First Epics?
 

Always been curious - how did the first people to get their epics figure out the quests? I assume no guides were out at the time since no one had figured it out yet. Did they really figure it out all by themselves? Similarly, what about the first players of EQ - how did they figure out where to level, quests, etc. Anyone here been on since Day 1?

Not day one, but prior to Kunark release.

I remember just walking around hailing every NPC, following dialogue chains, and finding minor quests in this way. Of course, I often had no clue what some of the items/creatures/people mentioned were, or where to find them.

I remember spamming zone chat asking "Has anyone seen X?" or "Does anyone know where to find X?" Sometimes you'd get helpful answers, sometimes not.

The Prima strategy guides had some hints on lore and such, but weren't the most reliable things. (I still have some of those) And eventually, there was the spiral bound book of zone maps.

To sum up, I remember a lot of trial and error back in the day, along with unreliable speculation and rumor.

Every class forum compiled their info and findings onto usually a single thread. It was something cool to see.

My main was a rogue back in the day when epics were released and I'd check the Safehouse every day for updates on worldwide epic progress.

Ahh yes, back in those days we had to hike uphill both ways to get to quest NPCs!

Yeah even back then knowledge was starting to become somewhat centralized on sites like everlore and caster's realm, the quests were basically just crowdsourced until all the steps were known. Wouldn't surprise me if a dev tipped people off to certain things either, but I dunno if that happened.

I remember being so fascinated by the sphynx in rathe mountains as a 13 year old kid. Shame it apparently isn't for anything.

I've heard several times that GM's / Devs told people how to do them. The druid epic begins with talking to a rando who doesn't give you any indication of how to continue the conversation with him. Granted, the text isn't rocket science (you just ask him what he's doing there), but there isn't any boxed text suggesting you do that. I think there's a few others like that.

Further along in the druid epic you spawn some mobs that need to be engaged basically immediately or they despawn, and that just seems like another thing you'd need to know ahead of time or you'd have to start the quest over again, although maybe that's what people did.

i think the "identify" spell also helped with items you got along the way for turn ins, etc.

The Rogue one was one of the first to finish because it got leaked on Safehouse by an employee.

To be fair, I believe the Rogue epic was initially mostly unsolvable because the NPCs at some part of it didn't direct players to the next part correctly.

Leaked by devs / GMs to their friends, word of mouth afterward.

This, there was zero purity. Most of the devs were active players, direct leaks to their guilds etc.