Interesting old (but relevant) EQ web paper
 

I was surprised he said it took 40-100 days /played to reach 50. I never played in classic, but here I'm pretty sure it took Uuur a little over 20 days to reach 50, and I definitely wasn't a fast leveler. I can't imagine taking 100 days to reach 50.

I logged on my first character (rolled in May of 1999) a couple years ago... level 21 with 24 days /played.

It was different back then... leveling was just one of the things you did.

Or rather, there have always been the power gamers, but there were enough truly casual players that you could get away with not having to race to the top in order to see other people.

If I remember right, this character was a Druid and had 130 or so skill in Fletching.

That sounds familiar. When I first started I went through 2 or 3 characters before sticking with a chanter. One of which was a monk that got to level 14 and had something like 80 points in fletching.

I think there were just a lot of us who didn't know anything, and didn't know we were "doing it wrong."

while a very interesting read, I largely disagree with him, maybe im just strange, or sick in the head, or easily amused, but I absolutely love to grind, I remember fondly sitting in a KC group for 5 or 6 hours a day for weeks, I always enjoyed grinding very much.

in fact, some of my fondest memories in EQ come from the OoW era, getting the 6 way camp in MPG at 8 or 9 in the morning and grinding AA there til midnight or 1 am on the weekends.

about crazy # of /played days:

"doing it wrong" hahaha, thats what made eq so fun. there were a bunch of people that would walk back to qenyos at night because humans/eru couldn't see shit and the problem was only worse when we used to play on shitty crt monitors. i spent a lot of time building up useless skills sitting around town, personally i was 'master' at every speakable language in the game.

it was way fun when we didnt know anything, i remember using that cloth map to get around and being kind of disappointed that features on the cloth map weren't in the game yet. then along came everlore, eqlizer, thottbot, etc.

needless to say, i had a lot number of /played days on my erudite paladin which i rerolled at 30 because that was about when i found out i was "doing it wrong"

about thotts kunark problem:
i disagree too, the dungeons were always awesome, and the were several unique spawns that were kind of FFA (skelly wizard in the moat at KC, giant golem thing in the beggining hallway at oldseb, etc.) also, there were a lot of drops that were just random off any mob in the dungeon, like in COM, or SS boots in KC. That being said, i never felt like i was just grinding exp since there was always a chance to get something nice, this was something i felt kunark did right.

karnors was alway my favorite, because you could easily tell the difference between a strong and organized team because of how far in the dungeon you could go because of the sheer difficulty. also something that kunark got right.

Karnor's, was for me, the true test of my bardness on live. I remember a bad pull, and having to mezz 5 targets, and keep up a charm while half the group ran screaming to the zone line before they realized there was not train :)

funny this was posted considering Kunark seemed to be everyones favorite expansion.

Velious was always my favorite.

And I know I'll be dragged out into the street and shot for it, but I really enjoyed Planes of Power and The Serpent's Spine as well. Those would be my top three if I had to rank them, in that order.