17 Years of EverQuest: What's YOUR Story?

We started in 2000, first on my husband's account then my druid Tessowin got her own account in Sept. At one point there were 5 of us in the same family playing, hubby, son, daughter, son-in-law. Favorite moments: we helped my son get his Harvester, and took a picture on the stage; My whole guild surrounded me in front of the Big Tree in North Karana while I finished my druid epic, and cried with love and emotion for the journey and their help. Being at two guildies wedding at the entrance to Unrest (they really married in real life). All the names and friendships made over the years, some still playing, some actually coming back. Age and work schedule has stopped me from raiding but you will still find me with newer toons in the Ferrott or Dragonscale hills or killing bears on Phinagel. And yes, I still shout train to Nektolus, and Watch out Griffons at Inn2!

So many, let's see where to begin. I remember a coworker telling me about the game, bought it, loaded it, and remembered the computers back then, internet speed , very long load, zoning, times. I started my first toon a Paladin. Stopped working on him since needed a raid to do pally epic.Started my Mage, it was a fun character. But a lot of factors go into starting a toon, and class, race. People have to realize back then it was totally different than now. Like some races have better intelligence, so better at some classes, etc. Some races couldn't see too good in the dark like my erudite. And when night fell, it was more realistic, had to buy a torch, or kill something with a light source like a beetle. Had to run to get your items from your corpse, naked, they didn't just appear on you when you died. I remember falling off the tree city, and wandering all around trying to find my corpse. You actually had to use /loc and ask if anyone saw it. You had to ask a cleric to rez you. And finding that some people actually were nice enough to take the time to help you.

Playing in the first perspective is what I loved about the game. You immersed yourself into the game as if you were actually there. Peeking around doors, trying to run past mobs by sneaking past them, hope they don't see you. Too many memories to mention, but i'll list some.

"TRAIN TO ZONE"
"LJ at Docks, or SG, or Spects to Dock or P1! Dvinn to Zone!
Needing a raid to kill epic mobs.
Dying and running to get your items off your corpse and hopefully a rez because you lost all that exp.
Drowning and dying in OOT after going afk and falling off boat. Not knowing where corpse is.
Actually learning how to swim, if you don't you drown, nowadays you will rise to top.
Having to catch a boat or actually run to where you are going and ask for sow, a druid or wizard for port
Waiting on lists to get into a group in Oasis.
Getting goose bumps at seeing things that can kill you and they are so close when you turn a corner
Meeting and helping many people around the world.
Playing 22 hours on my day off, and 48 hours in 2 days. I am guild leader so when i'm finished helping some guildmates, other people are waking up, repeat.
Making friends who still play till this day. Missing friends who haven't.
Realizing that there will never be an end game like other games. I have yet to see 1/4 of the zones.
Knowing that this game allows for different play styles, pace, opportunities, physical and mental ability
Appreciating some of the music in some zones. Sometimes they add or detract from the experience.
Appreciating that some people actually took the time to make maps for us.
Appreciating the fact that buying a year subscription, is the cheapest entertainment for your $.
Getting sick from motion sickness after spinning, being drunk, some tasks that turn you repeatedly.
It's being played 24/7 , play when you want, who you want.
16 years of not having to try another game, why would I? I've too many people to help in my guild.
Reaching 2430 members only to have EQ patch it, and I'm only one left. Restart and back up to 2085.
Having a level 105 try to give me 10k pp, the amount I gave him when he was low level toon, and since then has passed it forward, helping others. Saying it was the most memorable day in his life.
When they first came out with mounts, the horses head was in the way of looting. Also expensive.
Learning so many zones by memory. Surprising myself when people ask how to get to zone. And you actually remember the zone names and path.
Realizing that what I know about my toons is so meager compared to those who master theirs.
Having to learn languages or you couldn't talk to certain npcs.
Beating main boss in raids for the first time after so many failures.
Getting some epics for my toons. Hating camping for them. But glad when finally over.
Won game site for best suggestion in game. They forwarded suggestion to EQ. My suggestion was that no one does epics anymore because so much in game don't use them. Not worth doing. I asked if they could make an ornamentation that will make current higher new weapon, to look like their epics. Even though it isn't their epic weapon, it will look like it, and therefore show the achievement. And now it's in game. So hoping that I made a contribution to this long playing game satisfying.
Helping so many people so that they continue to play, instead of getting discouraged and give up.
Seeing people in raid guilds who at one point went through my guild.I like to think we helped move up.

