I did not play EQ1, and have been thoroughly enjoying EQ2. I'd like to have more background on the lore and the history that spilled over from EQ1 to EQ2, but am not sure what reoutable sites I should visit in order to get the information. Would someone be kind enough to post some sites that might be worth investigating? I'd really appreciate it.
The official EQ1 site used to be chock-full of lore....I haven't looked at it in a long time, though. Maybe start there?
((Bleodwynn here is a site that I use for EQ1 lore: http://my.core.com/~mickiep/lore/lore.htm You could also look a copy of EQ Atlas which is a book of maps and history/background for every zone in the game, pre-Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion. However, the original EQ1 site might be best since it is "official." Not only is it official, but it's free. :smileywink: )) Lord Aredhel of Felwithe Servant of the All-Mother and protector of her children Lucan D'Lere server
The site listed has some good reading, but a majority of it is basically fan fiction. Check the main EQ site to see what Lore is there.
I tried to compile a list of decent EQ1 lore resources a few months ago in a post on my server board. Sadly I forgot to keep check on it and it got pushed clean off the boards by new posts... (doh!) :smileymad: ... but I'll see what I can dig up from the research I did back then. Couple of things to note: - a lot of lore "resources" out there are either fan fiction or inaccurately paraphrased versions of the official lore. - some of the lore you will find dates back to the Beta days of EQ1-- such lore was either altered or discarded altogether before EQ1 went live and so was "official" lore no longer, despite having been written by SOE! Some of the Beta lore is very interesting but you have to have an idea which is beta lore and which is "official" lore, otherwise a lot of it doesn't fit or make sense. For example, anything mentioning Innoruuk as being creator and god of the Elves (including light elves) is beta lore! With regard to the EQ1 site: yes, it used to have a good amount of lore there but most is gone (I think Google even has some of the links cached still, but they lead to dead pages now ). Still, there's information there on the various races, classes, home cities, skills, etc., so should still be useful for someone who didn't play EQ1. I'll see what I can find.
For the original poster: Caethiel was beta lore ... so not necessarily a bad thing, but a confusing thing. That site linked above does seem to contain a lot of fan-written material too, though.
This is the compendium of War, written by my Guild in EQlive before we quit, It is written from around the time of Luclin, before Planes of Power and before the storyline started getting fairly random and the history started to change. some of it is speculation but its a very good read. http://www.1stfistoflight.com/html/1fol/everquest/eqcodex/default.htm _______________________ Egil Skalagrimson 25 Paladin, Oasis
just want to be clear: compendium of war is fan FICTION....its not lore....interesting to read maybe but confusing to anyone not familiar with official lore
You can actually get a fair bit of lore from the days of EQ1 talking to different NPCs around EQ2. Like Boomba, just inside the gates of West Freeport. Talk about his ancestors who sold pickles there for the last 500 years ago. Well, in EQ1 there was an ogre just inside the gates of west freeport who sold a wide variety of pickles. Dwarf pickles,Halfling pickles, Froglok pickles, Elf pickles. Holly Windstalker was a (in)famous NPC in EQ1, wandering the Qeynos Hills and killing anyone she found beating up on the poor defensless woodland creatures. (like Rabid Grizzly Bears ) There are others, there seems to be more "historian" NPCs like this in Qeynos, but that's only sensible, evils would be less likely to care, or tell you if they did.
I have run into quite a few of these NPCs and have picked up on some of that lore. I have talked to the pickle guy, but I didn't know that was reference to EQ1. That's the sort of thing I'm looking for. As someone who has not played EQ1, I feel kind-of like I'm missing out on some of this stuff and would just like to be able to appreciate all of the experience of EQ2. As a result, I got a copy of EQ Platinum, and I think I'm just going to have to play both games and see what it's all about.
Yay! Another addict in the making! :smileyvery-happy: Don't expect EQ1 to be anything like EQ2, is my only warning. The races, history and some of the world concepts are the main links between the two games. Mechanics-wise, they're apples and oranges. As your interest was piqued mainly by the lore, here's my suggestion (this is the way I'd do it if I was starting all over!): ignore adventuring, questing and tradeskilling completely at first... seriously! Just make a bunch of level 1 characters of different races, starting in different cities, and run around the cities and newbie zones seeing sights (ignore the deaths!). That alone will fill in a lot of the blanks you feel you're currently missing out on. Heck, even the character creation screen will give you a good idea of the races, classes and gods, plus good/evil alignments and historic racial home towns. Qeynos and Freeport should be interesting for you to check out (though much smaller than you're used to!). Other home cities will give you a good idea of places you may see later in EQ2, such as Rivervale. www.eqatlas.com is essential viewing for your tours, by the way. Oh... and be sure to look at the in-box world map compared to the EQ2 map -- it should help link all the names and places (from both games) together better.
