Originally posted by blakavar

So many memories. This was my first mmorpg.

I beta tested and so nobody knew what they were doing.

Taking my mage out of freeport at level 5 with my pet for the first time into east commons, back then those damn pets aggro'd everthing so it took a couple tries to explore. Seeing the houses and the griffon for the first time.

Tunnel to Ro standing at the cave entrance and looking around some fighter walks over and says" Hey guy group up with us" I reply "Umm ok" a minute passes "Hit accept Blak..." Me "Oh ok sorry never did this before"

"You see us on your screen to the upper right Blak?"

"Yea ok I see everyone"

Spent the next 8 hours in Ro near the temple ruins fighting mummies had to have been one of the top 5 most fun experiances I ever had in a MMORPG.

I had no idea what I was doing just set my pet on whatever the fighter was fighting and blast away, none of us really knew what we were doing back then. It was a unorganized chaos and we were talking, forming plans, tactics etc.  Some worked, some got us all killed but we kept plucking away.

Everything was so new for everyone back then.

You just described what could have been the very first player gathering in the Common's/Ro Tunnel. The fondest of memories for most EQ veterans was the epic gathering of players in that long passage that connected a once great and sprawling city to the dangerous deserts where the dreaded Sand Giant preyed on many.  Under that cold stone ceiling they would trade items, /random bet, duel and assassinate 'A Shady Swashbuckler'; (of course) all within the confines of a meager tunnel.

Long before the player colonization of Luclin, this is where it happened, and you were quite possibly, one of the first EC Tunnel settlers.

As others stated, the best memory was the total experience.  Back when I played EQ, i wasnt a Meta-gamer.  I didnt powerlevel, didnt grind for hours on end...I had fun.  When I left EQ, I lost the idea of playing for fun, and became a meta-gamer.  Maybe due to joining meta-guilds, and PvP power houses, but I started playing MMOs to get max lvl asap, and not having fun with the lore and world.

When I played EQ, I seriously spent about a month and a half between level 30 to 40, and thats playing 6+ hours a day.  Why?  For one, there wasnt SoL and PoK, but I enjoyed sometimes just sitting in HHK and bs'ing with people while looking for a group, or spend hours on end pickpocketing nobles while Monks solo them.  In EQ, i was never a meta-character, I didnt care.  I played to have fun.  When SoL came, I spent a lot of time in the bazaar, and around the portals doing what I do best, bs'ing with people. 

In short, my play style, and the entire environment/experience was my best memory...

 So many for me and these posts just remind me of others I had.  Sorry for the length but I blame all of the previous posters for making me remember all of these.

Part of what made it was there was so little known.  When EQ was released none of us knew much about the mechanics, agro management, which mobs were agro, how people roles would turn out.  There was little to no content in spoiler websites so you would take notes or possibly even make your own map.  Everything was so dangerous and there was typically a 'killer' mob in zones that was more powerful than any of the others.  I can't count how many times Dorn killed me in North Ro.  We'd have a full group of people sitting there and for some reason he'd always make a bee line straight to me while everyone else scattered.

On to a few of my favorite memories;

1)Those first steps into North Ro.  Remember in early 1999 the most amazing looking games were Quake 2 and the original Unreal.  So when I went from killing rats in Freeport out into the vastness that was North Ro my jaw literally dropped.  In fact I remember the first part was somewhat lush where you first zoned in but it was when you climbed that first dune past the small hut and guards or saw the sand and ocean from that little fishing hut over the water.

2)Making the run across Oasis to get to the swamp and upper Guk for some of this 'mesh' armor I had heard about for my monk.  At the time, no one was in Oasis as it was too high level of a zone but there was this enteprenierial troll that would sell mesh armor from the swamp to us Monks that had little choices for light armors.  This was back in the day where banded armor was pretty much the best you could get and the only magic items people had were derv rings.  We had no idea which things were agro and of course there was no map online or anywhere but I had heard of others making it safely across Oasis but seeing the crocs, orcs and occasional sand giant was thrilling.  I was able to make it but each of those early runs would really get the heart pumping.

