How your very first encounter went with the world of Norrath

[Kwitchercryn]

So, as the title says, lets see how everybodies first encounters went when they first signed on and started adventuring in the world of Norrath.

When I first purchased Everquest, it was shortly after it launched back in 1999. My computer was sitting in the "office" in mine and my dads house. I started it up and I was instantly hooked. There was so much. I was completely overwhelmed and had no idea what I was doing. I loved it.

Loved it so much in fact, that I completely lost track of time. Before I knew it, I had been on the computer for going on 24 hours. My face was only a few inches from my computer screen because my vision was starting to fail me, yet I couldnt pull myself away. So many orcs to slay!

Then, all of a sudden, my screen goes black! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] "WHA!?!?!?" I look up and see my dad with his finger on the power button to my computer. "Go...to...bed" , damnit all.....so I went to bed, sadly, I didnt even make it TO my bed, I ended up passing out on the floor of my room some how. Thats all she wrote. After that, I was completely hooked to this wonderful game.

[Barkingturtle]

I feel like the next line of your post should've read, "And I never saw a tree again."

My first moments in EQ I fell off Kelethin and promptly started my first corpse run. I imagine many others shared my experience and it was apparently fun.

[Kwitchercryn]

What is this "tree" you speak of?

[Volibear]

I rolled a DE necro. Fought a snake and lost. I then deleted the necro and started a mage. I then promptly won my first battle and kept the mage.

[fadetree]

Well, at the time, I was writing my own internet multi-player game....a text-only persistent world. It a sort-of clone of Gemstone III for 16 players and had been running it locally over 16 phone lines at the house, with a lot of success. Then I discovered the internetz, and was busily retrofitting the game for sockets and upscaling to 128 players. I had actually QUIT MY FREAKIN JOB to develop the internet version.

So then I was looking around at the internet for competition....found meridian 59 and was relieved to find it was more or less unplayable...saw a couple of others...and then ran into EQ. It was May of 1999. I had a bad feeling right away...and then when it opened and I stepped into it in June my jaw dropped and I knew it was game over for me, no freakin way a single person could compete with that. So went back to work and played EQ for the next 8 years.

As far as what happened, I rolled up a human ranger that first day, dropped into Surefall Glade, and spent like an hour trying to get out of there because I COULD NOT SEE lol. Then when I was out I surveyed the land before me. Lots of people running around killing stuff, training beetles to guards lol. I remember being on the little ridge just to the left of the SF entrance, back to back with another player, valiantly fighting the skeles...soon we were dead but it was a blast. Lots of great memories.

In fact, thats why I just rolled up a new ranger here on eq99. I tried a Sony TLP server for a while, but they are blowing through expansions so fast that it might as well be a live server, plus they didn't actually regress the code base so its still EZ mode in any case. So if you see a very young ranger around qeynos named Fadetree, its me. I like it a lot...I was *thrilled* to get a backpack and a coupla +5 HP ears off the injured rat in the catacombs, and had to RUN FOR MY LIFE in actual fear when I had a coupla red giant rats aggro on me. I barely made it to the exit. See, thats what you don't get on the live servers..actual dread and actual ( well sorta ) accomplishments.

[Danyelle]

Originally Posted by Volibear [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I rolled a DE necro. Fought a snake and lost. I then deleted the necro and started a mage. I then promptly won my first battle and kept the mage.

Good...good.

[nocookiesforme]

I can't remember which of these came first, but both of my first experiences involved incredibly noobish deaths.

Well, that's not quite true. My absolute first encounter with Everquest was just watching my friend play it for about 15 minutes when I went over to his place after school one day. After seeing his level 6-8ish mage kill some random mobs in Qeynos hills, I was enthralled. I HAD to play this game. So I went home and ordered Ruins of Kunark off of Amazon.com immediately. But when it finally arrived, I learned (to my endless chagrin) that our computer's graphics card was not up to the task of playing Everquest. (This was odd; I later found that I <i>could</i> play that shitty offline tutorial that came with the game back then. So desperate was my longing to play that I actually completed that tutorial <i>twice.</I>

Anyway, while I saved up money to buy a new video card, I got to play the game on two separate occasions at friends' places; they each let me make a character on their accounts since they knew how badly I was jonesing.

The encounter I <i>THINK</i> came first involved me making a human ranger. After struggling for probably upwards of an hour, I finally found the guildmaster in Surefall glade. I remember having trouble maneuvering in the tunnels there without night vision. Anyway, I eventually fell into a small body of water somewhere within Surefall, and started to drown. I didn't know how to pan up! I panicked, fearing that all I had gained through my hour of hard work, a newbie weapon and my guild tunic, would be lost!

I searched the shelf above my friend's desk for the Everquest box, hoping to find a manual. No luck. My friend was in his living room, playing Majora's Mask, so I ran out to ask him what to do. His gracious and helpful response: "AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Uh... Ah... Ahahahahaha! Page up. Just press page up."

I sprinted back to his room, but it was too late; I had drowned.

My other "first" experience was less exciting; at a different friend's apartment, I made a Human Monk in Qeynos. Running around the yard killing rats, I was frustrated to see that they had a tendency to run away when they were almost dead. "Whatever," I thought. "I don't feel like chasing them." So after waiting a little while to regain some health, I ran off, probably halfway across the yard, and started a fight with another rat. The same damned thing happened! At this point, my health was pretty low. I sat down, waited to heal up for all of like 2 ticks, then picked a fight with <i>another</i> rat that walked right across my path. Almost as soon as I did, the first rat, which had gained enough health to resume the fight, then chased me across the zone, returned. I switched my attention to that initial rat, and I think I actually managed to kill him. But by then, the 2nd rat had regained enough health to come back after me, and he didn't have very far to walk. The 2nd and 3rd rats owned me.

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[SCB]

The very first thing I ever did in EQ was roll a Wood Elf druid. At the time I was obsessed with druids in DnD (still the coolest class ever in 2nd edition rules IMO), and figured this would be equally cool.

I almost immediately fell to my death in Kelethin after wandering for what seemed like hours to find my guild hall. When I recovered my corpse, it had a number of Fine Steel weapons on it. I ran around /shouting if anyone had "lost any Fine Steel" weapons. No one claimed them, and I was elated to see what they were worth.

That's right, I got hooked by a bug.

[eadric]

My first day in Everquest ended with my level 4 half elf ranger falling down the hole in the Tree in Blackburrow. The corpse was more or less irretrievable... no one went that deep into Blackburrow and came back alive. So I lost all my gear and gold on my very first day in the game. And yet, I was totally hooked.

[Kwitchercryn]

lol Yeah, my first toon got lost wondering around in Greater Fay, I remember coming across a dead orc and looted the small cloth wristbands off him "whoo! Armor!" only to turn around and get punched in the face by a much bigger much livelier orc. I didnt understand that I had to run back and get my body at this point in time. So, I was pretty upset when I noticed I lost my uber leet wristbands a few hours later >.<