Everquest Mysteries

I remember a time when NPC dialog didn't even highlight the trigger words.

"Welcome Traveler, The evil whatever has descended into this realm. My tale of woe is long and arduous. Would you like to hear my [story] or are you [ready] to accept my challenge?"

But without the [ ]. Woof.

Side note: I'm curious who here has the longest history with EQ? I was in Beta 1 which was about 50 people. Anyone else in Beta 1 or prior?

Also: my dick is 8".

Evernothing said:

pics or it didn't happen

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My dick? Well that was just a lie.

I don't think I even have the beta disc anymore. I'm not sure I could prove it honestly. No screenshots either =(

The beta disc I got was just a CD-R with Everquest written in pen and a version number (don't remember that either). One day I got a call from 989 Studios and they did this quick little interview where they asked me why I thought I'd be a good beta tester for EQ (there was an online application that I had filled out previously). Disc was sent a few weeks later and that was the start.

There was a private beta message board where everyone could post. There were so few people, you pretty much knew everyone. In the beginning everyone started in Qeynos. I think maybe you could start in Freeport as well but none of the other cities were available right away. So you'd start with all sorts of class/race combos. Blackburrow was a shitshow. Trains everywhere.

Wipes were consistent but if you messaged a GM with your name and level they would restore your class and level after the wipe. Had to be the same class and name or else no go. They would also reimburse you your level squared in gold (might have been plat but I don't think so). It was enough to buy some of your spells back and maybe some merchant armor. In order to get level'd you would have to stand in a line outside Qeynos' gates and they would autolevel you one at a time.

I remember seeing GMs somewhat frequently. You'd see Aradune in his green armor and with his dual flaming swords, he always drew a crowd. The chick on the back of the box, Xectia, was a GM I think. Ozymandias was the very first guide if I remember correctly.

It was so new and so big, I would pay money to relive it, but it will never be the same as it was. I was completely addicted from the start. I wish I could remember more but it was 18 years ago =)

Oh and I remember there were no faction messages but there were faction consequences. I remember becoming KOS in Qeynos on my HE Paladin and I lost 4 levels (12 down to 8) because the guards corpse camped me. I petitioned and got the infamous, working as intended. I started over as a DE Cleric. People were terrified to group with me because they thought if I healed them, they would take a faction hit. It was entirely invisible at that point in the game. They eventually added the faction messages, but it was my understanding that they originally planned to turn them back off after testing, but obviously that never happened.

I was in the first group to explore Befallen. We had a GM with us who was observing how we played. The whole key thing was crazy. Then we eventually ran into one of the necros and when feared, you would run randomly for about 15 seconds. The result was an enormous train (obviously) and of course the group wiped. I think a lot of our feedback resulted in the change to just being a stationary fear, as it just seemed way too unfair to have that kind of train due to one spell. Was cool though =)

Synj said:

Side note: I'm curious who here has the longest history with EQ? I was in Beta 1 which was about 50 people. Anyone else in Beta 1 or prior?

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I was just a kid (13) and signed up for beta after reading an article on EverQuest in a gaming magazine. A multiplayer, persistent world that was 3D and first person sounded like everything I wanted from Morrowind.

Anyway, I received a CD, but I couldn't tell you when. I'm sure it was for one of the final betas as I remember the CD had the box art on it - but it was printed in black and white. I vaguely recall thinking that there wasn't much point in playing since the launch was right around the corner, but as you say, it was almost 20 years ago now and those details weren't really important enough to recall clearly.

Chukzombi said:

i never knew you could sign up for betas of games. even though i was in The Realm's beta back in 94-95, i just thought i got a headstart because i was a regular sub of Imagination Network (INN). hell, i still didnt know about Betas until i got an invite to play Velius beta from our server GM Valtron (Oliver Smith) and he had to ELI5 what it was. i did start playing EQ at launch though. i had a paladin on tunare server named WyatBurp. i know i'm making myself look tarded, but i kept making new chars on different servers because i kept clicking the top server not knowing the default was least populated. i had thought my characters kept being deleted because the game was going through many updates. after i figured it out i stuck with the server erollisi marr. i still had a half dozen or so different chars scattered on different servers. did this happen to anyone else? i figure it must have because they changed their system to reflect the servers you had chars on.

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LOL....

