Happy 25th Birthday EverQuest!

In memory of the 25th Anniversary of EverQuest, celebrate with me by sharing your memories.

1. Where were you on Sunday May 16th 1999?
2. What was your first character you created, and on what server?
3. Did you ever report a bug in the game that got fixed?
4. Tell the story of your biggest noob moment.
5. Tell the story of acquiring your favorite item(s).
   
6. What's the most fun and rewarding quest you've completed?
7. What other video games were you playing that year? (Wikipedia: 1998 1999)

 

1. I don't happen to know exactly, but at that point I would probably have been home playing video games with my Dad. We didn't pick up EverQuest until the Summer time.
2. Peregrintook HFL DRU, Bristlebane (later rerolled as HFL CLR after learning the hard way what the Priest of Discord is for). At 20, the GM wouldn't give me Peregrin Took, and named me Perigrine Bobbins. I complained a week later that my reputation was gone, and they gave me my Took surname back, and I was Perigrine Took forever after!
3. I discovered that handing Deathfist Slashed Belts to Deputy Budo lowered faction with Deeppockets, because Lendel started chasing me down and killing me when I tried to get to the bank!
4. I was probably level 23 or so, wearing full store-bought Fine Steel Plate in Unrest, painstakingly afforded by crawling to Kaladim with thousands of coppers and bronze, meleeing my heart out because I was constantly OOM. Someone finally sat me down and explained the mechanics of WIS and Mana.
5. Finishing my set of Ethereal Mist armor from Plane of Hate, staring at the wall, pre-CH chain healing, and winning /random rolls.
6. The Cleric Epic was Epic. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the camps were frustrating, but extremely rewarding. The most memorable "camp" was waiting for a ground spawn in Guk in a little tower of water. I thought I was clever sitting in the water using HFL vision to see inside the water but not drowning. I fell asleep and probably lost my chance to pick it up multiple times before I managed it.
7. I would have been neck deep in StarCraft.

 

1. Where were you on Sunday May 16th 1999? No idea...probably watching the NFL. Edit: There’s no NFL in May, so it wouldn’t have been NFL. No idea.
2. What was your first character you created, and on what server? I received EQ as a Christmas Present in Christmas 1999. I had never heard of it, but my mother was reading an article somewhere and a guy said it was his favorite game. She thought it sounded like something I would enjoy and got it for me. I first started playing in, I think, January of 2000. Our computer was not a gaming computer, and we had AOL dial up internet. You had to pay for a subscription back then, so my brother (Exos) and I had to share an account. He had a wood elf ranger named Stryderr. Obviously, we couldn't play at the same time being on the same account, so we had to split time on the computer/account. At that time, the max level was 50, and Kunark had not yet come out. I later got the Kunark expansion a bit after it was released. I'll never forget that we bought the physical copy when shopping at a WalMart one afternoon. It was awesome to install it and start exploring the new content. One of the first stops was to Lake of Ill Omen. My first character was a human warrior from Qeynos on the Povar server. I think I got to level 7. I was leveling up in Misty Thicket because a guy I went to school with said it was a good place to xp. He was a halfling druid and helped me make the long overland journey from Qeynos to Rivervale. The trip made me realize how massive and dangerous the world was. Old school EQ travel was no joke! One day I saw a level 34 wood elf warrior sitting at the gate in Misty Thicket. He was wearing full Crafted Armor (blue; the original warrior quest armor) and was Dual Wielding Lamentations. With his helmet, I thought he looked like a samurai, and looked so cool (at the time, 14 year old me would have said "bad ass"). He looked so awesome that I abandoned my human warrior and made a wood elf warrior. Some time earlier I got inspiration for the name "Frosst" while running through Qeynos Hils, so that was what I named my character. I eventually joined the server's top guild, Triton, and got to level 60 before the end of Velious. Our leader was Zaar, and the officers were Giantt, Rombus, Yana, Krellyk, Tpau/Bentos (the first guy to do the 10th Ring of whom the mask of Bentos the Hero is still named), and some others I can't remember. We had an Erudite Mage named Brodie who was quite a character (and many others too). My hero was Krellyk, a fellow wood elf warrior. Triton was pretty hardcore. I remember once I did a raid that began around 12 noon Eastern, and ended around 2:00 a.m. the next day. Just ridiculous. As part of Triton's Luclin push I was present at the serverwide first Emperor Ssra kill, which I think took place in May of 2002. I then got to experience some of the early VT exploration. When I went to college that fall my school had a firewall that blocked EQ. There were no other ways to get internet, so my EQ career effectively came to an end about the time that PoP came out. I was pretty bummed about it. A few years later I played a bit during LDON, GoD, Omens of War, and Dragons of Norrath, and got to level 70, but stopped playing for a bit then. In January or February 2009 I was feeling nostalgic for EQ, and I was poking around on the official Sony Message boards. While reading a thread, I saw someone mention the "EQ Mac Server" and how it was still in the Planes of Power era (I did some research and learned that it was stuck there because Sony had abandoned development for it, but kept the server running). I thought that concept for a server was amazing because it was the era I had to stop playing EQ and the EQ of 2009 was pretty much unrecognizable from what I had remembered. It was either that same day or the next day I ordered a G4 PowerPC from Ebay and got AK loaded up as soon as it arrived. Of course, I made a wood elf warrior and named him Frosst. I got him to level 65 and max AA, and was there when AK shut down in November 2013. The current Frosst is the third version of Frosst, again a wood elf warrior. I'm thankful for this place, and for the opportunity to play with you all, and in this incredible recreation of an authentic Planes of Power era server. It's hard to believe it's been 25 years since EQ came out, but for whatever reason, my love for it, particularly this era of it, remains undimmed.
   
