How your very first encounter went with the world of Norrath

[Ephirith]

Started a half elf paladin and split my starting points between agility and strength. Hit level 4 or so and went to EC and found a shaman killing the druids. He let me loot a bunch of fine steel weapons, I used one of them and sold the rest. Then a passing druid handed me a full suit of raw hide.

I thought I was hot shit, so I decided I wanted to journey to Qeynos. Actually made it through Kithicor at night, only to get killed by orcs in Highpass. Managed to get my corpse and went back to the commons where I found befallen. Wasn't long before I fell down the well near Llrodd and I never did get that corpse back.

Was about level 6 by then and managed to get a full suit of cloth and a rusty sword from vendors, and decided to get on the boat and go to Faydwer. Fell off the boat in the middle of the ocean and spent what must have been 2-3 hours swimming around until I found an island.... where I got killed by an aqua goblin or something.

About a week later I decided I wanted to be a high elf paladin and asked a guy in kelethin to help me transfer all my stuff. He logged off with it and never came back on. It wasn't even good stuff, like a full suit of banded and a fine steel weapon. This shattered my innocent 12 year old trust in the good of humanity and I moved to Rallos Zek with my brother where I spent a couple years being a complete douche to people.

[Flunklesnarkin]

I tried eq the first time a little before velious was released.


I remember being told the giant pit outside paineel (The Hole) was a shortcut to exp camps and i just had to jump in...



needless to say i never got that corpse back xD

[Barrier]

I started with a barbarian warrior, promptly fell in a well, and died. I didn't know about drag, so there he lies forever or until Aradune comes back.

[Heavydrop]

Made a human cleric in Freeport on Rallos Zek not knowing it was a pvp server (all I saw was a low population because at that time the game told you how many were on) so I was running around, killing stuff and I bought me my first pair of patwork pants from a merchant! I was excited. Then some guy came through and pk'd me and took my pants [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] I didn't understand what was going on and he probably had a few laughs at my expense. I restarted on the Mithaniel Marr server same class came name, etc and had a good time

[stormlord]

Since I can't remember my first login the way you want me too, I'll state what I can about my first few months starting in late march 1999... (barring a session of hypnosis)

1) I remember having to figure out credit card information... I remember where the computers was in the room... I remember having anticipation for the credit card being validated
2) I remember being amazed that it was a 3d world with other people!
3) The framerate was choppy in Qeynos (i had a voodoo 2 and like 300mhz cpu)
4) I remember fletching arrows
5) I remember blackburrow being a pvp slaughter house with people looting each other's whole corpses
6) I remember waking up past midnight on March 19 1999 and looking out my window at the stars... Went outside and had an ominous feeling... In the morning we talked about a ufo... All of this feels more recent strangely than EQ does even though it happened several days before I installed EQ...
7) I remember making a monk friend... i think his name started with X...
8) He was a roleplayer and died bravely in North Karana fighting an enemy of his
9) I ran around all over the place, you better believe it... tons of playtime, not very many levels

I wish I could remember better. It's all very very fuzzy. I'd give money to remember the memories clearly.

The human brain is a machine that generalizes everything into abstracted pyramids with increasing detail towards the base but it's still all subject to the wizard of oz. I wish it were clearer.

The passage of time either wipes things away or it changes them, almost exclusively.

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by fadetree [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well, at the time, I was writing my own internet multi-player game....a text-only persistent world. It a sort-of clone of Gemstone III for 16 players and had been running it locally over 16 phone lines at the house, with a lot of success. Then I discovered the internetz, and was busily retrofitting the game for sockets and upscaling to 128 players. I had actually QUIT MY FREAKIN JOB to develop the internet version.

So then I was looking around at the internet for competition....found meridian 59 and was relieved to find it was more or less unplayable...saw a couple of others...and then ran into EQ. It was May of 1999. I had a bad feeling right away...and then when it opened and I stepped into it in June my jaw dropped and I knew it was game over for me, no freakin way a single person could compete with that. So went back to work and played EQ for the next 8 years.

As far as what happened, I rolled up a human ranger that first day, dropped into Surefall Glade, and spent like an hour trying to get out of there because I COULD NOT SEE lol. Then when I was out I surveyed the land before me. Lots of people running around killing stuff, training beetles to guards lol. I remember being on the little ridge just to the left of the SF entrance, back to back with another player, valiantly fighting the skeles...soon we were dead but it was a blast. Lots of great memories.

In fact, thats why I just rolled up a new ranger here on eq99. I tried a Sony TLP server for a while, but they are blowing through expansions so fast that it might as well be a live server, plus they didn't actually regress the code base so its still EZ mode in any case. So if you see a very young ranger around qeynos named Fadetree, its me. I like it a lot...I was *thrilled* to get a backpack and a coupla +5 HP ears off the injured rat in the catacombs, and had to RUN FOR MY LIFE in actual fear when I had a coupla red giant rats aggro on me. I barely made it to the exit. See, thats what you don't get on the live servers..actual dread and actual ( well sorta ) accomplishments.

Me and you did a similar thing. I also played a ranger. I was doing programming classes at college, not trying to make an MMO. Strangely, I seem to remember being bound just outside the entrance to surefall glades near the campfire. I may have been bound in surefall, but I don't remember well enough. I don't remember having vision problems (i was human), but I remember the game being dark at night.