The 'how old is your oldest character' made me have this flashback. My oldest surviving character I stopped playing a couple of months into the game. I have taken them out briefly over the years, just maybe a session or two once a year. I had to ask myself why. That first character was part of an early guild that blew up. Guild Master that was running it had the policy everything looted was property of the guild under the pretense it would stop fighting over items. Turned out one of the other members was logging what was dropped and found out the Guild Master was RMT the gear. Very much ugliness ensued and I started running an alternate and moved to a different server to wait for the drama to blow over. To this day I am still not comfortable running that character as opposed to just about any other character with a clean story. I know, I have to get over myself.
Well, here's the story of my mage that was abandoned at level 7 for 15 years: My first character was a mage on Fennin Ro. In the _very_ early days of EQ, pet classes could not invis while having a pet up! This was changed quickly as it made pet classes pretty much unplayable, but in the meantime I started a ranger on Innoruuk that I still play as my main. When Inny merged with Nameless, I moved my mage to Inny with the free server transfers, but he still sat at level 7 for about 15 years. In the past couple years, I've leveled the mage to 110 and now it's one of my three main characters.
My first char was a human paladin. When he got to level twenty eight I wanted to switch to warrior because I heard they were better tanks. I did the original crafted armor quests with the paladin then twinked out my warrior as best I could. Was a huge epic question for a low level paladin, but once he was finished he pretty much retired.
Retired a 20 year old necro with RoS raidgear. necro is under-powered for the effort you have to put into playing them. Max everything when I retired tradeskill/AA/hunters/progression/raids.
I abandoned a server during Kunark or Velious. Was a combination of several of my in-game friends moving on, DAoC, and me finally realizing that our co-guild leaders were in it for themselves and their friends. The icing on the cake was when a white scale from Vox was awarded to an out-of-guild friend that was L59 because my L51 bard was a 'new' main (had switched from my monk when I returned to playing) and they were much further along the path to the epic. All of a sudden I recalled many months of transgressions where they favored someone besides me, a longstanding guild member. So I logged out and had no urge to log in again for several years, until I found out some friends at work were playing on another server.
There is one sadly, though I don't know if he counts. My alt shaman Junnar I played now and then, and the last time he caught up was in House of Thule. The short of it is once I made a cleric he was obsolete for my purposes, though I did not actively play him other than for making potions for years prior to that as well. When it became clear making a cleric to play was critical to the future of raid stability at the time, I created Zunnar because shamans just plain don't have the raw heal power to directly compare to a cleric in keeping tanks up. That is the only reason Zunnar, my cleric, exists. He'd be Vah Shir if it were possible too, so I went the polar opposite and went vanilla human with him. Because of that, Junnar is perpetually stuck without a logical reason to level him further, unless I wanted to continue alchemy past 300. I've never left an active raid guild, however in the latest merge (which I don't count as leaving) bringing me into IL, I left Junnar in the Infinite Elysium raid roster. I may move him over some day, but poor Junnar is completely replaced by Zunnar. I was only in one family guild and the guild leader convinced people to stay level 51 (or whatever the level is) to do the dragon fights for epic parts. It was a horrible idea, however I don't regret it since I started playing just before LDoN and stopping at that level let me experience a lot of zones I'd have passed by. When I first tried out raiding, I did so on Junnar and he ended up past Zunnoab's level, so I had to make the decision to level up Zunnoab as my raid main in my first raid guild, and could have easily chosen to switch to shaman if I wanted to. I only mained Zunnoab on raids, *(note at end)other than boxing others' clerics now and then if necessary, until part way through Arx Mentis. One of my oldest friends in game always ended up playing her cleric alt rather than her main, sometimes for years at a time. I decided to make and level Zunnar so I could relieve her of that. Quarm and the resulting TBM currency helped tremendously. A round of nerfs targeted bards around the same time, eliminating any reluctance for me to do it. I only took alt loot on Zunnar for a couple years before outright main switching for raid purposes last year. Now after our merger, I don't need to play a cleric on raids again now. Zunnoab was never fully abandoned, and I only ever considered Zunnar a main for official raid "paperwork." I took a 1-1.5 month break once but that's the extent of my time away from the game since 2003. I did play Junnar now and then all the way up to House of Thule though. That was the end of the line for him, even if he still exists. I don't remember if Zunnoab was my very first character technically, though he absolutely was for actually playing. It was either that or a human paladin I didn't touch aside from logging in once and deciding I wanted to play a Vah Shir too much, even though I initially planned to make a paladin. *About the sharing account info thing, yes I know it's technically against the rules but they have "another player is logged in" (paraphrased) as part of the "kick player" message when logging in. There is no reason to dwell on that and no one has my login info other than myself at this time, but it would be silly to dance around the issue when replying to this.