3. Did you ever report a bug in the game that got fixed? Not that I know of.
   
4. Tell the story of your biggest noob moment. There are many, but one stands out. When I was probably around level 8 I was selling some items to a vendor in the Western Commonlands. In the middle of the sale, a bear came crashing through and instantly killed me.
   
5. Tell the story of acquiring your favorite item(s). My favorite item on Povar and on AK was probably Bloodfrenzy. There's not much to the story of getting it-- just showing up to Cursed raids and eventually winning it. It's still one of my favorite items, but it's now probably been eclipsed by the Darkblade of the Warlord. Not much to the story of getting that one either...just showing up to Time raids until my number got called.
   
6. What's the most fun and rewarding quest you've completed? Probably the enchanter epic quest, which I first completed here on TAKP. It's a nice quest that takes you all over the place and isn't too much of a grind. The reward at the end is awesome. It's just a very nicely balanced, and very well done quest.
   
7. What other video games were you playing that year? (Wikipedia: 1998 1999) Xenogears (for PS1) and Baldurs Gate.

 

1. No idea! I think it was in September or October of that year that that I started playing EQ. Strange that I remember that.
2. A druid named Jaelvyn on Bristlebane. When I started grouping in dungeons, I concluded that crowd control was more fun and rolled an enchanter named Ravenwing.
3. No.
4. Unoriginal, but probably falling out of Kelethin and blundering around in the dark searching for my corpse. Greater Faydark seemed so vast and mysterious, and venturing out to fight orcs past the farthest lift a few levels later was a terrifying adventure, especially at night!
5. I gave a high-level caster (who could float!) my bat wings and he gave me some (magic!) jewelry with actual stats on it. I think maybe a polished bone hoop and a jaded silver ring? I was thrilled!
6. I was mostly limited to pretty casual play, as my parents were strict about screen time and lengthy raids like the one Frosst describes were right out! That made almost every step of doing my enchanter's epic a real challenge, and finishing it (sometime in Velious, I think) felt like a grand achievement. (Then as now, I felt that the snake staff was far and away the coolest of the epic weapons.)
7. Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and 3. I got into Everquest through a community based around this game - playing, making maps, reviewing maps other makers made - and so I had friends and a small, casual guild waiting for me when I talked my dad into buying the game for me. We stayed together until Luclin, at which point of most of us joined a larger guild together.

 

1. Well I was 8 so probably outside playing or doing some Nintendo gaming.
2. I created a Half elf Paladin Sanben on the Rathe server. At the time I dont think I ever got past level 10 or so on this character until years later when I came back to him.
3. There was a bug at some point in time when they were revamping the way the Test server operated. You were able to /testcopy your main character on any server to the test server. Then they offered a one time offer for the people who primarily played on test to transfer their character (or anyones /testcopied character) to any other character for feee but it was stripped of all gear. Doing some internet sleuthing of the EQPlayers website which was their internal Magelo type system, I found some people who had successfully transferred off their fully geared character, effectively duping top tier raid geared toons at the time. Turns out by performing the transfer while your character was in shroud mode, your items would not get stripped. I reported it and I think it got fixed before a bunch more people duped their characters to other servers.