Another thing for exploring EQ1, focus your exploring toons as rogues, trust me on this. I played a rogue for years and there was nothing better than invisin and running around exploring the world at extremly low levels. The only things you gotta look out for are undead, otherwise get SoW cast on ya and safe travels! I'm about to end my account in EQ1 and say goodbye to old norrath, but before I do, i've been running around, getting screenshots of everything that had memories for me (most of my old screenshots were lost when my last Hard Drive fried). Suprizingly my fondest memories of that game are my earliest. When the game was so magical and mysterious, I spent days straight...literally just walking around zones, looking at everything, usually with eyes wide and mouth agape. :smileyhappy: Its kinda sad though, wandering through the zones that I grew up in...no one ever goes there anymore, most don't even know they exhist. Like the otherday, a newbie was wandering where a good zone to go lvl so I told em Blackburrow, oasis, Loio, HHK, etc, he later replied that he had searched them, but they were always empty... sigh... o well gotta move on some time... :smileysad:
Thanks for all the suggestions! What's the deal with the gods? Is this something that we will perhaps encounter later on in EQ2? Not sure why they would have left out that alignment in this game - was it not somewhat central to EQ?
Well, one EQ1 expansion, Planes of Power, specifically, gave mortal players access to the realms of the gods. (well, the rest of the gods, there were a few you could get to before that) And, naturally, the "bosses" of these zones were the gods themselves. To progress through that expansion's storyline you had to kill 6? or was it 7, gods including Mithanal Marr, Rallos Zek, Solusek Ro, and the Rathe, and Karana. In other zones, God you could kill just for fun includes Tunare, Bristlebane, Cazic Thule, Innoruuk, and probably a few I'm forgetting. Naturally, this upset the pantheon a bit, and leading up to the Omens of War expansion, the gods descided that they were going to abandon Norrath to its own devices, leave their planes, and stop interfering with the events of the world. As such, the people of EQ2 are somewhat less faithful than the original, being almost 500 years without active dieties. APpparently some of the gods left avatars behind to tend to their intrests in the realm. The Avatar of Hate existed in EQ1 in the Temple of Cazzic Thule in the Feerot, so I imagine any other avatars would be similar to him. I'd imagine that at some point in the future of EQ2 the developers might use it as a plot device, the return of the gods. Add another hallmark quest to increase the max level of the game.
For the most part, the gods in EQ 1 didn't really do anything, pre Planes of Power expansion. Choosing a diety just ment that you could equip some items that were attuned to a certain diety. Post the PoP expansion, you could go kill the gods, which odviously pissed 'em off so they decided to leave. Read the Tome of Destany for full details on that, its under lore at http://everquest2.station.sony.com/ . Thats the official lore as to what has transpired post PoP/LoY expansions, which lead up to EQ2. And since the gods have left, there is no allignment, because for the most part, they no longer exhist, so why worship them? There are some devout NPCs that you run into, but for the most part many have given up. As for them possibly returning later on in the game's life, I believe that that is a very good possibility. They will likely do so covertly at first, as they will not likely be well received, then maby we'll go back to killing them again repeatedly to show them their place! One thing I totally expect to happen is the 'cold war' to start heating up between FP and Qeynos (side note: spelled backwards its sonyeq). Right now you can pretty much run around the opposing city ok and only get kicked out, not killed. I have a good feeling that that is just so that people can get used to the game, later on, they won't be so forgiving. So get everything you need from the opposing city while all they will do is put you out on your rump!:smileywink: Some suggestions on where to explore, areas that I've noticed transfered over: Odviously all of Qeynos and FP, as well as the zones immediately surrounding them. Nek forest and neriak Lavastorm and Solusek's eye A and B (A is a mid range lvl full of goblins and stuff, while deep in B is where the dragon Lord Nafagen resides) Halas, everfrost and permafrost (permafrost caverns are where Lady