At what age did you first start playing EverQuest, and what draws you in?

[Fenrisulfr]

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

I was 18 at the time.. and graduated high school about 2 months after release.

3d fantasy graphics on my badass celeron 333 + voodoo2 drew me in :P Most other games at the time were ugly. i.e. Ultima was cool, but it was an overhead, weird 2d view.

Why I continued to play EQ.. and now develop is the feeling of an open world, in which you control your character.. instead of the game controlling you.

Sounds about right!

We all appreciate the work you guys put into the server and give back to the community.

[Polixenes]

I was 33 back in 1999. No idea why I chose the Innoruuk server but I rolled a high elf cleric in April or thereabouts, and finally dinged 50 on Boxing Day.

This included a 27 hour session camping Drezlna for my Jboots followed by 13 straight hours of sleep.

Prior to that I was playing MUDs, Master of Orion, XCOM: UFO Defense, Diablo, Ultima Underworld. Maybe Baldur's Gate unless that came out later. Is it just that I am older that games don't seem as good as they used to be? Probably.

[Drem]

used to play MUDs. never played ultima online and actually played asheron's call before my friend let me log on his EQ account and make a monk. hooked ever since, tho it's never been quite as fun as it was during velious

i guess i was about 14 or 15

[Hottbiscuits Dreadmuffin]

Back in the summer of 2000, I was so eager to start playing this new game EverQuest with friends of mine on Spellbinder (oldschool AOL magic-FPS) and Splatterball (paintball FPS).

I pretty much rolled my face across the keyboard when I was registering my account (I was 11 and so excited) because not only did I misspell the username I'd wanted (poisonivy became poionsivy) but the password I couldn't even guess.

I had to call EQ tech support the first day because I couldn't get in my account D:

I love EQ Classic / Kunark / Velious for the lore and the difficulty of the game. Originally, there were no maps or websites you could go to to find things out. Everything was an achievement. Now that p99's EQ server is out, all of the original EQ Classic info is GONE from the internet (mostly, except for maps) so it's just like when I started [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It took me 15 minutes to find the Shadowknight guild in Neriak when I'd just started playing again. Awesome.

[Gr8ein]

Hehe i was about 4 lol i just explorered alot i still remember playing,nothing compares to this game,what draws me in is community is filled with nice people,and the game isn't too easy.

[gnomishfirework]

I was 19. I had just been dumped so I went out and bought it. It kept me occupied.

I had been playing MUDs and some guy i knew was going on about how lame MUDs were compared to EQ.

[Vonkaar]

I seriously had no idea that I was playing with so many babies back in those days. I assumed everyone around me was around my age. I was 21 when I started. I completed the nerd trifecta by watching the owner of my local comic shop playing Everquest on his computer and was instantly hooked when he transformed into a wolf and demonstrated quad kiting. I played MUDs on BBS' for years but this was (literally) a whole new dimension.

Initially, I lost at least 5 corpses worth of tattered cloth and rusty weapons before learning you could locate your corpses and loot your bodies. My original human paladin had 5 points spread out into all stats because I thought it would make me balanced. It took me a week before I made level 3, mostly because I stood around talking to people - many of whom were NPCs.

I stumbled into EC by mistake and was blown away by all of the auctions and shouting. I ran into a few halflings and thought they were awesome looking. A level 19 Tigole saw me running away from skeletons towards the tunnel and ran over to help out. I said thanks and he said np.. we got to talking and somehow in a 5 minute conversation I decided I wanted to be a halfling. I mentioned my friend that turned into a wolf and he said that he 'thought' that was a druid spell, so I chose Druid. And that is my story... Many hundreds of days /played later and I never twinked, never looked back. I stuck by a halfling druid and pretty well stayed at max level forever. I did a lot of complaining about being a druid and felt pretty useless towards the end of SoV, but ultimately loved the game as it was.