Chukzombi said:

yeah i know, if somebody had told me what i just wrote i would have laughed at them too, but i try to be honest here and internet gaming was still fairly new in the 90s.

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it was a brave new world for all of us.

i played a monk, started in late vanilla / early kunark. played through mid luclin. raided with a 2nd tier guild, stopped after ntov, aow, etc. basically because i had a huge course load at the university and was working at the same time too. also because luclin sucked ass and everything had a gajillion fucking hp and soloing became impossible.

i reupped 10 years later. bought some kronos, sold them for plat

got all awesome gear in bazaar, leveled a monk to whatever level it was back then, 85 maybe, soloed my epic and got a merc and went to solo velious and kunark

got to ntov, half of it was up, killed a couple named, soloed vulak aerr, got some piece of shit over which i would have melted with excitement a decade earlier, went to fuck around in POM and then i think it turned the game off permanently after that

i reupped 10 years later. bought some kronos, sold them for plat

got all awesome gear in bazaar, leveled a monk to whatever level it was back then, 85 maybe, soloed my epic and got a merc and went to solo velious and kunark

got to ntov, half of it was up, killed a couple named, soloed vulak aerr, got some piece of shit over which i would have melted with excitement a decade earlier, went to fuck around in POM and then i think i turned the game off permanently after that and let my subscription expire

Soygen said:

I wasn't in alpha, but I was in one of the first beta phases which was 0.5 I think. I remember starting a character in Qeynos and my PC would constantly freeze up, causing me to cold reboot. Weeks later, only after getting up from my computer after another freeze, did I realize the freezing was me zoning into Qeynos Hills. It just took forever.

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There was a phase 0.5 but I thought that was just friends and family. Zoning did take forever to the point where you'd have to be really sure you wanted to zone due to the load time.

I remember early in beta there was a guy fishing in Qeynos and I asked what he was a doing. He told me that he had been invited to check for exploits. He showed me that he was able to fish and then somehow able to tap into the loot tables and fish for things that shouldn't have been fishable. He pulled up a few pieces of equipment (low end but still cool to my noob self) and gave them to me. He was a ranger I believe, but I don't remember his name.

I think early on the only spells available were the wizard spells, so if you rolled a mage or enchanter, you'd have your first level spells but nothing else. That was for at least a couple of weeks.

Spells had zero description available and also didn't tell you the damage they did. So you'd see a spell like Bind Affinity for x gold and you'd skip it because, why waste coin on something you didn't know the effect of?

Soygen said:

Maybe it was phase 1, but I'm almost certain my CD had 0.5 on it. That CD is lost in time somewhere.

I spent a ton of time in beta farming the Order of Thunder off some mummy in the Qeynos sewers. I was selling them like crazy for their awesome +5 CHA.

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Not disputing you, it was 18 years ago =)

Do you remember your character name/class?

I think my first char was HE Wiz named Aeyanel or some shit (RNG).
Second was a HE Paladin, can't even remember his name.
Third was a DE Cleric named Feyd.

Do you remember the player wipes like I described? Where you'd have to /report your name and level and then after the wipe the GMs would restore your level?

I remember wipe nights were good and bad. If you were semi deep into a level, like 3-4 yellows, you'd want to grind your ass off to make the next level or you'd lose all that sweet exp! They would only level you to your current level, anything else was lost.

Conversely, if you weren't close to level and had already /reported, you could go and do all the stupid shit you were too scared to do. That was pretty great.

I had hung on to that original beta disc forever, pretty sure I lost it in one of several moves. Too bad, I actually liked having it as a keepsake.

Soygen said:

I think my first character was a human monk in Qeynos. No clue what I named him. I also made a half elf druid called Pharia or something like that. I do remember the server wipes, though in the earliest days of the beta I didn't play much since I thought it was freezing my computer up. I literally ignored the game for weeks, not realizing it was slow loading zoning.

I found my original EQ disc(from release) recently, but everything else is lost in time. Everquest was mind blowing for me, back then. I miss that feeling of discovery that just doesn't exist in gaming these days.

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Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me but that sounds so familiar. I ran into a druid soloing in Lavastorm and I was amazed, because I couldn't solo for shit. He told me about damage shields and I was like, what? Then he told me about Flight. An early beta spell that I guess Wizard and Druid could get, eventually removed due to obvious issues with exploitability. But he sold me that Druid was where it's at and it became my first class in retail.