There were a handful of broken raid mechanics in HoThule / VoAlaris when I was the most active in my raiding time and some of those got fixed nothing super important that I can remember though.

4. I had a great one on my first raid in Temerity on AK, we killed Grummus, I was fully OOM and my group was dying to DoTs, and I just hailed the Planar Projection before insta dying. On TAKP, during an early Vulak raid I tabbed to my cleric and by the time I tabbed back to my Druid he had successfully autorun across the bridge into the 4-way training the raid about an hour into the encounter. On live I lost my corpse in Blackburrow. In classic 8 year old fashion I asked my mom for help and bless her heart she actually sat down with me and helped me look for my corpse. I think I either got feared or blinded into the pit in the center of Blackburrow and the pirahnas ate me.

5. Saving up all expansion in Underfoot to spend 66,666 points on the very first First Creation Head, which was the final piece to the Coldain Shawl 2.0 augment. At the time the proc on the augment healed your group and gave you mana back on most casts, was effectively worth 6-7 pieces of gear worth of mana on a long fight. Was very pleased to save for the first one.

6. Same answer probably I think? On the Phinigel server I went through all expansion up until a few years back and completed most of the big quests on the way. I really liked doing the Coldain shawls 1/2, Aid Grimel, Breakdown in Communication, Epic 2.0, Eron’s Jewelry, Artisan’s Prize. All of these whole-expansion quests were great. Not a quest per say but in the Burning Lands expansion there were 4 evolving items that were best in slot if you evolved them fully, but to unlock the ability to evolve them you had to complete a bunch of achievements. One of them required you finished on all quests and missions for the last 3 expansions, one required you finished all hunters (kill every named mob once) for last 2 expansions and PoP. One required you visited every single zone in the game once. One required you finished all collections prior to that expansion. I really liked how they required you to cross several expansions worth of content to unlock the best items in a few slots.

7. At the time I think if it wasn’t some random N64 game it was Starcraft with my brother and dad, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, or maybe Diablo 2?

 

Great Idea, thanks for starting this thread.

1. On that day I must have played EverQuest. Well I tried, but, given the masses of people swarming the place, there was hardly any mob to find. The few I got a hold of more often killed me than I killed them (that changed with a little 1HB skill and the almost legendary Cracked Staff I eventually found on a decaying skeleton).

2. I started a Barbarian Shaman, named Kenelan. I think it was the Solusek Ro server? Not sure anymore, the EU servers got merged several times.

3. I did report some minor bugs, but can't recall any specific one. I think the Gavel of Justice quest in Everfrost did not work in the beginning and I wanted that as a magic weapon.

4. My biggest noob moment? About he first thing I did after entering the world: In anticipation of a nice quest or story I approached the first trustworthy looking Northman with a H-a-i-l. There were corpses all around and one of them was mine.

5. There were certainly stages of goals, when it comes to items. The first was getting a piece of equipment in each slot (including the cracked staff I already mentioned, but that one wasn't planned). The second was getting a piece with magical properties in each slot. And I remember how proud I was after attaining a full set of Black Wolf armor on my Barbarian Rogue.
But the things I remember most fondly are quests like the Burning Rapier, because, just like Frosst pointed out, it wasn't just a roll or a hand-out, but something I invested time, plat and corpse runs into. It included a lot of traveling and trade skilling, as well as fighting. The Gnoll Slayer quest for the second variant with the wolf pet clickie was not that extensive, but still something I had to have. And I have done these quests here as well.

6. The epics were fun to do as well. And I used them extensively, necro, shaman, rogue, and warrior. I had to rely on the generosity of friends in raiding guilds, but the quests still required me going though the quests and participating in the raids and fights. Especially the necro duck stick was actively in use all the time, and upgraded later to 1.5 and 2.0. Totally worth the investment and I visited wonderful places while doing the epic Epics (later called 1.0).
The history of rewarding and fun quests also continues in TAKP. The weight reducing container quests were great, especially since you were able to go as far as you wanted and your level permitted. And getting the Ring of the Chicken Guardian on my warrior from running through Najena, getting the keys, and camping Najena herself in early 30ies, was a blast. Granted, I go lucky there, but it still counts.

7. Other games around that time were Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment and Ultima Online (still playing that).