Many more as there were so many new expansions added, so much more to learn, so much more to see and do. So much more people to help. As long as EQ is up, i'll still be here, making new friends, making some enemies i'm sure lol, but enjoying a game that has become a portion of people's lives. When you think about those people that have played all 16 years, the argument is that they don't have a life, well in reality, in EQ we do.

I got a tell once, "Can you help find my corpse?" Being bored that day I went. This was 15 years ago, after several attempts at trying to get her not to follow me I finally got all of her corpses into a pile. This is how I met my wife. We've been married 14 years now, but I will never forget her first words to me.

I started in 2000, just as the release of Kunark. I was leveling my Iksar Monk through his teens in Lake of Ill Omen when I saw an /ooc advertising for a random guild. I hadn't been in a guild yet, so I figured I would join to expand my group of people to play with. I became good friends with a number of people from the guild.

Flash forward 3 years and I had left the guild to join the top raiding guild alliance on Quellious, but retained a few friendships from my original guild. One person, in particular, would log on mainly to strike up conversation. I was raiding (or prepping for raid) 40+ hours a week at the time, so she felt she could essentially expect me to be online whenever she logged on. We maintained an online-only friendship from 2000 to 2004.

One day in 2004, we decided to talk on the phone. After about a month of phone calls, I paid to fly her from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania. On that first visit, she decided she was going to stay. We've been together ever since, and we are celebrating our 8th anniversary on April 19th. As strange or cliche as it is to say, I owe all of my current happiness in life to picking up EverQuest back in 2000.

I started playing March 16th 1999. I worked at Sony National Parts and heard about the game before He was the gamer at the time. but once he started playing he got me hooked also. We started on Tunare. I remember seeing some one in full bronze armor for the first time and thinking wow. Or that beautiful blue Bard armor. My first character was a wood elf druid named Kharis. But my dark elf cleric Aalya became my favorite. We helped formed one of the firs guild. Unity of Honor. I remember taking a ship FD. When I made my Dark Elf Cleric, the females in leather and chainmail armor had our butt cheeks hang out. It was so funny and we had a blast.

One of my fondest memories in EQ was a Maiden's Eye group on my Rogue that got me (I believe) from my mid-20s to my mid-40s. I went LFG in General and shortly someone named Heab sent me a tell and an invite. We started killing in a Hot Zone, but when more people joined, we went into Maiden's Eye and killed red /con mobs. I think I remember getting like 17 levels in that one single group.

Bought EQ, played EQ, still play EQ.

My boyfriend got me started in EQ about 4 years ago. I had never played a game like it and my first time playing was a study in frustration but he helped me through it and now I love it. We rescued a dog from the shelter 2 years ago and promptly named him Fippy because like Fippy he never gave up. Happy 17th.

Zek..
https://www.youtube.com/user/Domina907

My strongest memory of Everquest is the day that those CD's arrived in the post with my Beta all ready to install and play.

The excitement as I waited for the installation to complete was something else.

The only thing, in fact, that rivalled that feeling was the feeling of horrified dismay when it didn't work because my graphics card was too rubbish and I couldn't afford a replacement.

I started Everquest after playing Everquest Online Adventures on the ps2 for the whole time it was online, played EQOA right up to the day they turned the servers off. I then came to Eq looking to replace EQOA. Everquest is a fine game and Ive made some really good friends and had a ton of fun here, but it isn't EQOA and never will be. That game had a community that was just the best ever,
and the gameplay was seamless and great. It was a time I will always remember and wish I could do all over again. While I love EQ and will continue playing I would return to EQOA in a second if it was possible.

I started playing EQ when I was about 9 years old with my dad. I would stay up with him on the weekends to help him with quests, raids, etc. We used to listen to 98KUPD while playing, and to this day I can still relate certain raids with the songs I heard while playing with him. As my dad has continued playing, I've been on the search of EQ again for a very long time, and after finally finding it again can not wait to get started back up in the world of Norrath!!

I started playing sometime in 2001, if I remember right, it was some months after Velious' release. After a few months' playing, I joined the Guide program to comp my sub fees...and ended up being assigned to Tallon Zek. I had a heck of a lot of fun and some good memories guiding, but the one thing I'll never, ever forget is this:

This entire episode started with a Ragefire ninja loot (naturally) and escalated...quickly. I had been in EW answering petitions, and decided to take a break. It had been an exhausting week from the sheer amount of petitions being filed, investigations and warnings being handed out like candy. I opted to not port back to Sunset, and camped on the spot.