3)Fear break in and my first piece of  blighted armor.  I remember our guild as being one of the few that could consistently break into fear.  At that time there were only a few guilds on the server (Karana) that could so several times we'd help out others after they would wipe.  Not that we didn't have wipes from time to time but got to be pretty good at it.  When the first pieces of blighted armor dropped including a robe I think my hands were shaking I was so excited/nervous.  Also learned how to pull the temple with my necro.  We had a monk that did most of the pulling but the temple was full of SK mobs with harm touch so the necros job was to load up the invulns and do a quick circle around the temple and then run out and let the monk tag off me once the HT's were used up. 

4)The first Vox and Naggy raids.  These were also a blast and my favorite part was always the congo lines when the AE fears hit.  Seeing a single file line of 20-40 people running out of those rooms always cracked me up.  Sort of the 'Sir Robin' from Holy Grail experience, bravely ran away.  Back then the only places to exp at higher levels were SolB which had the added benefit of Kobold enchanters that would charm PC's.  Funny to see one of your party run off after a runner only to come back and start hitting people in your group.  I also remember a warrior at the zone line after some bad trains that was hitting everyone that had run there, spent the next 10 minutes apologizing to everyone outside the zone that she had been beating on.  Then there was lower Guk.  I remember doing /who totals down there and many times there would be 90+ people in lower guk.  The comraderie was great!

EQ was great because it forced you to group.  That in turn created a VERY strong community which is lacking in virtually every MMO post WoW.  People have hit the nail on the head in this thread about how fear and risk are what made this game great.  There was a sense of accomplishment that most of the new games are missing.  EQ was not a perfect game, there were plenty of things that could have been done better but it's frustrating that every company thinks because of WoW's popularity, the only games that are going to make it are the solo centric, linear quest line, no death penalty, instanced and easy games.  I don't consider myself a WoW hater, it brought a lot of new people into the genre which I think is a good thing and hopefully some of them are branching out and looking for more of a challenge.  For those of us that cut our teeth on EQ, we've dealt with hard and complex and I for one didn't want to take a step back with WoW.  The problem is not many companies will risk taking a step forward.

My all time favorite memory was waaay bak when i started playing in 2003.

I had just started a monk in qeynos and i was doing the starting quests for the GMs.

I found this guy surrounded by mobs and he was dying, there was a much higher level person standing near him and was being asked for help.

The higher level guy just stood there and said "welcome to the game noob"

and i just laughed xD

 A bunch of EQ nostalgia in the FOH forums,

www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/39153-evercracked-everquest-documentary.html

Scariest Moment: Being stranded alone in Lower Guk during my first visit because my entire party is killed, but being hidden as a rogue I survive and have to creep my way back.

Second Scariest Moment: Upon exiting Rivervale to Kithicor Forest, i spotted a corpse of a ghoul a few feet a way near a tree apparently unlooted. As I run over and loot it I turn to see a high level undead commanded standing behind said tree, he Harm's Touches me killing me instantly. (At that time I did not know the undead come out in Kithicor at night)

Fondest Moment: Finding a piece of banded mail armor on the ground fairly early into launch. (Everyone was soooo jealous I had shiny pants)

Second Fondest Moment: Being recognized as the most powerful and well known merchant on my server (Brecca Bargainhunter Tunare).

Third Fondest Moment: Drunken raids on Neriak with my first guild "The Pygmey Coalition"

Most aggravating moment: When they released Moon of Luclin. (The Bazaar forever ruined my ability to trade with players one on one.)

My favorite memory;

My cousin and I were in Lake Rathe and some new player ask if we could join our group, we said sure.

Well when he and I played we use to talk on the phone while playing.  Well we decided to have some fun with this new guy....

We told him of the stories we had heard about the Sea Monster that was in Lake Rathe, so my cousin was in control of the boat and I acted as if I had to leave, I popped levitae and ran accross the water.  Then I started casting damage spells on my self and talking in group chat, saying taht the sea monster was attacking me.  We  had the new guy so scared, this was back when if you died in a bad spot you might just lose your char, no graveyards yet!

My cousin made up some story about having to log and left the poor guy in the middle of the lake.

I still wonder if he ever left that boat in the middle of the lake or just /camped   lol

I played EQ from 1999ish-2007 on and off. I have so many memories from the start to the end of my EQ career. One of my favorite was on Stromm in a small guild called Asylum of Insanity. I was a babarian warrior named Therinn.  I would say that for the most part my memory of EQ is small fragments of my best and worst memories.

