We Want to Hear Your EQ Stories!

It took me a long time to realize how much I loved the Parkinson art for Everquest. I enjoy, maybe even more, the Giancola cover art for Vanguard.

http://www.donatoart.com/gallery/vanguardb.html

The story goes (as retold in wikipedia) that Parkinson would be unable to complete the Vanguard art due to his illness and hoped that Giancola, his friend, would do the art instead. Giancola did the left side in Parkison's style, and the right side in his own and included a character who resembles Parkinson in the final art.

Back around PoP I got my Emp horse (Stampy was his name) and challenged my bard friend to a race in Tranquility. We got in position and ready to go and when the referee said "RUN" my evil plot unfolded. What no one else realized was that I had converted 100k platinum to copper and I split it at that moment. The bard couldn't move, I won the race, and then I promptly walked down some stairs and fell to my death. Tada!

I purchased EQ when it first came out, thinking it was an single player RPG. Opened the box to find out it required a credit card to play. I was terrified at the idea, so the box sat for a few weeks before i got brave enough to sign in.

According to my 'Played' hotkey my main toon (Elenderil - Wood Elf Ranger)) was created in December 1999. I had been playing for a while before this with another toon but playing Elenderil really did tick the boxes for me. I came to EQ with a background in pen and paper RPG's and immediately liked the way that the game had all of the flavour of those games but by having a computer apply the rules none of the arguments with the Game Master that often occurred in the pen and paper world. EQ was a complete unknown and starting so early almost no one knew how things worked. Two RL friends had been playing since launch day and had reached the dizzy heights of level 10 and gave me a lot of advice.....not all of it good.

So the story. I was travelling from Butcherblock to Freeport on the boat. In those days web connections timed out after 2 hours with a dial up modem and wouldn't you just know it just as the boat is about to zone into Freeport the connection dropped. By the time I had reconnected the boat was back in the Ocean of Tears heading for Butcherblock. No problem says one of my friends, just jump off and swim back though the zone. So I jumped into the water (swimming skill - 1) and start paddling to the zone line (congratulations you have gotten better at swimming - 2, 3, 4, 5...). That was then we learned you can't swim through a zone line!

There was a moment of slight panic. This was back in the days of corpse runs to recover your gear from a corpse. None of us knew how to recover a corpse from the bottom of the ocean. There were no in game maps, just EQ Atlas and a printer. The only thing that was obvious was it would be good to not drown. One of my friends managed to find the EQ atlas map of the Ocean of Tears and point me in the direction of the nearest island. When that came into view there was a second panic, none of us knew what lived there or what level or faction they were! Eventually it was decided that the best thing to do was swim out in front of a boat and hope it was possible to board it. It was or at least in some way shape or form the boat scooped me up from the water. The bad news it was going back to Butcherblock! The good news Swimming was the first skill I maxed out for my level.

Those boats used to be floating class rooms too. I learned most of the languages of Norrath either waiting for one to arrive or while travelling on them. Other times the passengers were so bored we would play impromptu games of 'I-spy'.

I loved those early days of not knowing what to expect next, having real difficulties in travelling and dying really being a major issue. I suppose that was the unexpected bonus of being there in the early days, no one knew how MMORPGS worked, there were no cross game shared expectations. We were dumped down in a totally new world and left to get on with it and I for one enjoyed the game for that.

So we had, Win 97, DIal up modems, 12 inch CRT monitors, no voice chat, no maps, no group finder, no quest finder. & dead bodies everywhere(most of them mine).

Dec 99 it all started, I picked Sullen Zek server (What was I thinking) anyways I make a Wood Elf Druid, spawn in a hut next to the trainer, It took me some time just to open the doors, I proceed to run out & up the ramp to just fall off the side and die, respawn in the hut run out the door & run off the ledge again ugh...I run out again instead of falling off the ledge I get lost on all these platforms. It takes me a few hours & many, many, many, deaths aka suicide just to restart at the stupid hut... I finally find one of the lifts and stand there waiting for it to move..... someone from below runs up and lift goes down I take 2 steps off the lift and a players necro pet one-shots me, well I'm back in the hut again, Started to rage!!!! slammed some stuff, threw something across the room. UGH..this time it only took me 30 to 40 minutes to find the lift ( maybe a few deaths in there somewhere). general chat is going off, necro farming newbs at orc lift.

