Our 'First Time Playing Everquest' Stories

[unsunghero]

So my first ever Everquest character back when I was like in middle school was an Ogre Shaman. I remember the first mob I ever tried to fight was a yellow con rat or something, I think it was inside Oggok already. I realized very quickly into the fight that I was going to lose. So I ran. I ran deep into Oggok, ducking down hallway after hallway. I remember thinking "well I am completely lost, but at least I ditched that rat. No way it will find me with all the turns I took". Then less than a minute later, there was the rat, attacking and killing me. I couldn't find my body, so I thought, well fuck that character!

I deleted it and made a human monk starting at queynos. I had more success with this character, and I remember after gaining a few levels I stumbled upon Blackburrow having no idea what it was. I went inside and very cautiously was fighting around near the entrance when I saw a massive gnoll train wiping everyone out. I remember I zoned out to stay alive, and 10 minutes later when I zoned back in all the gnolls were dead and there was just a halfling druid standing there. I didn't realize that he was high level, I just knew that he must have killed all the gnolls. I remember him saying to me "yeah that was a big train, but don't worry I tanked it". At that time, I had no idea what MMO terms were, so I thought that was his personal figure of speech. I remember thinking to myself "hah, tanked like a military tank. That's a cool way of phrasing that", not realizing there were all this MMO terms that I was unaware of

Later on I remember seeing another train at BB, and seeing a troll shadowknight holding it off at the bridge. I remember thinking man, that must be one of the most powerful characters on this entire server, what a boss. I decided I wanted to play one of the large races, stopped playing my monk, and made another ogre shaman

This char I got to much higher level, around 20-something, before switching to an enchanter which I took to around 40ish

Anyway, just some early EQ memories

[unsunghero]

Another memory was when I re-started on the Sullon Zek server, my char was an Iksar shaman. I remember my cousin was staying the night over at my house, and I was showing him EQ

I remember telling him "This sullon zek server has no rules, so I can do whatever I want". Right after that, an Iksar necromancer had attacked a mob that I wanted to kill. So I told my cousin "watch, I'm going to ruin this guy's night". So I got a SoW and then went all over the zone looking for the highest level skeleton I could find. I aggro'd it and ran it past the necro doing a /say "Help! Help!". It aggro'd and killed the necro. I then ran around in circles until I saw him come back and start looting his body. So I ran the skeleton over to him again and did another /say "Help me please!". The skeleton killed him again. He sent me a /tell "Hey fucker that thing is too high for me to help you, stop killing me!". I ran around with my skeleton friend until he went back to his body and gave him another drive by doing /say "Help me! please!" And he died again. My cousin was crying from laughing so hard. He thought it was the funniest thing

I then said "you should see the trains in this Kurn's Tower place". There were monks that would go to the bottom of the zone, aggro'ing everything, then run it all to the entrance to massacre everyone. There were so many corpses the entire zone was lagged out

[Homesteaded]

Two kids I played hockey with, one ended up being my best man and I was his, were talking about some game in the locker room. Asked them about it, found out about it. Ended up going over to their houses and just watching them play until I was finally able to get my own PC. The rest is history.

[magnetaress]

i never made it past lvl 5 for the first year

[Jibartik]

I said with confidence, first im gonna get to 12, then im gonna go to the bottom of befalen and get that white robe, then im gonna I can't remember the rest but it was a lifetime before I ever got to the bottom of befalen.

[Toxigen]

December 2014 - P99

RL bud convinced me to try out the game. I asked him what the hardest class to play was. He said enchanter.

Created char, entered world, was like "wtf is this crap?" Felt totally alien, I was as green as green could be. Zero clue about mechanics, had to use the wiki constantly, etc.

I didn't know AoE mez and level 4 mez could be used interchangeably until my 40s.

Don't play much at all these days but it was a good 7-8 year run.

[MrSparkle001]

I was already in my mid 20s when it came out in 1999 but I loved the idea of it. A 3D first person online multiplayer game like that? Sounded totally epic. I was playing MUDs in the 90s and now it's 3D, wow.

Went out and bought the game and a strategy guide. Read the guide front to back at work.

Decided I wanted to play a high elf enchanter. Sounded different and interesting. Dialed my modem connection on MCI Worldcom with my phone, set aside like an hour to play that night because back then you had to pay extra if you were online for more than a few hours per week, and proceeded to get lost in Gfay and Kelethin with my newbie enchanter.

But man was it immersive.

Eventually heard about this stein of mogguk quest enchanters could do and decided maybe it was time to explore the rest of the world. My play experience was basically Crushbone at this point with a few excursions into some parts of Butcherblock. I made to I think level 12, ran through Butcherblock, took the boat that I finally saw to a strange foreign land full of players I'd never seen before, and then had probably the most epic experience I've ever had in a game making my way to Erudin. Each area had their own community. Gfay was one group of people, Freeport and the Commonlands another, Qeynos had entirely different players talking in chat about things I'd never heard of like Blackburrow, and Erudin was basically empty lol. The trek was dangerous, and even more dangerous in my mind as I wasn't conning everything and just assumed everything was hostile like the giant spiders in the Commonlands, so the journey took forever as I dodged and avoided everything.

Will never be able to recapture those feelings.

[Infectious]

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

I can do an in-game story later, don’t have time atm, but I remember my mom angrily telling me that our extended family has not been able to get in touch with us for months

This is because we only had the one phone line, and I was always tying it up with dial up internet playing EQ

Don't forget, when they would call it would LD you, on EarthLink atleast. That and the 100' long phone wire I had running from my room to the kitchen phone. Good old times

[Ooloo]

Bought the game the first day it was available at Software Etc. in the local mall. March 99, rolled a human wizard in freeport. Wandered into the commonlands and got killed by a puma. Went back to playing ultima online until about July and gave EQ another shot, rolled a barb shaman and that time it stuck. Ended up selling my ultima account on ebay for a cool grand, which is a ton of money for a 15 year old. Bought a bass guitar with it, which I still have and still play!

[Ooloo]

The first really epic feeling thing I did on my barb sham was figuring out how to get to the freeport area, cause that's where my friend started (he made a human warrior). That was so damn cool. I remember passing through the big gorge in EK for the first time, and once you got up to the top the client (at the time) couldn't even render the draw distance down to the bottom, so if you peered over the ledge all you saw was fog. I always think about that to this day when I run through that gorge.