When I first started I was about 13 years old and  about 18-19 when i quit.  I spent so much time on this game 5+ hours a day and if  I couldn't play I freaked out:)

Now to my memories.

Its honestly the simple things that I remember best! I fondly recall hunting Black burrow gnolls to turn in fangs. Back then everything seemed so epic to me since it was my first MMO. I looked upon those camping the elite gnolls with envy wondering how great it must be to be able to hunt them :). I also remember hunting bandits in the Karanas and turning in their sashes! I'm not sure why but I recall these events so fondly even though they are the most simple of memories.

But I must admit I miss the old auction system before the bazaar in the commonlands! I use to get up at 5am or stay up all night! then I would offer half of what players wanted for their items because they were so tired of trying to sell an item all night then I would turn around and sell it for double what I paid. I loved doing this and as a newb the money was really good and the more I did it the more I could buy and the more I could make. After doing this a bit I got a full set of bronze armor... and I had a bronze axe... I thought I was so godly. I was a cocky dwarf with my bronze shell.

I miss Everquest I know its changed but perhaps its time for me to come home... Everquest will always be my home among MMOs nothing will ever feel the same.

Hard to say, but I think my two fondest memories from EQ are....

First is going back to right around the time immediately after Vellious launched, everyone in the guild who was of a level had been working on Epics and I was down to the last raid to finish my shaman epic. I had hit a personal low point in the game and was ready to just walk away for a while when some friends in the guild formed and led the raid to finish my epic and *insisted* I come along and get it.

Second one is shortly after that, the guild I was in had formed out of an alliance of smaller guilds and independents who were sick of getting treated like garbage by the bigger guilds...we were a fairly unorthodox bunch with some very skilled players and loved doing things with class/level mixes that were "impossible" (like a successful trakanon raid with a 54th ranger as 2nd tank lol).

Late one weeknight, we heard in guildchat through some "friend of a friend" sort of thing that a large PUG raid had just totally wiped out trying to break into the Plane of Fear and had no hope of corpse recovery. We did a quick survey and mustercall and went to help them out, no charge - no bs, just being nice guys. We managed to break the entry in record time with like 10 or 11 people, only one cleric and one enchanter among them, pulled off the rescue and left...was just an incredible night.

Or perhaps it should be one of my earliest memories as a very young shaman, desperately sneaking across the seeming endless plains of karana trying to get to FreePort to buy smithing supplies....(and snake scales to sell back in Everfrost!)

I miss those elements of risk, loss and player interdependency....

EQ 1 was a cruel master but super addictive.

we had just got the internet at home and my wife bought me EQ1 after reading about it (what a sweetie). I was sceptical at 1st but tried it and got totally hooked. Boy did she regret that lol.

First character was a erudite wizard......i would skill stuff in sight of the guards so i could always run back. the tall tree and dense wood scarey stuff.

Then the troll warrior , i was so proud i have made myself a full suit of patchwork leather. Not really understanding the lore i went to visit the orges, i opened a door to the wrong room and cheif or chef killed me. My corpse with my love new armour on was lying at this ubber KOS  NPCs feet......dam it

Then the Barb shaman, going into black burrow.  Hmm not lightvision and at that time if you didnt have nightvision or a torch the tunnels were totally black.

All great moving stuff.

The best momory , joining a "defenders of the realm" guild and on the first raid my necro skeleton got the last blow on the raid mob. I want to raid "Go Boner!" in chat channel but instead typed "got boner!".  All went very silent and 3 years later i still hadn't lvied that down

My first Xanamech raid in PoInnovation.

/autoassist off

Oh, and thankfully I was a monk so I could fd the aggro I got on the npc gnome because I was such a newb to raiding.

There are just so many memories as others have stated.  I played on Bristlebane/Saryrn pre-Kunark for 4+ years.  I remember that first night after installing and "attempting" to talk to the 1st NPC in sight and instead auto attacking.  Being a Dark Elf I ended up in the forest full of snakes that honest to God gave me goosebumps!  I was frozen in place and didnt even know what keys to push next!  Being lost in that world daily was just an describable feeling.