Vox resides, again deep inside) Rivervale, the Misty Thicket, Kithicore woods, runnyeye, likely the Gorge of King Xorbb the Ferrot, the Temple of Cazic Thule, and the Rathe Mountains (careful in cazic thule, its a very nasty zone) This is all of antonica which is currently all of the zones in EQ2, the other continents are there, we either just have to find them or they will be added later. The lost continents are Odus (erudites and kerrans from here), Faydwer (all elves, but dark, gnomes, and dwarves from here), Kunark (iksar from here), Velious (no starting races or cities here, just high end...well mid range now areas), the moon of Luclin (the kerran of old start here). Edit: You could kill all of the gods save for Veeshan (who flew off ages ago) and the Nameless (the being who created all the gods and the universe). Progression gods to advance to the others (had to kill them in a specific order, you could kill them out of order, but all the gods in a specific tier needed to be killed in order to move on) Bertox (god of disease, necro/sk god) Saron (god of nightmares, sk god) Mithanial Marr (god of valor, pally and the frog's god) Rallos Zek (god of war, warrior and most ogre's god) Karana (god of storms, druid/ranger god) The elemental gods (Fire: Fennin Ro, Water: Corinav, Earth: The Rathe Council, Air: Xenergy) Most all the other gods were just in there for flavor so that you could kill them, most of the other planes that they resided in did not require any kind of flagging (access by killing other gods). Hope that helps =) Message Edited by Gobbwin on 12-23-2004 07:50 AM
Interesting. I feel like such an incredible newb. I sincerely hope that as EQ2 progresses, Sony does the same thing that it did with EQ and makes it as rich as what EQ sounds to be. I still haven't patched my copy of EQ - can't seem to tear myself away from EQ2 long enough, but I really appreciate all the info you guys have been giving me. I wish I'd have played EQ and then moved into EQ2 long ago, but ah, well, what can you do when you're ignorant to online gaming?
If you're a roleplayer, you're actually at an advantage, not having played EQlive. Imagine, if you will, that you were born into the Shattered world, not having experienced what the characters from EQlive experienced. No face-to-faces with Tunare, no duking it out with the Rathe. You're a simple person, ignorant of most of that. It's easier to roleplay a simple person who has no concept of that stuff if, well, in reality you don't know about it :smileywink:. As a veteran of EQlive, sometimes it's hard for me to RP my character as the young and inexperienced lass she is. As a player, I remember the day Galeth Veredeth came back to Faydark with the kidnapped-then-rescued Firiona Vie. I stood in the castle in Felwithe and listened to the king speak. But my character has no idea about that stuff. EQlive was a very rich world, and there is a lot of lore out there. Some people will freak out and say, "Ahhhh, half of those lore sites are just fan fic!" Yeah, there is some fanfic and beta lore being passed around as "canon", but there is some good stuff out there too. Oh, as a sidenote, the Everquest Altas and the EQrpg books are TREMENDOUS sources of in-game, legit lore. I'd quote some of the stuff in them, but I don't want to get spanked for it. *winces away from Faarwolf* The Freeport book has TONS of stuff about the history of Freeport (did you know it was originally a dark elven city?!) and some of the surrounding areas, too. One thing that I like about that book is that it goes over the different factions in depth. It also gives some history on some of the more famous NPCs - Opal Darkbriar, Lucan D'Lere, etc. It's cool, and a worthy read. Arana Wood Elven Warden
There were some gods you couldn't kill, actually. Quellious springs to mind, his Plane being the Plane of Tranquility, a "safe" zone (no combat, period). I'm not even sure if he was actually in zone or not... Other you couldn't kill: Zebuxoruk, the "anti-god" a mortal who attained god-hood by believe strongly enough that the god weren't gods. Luclin, Goddess of Shadow, her avatar appeared in Vex Thal (an ancient semi-ruined city on the moon Luclin) for raid events but the goddess herself never showed up. Brell Serelis, as of OoW players did not have access to the Underfoot (his Plane) so no one had killed him. I believe Erolisi Marr had never been killed, also by virtue of her plane not beign accessible. Rodect Nife prime healer, never appeared, so never killed. And most of hte sub-dieties, Terris Thule, Vazaelle, etc.
