Biggest thing I loved about EQ and being a shaman was how much I could help people and how much clutch shit I could pull off when things went bad. Like you said, it felt good to be needed and I've never felt needed in any other game as I felt in EQ. I was in high demand and I was appreciated and I was useful. It's insane how shitty WoW is now in this regard, especially after the latest pruning. Shit hits the fan now on my shaman there? Okay I can maybe throw a shitty spot heal, but that's it. In EQ I really felt powerful when I mastered shit. For some reason, I was also a much nicer, much less elitist person when I played EQ. I turned into a bit of a raging asshole at others when I started playing WoW. Everyone just seems so much more dumb in WoW vs. what I remember from EQ. I can't tell if it's because EQ made you actually not be dumb to make it to max level or if my being young just skewed my perspective.
To the other point, early EQ was absolutely terrifying for me, between shit being so unfamiliar and me just being a complete idiot. I remember fleeing from a mob in FoB when I was little and getting lost in the woods (which I dunno how I got lost because they're not that big) and hit the zone line for Warslick's Woods which I'd never even heard of or new where the hell it was and wondered if I'd ever find my way back to the pit again. Much later when I was in the high 20s, a couple people took myself and another monk into Dalnir for some sweet loot. We got overrun in the church and the druid evac'd us out. I'd never been off of Kunark at all before. I was scared shitless about ever making it back home, but the druid was nice and decided to escort me back to Frontier Mountains where I knew the way from there. We're invised and leving through Dreadlands when just as we get to Karnor's the druid DCs. I hang out and wait for him, but eventually my invis starts wearing out. I have no clue where the fuck I am or where to go, so I just found the emptiest area I could and just FD'd. The druid never came back and I laid there from like 3-6am begging in /shout for someone to come help me gtfo of there and offering all of the little bit of plat I had.
The first time I hit level 20, I wanted a sweet surname and the one I wanted to make had an ` in it, so I had to petition for a GM to put it on for me. So I throw my petition in and as I'm waiting, I'm in the deep end of the FoB pit pulling some high greens and light blues to pass the time while trying to be careful not to die. End up pulling a mob too far back up a ramp and pulled a scorpion from the field behind me and got double-teamed down. Of course as I'm running back to my corpse is when the GM sends me a tell, but I deleveled and couldn't get my surname. So I go back to the pit, pick a cleaner spot and level back up to 20, put my petition back in and went back to killing the easy shit. Eventually end up getting a shitty pull where a bandit I grabbed ran by a dog which aggro'd the bandit then decided to switch to me when it got close and I got killed and deleveled again. And of course, that's when I got the GM tell again and once again had to go back and relevel before they could give me the surname. So I say fuck it and I get 20 back and then go sit in Cabilis at the Haggle Baron shop. So I needed something to pass the time, so why not level my Beg skill? Sure enough, shopkeeper gets pissed at me eventually and kills me. I logged off for the night after that.
I remember sitting facing a wall outside of Cabilis in FoB once and was playing with the settings. I found the distance slider and didn't know what it was, but I just threw it to max anyway. Nothing really changed so I just left it there. Later on I got up and turned around and HOLY SHIT, I thought I literally got transported somewhere else because of how different the game looked. Freaked me the fuck out. Before I found the gamma settings, I would literally just sit there at night time spamming sense heading to train it up because I couldn't see shit all in the dark, even as an Iksar since my gamma was at the lowest setting. I couldn't imagine playing another race with no night vision, cause that shit would be insane trying to do anything.
When I first created my character and got to the stat selection, dumbass me assumed that stats in green, which were also the highest, were at a good level already and good to go and that the stats in red, being the lowest, needed some help. So naturally I dropped all my points into CHA on my monk and later my shaman. Twice.
During my time in EQ, before voice chat really caught on more, I started taking screenshots of all the funny or random shit people said in game. Little inside jokes, people just straight being weird, funny little story snippets people told. I complied them all into a bunch of giant quote boards which I still have today. They've been very good for keeping a lot of old memories alive.