Dunno what server you were playing in the summer of 1999, but some rag came out with a review of EQ that claimed Necro the best class & Gnome the best race for Necro. Within two weeks orc hill in GFay and CB were overrun with Gnome Necros (on Tunare server at least, would be surprised if that was a unique experience). Necros were not rare.

There was a mass exodus of hybrids because more and more people learned about their exp penalty and because Warrior/Rogue/Monk were all given much better upgrades in Kunark. The first person to hit level 60 was a Ranger and he was publicly complaining about how bad the class was in Kunark, which caused a huge ripple effect. People in 1999 weren't complaining about a specific class being drastically underpowered in comparison to most others, aside from Rogues to some degree.

Raiding was hardly "massively accessible to everyone". Not even close. The planes were not "left largely vacant" in Kunark era and it still took a significantly populated and relatively skilled guild to do "trash mob" Planes clears, of which there really weren't that many when looking at the whole playerbase. First of all, you had to actually get to that level, and I don't think you understand how much of the EQ playerbase had trouble leveling back then, and how the majority of players were sub level 50 even in Kunark era still.

Plenty of people are happy doing roles that aren't exclusively about "killing shit". Enchanters were capable of killing with Charm or the animation pet anyway. Charm wasn't used to the extent it is today, but it wasn't uncommon to see Enchanters use it for soloing or small groups, or even full groups in safer areas. Enchanters could often be seen in cities using Charm to throw guards into each other and level that way. The continually increasing knowledge of using Charm is part of what contributed to the class continually becoming more popular.

There were a solid amount of Necro players, but they didn't dominate the overall class counts at all. They were nerfed because of being clearly OP and the constant complaints of how imba it was. Plenty of abilities got nerfed back in the day that weren't from the most popular classes. Whirl Till You Hurl on Enchanters, for example.

Those classes didn't get buffs, what are you talking about? Bards actually got their higher level Charm song nerfed. Enchanter did get Clarity after initially not having it very early on, but they got that skill after Whirl Till You Hurl was nerfed.

I wouldn't say Shaman was OP for the most part in Vanilla either, compared to a lot of other classes. They are just an inferior version of Druid until Level 34, really. They come into their own at that point and peak extremely well at Level 49/50, with powerful DoT's and their slow spells having reached maximum efficiency, but slows weren't as needed in that era and other casting classes could do more impressive things.

WTF? The game only existed for 9.5 months in 1999 (realistically less than that because of early server issues). That period of time + all of 2000 does not make the 1999 timeframe a "majority".

Nobody said Necros were rare. They simply weren't one of the top played classes. Gnome Necros were able to be Agnostic back in the day, but it was changed. I'm sure there were spikes in how much Necro got played because of things like what you just mentioned, but the nerfs and "we don't want a Necro in our group" mentality from some of the playerbase also buffered it.

Whoa. You were literally talking about the year 1999, and not the general era that project 1999 is seeking to emulate?

Then I and any one else can safely dismiss you as being a loony on this entry alone :


Think I'll be cutting my losses on this dialog. You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Serves me right for giving benefit of the doubt.

Yeah...and you suddenly shifted to talking about a different timeframe and then made a post which seemed to infer that 1999 EQ constitutes "the majority of 2 years". Maybe you're talking about something else entirely, but why? I was talking about what the first 7 months of actual 1999 Everquest looked like, aka the amount of time that has passed on Green 99.

Huh? Heals, Snare, Root, Damage Shield, Teleports, SoW, good Direct Damage spells. That alone made for a versatile and effective character in 1999, and then throw in Animal Charms, Tracking, Harmony (which most players hilariously didn't even know the function of throughout much of 1999), and the fact that for much of 1999 DoT's were doing full damage to moving foes and one of the Druid DoT lines was nearly unresistible, allowing them to solo red con mobs via kiting.

You're the one who doesn't seem to have a proper knowledge base, but anyway, maybe you're just communicating confusingly again here and only trying to say that listing Druid as #5 is too low? I don't think so, because the classes I listed higher had more mass appeal for people newer to the game and it's really what I remember more of back in those early days. Druids started gaining more popularity after tales of them kiting red cons began spreading (although it was nerfed shortly thereafter) and as more people learned about them being a great class for the casual gamer.

