Happy Birthday Everquest!

[Sebekkha]

March 16th will mark 16 years that Norrathians have been adventuring through the lands of EverQuest

Who, or What lured you to this sacred, mind bending, addictive lifestyle??

What, caused you to say 'enough's enough' and venture to other MMOs?

We all share something common here, Enjoying Everquest, It's great to be able to understand reasons behind starting, quitting, quitting for the 4th time, etc!


:)

[Catashe]

Truthfully?

The picture on the box cause I was looking for a new game to play.. Little did I know that i didn't read the fine print on the box that it was a paid sub... lol Cut me some slack i was 15 =p

The enough's enough part had to be the OOW expansion.. I didn't really care for the GoD expansion and found OOW the same lackluster experience and nothing really changed for druids so that was it for me... Not to mention GoD and OOW just didn't compare in my mind to PoP.. I loved that expansion.. Sure it killed my porting business but the idea of raiding all the planes and killing the gods was fun and since I started in Kunark, I really missed the whole raiding Hate and Fear days cause by the time I was max lvl and got into a raiding guild we had already moved on to Velious and Luclin and there was Dragons and Snakes to kill(More Dragons then snakes)

[douglas1999]

I was resistant to EQ at first because I was a diehard UO player at the time. UO of course went to shit shortly after EQ launched, so I started playing mid-classic, probably 5 or 6 months before kunark's release.

Like many people I quit during PoP, which I understand had some decent high end raid content. PoK just killed the spirit of the game for me though.

[myriverse]

Who, or What lured you to this sacred, mind bending, addictive lifestyle??
Friends from AOHell.

What, caused you to say 'enough's enough' and venture to other MMOs?
Tried other MMOs as they came, like DAoC, but none came close to dragging me away. It was City of Heroes that forced me to make a choice. I probably wouldn't be here if there were a CoH emu.

[triad]

I started becasue my older brother got it to play with his friends and i kept making fun of him for playing a stupid game. he told me to just try it then and made me a highelf cleric and rand me to newbie lift... Bad move on his part i played live as much as i could from then (early kunarkish) till 09 or whenever that SoF or whatever with the new sleeper came out and it just didnt hold my attention anymore..




they arnt even trying anymore on that box.. its sad

[mr_jon3s]

My dad bought it for me. It was my birthday and Kunark was on sale. He didn't know it was a paid sub but paid for it for a year then I had to mow lawns and give him the 15 a month because prepaid cards werent around and I didnt have a credit card. I played on and off for years. I had just restarted playing live got my boxing group to lvl 90 with a couple thousand AA's and then sony made it so you could buy a lvl 85 character with max AA's to underfoot. I was pissed after puting in all that work quit and came to p99.

[joedirt87]

A friend of mine kept bugging me to try it. This was 2000 or 2001, Finally caved and bought it right around the time that EQ Trilogy set was released. Was funny because he was probably in the low or mid 40s when I bought the game and I ended up out leveling him to cap (guy was a complete stoner who would just mess around and get himself killed). Wish I had listened to him sooner. Played from late 01 to late 04. Omens of War and WoW on the horizon killed it for me. The guild I was in lost some steam during GoD and by Omens we couldn't even get enough people to log on for raids. After quitting EQ I went straight to WoW. I tried to go back, think it was at the end of Dragons of Norrath but It just felt weird after taking time off.

[Thulack]

My stepdad came home with it to play. Then my mom started playing. Then i did. Then my little brother. After about 5 months we had 2 pc's setup in basement next to each other and would rotate playing :) This was July of 99.

[theG33K]

I was HEAVILY involved in Diablo II at the time and ranked #19 on USEast with my Necro as well as dabbling previously on Ultima Online, Meridian59, and then Asheron's Call. A friend who also played DII tried EQ and convinced me to check it out. Curse that bastard....

I was there from the beginning, day one on the opening of the Tholuxe Paells server. I stayed all the way up to Omens, by then I had enough. I left EQ for WoW, like most others at the time.