Good Times...

I started May 1999 with an Ogre warrior. In the game I played before handing someone somthing had the same key setting as in EQ to attack someone. So friends who started somewhat earlier told me, go and hand this thing to NPC xxx.. I was 5 minutes old and guess what.. bang boom, dead....

What I remember really good from the first 3 weeks are two things.

1. Drowning in the river and my rusty dagger was lost, several friendly Ogre also all lvl 1 to 5 tried to get it back. Holy disaster.

2. One Ogre friend and I tried to swim through Lake Rathe to get to the Gnoll camp. Not sure but I think we were lvl 10 maybe. My Ogre friend died while he was swimming, and died and died and died and ran back from Ogguk. What the hell are you doing? I have no idea, I am drowning. Why are you drowning? Keep your head above the water !! How do I do this? Oh my, look up with the arrow key!. Ohhh Thanks that works.

The next weeks and months I remember no one having shrink and I was stuck on the stairs in Unrest (ate too many muffins) until a GM came an got me out of this situation.

Logged in and was high up in the Sky above Castle Mistmoore and no chance to get down. GM came.

17 hours Corpse Recovery in Plane of Fear.

The famous " I fell into The Hole" OMG my things, my corpse omg, omg

And the worse ever, dying in Unrest, sitting in Ogguk naked, friend looted all of my things and it took him 5 hours (NO JOKE) to crawl to Ogguk, jumping with 10 agility through the Karanas. Asking me if he can delete the empty bags and I said yes, to find later my RUBICITE BP missing. END of my life ...ahhhhh nitemare deluxe.....

I was waiting at my key board at 3pm est on march 16 and could not make a character on Mangler or Selos because of the heavy traffic of people wanting to join the new servers , so any YiMin on Selos or mangler is not me ! Of course that did not stop me ! Even from starting late I still reached lvl 50 on Mangler , I used my fathers name and made a male character to honor the memory of the man who was such a tech nerd and showed me EQ way back in 1999 when I was a ten year old girl, I am now 30 and and plan on playing EQ as long as I can , the odd thing is I tried making a Yimin on other servers also and they were all taken . Did not know this name would be so popular

YIMin

Started playing in classic. Wood Elf Ranger. Fell to death a couple times trying to navigate the bridges and platforms. The ground was littered with dead bodies (not just mine, tons of players' bodies).

Some level 5 druids were casting Skin Like Wood over and over in front of Kelethin bank just so everybody could drool over these awesome particle effects!

Tailors were making a fortune (i.e. tons of gold, not plat) in making precious patchwork armor for newbies. This wolf skins were in high demand!

I didn't leave Greater Faydark area until I was level 16 because I really loved that place and I was also a bit afraid to leave the place I finally learned to know so well.

I felt like a superhero when our group killed Emperor Crush for the very first time. However Ambassador D'Vinn was wreaking havoc in the Crushbone zone all the time because nobody could kill him and people were training him to the zone line all the time.

First boat ride with my buddy. We started from Butcherblock Mountains. After the first stop in the Ocean of Tears (sister island) we saw our very first hill giant (Gornit) and shortly after we saw our very first cyclopses. These creatures were the biggest mobs we had ever seen and we were just in awe! The boat ride itself took like 25 minutes or so and felt like a real adventure! We took the next couple hours to explore Freeport and finally reached the Commonlands!

There was no shared bank. You looked for a secret spot, droped your stuff on the ground and then logged in your 2nd character and picked up that stuff.