No other MMO had the social aspects of EQ. The fact that EQ was such an ugly bitch and so flawed is what forced you to be friendly. You HAD to stare at your spell book for 10 minutes while you rested your mana... so what did you do? You chatted with NPCs or hopefully, the dude next to you roleplaying a hot wood elf ranger. You all become friends and loyalty springs from this friendship. Guilds formed and drama ensued. Death HURT and clerics were valued for their abilities to lessen this sting. Shit, I just died 6x in Unrest from a train... lost 4 hours of experience but this badass cleric in full planar purple came in and rezzed all of us. I'll never forget him.

By removing these difficulties from the games and catering to the casual gamer, companies like Blizzard have opened up the coffers for a flood of newbs and hoards of cash... but alienated the fan base who will come back TEN YEARS after the game is long dead - just hoping for more of that abuse. We all complained like crazy for all the shit that Verant did to us in those days but here we are, >donating< cash, or programming skills, or spare server parts, or our own spare time to a world that many of us swore off - just for a bit of that nostalgia.

That's what has me coming back for more abuse. No, I won't go for my epic in P1999. No, I won't go into VP on P1999. I won't stick around and try to wake the sleeper when SoV rolls around. I don't need that abuse. I will try and farm Grachnist and get myself an earring so I can run around exploding in mid-air...

[Cethin]

I started playing when I was 12, in Summer/Fall 1999, way before Kunark. My best friend (at the time) was playing EQ and I often went over to his house to watch him play and/or create my own character and end up lost in Qeynos Hills soon to be killed by a bear of sorts. Eventually, I bought my own account and created a halfling druid named Neddun. My friend helped me out with gear and would often use me as a mule for the items he was trading (Lore items and such). I loved the graphics in the game, especially the spell graphics and how they change as you level up.

Eventually, I got tired of quad kiting dorfs in BB and found that a hybrid healer/caster was not really my style. So I created my soon to be twinked-to-hell monk after Kunark came out. Cethin Whistlingfists (lame, I know, I was 13 alright?!) I sold everything that I could off of my 53 druid and even sacrificed my soul to a necromancer for a decent amount of platinum all the way down to level 49 (Have to save starfire and SoN right?). Then I bought my monk everything a typical kunark-geared monk would have...only he was level 1. KDs, Trance sticks, fungi tunic, FBSS, the works. I loved tearing through mobs by myself and I leveled up rather quickly.

What really kept me into the game was the whole concept of FD pulling and how powerful monks were at running groups. I loved the challenge of it, I loved the thrill of it, I loved planning ahead and making sure that it was safe to bring back mobs and that all my threat was wiped from them (damn wandering mobs). Pulling for raids was especially fun, even though I did not have much experience with that at the time. I hope to level a monk on P99 after I level my enchanter which is a class I've always desired to play.

I just love the challenge of this game. It is very unforgiving, you need to know what you're doing and people will know if you're good or not. I love the community of EQ. Instead of throwing yourself into a LFG queue in which you're paired up with people across servers you don't even know (coughWoWcough) and never to see them again. In EQ, you handpick your groups. You want to do something, you already know who to bring. I love it. EQ is great. P99 is the best. I love you guys. *tear*

[Kazowi]

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

I was 11 or 12 and used to make fun of my brother while he played.
Then he made me try it. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

by brother you mean twoclose, and by try it you mean anal right?

[Quasimojo]

I was 33. I had never heard of the game, but when I saw it on the shelf at the local CompUSA and read the box description, stating I could play an RPG online with hundreds or thousands of other people, I had to check it out.

What keeps me playing? I'd have to say the fact that nearly everything I do is meaningful. I have a compelling reason for pretty much any activity, whether it's completing a quest for a particular item or grinding xp for that next level and a particular class-defining spell. The game is full of opportunities for feelings of accomplishment.

Add to that the fact that even basic combat requires some level of tactics and strategy.

All the other MMORPG's that have come since are like kids games to me.