Everquest - Live Servers
- Thread starter wilkxus
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Big_w_powah
Trakanon Raider
- 1,887
- 750
I know. Its EXTREMELY tough...For classes focused on buff/cc/debuff, they play so very differently with very different strengths.
Xarpolis
Life's a Dream
- 14,111
- 15,615
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.
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.
- 1
Not too long ago I was going through boxes and stumbled across a binder I kept with Map print outs from EQatlas, I think. Even had little notes on them for mobs and my favorite, the path I had to take to get through Lake of Ill Omen.
Xarpolis
Life's a Dream
- 14,111
- 15,615
Speaking of being in the top guild on server, did other servers intentionally kill off lower level "boss mobs" every time they pop just to keep a valuable proc weapon out of rival guilds hands so they couldn't possibly attempt the main targets we wanted? We did that shit religiously. It was most noticable in Velious when we kept the giant thing on farm even though we were clearing NToV.
Avatar of War, Tormax, even Dain & Yelinik. Anything that would keep a rival away from something that would help them beat a harder boss. It was ruthless, but it existed anyway.
On my server, 2 guilds attacked a dragon at the same time. The 2nd one actually had a group of all DPS dealers, so they "KS'd" the dragon. We had a mid-level guild leader that played in a cyber cafe. He had to use the restroom one afternoon, so someone quickly made an alt character and joined the guild and transferred leadership to that character.
We have stories of people who killed themselves. People that we hated and liked... Meeting people during the various "Fan Faire" events were awesome, and people that couldn't attend would often make their own local gatherings. I went to a bunch of these parties. It was pretty cool.
Avatar of War, Tormax, even Dain & Yelinik. Anything that would keep a rival away from something that would help them beat a harder boss. It was ruthless, but it existed anyway.
On my server, 2 guilds attacked a dragon at the same time. The 2nd one actually had a group of all DPS dealers, so they "KS'd" the dragon. We had a mid-level guild leader that played in a cyber cafe. He had to use the restroom one afternoon, so someone quickly made an alt character and joined the guild and transferred leadership to that character.
We have stories of people who killed themselves. People that we hated and liked... Meeting people during the various "Fan Faire" events were awesome, and people that couldn't attend would often make their own local gatherings. I went to a bunch of these parties. It was pretty cool.
Porkchop
Mr. Poopybutthole
- 1,212
- 1,009
EQ was just fun for me. That's why I stuck around. I also appreciated the fact that I could play it by myself any time I wanted, or If I wanted to play with others then we didn't need a LAN party or more controllers/TVs or whatever. For the time, that was pretty revolutionary.
Karana had the KGC - Karana Guild Council, which had a rotating calendar for boss kills, you'd sign your guild up, get on the waiting list, and if you didn't kill it in a timely manner (a day I think? Idk) it was open for others to take it and you lost your chance.
A lot of people liked to shit on that as care bear, but it was actually fantastic for the top guilds, it meant there was no effort to keep the people 'behind' the curve down, they were naturally kept down by the fact that they would only get 1 cazic or inny kill every 6-12 months, they couldn't get geared up to even attempt to compete with us, we all looked like saints for letting them have these mobs, and every time some guild couldn't kill them or the server was going down, we'd rush in and get it anyway. Just all around win/win from the perspective of the people ahead of that curve.
Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
- 12,001
- 29,237
Yeah I ran a guild on The Rathe for awhile that had a similar calendar system. Basically you were occasionally allowed a shot at a mob, and once you killed it you were put in the rotation. So it was relatively hard to break into the upper echelons, much less gain ground and pass other guilds.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 4,864
- 6,821
EQ - first mmo.
First toon - level 6 rogue that spent his days training the entrance to Blackburrow. GM showed up and kindly told me to knock it off. So many players hated that rogue, had to delete it.
First lesson in EQ - Rep mattered.
Started a ShadowKnight and kept on truckin.
Top guilds on our server were ruthless. Rotations never worked, especially with two of the top guilds being aussie and asian. They couldn't care less about rotations, why should they? That made it interesting imo. We spent days, weeks and months screwing over each other's raids and boss timers. It was glorious... except when GM's got involved... all too often.
The constant griefing during raids (mass zone pulls by fd classes etc), stealing of bosses and just general FUCK YOU ALL attitude kept me in the game.
But there was another side to EQ. It took me a while to realize that not everyone liked to play the grief game. Some of the nicest MMO players I have ever met were in EQ. It had both extremes.
Many of those players had great reps (as players and human beings) that kept them above the fray. A unofficial code about who you messed with. Miss that.
First toon - level 6 rogue that spent his days training the entrance to Blackburrow. GM showed up and kindly told me to knock it off. So many players hated that rogue, had to delete it.
First lesson in EQ - Rep mattered.
Started a ShadowKnight and kept on truckin.
Top guilds on our server were ruthless. Rotations never worked, especially with two of the top guilds being aussie and asian. They couldn't care less about rotations, why should they? That made it interesting imo. We spent days, weeks and months screwing over each other's raids and boss timers. It was glorious... except when GM's got involved... all too often.
The constant griefing during raids (mass zone pulls by fd classes etc), stealing of bosses and just general FUCK YOU ALL attitude kept me in the game.
But there was another side to EQ. It took me a while to realize that not everyone liked to play the grief game. Some of the nicest MMO players I have ever met were in EQ. It had both extremes.
Many of those players had great reps (as players and human beings) that kept them above the fray. A unofficial code about who you messed with. Miss that.
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Xarpolis
Life's a Dream
- 14,111
- 15,615
I know ED got the "world first" on Emperor Ssraeshza 2.0
That was pretty awesome. I don't remember using TeamSpeak or anything like that back then. But we were like "HOLY SHIT!" and all that text party. There was also a flood of tells from all over the server asking for links to what dropped. Word travels fast.
That was pretty awesome. I don't remember using TeamSpeak or anything like that back then. But we were like "HOLY SHIT!" and all that text party. There was also a flood of tells from all over the server asking for links to what dropped. Word travels fast.
Louis
Trakanon Raider
- 2,836
- 1,105
Hatorade
A nice asshole.
- 8,181
- 6,604
Itlan
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 4,994
- 744
Words like elysian or umbral. When the fuck would I come into contact with these words in my youth?
Elysian maybe when you start reading Greek tragedies, no idea when I'd come across umbral. See mom, I wasn't pissing away my teenage years!
Itlan
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 4,994
- 744
A lot of shit like that, where you could just infer what the terms meant even from a young age. Really helped to round out my vocabulary, and I scored a 710 verbal despite being a piece of shit high school.
I have Brad McQuaid to thank for that.
Don't fucking put that on your resume Brad.
