I was a Dark Elf Wizard on Tarew Marr. I was also a member of Enlightened Dark, the "big" guild of my server. We were the ones that always got the first kills on everything.
Anyway, as a low level Wizard, I remember getting my early "Gate" spells. These were the ones that allowed you and only you to teleport to a different location. I actually got anxiety the first time I used them, worried that It would take me into the middle of a bad area and I would die and lose a corpse. It's not like I would be able to gate back and quickly get my stuff. I would have to find my way through the world until I got to where I died, and who knew how many days that would take? Hell, how do I even get to Tox from Neriak? Anyway, these were also the days of EQ'Lizer and not knowing where items came from. It was a lot like the real world in that regard. If you found a new item, you kept that shit a secret so you could gather more of it to sell. So you NEVER knew where items came from early on. That robe looks awesome, where did it come from?
What the hell is Kedge? Oh shit, underwater? I can't breath that long! The game was all encompassing. Very "epic" in how it felt to accomplish even small things.
At the start of Kunark, I swapped my main to an Iksar Monk named Szerak. I loved the idea of "pulling" and I became pretty good at feign pulling. 2 of the best monks on the server taught me everything they knew, which was helpful. Anyway, I got onto my wizard to help someone with a teleport and saw that there was a pickup raid going for Plane of Fear. I knew that Cazic dropped the "cazic skin" needed to do the Wizard Epic, so the greedy side of myself joined the raid. I was only 54 at the time (max level was 60, but the server only had a dozen or so). I wasn't in a big guild at this time. Actually, I might have dropped from my small family guild because I wanted to focus on the Iksar Monk. Anyway, I went on this pick up raid of Fear. There were 7 wizards total present. There was even a Carmine Robe that was stolen during it, which caused a lot of drama, and almost caused the raid to end early.
It was around 2am when we FINALLY killed Cazic, and sure enough, he had the skin. This is only the 6th one to drop across all servers. The leader of the raid didn't want to get involved with the drama, so he decided to sit out of that roll, even though he was a Wizard.
At that point, one other wizard had left (I think they were the one that stole the Carmine robe). We all roll, and sure enough, I get a 100. I became the 7th wizard world wide to receive a Staff of the Four, and I was only level 54. Unheard of, but it was a stupidly rare drop.
Shortly after getting the epic, I was invited to join the big guild on the server. I guess at the time, they wanted all of the epics under their tag. I ended up being a member for another 5 years before leaving EQ to play WoW as a member of FoH. But still, that was some awesome shit. I remember how fast your heart would beat when a boss died before you could see what items he had. Then finding out who got the loot in the first place. So much anxiety. This game was amazing. I'm glad that I was able to play it back when I had TONS of free time. Unfortunately, playing it so much ended up costing me some real life social interactions, but it was worth it (at the time). Such good memories.