 

1) NSFW and it didn't involve video games or computers
2) Karana, Hum Mag named Selane or something homonymous to that
3) yes, on AK. but very few, of very many
4) getting scammed in a "rare item to re-sell to that guy who wants to buy it" for 5 figures. (Partially recovered by GMs tracking accounts and offering them "reimburse or get banned")
5) using the recovered pp to eventually buy a fungus covered scale tunic at mid-level in in Kunark era
6) Monk epic
7) Starcraft, HalfLife (beta?), Quake 2, Diablo 2

 

1. I'm not exactly sure (do we mean March 16th?), but I was in my second semester of 8th grade. I didn't start playing EQ until just after Christmas that year, so my first toons were around New Years Day 2000.
   
2. I created a Barbarian Shaman on Solusek Ro server. I didn't play him long though, because right after that I played a HE Enchanter on Rallos Zek and just PVP'd between Gfay and Felwithe until level 8. Back then if you had a fast connection you could run from other players across the zone lines and zone in faster, then run and hide beneath the bridge or something (or do a Minor Illusion trick). I finally settled back on Solusek Ro with a DE Wizard - I still have him as an active account on EQ Live today.
   
3. I never reported any bugs, no. I did get stuck in the geometry a few times.
   
4. I'm sure I had a lot of noob moments, but I think my earliest memory was making the run from Everfrost to Freeport across the Karanas and getting smashed by a hill giant when I reached East Karana. I also died shortly after that when I reached Kithicor for the first time and hadn't been initiated to the undead following the Halloween Event (Nurgal's Stone / Plane of Hate opening the previous year). I had a really late night exp session in North Ro on the DE Wizard that later became my main and my best friend at the time played a DE Necromancer. I remember getting really upset when I died to some spider or tarantula and had a long run back while he just feigned death. There was also a time when I spent an entire day ferrying back and forth between East Freeport and Butcherblock doing the Tumpy Tonic quest when it was still really good exp (it got nerfed pretty quickly), dropping the product off below the docks in East Freeport to transfer them to another character and coming back to everything being gone. That was a really bad day!
   
5. I don't remember distinct details, but Jboots and catching Hasten was difficult back then because coin still had weight as we all know. Staff of the Four (wizard epic) took me an entire year of going to pick up raids during Kunark expansion and slightly into Velious - guilded wizards got first dibs. I probably used my Elemental Flux staff the most because I dual and then quad kited from L34 to 60 (finishing up with a 2 week, 8-12 hour per day grind at Raptors in Timorous Deep; 59 was brutal back then).
   
6. What's the most fun and rewarding quest you've completed? Most fun and rewarding quest - definitely the Coldain Prayer Shawl during Velious expansion. It took me quite awhile to grind the tradeskills, and I remember a scripted war event outside Thurgadin that was extremely buggy at first.
   
7. What other video games were you playing that year? (Wikipedia: 1998 1999). We had a Computer Science Club that met after school in High School that was really the Starcraft club (1997 PC Gamer Game of the Year). I played Zerg. Not a video game, but Magic the Gathering was also something I spent a lot of time doing.

 

1. Where were you on Sunday May 16th 1999? I wasn't even born ya ancient af nerd
   
2. What was your first character you created, and on what server? A wizard of p99 red
   
3. Did you ever report a bug in the game that got fixed? yes? quit trying to doxx me!
   
4. Tell the story of your biggest noob moment. I am perfect in every way?
   
5. Tell the story of acquiring your favorite item(s). I pretended to be friends with this low-rent sociopath on red for a few months and ended up just peacing out with their strings/stopper on a recharge trip. Good times!
   
6. What's the most fun and rewarding quest you've completed? Quests are literal aids but I did the the stanos' head to gm in qeynos to get the Fanged Skull Stiletto which ended up being some fun rp nonsense as a giveaway.
   
7. What other video games were you playing that year? (Wikipedia: 1998 1999) Old people are seriously the worst I already answered this!

 

1. I didn't have a working computer at the time, but had several casual friends who had been talking about the game leading up to release. I picked up the Prima strategy guide sometime in April '99 and read it many times over. Finally by August I'd saved up enough to buy a new computer and had my first actual look at the game.
2. First character was a HFL ROG named Tarvos on Rallos Zek, which was where I thought my friends played. Made it up to level 7 before finding out they switched over to Brell Serilis. I restarted there with a gnome mage I don't remember the name of before switching to a dwarf cleric named Ainvar not long after.
3. Nothing that jumps out at me.
4. Not much of a noob moment, but /consent used to grant someone permission to loot your corpse to retrieve your items for you. Someone died in the mines of Ak'anon and asked me to loot their stuff for them as they were KoS. They had one bag that I couldn't loot (must have had a lore item), but I didn't understand why at the time. They didn't believe I couldn't loot it and thought I stole their items, which created lots of drama in tells and OOC.
   