You could drop coin on the floor and people were doing amazing ground paintings made from copper coins. Shortly after Verant changed it so you no longer could drop coin on the floor because those mass droppings / paintings caused too much server stress.

Many pieces of equipment on your character stayed with you for a long time. Progress was slow. And that was kinda good.

It was the dawning of true MMO and I am happy I was there! Good, good times!

Killing the Noxious Spider solo in 1999.

This was pre-pet-heal, per-mercenary, pre-iceflame guard, pre-Aegis era. I was using the Earth pet, which was a research-only pet.

The Nox was highly sought after for the GCB (gold chitin bracer) on the race to 200 INT. I was up at the sonic bats and tne Nox showed up right at the top and I sent pet in and hurled gobs of fire and swords at him. Pet was at 0.001 percent health and I got one last nuke in.

Nox died. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely get across the bridge to loot.

GCB. Win.

Nothing has ever come close.

A far-distant second was being first to get Mage epic on Fennin. Monster pet resulted which I used until PoP.

Couple other things.. Killing Drelzna for Jboots for 36 hours with Noxx Stonehands, Tirranna Daystar (hmm), Svolthoh, and others I don’t remember. We had a pact not to leave until everyone got a pair. Tirranna was last... as she looted hers the server crashed. DOH. Came back sans jboots so we waited another several hours. Those boots were very, very cool back then.

Tirranna showing me her brand new crafted Staff from Gnome quest. You’ll never guess who Tirranna is.

Traveling to Guk for the first time, as one member of one of the pioneering groups in Guk on the Fennin server. It was only hinted at.. rumored. We fought there for weeks, Celty, Noxx, Baramos, Dramasus, Ternada, Korona and others. I finally got an SMR and gated out very quickly to show off. Problem was, I was bound at the Fay spires, and as I gated in there was Oracl the Wizard. In a CRYOSILK robe. (From Fear). He looked at me, sniffed and said, “Nice robe, Baramos.” Arghh.

Camping the Polished Granite Tomahawk from Grenix in Highold. It wasn’t lore then, but it became PENDING lore.

Camping the scariest zone for its time, Najena. What a horror story...

Korona Stoutheart leading a motley crew of us to Efreeti in SolB and falling into the volcano...

Mostly I remember falling in love over, and over, and over...

The power and magic of EQ in its beginnings leave almost everything else in the dust, in my experience

I have powerful and wonderful memories of Everquest. I started in June 2000 with friends I went to high school with. I was in my early thirties. I was living far away, married, kids, and long hours at work. EQ let me get in touch with old friends in a new way. Facebook wasn't yet a thing as far as I recall.

I remember when my daughter was in pre-school and my son was in Kindergarden and they were fascinated with this game their dad played. My son still remembers one time in Lake Rathetear when I was AFK, he stepped in and helped save the day for my high school buddy.

I was standing in POK this evening and I was suddenly hit with a powerful memory of how I used to play hide and seek with my daughter. She'd run my enchanter around in the Pixie Shroud that she loved and hide. Then I'd have to find her on my other account tabbing to the screen while she giggled and watched me hunt. Unlike my son who had an Iksar warrior that he leveled to something around ten. We got this phone call from his kindergarten teacher wanting to know who this lizard man warrior was that my son loved to draw and tell stories about. My daughter on the other hand refused to go to any zone that had mobs that would attack her. She loved the Plane of Knowledge and the Plane of Tranquility and my enchanter for its illusions. She's twenty-two now. Hard to believe.

I've also made some real solid friendships through the game over the years. People I've known only in game and through long phone conversations and Discord. I could tell you memories of lost bodies, close combats, amazing and exhausting raids, but for me, this game is really about the relationships and friendships and social memories it's brought me over this amazing twenty-year period, including getting to know people younger than me and watching as they grew up and married and had kids and got their first jobs. And spending time with a friend my age as he learned he had terminal cancer and spending time with him in game while commiserating with the pain of Chemo.