I truly miss the wonderful community as well.  After playing WoW on and off for the past few years it just makes me cringe to think at what MMOs miss out on these days.  The average player would gladly stop whatever they were doing just to help you out.  I remember seeing a druid quad kite for the 1st time and asking him "How is that even possible?!"  He spent the next several hours teaching me the art, a skill which I passed on to many other druid brethren over the years.  :) 

Also charm kiting frogs in PoS was so much fun.  A RL buddy of mine just loves to tell the story of the raid that kept stealing my spawns while they were buffing to kill the giants.  Too bad for them that next frog they "stole" had 1 too many buffs. :P 

The nostalgia is great and all but just talking about classic EQ in a sense makes me very sad.  It is the realization that I might never get that overwhelming sense of awe from a video game again.  But yet I continue to wander from game to game, hoping something will give me that feeling again even if only for a moment.

I will keep it short:

Besides the complete, total experience, my best memory would be travelling and exploring.  I probably spent a good amount of days (played time) travelling from Butcher Block to Freeport.  I remember I somehow landed on an island when i was on the big huge ship going to Fironia Vie (sp).  I waited on that island for about 7 hours til I contacted a CSR, as nothing came back to get me...

I have quite a few memories, however I thought I'd share a few images from when the game went live:  

  Very First Screen Shot when the game went Live: img515.imageshack.us/img515/8435/eq000000.png

img38.imageshack.us/img38/8928/eq000001.png

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img195.imageshack.us/img195/1034/eq000003.png

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Shortly before or right after ROK came out my guild decided to PL my sorry human warrior butt on TZ at level 16.  Now let's see where can we go on a PvP server.  I know!  Permafrost at the IGs.  So there I am beating up on IGs and it was going ok till the cleric said to pull 1 mob.   Ok.  No problem.  Peek around the corner after entering the door.  POP! Magi.  Agroed all the IGs. LOL  Ok.  They gate and are like RUN!  So I take off runing.  Get lost and manage to have most of the zone on me by the time I make it to one step from the EF zoneline and die just as some poor newbie zones in to see a massive train including IG's right in his face.

When I got resed found out he was flattened half a sec after I was.  He sent me a tell laughing about it.  He was like I zoned in looked up and couldn't even type OH ****!  I was dead that fast.  He and I ended up grouping a lot after that though so it was actually pretty cool.  :)

I think my most embarassing memory was at lvl 52 as a shaman.I never played a melee class at the time and was grouping in karnor castle. Then a skeleton captain or commander was killed and dropped a "tranquil staff"; i won the roll. being clueless, i tought "well this staff is no good", even tho people in the group were telling me this was a great monk staff, but without going into details.

I auctioned it in the Dreadlands without a price and soon enough a high lvl ranger from the top guild on the server send me a tell "30k pp and jaundiced bone bracer?" Not knowing better, but knewing what  JBB was for a shaman, i instantly accepted.

Days later, i found out that this staff was going for 60K pp at the time on my server, seeing it auctioned in Gfay (which was the trading hub of my server). Some weeks later, i started a Monk and after a few months of lvling i, incredibly, won a second Tranquil staff. I kept that one, and it was well worth the price for a monk!

My most striking memory is definitely going from Halas to Oasis of Marr. I had no maps, and only looked at the maps found in the game-manual. Players from Blackburrow told me it was a good exp spot for lvl 12+. And then i went, crossing the Karanas with that incredible midi music playing, escaping a hill giant, running away from Hypogryphs in north karanas, avoiding the cyclops in east karans, binding myself in Highpass and dying right after from the orcs constantly flooding the zone, crossing kithicor wood at night and OF COURSE dying from a deathtouch ( i ran right into the Dark elves...it seemed the fastest way to go straight!), discovering the commonlands and realizing that i crossed an entire continent and was discovering new lands, new players... then finally arriving at the oasis of marr, and running right into a sand giant rampaging trough the dock.

If i was to name a third memory... it would be something many people must have experienced: a failed plane of fear raid. Basically, the entire raid wiped out far from the portal and the multiple attemps to recover our corpses naked were a total failure: our corpses and exp loss were piling up dangerously. I remained online for 23 hours straight: i just couldn't go and abandon my corpse. Eventually on of the higher guild wnet up, cleaned the area and dragged our corpse, did the rezzes and we called it a day... 

Then, aside from a mistell involving sex tells, many personnal memories and random visions of my adventures trough norraths.

 Some pics:

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/2119/2000guld2.jpg

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img195.imageshack.us/img195/6557/2001nagafen.jpg

 img36.imageshack.us/img36/4657/2002trakdead.jpg