I tried to make sense of the senseless(aka your "list"). I assumed you meant some kind of "average" population over the entire era p99 tries to encapsulate.

All it took was for shamans to start hitting 9 and druids 14 for druid's stock to start massively rising. Few people wanted to play blind ass scrubby looking tattooed clown-shoed barbarians, who started in what was believed the in the worst starting zone in the game or be an ugly ass, butt scratching ogre/troll in order to play shaman when they could play "good looking" druids instead to get SoW. it certainly was also helpful that druids were thought to to be the only class who can realistically tackle even red cons thanks to SoW + swarm spells.



There were some servers where druids had twice the population of ANY other class. it makes me wonder if you even played EQ in the first 2 years let alone the first several months.

That isn't true at all, LOL? First of all, plenty of people found Barbarians to have an appealing look (and as for Ogre/Troll, people had plenty of reason to play those races too, aka their stats, if not the fantasy roleplaying enjoyment of playing an Ogre or Troll caster). Second of all, Everfrost was an amazing starting zone. There was more to hunt there, and across a wider level range, than any other starting zone in the game, and the ambiance of the twisty icy mountains and danger of nighttime was quite enthralling (even if it was more difficult).

Finally, and most importantly, Barbarian Shaman was my first fucking character early in 1999. I was in Blackburrow, and Qeynos Hills, and the Karanas, where ALL of the Human Druids were also starting out. There were more Shaman there than Druids (and more Rangers than Druids as well). Obviously there were a ton of Druids starting over in the Gfay area, but Shaman was not such a scarce class as you say (I saw a decent amount of Ogre/Troll Shaman when I found my way over to that part of the world), and Druids were not found in large quantities everywhere. Warrior was the class that was everywhere, and Ranger was next in line in terms of how many I saw being played during those months (they were basically "Warriors who can also cast snare and use tracking and forage food!" to most people who had progressed a bit, plus the RPG attraction...extremely popular).

I'd really like to know what servers you claim had 2x as many Druids as any other class, because that was not my experience, in any game era. Sure, they were a relatively popular class from the start and got even more popular as they became the class that casual players latched onto (ironically the one class who survived being called bad in Kunark, because despite their weaker power level at the higher levels, people still really liked their travel ability and self-dependability). It's even possible they were the most played class at a certain point, but it wasn't like that during early EQ, and that number you quote sounds overboard to me for later eras, because Druids did still have a stigma attached to them; there was a ton of talk as the Kunark era progressed, about how much worse they were than Cleric or Shaman as the defensive support for a team.

You guys realise how daft it is to argue about your distant memories of something right? Every single person has a different tale of "how things were back then".

Share the stories then! For me, much of it is not a "distant memory", but rather something very memorable and ingrained in me. There aren't many posters who were actually playing 1999 EQ and I doubt most people were as studious about it as I was. Back then as a kid, I was scouring the internet at school every day (during study hall, lunch period) and reading up on what people were doing in the game, and then going home and playing as much possible. Once the summer hit, my whole life was pretty much Everquest, I was non-stop living it, playing almost all day long and reading up online whenever there was server downtime or when my parents wanted me to take a break (which amounted to me telling them I would go biking/swimming, but I actually went to the library to use the computers there and read EQ info, LOL).

Its memorable for everybody who played back then, myself included, yet everybody still has different stories. Memories are funny, fuzzie things.

Everfrost was and still is absolute hairyass. Back then people were much more focused on how their characters looked and it heavily influenced not just race selection but class selection. A lot of people full intended to RP their characters
from day one and derp captain cave maaaan! didn't exactly appeal to them. And night blindness was a big, big thing back then, especially in everfrost and especially for a newb with limited game knowledge. Your corpse rotted a lot faster back then, especially at low levels.


Druids were found fucking everywhere outdoors. People always used to joke about making sure "to get your druid spayed or neutered".


Any time a new sever would go up I'd log on to check out what class players the first couple of 50s were shaping up to be. I also usually checked player populations for the hell of it as well and other things i was curious about, like how often would people roll a a non troll/ogre SK or barbarian instead of an ogre/troll. Turns out a fucking shiton. People cared a LOT more about looks than min max back then