb Skwad on BB holding off the invading Guktans scripted capture of the zone for so long they finally locked the server to force the troll loss.

You are working hard on killing EQ after 18 years by ignoring ongoing lag issues on the AB server for months. Close to be unplayable.

Such a shame.

I could only find one old EQ screenshot. This was probably in late 2001 or early 2002. Our first Maestro kill in Hate. Looks like we were rockin that Thurg gear. I count 13 people in the "raid".

This x100. Getting level 24(?) then 44(?) to have the spell effect increases was a huge goal of mine in 1999. You can sort of change them now, but only the final casting effects, they no longer show as coming out of the character's hands - just the completed spell cast component. Still a massive improvement over the WoW garbage spell effects are now.

18 years .... and near 4 months with unplayable lag on antonius bayle .... verant did a great job .... sony and daybreak are for eq like donald trump is for america ....

Back in 99 i played Quake2 competitively so i followed everything from Id Software. I read that Brian Hook was leaving id and probably going to 989 studios/Verint to work on Everquest. I was like why would someone leave Mecca (id software) so i looked where he went and was like hey that looks like the table top role playing games i used to play so i bought a copy online. Wich took 2 weeks to get to me. I started playing and made a Wood elf ranger. I still have the first screenshot i ever made in game.

I have a lot of good memories of the game and the people i played with but there is one memory that is always there when i think about EQ:
When i was level 3 or 4 i went on to explore further out then near the elevators. It was dark and scary without a map so once i hit the zone edge i did what every boy scout does when lost. I kept following that wall until i zoned? into Butcherblock. At first I didn't know what happened since that was my first time zoning! I kept on exploring the new zone and scared that i would not be able to find my way back i decided to keep the zone wall on my left hand. So after a few minutes following the safe wall i zoned into Dagnars Cauldron. It never crossed my mind that a zone 2 away from a starting zone might be dangerous. That whole concept was new to me back then.

I was hopelessly lost when i reached the end of the dc "tunnel" but hey there are friendly people there at those tents. So i went there and promptly got agro from a rat. Being level 3 or 4 i felt i had graduated rats some time ago and was like lets fight... So i re-spawned without gear and without even knowing where i had lost it. That was the only corpse i ever lost although original PoF tried hard!

Everquest...

It was an amazing new thing the likes of which I'd never heard of before let alone seen. I had played console games and the occasional PC game all my life but the idea of playing on the internet with hundreds or maybe even thousands of other players that all interact with one another and effect each others game was mind blowing to me in 1999. My step dad brought it home, I'm not exactly sure where he'd heard about it to be honest. I was in middle school but it was summer at the time so I got to sit and watch him explore this new world. I was really into Diablo at the time and this game had so much of what I liked about that but seemed so much more real, so much more alluring. The first time I got to run around on my own character I was hooked. It felt like I had really jumped into this world. I played tiny bits here and there for that 1st year or so as I was able to get time on the computer (and on our dial-up internet).

Later on I got my own account and computer and we upgraded to a better internet connection (all just for 3 of us in the house to play more EQ haha). This is the time when my love of the game was solidified I believe. It was the friends I made in game and the community we shared together and with so many in the general population at that time. Back in this time people really helped each other out and there was a real sense of community. It wasn't only all about progressing your own character, but it was about building relationships and also building a reputation. Players names were known by many for the good and the bad that they did because of how much the community relied on each other for many things. My uncle and I started playing together on the 7th Hammer Server and met a High Elf Cleric named Faru who also had a RL friend that played a Wood Elf Druid named Leggerini early on at the Chess Board in Butcherblock. We ended up playing with them all the way through PoP and even ended up creating a guild all together (well they created it and we moved over to support/help). A little later on we added another friend, a Vah Shir Beastlord by the name of McCluclin. We had an amazing group and we played together just about every night for years. The experiences and friendships during that time are invaluable memories for me and for my uncle. To this day we still talk about Faru, Leg, and Mac. I only wish we had not lost contact with them after some things came up and I had to quit playing for a while to focus on college and family.

Like others on the thread It was a co-worker and fellow D&D gamer who introduced me to EQ. The game had been live for about 6 months so when I stared my friend was already in his 30s so I heralded on solo. Cuun the Halfling Druid who never slotted panic animal because i was an idiot. hours and hour and hours of gaming led to days and weeks and then my wife decided to play and then we needed another account and who had to start over? Me so I threw my druid out the window and started a Barbarian Shaman hated the look of the male avatar for the Barb so made female. Those days in Halas were cold and tough. That first trip to Qenyos through Blackburrow the nearly an hour run across Karana through high pass and eventually on to Freeport. getting there and accidentally hitting 'a' when you had targeted the merchant to sell. *LOADING* Making the trip back just to get the corpse walking away from the computer and getting killed by a rat when your making a sandwich in the other room... AND YET! We continued to play. Was the fourth shaman to obtain the Spear of Fate on Luclin only to be hit with the nerf bat a few week later. Realizing I had to step away from the game because I was neglecting (not criminally) my kids and wife. It was easier to quit smoking. What I do not miss is freaking DP Raids and the manipulation of the rules in non guild raids that went on. But now two of my kids are graduated and the third wants nothing to do with family so back to EQ just wish I could have comeback into my toon with her Spear of Fate and Time's Antithesis. What I do not miss is freaking DP Raids and the manipulation of the rules in non guild raids that went on.

i remember my very first plane of fear raid , back in mid 2000 , i was then ( on long since lost account ) a lvl 49 cleric .
Then , the invis/ivu spells were awesome !!! they lasted between 10s up to like 4 minutes ( not sure , but definetely a short time ) and you needed both up right of the bat since the nasty roamers at the ZL could be both types ........ i think i will remeber it ALL my life:

1) problem: the zoning time: you could zone for 1 min and be dead the other side before even loading
2) some had 28.8k some 56K rooters and if the numbers are today laughable , the difference was huge so you had many LD'd zoning
3) the usual: everyone but the casters and clerics are back in their hometowns completely naked ( only place to bind , close to the walls in the 1st n00bies zones of each towns.

now the circus begins: some are coming back running / druids going to get them all ( you could spent a huge amount of time doing so ) while some brave CLR ( including me then ) Chain zone to try and stack piles of corpse to a somewhat safe area and start the rezes ( 90% then if i m correct ).

Took us about 13 Hours to be able to finally do all the rezes , some lost about 1 and half a level ( hell levels were such a pain then ) .

go and explain that to my boss , so i called in sick and when to bed .

we came back 1 month later ( respawns were super long maybe 7 days , not sure ) with a succesfull but still painfull raid.


Who's dumb enough to play 13 hours straight just to get his stuff back ???? EQ players lol

I remember when patches would take for ever to apply and were very vague on ETAs, oh wait that just happened today.

They are just giving us a True Classic Everquest experience

I started in Nov 99 as a human monk named Choyli Fut, a bunch of people who I worked with played and they got me started on Fennin Ro in a very long running guild called Ruis Saille. I will never forget when my blind human got lost in karana, i can't remember which one but i blindly ran into a camp that had this necro NPC that ate me up in a heart beat, and the entire guild showed up to help me get my corpse so my wu's didn't rot. I went on to other characters and other guilds but the fellowship and friendship I found in Ruis Saille has always been a part of this game for me.

I remember a Fear raid in mid 2000 where zone aggro bugged and everything was deathtouching people as they zoned in without being anywhere close. We spent 12 hours trying to get corpses until a GM showed up and froze the zone.