They just looked for the "!" over the NPC's heads.

Having npcs randomly drop hints for really hard quests from random texts in different norrath taverns would of been amazing. That could've added a whole other dimension to this game and give reason to travel into and hang out in cities.

I remember going to NPCs and actually talking to them.
Hail
What gems?
Who took your gems?
I will find your gems.
Where are your gems?
I want gems.
/gu Anyone know about %t's gems?


Good times.

I remember responding to quest npcs in complete sentences as a young teenager. It was totally awesome. I felt like it was one of those old text based rpgs where you have to type in the correct text and words to proceed.
In the end I never did a lot of quests and ones that gave me items to do what ever with ended up sitting in my bank forever.

Well, they do, there are places where this is the case. It meant that you had to try key words on every NPC you saw, like this:



The third monk shackle quest, for example. The quest giver doesn't tell you much except for saying there's a history book you should read. You would then have to find the book, read it, and go around Cabilis asking every NPC in sight about a lost iksar master. There's one totally random no-name vendor inside a tavern who would tell you about an arm wrestling match, then you find the person who lost to the master, they point you to The Overthere, at which point you'd spend the next few weeks running around OT, not finding shit. Eventually you'd give up and get on the boat to Timorous Deep because why not? Then the boat would bug out, drop you in the middle of the ocean, and maybe you'd be near the chessboard island where the "an Iksar master" is hiding out. Or not, maybe you'd drown or get killed by Faydedar and lose your body forever, and never go back to TD again.

Or you would talk to a ranger or a druid who saw "an Iksar master" on track while riding the boat, and skip all that nonsense.

It was a fun time.

I recall following some by text only with no help but mostly the easier ones. I know for a fact though that GMs or devs which ever category you want them in either knew it from the code etc or out slowly got passed down from top dev-friend01 to friend of friend etc eventually turning forums full of half guess half quested epics became full guide. Look at some of the original epic quest finishers, they were always top guild, top player of that class, very far gear wise.

I remember having npc's with broken texts back in the day. When the NPC's replied with a exception error

Wow I haven't seen that name in ages.

They actually worked for it, that's how. I love trying to do the broken quests and see how far I can get with no information or partial information besides knowing that it's broken. Makes it that much more fun.