Completing Quests back in the day with resources

[tekniq]

Edit Title - withOUT resources.

If you actually read some of the dialogue with NPC's for quests, most of 'hints' they give for the items they need are so vague, so back when this glorious game started, how long did it take for people to complete quests and more importantly hard quests?

Some examples are epics, VP key...I could see people spending months if not a year just to find the pieces. Like the first people to discover and kill PS...that must've took forever considering how rare they are. Or picking up artifacts at a random location in swamp or OT.

Anyone have real experience when EQ, Kunark, Velious started because by the time I played, ZAM was my resource.