Originally Posted by Heartbeats
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I started playing live classic when I was 11 or 12 because I overheard the woodshop teacher at school talking about it. My first character was a Half-Elf Paladin (because I have always thought Elves are the coolest fantasy race, I was playing a lot of Warcraft II before I started EQ, and Paladins were the most badass unit in that game). I had a 56k modem back then, so I dc'd constantly and spent most of my time lost in Felwithe. I managed to convince my parents to get a cable modem, and in the meantime did some reading of the manual and some online guides. I decided to make a Wood-Elf Ranger, because they seemed to have a little bit of everything: heals, buffs, debuffs, DDs, DoTs, as well as melee (I have ever since thought that dual wielding is the coolest thing ever in any RPG) and ranged prowess, great utility and independence with the track/forage/hide/sneak skills, yada yada. Unfortunately for me, Rangers in classic were not as awesome as I thought they would be, because they were the weakest of any class at each of the individual abilities (except for ranged attack, which was relatively useless at that point). I spent a lot of time lost again (it took me forever to realize I had to pan my camera down to see the ramp to the Ranger guild in Kelethin), but I slowly made my way to level 17. I remember moving from bats and skeletons, to orc hill, to slavers in CB, to trainer hill, to TR, before hearing about bigger and better experience across the ocean in Oasis. One of my best EQ memories ever was actually having to ride the boat. Someone gave me a free Bracer of Erollisi at the BB docks - the first time it ever occurred to me that someone would just give me an item. Watching the fake in-game sunset had me enthralled - for years afterward seeing real sunsets while on vacations with my parents would make me think about EQ (is that sad)? I also enjoyed the language parties that formed on the boat - a full group of six people, each a different race, spamming a group chat hotkey for the entire trip, so that by the time I arrived in Freeport I was fluent in Gnomish, Dwarvish, etc. I spent levels 13-17 at orc highway, or one of the various orc camps around the area. Sadly, that was the end of my classic EQ experience, because my parents only let me play one hour a day, and I couldn't ever find a group before I had to camp out.
Despite their classic weakness, Rangers have been my class of choice ever since. In the Velious-era, I picked EQ back up and leveled another Wood-Elf Ranger to 52. When I went off to college at 17 (somewhere around PoP probably), I found out that my roommate and another kid on my floor had played EQ. They bought a 65 warrior and 65 druid respectively (or was it 70 then?), but I created another Wood-Elf Ranger from scratch and leveled to 55 before quitting yet again around LoY/LDoN. My fondest memories of that last character included farming the giant named animals in Stonebrunt Mountains (I thought it was an incredibly cool and underpopulated zone, gave me the same sort of feeling of awe I got from riding the boat) because I could track them down, fearkite them, and do the subsequent quest turn-ins in Erudin for caster legs/arms that sold for 4-5k each. I also camped the incredibly rare Eyepatch of Plunder (a face slot item in Velious with clicky-haste, it stacked with worn-haste and buffs, and also had some pretty good stats). 1/4 of the quest items were dropped from Stormfeather, a mid-30s named griffon in Iceclad on a 19 hour spawn timer who skipped most of his pops, so he actually didn't show up for days at a time. I camped him for days while studying for exams, before finally looking up at my computer to see Stormfeather in front of me, and me almost dead.
I swore off MMOs for several years, until I was really drunk at my friend's house and he convinced me to start a trial account of World of Warcraft (this was shortly after the WotLK expansion came out, he had an 80 mage, his younger brother had an 80 rogue and several friends with level 80 characters). Needless to say, I rolled a Blood-Elf Hunter, and my friend passed out only to wake up 12 hours later to me still playing, with a fully upgraded account and my character at level 20. It took me about a month to get to level 80 (my first MMO character to reach a level cap), and the next day I had my first raiding experience in any MMO (Naxx). I continued playing and raiding for a few months, as well as getting involved in PvP and leveling a Death Knight alt to 80 so I could try out tanking. Eventually I got sick of raiding, and I missed the "camping" aspect of EQ; I just didn't feel as rewarded for getting a piece of gear by doing an instance once a day or a raid once a week and hoping that it dropped and I won the roll. I started playing Aion (as a ranger, of course) shortly after it released in the U.S. because I saw some videos on YouTube that made it look fantastic. It was incredible at first, but the more I played, the more disappointing it was, and I quit at level 44 (out of 50). I went back to WoW again for a few months, with the intention of doing mostly PvP. I used to roll into Stormwind, the main Alliance city, with 5-10 people and set up shop in their bank. I also dominated almost every battleground I did, though I was never terribly good at arenas, I peaked at a 1900 rating. I ended up drifting back into the raiding scene, because I wanted some of the PvE gear to maximize the efficiency of my PvP set, and dealing with all the WoW raid drama and required raid times killed it for me once and for all.
One of my RL friends contacted me on instant messenger shortly thereafter to tell me about the VZ/TZ (PvP) server on the same emu as P99. I only played there for about 2-3 weeks as a Ranger again (but Human this time), boxing either a Bard or a Druid (the druid account wasn't mine but I was given the info). I quit that server because I was farming the Seb key with my boxes and my friend's boxes, when a 57 Ranger showed up and ganked all four of our toons with an exploit (he had the Earthshaker's Mantle, a PoA quest item with two charges of Earthquake, a 162dmg self-based AoE; he ran into the middle of us and spammed that shit 13 times). I SS'd the combat log showing the exploit and posted it on the forums, but the guy wasn't banned, or even suspended; instead, the GMs rolled the server back three days. It just so happened that in those three days, I had camped two FBSS' (they dropped on consecutive spawns!), Jboots, gained four levels, and done a hell of a lot of work on my epic, all of which I lost. So I said "Fuck TZ/VZ!" and that's when I found P99.
This go 'round, I finally decided to do something different than a Ranger. Over the course of several months I leveled a High-Elf Enchanter to 50. This is the first time I played a caster-type class in any RPG, let alone MMO, and I have to say, I love it. My reasons for picking the Enchanter were twofold: I didn't want to deal with the hybrid experience penalty, and I wanted to play a class that was actually desired by groups. This is the first character I have ever had in EQ that reached the level cap, and I recently joined a guild and have been enjoying my first raid experiences in EQ. Enchanters are awesome! I still love Rangers, and I have one twinked and leveling (hit 17 yesterday and got dual wield, then kept going all the way to 18). Having realized how much I love playing an Enchanter, though, has instilled in me the desire to try other classes. I was thinking I should roll a priest class next, namely a Cleric, but I also want to play another pure caster (namely Magician or Necromancer).
My long-winded point is that I just want your account so I can play a Necromancer; I don't need it to farm anything, as I can and have done so on my Enchanter. I have become in-game friends with Carron, and if you give me your account, I will share the info with him so he can actually farm when I'm not playing it. If you don't give me your account, I will probably end up making a Necromancer at some point anyway, and you should give it to Carron – he's awesome (and he'd be the first to tell you)! Jesus Christ, I've been writing for an hour and a half, but it's okay because I don't feel like farming anything right now, and there's no one in Unrest to group with my Ranger. If nothing else, though I haven't ever forgotten my cheesy memories of the sunset at the BB docks, I had completely forgotten how awesome Stonebrunt was until I sat down to write this. Cheers.
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