I still keep coming back to EQ, it just has everything that I "need" in a game, nothing else has filled the void. And believe me when I tell you, I've played every MMOish game out there over the years.

EQLive is easy mode now and lost it's appeal years ago, I login maybe oncce a year to poke around and collect Vet Rewards that's about it.

I've been here on P99 since the beginning, and plan to stay till the end ~

[Evia]

Some really great stories here. I've enjoyed reading them. :)


As for my experience with Everquest it was in August of 99. My brother was given a birthday gift from our aunt and it was this fantasy game called Everquest. So, it's my brothers 11th birthday. She said she just saw it at the store and it looked like the kind of game my brother would play. She totally just bought it on a whim! (am I glad she did...)

So my brother opens it and at the time we're both nerding pretty hard on Diablo II so I was kinda hesitant about my brother playing some other game, so I wasn't exactly thrilled to check it out. I'll never forget though when my brother called me over to watch him create his character (after we both begged our grandma to let us use her credit card so we could play ;P) and watched him cycle through the character races and classes. I was instantly hooked! I wanted him to hurry so I could create a character. I hadn't even seen the game yet, just character models in a little box with big bulky inch thick choices for classes and races, but I remember being so totally blown away by all of my options.

When I finally got to make my character I chose a High Elf Paladin. I thought he looked like such a bad ass (I'm not sure how?). I remember when my brother explained to me (as an 11 year old explains to a 13 year old) that Everquest, or, Norrath, was a forever existing world that continued to exist even when you logged out, and that anyone with a blue name is another player. I lost my top. You can do that in a video game? This shit is like real life! only way more fun!

I was mad addicted right off the bat though! I would pretend to go to school and sneak back in my bedroom just so I could play. My brother and I shared a PC at the time and we'd take turns doing 2hr sessions each and I remember trying to come up with anything to get to stretch my 2 hrs some how lol. I created so many characters though...and leveled 1-30 or 40 and then make a new character.


What ultimately caused me to leave though was the Planes of Power expansion. I hated how small the world felt when the port books got added and never got used to it. I missed the once so realistic world of Norrath that was so devalued from that expansion on (arguably from Luclin on) Traveling or adventuring naturally felt pointless because I could just click a book and run through a zone and click another book and be in another continent in 3-5 minutes. I quit playing shortly after and would check back in every couple expansions or so with the hope that somehow the game had changed or gotten better but each time I was more and more disappointed and saddened at what had become of a once amazing game.

Years and years later I found Shards of Dalaya or whatever and played it for about a year and a half until I found out about P99 and I've been hooked ever since. Thanks for 16 great years EQ! Happy Birthday! (ps. I love you)

[Skydash]

My buddy in high school had bought EQ a few months after release.
He was so mad when he made an Ogre Warrior, and was killed by a rat in the newbie zone!
So he brought the game to school and gave it to me... lol.

I picked Monk and never looked back. Played until mid Velious, right when we started killing ToV pretty regularly. Got super bored with the limited Monk drops.

[budorf]

Some awesome stories here, thanks for sharing, I enjoy reading them all.

I think I picked up my copy of Everquest at a local Electronics Boutique (later to be bought out by Gamestop) sometime in April of 1999. I still have some really vivid memories of my first character, Tenuvyen a half elf warrior. I probably spent an hour or two lost in Qeynos until I finally reached the gate and started fighting bats and snakes. I got him up to level 6 or so and was working on a full set of patchwork armor. I joined a group that had a bard in it, and he took us all the way to split paw (which at the time was for much lower levels) and we fought and killed some gnolls there. I couldn't believe how huge West Karana was. One day around level 8 or 9 I made the mistake of attacking a willowisp with Tenuvyen. He did not have a magic weapon, and therefore died very quickly to said willowisp. I spent several hours looking for his corpse, but could not find it so I gave up and made a barbarian Shaman named Budorf and decided that he was a lot more fun than a warrior.