When I logged back in, "it" was hitting the fan on guide chat and the petition queue was unlike anything I'd ever seen, before or after. The general gist of chat was, if you were in Velious, drop anything and everything and get out, NOW. Curious, I asked in chat: "why, what's going on?"

"Sleeper's awake."

Then, I looked at my FOV (I used the old GUI). The first thing I saw was Kerafyrm's butt. I'd logged in right underneath it.

Never before or since did I ever hit a port clicky so fast.

This game is a drug. A drug that has lost it's quality and purity over the course of 17 years.

This game has been a huge part of my life. I remember when my friend Ricky tried to get me to play for months and I kept telling him no I didn't want to pay a subscription for a video game. I wish I had listened to him sooner and picked up the game then. I eventually relented sometime around christmas in 2000. It was sometime around the time of velious just hitting the game. I made my dark elf necro but Ricky wasn't on so I decided to play a shadow knight for a little bit just to learn how to play the game. I wasn't terribly impressed at first and logged for the night. However I logged in and worked on my necro for a couple levels the next night until Ricky logged in. He sent one of his guild mates Untitled to come get me and show me from nektulos forest to east commonlands. I was like level 6 or seven at the time. As I ran to EC I was being chased by a kodiak bear which was scary but the moment that hooked me to the game was AS I zoned into EC someone had picked up a train and was running it to the zoneline as I was coming out of the cooridor of the zone line there were giant spiders, giant beetles, both the size of cars, lions and wolves all coming right at me. The rush and complete unpredictability of the game had me hooked from that moment on.

Time passes and Ricky introduces me to many of his friends and guild mates some of them become my friends as well such as Xiara, she is one of many people that I've played the game with over the years that I wonder where she is in life now. However over time I began to make my own friends. My very first group of friends I made in north ro and oasis together. Tulwynn the ranger, Warne the monk, Deepdark the druid we bonded so well in those early levels that we played together for probably a month. After about a week we decided to start a guild together on karana <Shield of Justice> Our conquests together in the orc highway, kithcor woods killing orcs, high hold pass killing orcs, and then slaying goblins in high hold keep are some of my fondest memories. There we made even more friends some from other guilds and some that joined SoJ with us. Also along this time I had convinced my friends Jon​ and Josh and a few others to play as well. I became closer to my friends that played the game than probably any other friends outside of Luke​, Jeff​, and Chris. You see Everquest was a social game where you relied on each other and items where hard to come by to truly improve your character so you either had to save money and look for bargains to buy it or you had to have a strong group of friends to help you get it, groups were 6 people and a single mistake could be unforgiving in the game. Raids were 50 to 70 people working to kill a single mob again with one person screwing up and you wiped but no game has been able to replicate the thrill of that kill.

Over the years of my raiding and participating in the game it often took up more of my life than it should have but I made some amazing friends that helped me get through some really difficult times whether it was the death of Ricky, the scare that my dad may have lung cancer (which he didn't), or my depression after dropping out of college the first time or a couple other major things. I was in school these people were there for me and they also provided a distraction on goals etc. Some of them I still have the ability to contact such as Terrill​ (Brahman) and others I've lost contact with such as Lunky, Kumara, Fulgore, Scalapula, Havyk, Ujust, Nielar, Vashek, Rystlin, Mocho, Bloth, and so many many more. I just want to say to everyone thanks for the great time, the great memories, and you may just see me in game from time to time whether it's on Phinigel the new progression server, or my live server Bristlebane.

I was a definite clutz!!!
Got onto EQ with 2 other folks and whoooosh - off we went to explore , slowly making more firnes along the way.
Only 200+ on Rodcet Nife.
Anyway so much of what you all say has brought moisture to my eyes - remembering so much - Logging in and all the chitty chatter.
Jut wanted to put my 1/2 pp into the frey!!
Take care all of you and May be the paths you take always be golden'0
Love from Zarie
Created on Rodcet Nife, Merged with Quellious and the Povar.

Hm. Mine is odd and kinda sad.

