Any quest lines with interesting story lines?

I'd be interested in participating in the lore but there doesn't seem to be very good integration between lore and gameplay in terms of feeling like your part of a story.

Is there some place I can find out more about this?

Also which expansion was it where you went back to the ancient elf city that caused the Desert of Ro? Or as the orcs put it in Kelethin: "You ruined your lands, you won't ruin ours."

There are actually a couple of those elf cities both Takish- and Argin-Hiz are completely ruined / terminally doomed

Many of the epic quests (but not all) have really neat stories behind them

Actually I really liked all of the lore and stories behind TBL.

Yeah, I ought to go read the articles on zam for all of the epics. It's not worth the absurdly long camps to get the mostly outdated weapons, though.

Epic 1.0, 2.0, Epic re-telling, Hills of Shade zone quest arc, PoP expan quest arc

The Hills of Shade quests tell a historical story line.

Edit: Tour beat me to it!

Even the Anniversary quests have story lines...just did Fippy's Further Revenge https://special.eqresource.com/fippysfurtherrevenge.php and they were talking bout being mistreated etc. Kinda short but fits in well with other gnoll lore. And has a nice charm as reward.

Thanks! In fact, I'm just about the start doing the Secrets of Faydwer expansion so I look forward to Hills of Shade.

It's a pity it's so hard to find much lore about this game so that you feel that you are part of a story. Other games do a better job (EQ2, WoW and LOTRO, of course).

I know a lot of people hated it, but I rather liked the TDS storyline. It felt like I was actually participating in the story, not just completing random tasks that don't mean anything.

It might not be exactly what you're looking for, but the last quest in the Shard's Landing partisan line is hilarious.

I recently ran through RoF again, and I really enjoyed Chelsith Reborn.

And, while not necessarily feeling like you're part of the story, Thuliasaur Island (especially the drake's quests) I found really enjoyable from a lore perspective and made the final mission more impactful than "you kill a big dude"

I am partial to the Loyalist Shield of Honor quest line from Luclin for the story et. al.

Going through LDoN in it's entirety gives you oodles and oodles of lore, but that is more of a side benefit, not a direct benefit of a specific quest.

There are lots of lore-driven/providing quests out there, but not really easily found in most cases (which is not necessarily a bad thing . . . a huge draw of the early days of EQ was exploring everywhere, finding things in corners and out-of-the-way places).

I was pretty disappointed when they stopped updating the story journal in game (I think DoN? was the last time we got more lore that way), as that seemed a pretty good way to provide the basic lore of the beginning of an expansion for those that were interested. In more modern expansions, the lion's share of the lore comes from completing "partisan" quests to varying degrees, as well as the group missions (again, to varying degrees of fullness).

My favourite topic of lore within EQ is Mayong Mistmoore - a lot of things point to him existing aesthetically, signs on walls, designs on floors, then there are things NPC say, faction hits etc.

Once you have played through DoDH - including the raids & TBS you have a much broader scope of what this near-mythical individual has been doing, what his long term goal was.

If Mayong is gradually alluded to still be around & once again shows up in the future I will be a very happy EverQuester, he & the lore around him are key among the many things that helped EverQuest to feel less like a generic fantasy world & something uniquely its own world.

There aren't too many "personalities" that have been a feature across multiple expansions like him.

I enjoyed the lore behind GoD and OOW. Lots of awesome stuff there.

For semi-recent stuff I thought EoK was well done story wise. I still want to know what's up with Tucker the Chucker though.

A lot of classic era EQ had interesting stories and plots woven into quests. Run through Qeynos and hail some of the NPCs there for some decent stuff. Now as far as playable plot lines try the Secrets of Faydark keying quest.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4344

It focuses on one of the main raid bosses for that expansion.

It's not a quest but what goes on with Irrissa the Seer in Solteris is neat. If you take note, you can follow his time travel path, and one of his jumps is quite interesting...

the shadowknight epic retelling was pretty ... epic. the quest was outstanding in terms of, idk, making everything cohesive. an origin story for the entire class, not just an ornament quest.

The wizard epic retelling quest(an epic request) actually impressed me, not the story itself(its fine though), but the fact that we got an alternative version of freeport, with a festival, with small mini-games and prizes. And we get to see freeport in flames, overrun by solusek Ro and his fiery minions.

If you are after lore/story, I recommend that you just try to run through the entire progression quest-line for an expansion, most of them actually have a decent story.

Are there any guides on how to do one of these? Most of what I've found so far is pretty disjointed.

I'd actually like to do most of them but I don't see any one place that lays out how to progress through an expansion or that gives much in the way of lore or rationale.

EQ2 has EQ2i which is excellent. Then again, EQ2 has quest progressions built into the game which is a nice improvement over what I'm seeing here after returning after many years away.

Good to be back, though.