Happy Birthday Everquest!

[Skydash]

My buddy in high school had bought EQ a few months after release.
He was so mad when he made an Ogre Warrior, and was killed by a rat in the newbie zone!
So he brought the game to school and gave it to me... lol.

I picked Monk and never looked back. Played until mid Velious, right when we started killing ToV pretty regularly. Got super bored with the limited Monk drops.

[budorf]

Some awesome stories here, thanks for sharing, I enjoy reading them all.

I think I picked up my copy of Everquest at a local Electronics Boutique (later to be bought out by Gamestop) sometime in April of 1999. I still have some really vivid memories of my first character, Tenuvyen a half elf warrior. I probably spent an hour or two lost in Qeynos until I finally reached the gate and started fighting bats and snakes. I got him up to level 6 or so and was working on a full set of patchwork armor. I joined a group that had a bard in it, and he took us all the way to split paw (which at the time was for much lower levels) and we fought and killed some gnolls there. I couldn't believe how huge West Karana was. One day around level 8 or 9 I made the mistake of attacking a willowisp with Tenuvyen. He did not have a magic weapon, and therefore died very quickly to said willowisp. I spent several hours looking for his corpse, but could not find it so I gave up and made a barbarian Shaman named Budorf and decided that he was a lot more fun than a warrior.

I played Budorf until a little after Luclin came out. Had tons of fun on amazing raids with my guild from classic all the way through, but the game was just eating way too much of my time, and having to grind alternate experience points was just not something I wanted to deal with. I still played a lot of EQ even after I gave up my main character though, just not as hardcore. Lots of twinks, lots of playing with family and friends on the PvP server, working the auction house, etc.

Since then I've tried a lot of other MMO's. Obviously WoW, which was super addictive but I lost the urge after hitting level 50 or so. FFXI was fun at first too, but became way too much of a grindfest. EQ2 was a lot of fun.

One MMO I played about 5 or 6 years ago that I thought was actually amazingly well done was Warhammer Online. The mechanics for questing and raiding I thought were really well done, but ultimately the developers weren't able to keep up and make adjustments and the game died off after just a couple of years.

[oldhead]

16 years ago... I was in IT. No longer in IT. Switched Careers. Just switch from a pager to a cell phone. Napster was still being used. Had a 33.6k modem. Just bought my 1st laptop which I would soon install two 56k's and run two phone lines to it and two dial up for double bandwidth. Was fit, young, and didnt quite understand just how damn sexy I was.

[Feanol]

Again, I've really enjoyed reading the experiences of others here!

I started playing a few months after Shadows of Luclin released. I didn't have my own account, I was using a friend's who wasn't able to play very much. He made me a copy of the game CD's. No subscription for me!

I was about age 13 at the time, and it was my first experience with a totally enveloping game. I made a Vah Shir Rogue named Kristentra Shadowpride and fought in the gorges outside Shar Vahl and inside the Pauldal Caverns leading to Shadow Haven.

Got to maybe level 37-ish or so before my parents made me stop playing because they heard me awake at ungodly hours of the morning. I remember waking up early to get a few kills/trades in before my school bus came.

Very clear memories hunting Dervish Cutthroats Solo in the Northern Desert of Ro with sneak pull...

Love this game Happy Birthday!

[xassis]

My dad sitting me on his lap and letting me run his dark elf trademuel through the bazaar sparked my love for EQ, and a little while later he let me create my own character, an Iksar Necro named Xassis (Still the name I always use for all my usernames, no matter where it is) and what stopped me from playing it was my Dad's ever increasingly demanding job and a lack of funds to pay for the game. I eventually came back to the game in 2009 during the Seeds of Destruction expac or whatever and got a Dark Elf Magician to level 55 or something. The game kinda sucks now, not going to lie. Then I found P99 in 2011, and didn't get it working until May of fucking 2013, but eh. Created my Monk, and here we are today. Still my favorite game of all time, matched only by Pitfall: The Lost Expedition. You'd think, me being only a mere 14 years of age I'd be more into the mindless FPS games that the vast majority of my generation are into, but, fuck that shit. Keep it classic, y'know?

[Kayd]

I played EQ because of UO. I started when the UO servers opened and PKing and exploits were rampant. I eventually just got tired of the griefing, quit, applied for EQ beta and waited. I got into beta and played for years after release.

The things that so many grew to hate about EQ, the long leveling curve, the death penalty, corpse runs, loosing levels, were the things that I liked best because they made it a game that kicked your butt. Those were the elements that made it a world where death is to feared because it costs valuable play time. Not having an easy path made it the game that gave me the highest highs, and yes the lowest lows.

I left for a stream of MMOs that followed: AC, DAoC, EQ2, Wow, SWG, DDO, Vanguard, Rift, AC2 (ouch), and many others. I always came back to EQ. All of the things they tried to "fix" in EQ just made these games seem bland and uninteresting to me and I eventually lost interest and came back to EQ, until one day the EQ I came back to was nothing like the EQ I loved.

So thank you, thank you, thank you to the Project 1999 team for bringing back a game that is truly one of a kind.

I hope that one day the MMO industry figures out what the rest of the business world has, that trying to copy the leader (in this case EQ then WoW) only makes the leader richer, and is generally a loosing strategy for all but a rare few. That there is a niche out there for games that kick your butt, that don't give players free or easy experience or advancement, and that niche if big enough to make some smaller developers profitable. Until then I am more than appy playing project 1999.

[theG33K]

^^^ Exactly