My first character was a barbarian warrior (May 1999). He was so blind at night he couldn't see and I sat at the dark pool of water in Halas (over which the little raft ran) and I fished and sold old shoes and stuff that came up until I had enough for a lantern. I was so proud of that lantern. I still am. I killed decaying skeletons and small spiders among a throng of other new barbarians and I even once ventured out to the edge of tundra where more hardened veterans of Halas actually took down a HUGE WOOLY MAMMOTH. I saw my first halfling there (which would lead me to create my longest played character, Pipwalker, a halfling druid). Anyways, my warrior, named Ardenvale, eventually discovered Black Burrow...saw his first two trolls (clad in ringmail, holy impressive). These two trolls caused me to create Gremag, my current main, Troll SK. As I carefully and fearfully explored the upper open part of Black Burrow I wanted to hide from nearby gnolls so ducked into a hollow tree... Ya.. THAT tree. The pit trap. Everything was dark when I landed far below. I couldn't see a thing (must not have had my lantern equipped). Then I was pummeled to death by unseen gnolls. I had no idea how to get my corpse back. I didn't know anyone in game. I was distraught. All that time fishing. I even had some scrappy leather armor and a cracked staff, and of course, my prize, my lantern. Lost. I quit and when a new server was announced, Quellious, I began anew, as Pipwalker Tanglefoot, Halfling Druid of Rivervale. I played much more cautiously for years. Still do.
I re-rolled my first character. That is when original stats mattered. A few, I killed off because I didn't like them. Very few though.
LOL. Original stats still matter, since the relative differences between them continue to exist as you progress...that's why ceilings on stat A and stat B are different years later.
Well, I had a DE SK alt created in 2007. Been level 17 for 10+ years. I did dust her off recently, she is now 98 with a 2.0 epic... I also did a 2nd account back in Luclin days, mostly to run a bazaar mule. But I also made a Dwarf Pally there and got him, I think, to 28. Later I quit EQ for several years. Upon return, I was able to resurrect my primary account, but the secondary, with my bazaar guy, my for-sale goods, most of my plat reserve and Teiwaz the Dwarf Paladin, was lost to sands of time....
My first character was a dwarven pally. Played for about 6 months and picked up a second account which was an elven druid. After getting both to about 50 and raiding on the pally and friend suggested I try a monk / shammy combo. Wow what a difference. The pally/druid combo were pretty much stuffed into the digital refrigerator since 2003.
Nice My circa 2000 DE Enchanter is still level 11. I had to log him in before server mergers to keep him from being deleted by the game. He became my original mule.
Sure, my first toon ever was a dwarf Pally. I went to Orc hill and killed a few things, then someone gave me a BABS and a Dwarven Ringmail... I felt so uber! Then I died and could't find my corpse, so I lost them both and I was so upset that I started another toon on another server, and never looked back.
Yes.. 110 wizard , 33k AA 110 wizard , 30k AA 110 wizard , 28k AA 110 Ranger, 28k AA 100% completely stopped playing them. ln favor of zerker's.