Everquest, I never knew what this game would become when I got that phone call and went down to Fry's or wherever it was and bought my first copy of the game and then created my first character and began to explore a seemingly endless world.

I have an EQ story that still irritates me to this day!!

OK first off, again irritating, I made a Necro in 2001 on Brell Serillis by the name of Deathlord. Lot of people liked my name and complemented it and how well it went with the Necro. Wasn't to long after PoP came out I had a GM come up to me and made me change my name and made it to where u could not make a char named Deathlord. 2 or 3 days later someone made a Necro and Named him Deathlord. I petitioned it and never got a response back. Sent that person a tell and never got a response back either. I am pretty sure that GM made me change my name to use it for theirselves.

My favorite memory was when I was part of the guide program on the Mithmar server and me and some other guides were going around the plane of knowledge playing ducks where we would all crouch and follow each other around and quack and invite players to join us. We ended up with a nice long line and I gave out cookies after we stopped, after that I would often go to plane of knowledge and hand out cookies and often random zones and hand out cookies.

It's almost funny the ability this game has to create memories. Like long lasting think back many many years later memories. My brother played Classic in `99 and he absolutely insisted I play too and I did shortly after Kunark came out. I Played EQ for 4 years. When I then switched to EQ2 and played that for almost 12 more years. I got plenty of fond memories there too. I started coming back to EQ at first I'd come back and play for the anniversary fabled mobs. Then again the following year. This year I've been working on leveling up my characters and finding a bit of that old magic. A few days ago I just happened to catch someone asking for help in general chat. I was like that character name seems familiar. Did a quick who is and he's the class i thought he would be as well. Then it hit me.

This was a guy I played with for years with on multiple occasions. He had quit to go play WoW around the same time I switched to EQ2. We were both still essentially the same level with both our respective Mains. I only just recently put on another 3 levels days prior to catching him online. His RL friend had asked him to come back and he decided to check out as well because of the 20th anniversary.

Starting from when I was playing a monk around level 12 in High Pass we soon after joined a guild together. Aside from my brother's character he was the guy I adventured with most. My Monk pulled Lucan out thru the front gates of Freeport for his Soulfire Epic. We even rolled a pair of alts together originally we were both going to be High Elf Magicians but at the last sec I decided to instead roll an Enchanter. Two days ago My Chanter and His Magician was killing Magi P'Tasa for his Mage epic. Something that required a raid to do back in day but was rather poetic to do with 2 Characters that were built for the purpose of adventuring together. Even with 16 years of separation. It will be something that I'll likely remember in another 20 years. But first I have other adventures to partake in.

Hey this is Mal here aka fire you might know me as Malcolm on Phinigel, Zhulauk on Agnarr. I've been playing with Dort, the original Darksiege on Bertox and Tancx now on Zek. I introduce them too the game after my RL brother introduced me too the game with his wife. I came here just as Planes launched as a troll sk and then I moved too ct too play Gladiuss my human warrior I moved servers too The Tribunal too join Aurora Noctum and been majorly troubled by aussie guilds however I seem too always run into the same group of hero's I always have trouble staying in the one guild though I "feel" lucky yet again though these days I run my own guild Thunder Down Under on Agnarr and have been liking the Agnarr players. I'm always saving my loot for better days and love playing all classes. I own 4 accounts and have been having trouble playing on Mangler and Selo's.

One time I won a krono from a Order of the Ancient Dragon race run by Dreekenail.

I've been an off and on player for years. I started playing in 2000. After Kunark was released, but before Velious was. Most of the characters I still play today were created between 2000 and 20002. I also still frequently game with (in EQ and other games) the same buddy I met on the original Binxx in 2002.

I have too many fond memories of the game to call out any one particular moment. Finding new zones (new to me), hunting in less popular zones, power leveling friends, dungeon spelunking, near death experiences, taking down big baddies. All great fun. However, the best part about EQ is the relationships you build with people. No game I've ever taken part of before, or since EQ, has come close to having that kind of connection to people.