you call yours self a veteran but...

I started a few weeks after launch, made a Human Paladin in Qeynos. Really had no idea of the grand scope of the game or anything. Around level 10 I ended up in West Karana, and saw people shouting about leading a group to this far away place called Freeport.

They said to form up by the guard tower, so we did. The group was maybe 20 people. The leaders seemed to know what they were doing, and were pretty organized. Finally we head out, it was super exciting, I was going to see a bunch of new stuff. We made it just out of range of the guard tower and ran into a Hill Giant, the whole group died. That's basically the most EQ thing I could have experienced early on to teach me how brutal the game was.

The next day after reviewing some maps online, I decided to try the trip myself. Made it to East Karana, and saw a cyclops in the water near the bridge (Groon I think). Got too curious and wandered too close. Dead. Luckily I got some higher levels friends to help recover my corpse the following day and take me to Freeport. There I promptly discovered North Ro, and ran into the middle of a derv camp, dead again. Ended up consenting a guy to get the stuff off my corpse, and he actually gave it to me instead of stealing it. The early EQ community was pretty amazing.

Anyway, that Qeynos to Freeport trip was daunting before ports were common and levels were high. A week or so later, still not much above level 10, two friends and I charged a guy 10p to escort him from Freeport to Qeynos. Nobody died. I deleted the Paladin shortly after, made a Halfling Druid, and ran him to Qeynos to join my friends. Since group ports didn't hit until 29, we still spent a lot of time making that run back and forth. You couldn't always count on both sides of Highpass Hold being camped, but things got easier with Invisibility.

one of my fondest memories where when a mage gave all the newbies red summoned armor, making them into "mini gods" but there were still SO MANY red corpses all over the place... it was brilliant, 1 bored high lvl mage... 200+ red corpses and a bunch of newbies having a blast of their life (was levelling a new alt then)

but also the evil mages giving newbies modrod so they clicked themself to death it was brilliant (and now nerfed... boooooring)

killing guards (now also nerfed... so lame) was great exp + fine steel weapons

helping another necro recommending him to go to "my" guildhall (I was DE necro) well the "guards" down there didn't like his race... so he died... so he /consented me so I could LOOT his corpse (not drag it) this was way back in the day... so I zoned in to get his stuff and then also bought whatever he needed from the guildhall

the time when some necro got my corpse out of the lava in Sol(one of em) back when the entrances ACTUALLY looked like eyes... now Lavastorm is just meh compared to what it were.

and many many other good memories

My favorite memory is grouping with a mage that went kinda like this:

I was killing mobs in Lake Rathetear, and a mage wanders up asking to group for experience. He saw I could pull them solo. I add him to the group, and just before the mob dies, he disbands the group and gets the kill (and exp).
He says "Ooops. sorry, accident!" so I re-added him and then pulled the next one. Again, right before the mob dies, he disbands the group and says, "Ooops sorry, I didn't mean to do that".
I added him again, but this time I pull 3 mobs. When we are engaged and killing them, I hit group invisibility, killing his pet, which made all of the mobs run at him, then I hit Melanies Melifluous Motion, which ported him to the bottom of the lake, where the mobs ran to and started whomping him. I hit Disband and Selos and ran to the zone line.

Ironically, he drowned ...

Moral of this story? Don't try to trick a bard, it may end poorly.

The Quon teaches the classes to the Masses!

Welcome to the purple club!

HAHAHA ahh, mod rods... good times. and yeah, i miss the days of killing guards for XP and cash. killed guards in FP, and Qeynos. fun fact, i had no idea there were factions off gaurds in Qeynos and ended up getting killed by one that did not like my gnome wizzy.

Did anyone else ever do "FP2Q Newbie fun runs"? The idea was to have a group of people create a new toon that starts in FP and try and make the run to Q without dying. Not sure is this was a thing out side of our group of friends/community/server