5. On my gnome mage I'd heard about a rare powerful weapon that could be acquired from a quest in Ak'anon. I farmed materials for the quest again and again until I finally acquired the mighty Bull Smasher which I used for my new dwarf battle cleric. Other fun stories were the many hours of Mistmoore hunting to help multiple ranger/warrior friends obtain dual Electrum-Bladed Wakizashis. There were some tense times of trying to hold down maid or butler camps with only a cleric and two melee group.
   
6. When the Temple of Sol Ro armor quests were released. I completed them all on my cleric so he had a full set of gold armor, which was a very unique appearance at the time.
   
7. I wasn't much into video games and probably played nothing else at all in 1999. Prior to that would have been dabbling some in Escape Velocity or Warlords II.

 

The anniversary brought me here, and I am looking forward to starting all over.

1. My dad picked up EQ, watched him play for a few hours and I was hooked. I didn't play until Luclin since I was able to actually get a job and save up for my own PC.
2. I made a Warrior on Xegony!
3. Not that I know of, far too young but would've probably been helpful.
4. I had no idea about being encumbered. I probably walked around for DAYS, and I mean DAYS, until I logged in one day and my dad had vendored and banked some stuff for me, and then explained that to me.
5. The Eyepatch of Plunder I think it was called? Clicky haste item and I was so stoked to actually get another clicky. Also the sword off the Avatar of War, was so pumped to win it, thought it was the coolest sword I have ever seen in the game.
6. I got my Warrior epic during PoP and raided with some people I had met over the years. We had a few people who recently got their epics and we all banded together to help out. Was very cool and I long for that feeling in MMOs again. Also, maybe unpopular opinion? I really enjoyed LDoN. I thought it was cool we could grind dungeons and get the new gem stuff.
7. Armored Core for PS1, Gran Turismo, also played some Doom.

 

1. Where were you on Sunday May 16th 1999? A couple of my friends started playing EQ pretty soon after launch. I puttered around with noob characters in their basements once in a while, but I didn't take the plunge myself until mid-Velious or so.
2. What was your first character you created, and on what server? A halfling ranger named... something. I probably have a notebook somewhere with all the backstory I wrote for him before I actually bought the game. I think the first toon I leveled beyond single digits was a gnome rogue named Nasal. Somewhere around level 40, I got frustrated with the rogue's inability to solo or reliably get groups and rerolled a barbarian shaman named Teiresias. The reference was lost on basically everyone, most of whom (fittingly?) called me Teresa. Pro tip for shammies: pick a name so hard to spell that you never get buff tells.
3. Did you ever report a bug in the game that got fixed? I wrote a long thread on the public EQMac.com forums about all the most egregiously buggy abilities that each class had on AK. Hobart eventually nerfed a bunch of them.
4. Tell the story of your biggest noob moment. I started a guild in early Luclin - total scrubs following a total scrub - and figured a great first raid to lead them on would be one of the alien caves (Radir or Tawro?) in Umbral that I'd never been to. Those aliens don't fuck around. We wiped a couple of caves in and spent a million years CR'ing. I'm not sure if/how we ever got our bodies; I probably didn't know about summon corpse.
5. Tell the story of acquiring your favorite item(s). I joined a guild around PoP launch that was pretty early into Time. I really wanted the shaman slow stick. The guild had a weird DKP system where items had fixed costs and were assigned by a loot council. A shaman officer assigned me a bunch of basically crappy loot that cost a lot of points, tanking my DKP and removing his competition. The slow stick dropped a few times in our farming, but I was far enough down the list of shammies that I didn't get one before I quit. The officers eventually logged my shaman in to loot a rotting slow stick. I un-quit sometime in early GoD and did enjoy spamming slow on pookas and stuff.
   
6. What's the most fun and rewarding quest you've completed? I did all the Aid Grimel tradeskills on four toons - 6,160 skillups - during covid lockdown. 2020 was a hell of a year.
7. What other video games were you playing that year? I played text-based MUDs around that time. I used to write zones and quests and stuff. It was pretty fun watching my friends play through content I'd created.