I played Budorf until a little after Luclin came out. Had tons of fun on amazing raids with my guild from classic all the way through, but the game was just eating way too much of my time, and having to grind alternate experience points was just not something I wanted to deal with. I still played a lot of EQ even after I gave up my main character though, just not as hardcore. Lots of twinks, lots of playing with family and friends on the PvP server, working the auction house, etc.

Since then I've tried a lot of other MMO's. Obviously WoW, which was super addictive but I lost the urge after hitting level 50 or so. FFXI was fun at first too, but became way too much of a grindfest. EQ2 was a lot of fun.

One MMO I played about 5 or 6 years ago that I thought was actually amazingly well done was Warhammer Online. The mechanics for questing and raiding I thought were really well done, but ultimately the developers weren't able to keep up and make adjustments and the game died off after just a couple of years.

[oldhead]

16 years ago... I was in IT. No longer in IT. Switched Careers. Just switch from a pager to a cell phone. Napster was still being used. Had a 33.6k modem. Just bought my 1st laptop which I would soon install two 56k's and run two phone lines to it and two dial up for double bandwidth. Was fit, young, and didnt quite understand just how damn sexy I was.

[Feanol]

Again, I've really enjoyed reading the experiences of others here!

I started playing a few months after Shadows of Luclin released. I didn't have my own account, I was using a friend's who wasn't able to play very much. He made me a copy of the game CD's. No subscription for me!

I was about age 13 at the time, and it was my first experience with a totally enveloping game. I made a Vah Shir Rogue named Kristentra Shadowpride and fought in the gorges outside Shar Vahl and inside the Pauldal Caverns leading to Shadow Haven.

Got to maybe level 37-ish or so before my parents made me stop playing because they heard me awake at ungodly hours of the morning. I remember waking up early to get a few kills/trades in before my school bus came.

Very clear memories hunting Dervish Cutthroats Solo in the Northern Desert of Ro with sneak pull...

Love this game Happy Birthday!

[xassis]

My dad sitting me on his lap and letting me run his dark elf trademuel through the bazaar sparked my love for EQ, and a little while later he let me create my own character, an Iksar Necro named Xassis (Still the name I always use for all my usernames, no matter where it is) and what stopped me from playing it was my Dad's ever increasingly demanding job and a lack of funds to pay for the game. I eventually came back to the game in 2009 during the Seeds of Destruction expac or whatever and got a Dark Elf Magician to level 55 or something. The game kinda sucks now, not going to lie. Then I found P99 in 2011, and didn't get it working until May of fucking 2013, but eh. Created my Monk, and here we are today. Still my favorite game of all time, matched only by Pitfall: The Lost Expedition. You'd think, me being only a mere 14 years of age I'd be more into the mindless FPS games that the vast majority of my generation are into, but, fuck that shit. Keep it classic, y'know?

[Kayd]

I played EQ because of UO. I started when the UO servers opened and PKing and exploits were rampant. I eventually just got tired of the griefing, quit, applied for EQ beta and waited. I got into beta and played for years after release.

The things that so many grew to hate about EQ, the long leveling curve, the death penalty, corpse runs, loosing levels, were the things that I liked best because they made it a game that kicked your butt. Those were the elements that made it a world where death is to feared because it costs valuable play time. Not having an easy path made it the game that gave me the highest highs, and yes the lowest lows.

I left for a stream of MMOs that followed: AC, DAoC, EQ2, Wow, SWG, DDO, Vanguard, Rift, AC2 (ouch), and many others. I always came back to EQ. All of the things they tried to "fix" in EQ just made these games seem bland and uninteresting to me and I eventually lost interest and came back to EQ, until one day the EQ I came back to was nothing like the EQ I loved.

So thank you, thank you, thank you to the Project 1999 team for bringing back a game that is truly one of a kind.

I hope that one day the MMO industry figures out what the rest of the business world has, that trying to copy the leader (in this case EQ then WoW) only makes the leader richer, and is generally a loosing strategy for all but a rare few. That there is a niche out there for games that kick your butt, that don't give players free or easy experience or advancement, and that niche if big enough to make some smaller developers profitable. Until then I am more than appy playing project 1999.

[theG33K]

^^^ Exactly