My then fiancee and I went to Game Stop, and he saw EverQuest ... Kunark edition. He was estatic and wanted me to buy it. I was, of course, wary ... as I was just learning about the internet in 2001 (yeah I was a real country girl) so I'm like ... no. But he insisted and I picked it up.

We set it up on our pc with AoL .. and were hooked in a second.

Though we've played off an on in these 17 years (I stopped when GoD came out but came back for the Phinigel server) I always talk about EQ and how much I love it.

Well, this may be a lengthy post. I started playing in 2002. I never heard of this game before, a friend of mine started and he showed it to me, I didn't know anything about it. I started off with a certain race (I think it may have been a dark elf), but I had no idea how to leave the area and get outside, I was frustrated and wanted to quit, my friend told me that this game has many other races and to try something else, I did with another, and I didn't like it, he said to me "Try an easier city, I'm a ranger and the city isn't that bad to get around in". Well, I had to get used to the idea that I was in the trees (at the time there was no in-game map, everything was typed /loc for me and I had to raise my sense heading), also being a newborn ranger I didn't have barely any tracking. This was during the Luclin exp. waiting on the spires as well to go elsewhere, once I knew where they were, and hoping I wasn't attacked by an orc or something that conned red and disliked me. I miss the days where GM's on Sat. afternoons on the AB server (which is where I've started and stayed with), they would have a story about Greater Faydark and Kelethin and you were to sit quiet, listen and not type to the GM, if you were patient to sit through it and not move about, the GM would give you one free stack of cookies and milk. The story was very interesting to me (I honestly don't remember most of it though, it's been so long). It didn't take long to meet some friends I didn't know, Greater Faydark was just packed at the time trying to kill a certain mob for pristine scales to make armor (it's all different now and hand-in's are needed). But I just got used to what I saw and it took me a bit of time, but the more I played the more I enjoy the game to this day. I've been in and out of several guilds over the course of time, been an officer in quite a few as well. I love to help others out, I never ask for anything in return, I know how hard I struggled in 2002, no mercs, no GH, no GL, no PoP, nothing of the sort, I know most everyone has a pocketed merc now, but back in those days, if you died in Lesser Fay. it was type in /loc and write it down fast because you would need it to find your corpse, you had I believe 3-5 days tops to find it and loot your own, otherwise it would just be gone and all your armor, weapons everything would disappear and you'd have to build everything up again that you lost on your toon. Finding a cleric was very difficult as was any other class that could rezz you. When PoP came to be, which was the next expansion, the Guild Lobby wasn't a thing yet, and everyone just sat near the main bank waiting for buffs or whatever. It was tough to get inside it at times, but these days seems like outside the GL at times I see more people, it depends on the day and time. I'm in the EST and it's perfect for me because I am usually a night owl, I'm 6 hours behind the AB server, but the best part of all is the friendships I obtained over the course of time, some have left the game for good, others remained but moved to other servers. The ones who are loyal to a certain server (like myself) are still there and they are always there when I need help as well, or just chat about whatever. I do what I can to contribute to the guild I'm in if I find an item that is not a "no trade".. back then it was called a "no drop". I do remember the old bazaar and players just honestly didn't have enough space when you first zoned in, you had to click on each player to see what they had to sell, there was no menu option for that, or tickets to buy to have it right parceled to you or your toon. Good times, challenging too. Sadly my friend decided to leave at lvl 35. But I hung in there and sure I will level slow, RL does come into play many times over in outside of game, I am now lvl 91, I have much further to go and I haven't even seen the last 3 expansions yet. I'm not in a hurry to level and power up to 105, I enjoy the content. I only wish the Saturday afternoon story time came back once in a while to Kelethin on the 2nd lift. That was a fun time

I remember being in Frenzy, during Velious, when the group dropped to 4 members and we couldn't find replacements. It was the first time that ever happened on the server. I wonder how much longer it would have taken had they had global chat channels at the time.

I was watching a friend play this game he had gotten, EverQuest. It looked interesting to me so he let me make a character and try it out. I made a Rogue on his account on the Karana server, by level 5 I had decided to get my own game. I remade the rogue and transferred all the cloth armor and rusty dagger I had collected. I decided by level 12 to try out the Bard, so off I went and made the Bard, got to level 2, and got my new bard song, I decided to cast it to find out what it did within the safety of the guards at the Freeport Gate. I went back to my Rogue at that point and never looked back. 500 million alts later that Rogue is the only character that I still have from those days.