Yeah it was great at building "relationships" online and while destroying them IRL. Just the way it was How can one have nostalgia for something one did not experience? and No... PoP took grind fest to previously unheard of limits outside of Korea. Wasnt so much the expansion itself as the change in running the game, remember Furor? No PoP pretty much ran us off within 6 months and that lasted .... ummm 10 years IIRC.
June 1999, on the E'Ci server. No breaks other than my honeymoon. For the most part things are so much better. There is no way in hell I want to play "the way it used to be".
Furor's negative influence over the game had already been long set in at that point, since roughly late SoV. Never before has an unpaid player had so much sway over a game, and in such a detrimental manner.
Good point, though I guess Eve had bigger problems with that than EQ it was enough. That Monk nerf he was behind just brutalized anyone playing the class and confirmed that nerfs are a sign of laziness.
I've been around since the final 2 weeks of the open beta. I do take every summer off however, because, it's healthy to maintain RL engagements, plus...the sun. That being said, it wasn't until cotf where I felt the game lost its appeal. There were lots of things along the way that were annoyances, but until the past 3 expansions, I never felt like it was a chore to login, which is probably why I mostly browse the forums on the rare occasion now, hoping the next year will be better. To be fair, raiding in the old game *is* a chore. I would be gung ho about progression servers, or even P99, but I don't want to play a character that isn't bard or enchanter, and those are a chore back in that era and not really worth it in the modern world.
Ol' Rat goes back to 1999. First roll of my first character. I've had breaks though - so not continuous. What I find alarming are the changes to the Raid Game in the last couple expansions. (more on that in a new post) -Rat
I started in 2001, but I still got to experience many of the "old school" features, such as: (1) corpse runs (2) staring at spellbook while medding (3) pets not zoning (4) pets poofing when you invis (5) raids not being instances (4) raids just being a bunch of different groups talking in /ooc or /gu (5) traveling by boat (6) wizzies and druids offering port services for plat (7) leveling in classic dungeons and then hitting the "kunark highway" (8) trains in Crushbone, and later on in KC (9) learning how to act in a Naggy/Vox raid (10) "hell levels" (11) printing out all the maps from EQ Atlas and keeping them in binders (that used a lot of ink....) (12) camping Quillmane (ugh....) (13) buying/selling in the EC tunnel (14) 50+ players in Dreadlands (15) Fear raids turning into all night corpse recoveries (16) raid rotations I could go on and on. It was fun and new back then, but I wouldn't go back to it. Today's EQ suits my play style much better.
I started April 99, Missed out on March because in those days new games would take 2 to 3 weeks to get up to Canada through the old distribution systems! .. no on line download back then! Played on Fennin Ro, then switched to EMarr when the server went live in May 99, my clerics birthday is the first day of the server Certainly has changed a ton, been mostly playing recently on Phinny for some nostalgia, it is fun, but it is still nothing at all like the old 99-00 version of the game.
All told, much less of a timesink these days. To be at or near the end game in 1999-2002 you almost had to put in at least 30 hours a week, often more. These days you can get away with half that, which is a good thing!!
I claim April 1999 because the oldest char I have is dated then. He was my third character I believe, but alas, the only one still surviving. Furor wasn't so much of a player as a competitor. If you read their idealized history of WOW development, he mentions the reasons for running FOH et al. It was less about playing and more about market research IMO. There are so many wonderful things that have happened in EQ, that any nostalgia post will have hundreds of different ones. Some of my favorites were the Hate Plane war. Sgt. Commander Replay of Qeynos (great paladin and great guy) toting the huge (50 ac?) shield he was given for leading the light forces in the battle was an inspiring sight. Video game or no, some events are just so epic to those beholding them that they make an impactful memory. The werewolf invasions spawned/lead by GMs in West Commons and Karanas were always a blast. The (what would become in some way DON/Shrouds) test server month where we played as npcs with npc powers against players (think LOTRO Creep play.. just long before LOTRO). Ah the memories....
Class of March 1999 ECI. Old School cleric turned battle cleric. Took many breaks and played on several TLP servers since. Love the changes to cleric that made playing them more interesting. Last expansion I liked was HoT. Favorite expansion of all time is still Kunark!
Flarp according to everyone on every server, they have all been here since "Beta" was opened back in 98/99.. I myself have only been playing since just couple months prior to Velious release. I am Kunark era born.
As a new player in 2002 / 03, I played all of the older expansions -- they were still quite active at the time. I even raided the lesser targets with low end guilds, however AOW / NToV weren't regularly raided at the time (at least on Zebuxoruk) because guilds that could beat them were focused on Luclin and PoP targets. I rate PoP high because most zones had an ample amount of character and uniqueness, and it was a big accomplishment to be able to go to the higher tier zones.
It is a whole nuther experience from playing in an expansion when one does not know what is coming up next and going back after a release has added to the game. At the time it is the best place to be and there is an air of excitement about it. It was the idea behind TLPs but lets face it, there is no going back, only fooling ourselves about going back as we know exactly what is ahead. Of course the Live game has it own problems currently given how unsure DBG appears to be about direction and that last... well to put it civilly... less than acceptable expansion. Meh accomplishments that are butt mashing trials just dont ring many bells any longer. Wish someone could take ideas from other games that have attempted to provide some meaningful accomplishments. Yet mostly what happens is the top mashers are catered to and the rest get scraps then they use the numbers that show the "rest" aint playing or paying for it ( its just bad content after all) and then double down with the idea the "rest" cannot be served and make money. Self fulfilling no?
I dunno, if you weren't raiding, PoP was a pretty miserable place to be. Most people were restricted to four zones, the people that were getting anywhere past that right away were either raiding or had friends in raid guilds. The PoJ trails, as odd as it seems now, were a pretty high threshold to get by for someone in the best group gear available. Only knocking on PoP for all the misdirected nostalgia that some people seem to have for it post alternate and level keying.
No fan of PoP as Ive stated that period was what convinced us to look for greener pastures, found them too... for a while. Not sure what makes game companies go so stupid running MMOs but plenty sure do.
PoP was sort of the place where I was stopping raiding and moving full time to Firiona, so it was a weird place for me, having all sorts of access everywhere else, and nothing at all on FV. I guess that gave me a really good perspective on how messed up access and flagging was, and how unfair it was to some groups.
Took a lot of effort to get a copy imported into the UK during the launch period so that delayed me for a good few weeks. Trivia: I started off on Bristlebane as this was considered the unofficial British/weird Viking types server and one of the first guilds I was in was called United Kingdoms. A few years down the line it was noticed that another guild on AB had the same name and this caused a small amount confusion many years later when the Euro population on Bristlebane withered away to nothing forcing those left playing to move to AB. "You were in UK? I don't remember you." "Yeah, when [name] was guild leader." "Don't think so." "The original UK on Bristlebane." "Oh. Right. I thought we were the original UK."
September 15 , 1999 here ( rathe server ) , I only took few breaks , longest was 5 months or so , but since I am boxing ( 4 ) , I always have something to do , specially since I made some toons in firiona vie server $$$....
