Ten years is a decent amount of time by anyone’s standards. Even centenarians consider a decade to be a nice little chunk of their life. So the fact that EverQuesthas spanned a decade in its live time is quite the feat. And it has done so with a desire to always stay competitive, if not by leading the pack then by keeping its substantial player base satisfied.
But it’s not often the current trend that we remember most in our gaming memories; we linger upon those events early in our MMO careers that laid the groundwork for all of our subsequent endeavors. In a break away from our normal competitive routine, I’d like to present to you the most memorable moments of the Ten Ton Hammer staff. Please sit back and wax nostalgic about some of your own favorite moments from this ground-breaking game.
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I sat for hours, so many that they all blurred together with Phil “Ralph” Comeau and two other gents from work camping "The Preacher". Our victim was on a 30 minute timer, but we could kill everything in the room in about 20 seconds. That meant that we had to find other ways to amuse ourselves. Our night consisted of listening to Phil's jokes and watching our bard dance on "the stage" where the Preacher spawned. It was one of the most memorable nights of EQ not because we actually accomplished anything amazing, but because four friends sat around in an office, drinking beer and enjoying the downtime in a MMOG. I still believe that the downtime in EQ was one of the biggest reasons that people played it as long as they did.
I have a ton of fond EQ memories. The first one that stands out for me though:
One day I was minding my own business in PoK (aka looking for players willing to let me sacrifice them) when I suddenly got a desperate /tell from someone asking me to summon their corpse in the Plane of Fear. I realized full well that even getting a single corpse summoned to the zone line was difficult to say the least, but I figured I'd give it a shot.
I arrived a soon after to discover a raid of about 50 people, all milling about in nothing but their EQ Underoos, and for a split second I thought, "Oh crap..."
Two hours later I'd somehow managed to summon the full raid, rez their clerics and went on to even help them pull Mr. Stinky himself, Cazic.
Two weeks later I became that guild's new raid leader, taking them all the way up through the elemental planes. The social bonds that formed between players in EQ is easily one of the best things I took away from that particular MMO, which by no coincidence is the underlying story behind just all of my favorite memories of the game.
LOL oh The POF memories, One night the entence mobs where buged. I had to stay Feign Death just inside the entence for over 4 hours to help get peoples corpse back. That night we had every major guild try to help break the entrence so we could all get our corpse back.
It was so bad that a GM had to come in and start killing mobs so the over 100 or so people could get there corpse back. Even tho it was so frustrating i still had fun that night.
A link to this post over on Blue's News brought me back here. I started playing EQ1 during Phase 4 beta. I still have my beta cd. There are so many memories that came flooding back from reading the post and subsequent replies that i'm obligated to share my own.
I'd never played an MMO before (UO, Meridian 59 came *after* the launch of EQ for me) and i'd never played a pen and paper RPG before either. EverQuest was such a radical concept for me that I was stunned at the loading screens, not to mention character creation. The most vivid *wow* moment for me came when in phase 4 when I created a Barbarian Warrior. I remember to this day feeling cold as I ventured along the blue passages of Everfrost Peaks. I remember watching the snow falling. The sounds of gnolls. I remember the barbarian shamans all centered around fires in the city. I remember how the wolves stayed near to their masters. I can't even really put it all into words.. Watching characters and not understanding if it was a computer controlled person or a real person playing. I remember the particle effects of spells being cast... I remember the bear pelts going into your inventory after you killed one and knelt down beside it.
I remember having a passion as a tradesmen and spending countless hours in the East Commonlands tunnel auctioning off items. I would always vow that one day the cumulative efforts of all my auctioning would net an items of value greater than all others to me. It was many days later that I was able to purchase the legendary Cloak of Flames. Lord Nagafen's chief treasure was proudly displayed every time I viewed my inventory screen.
EverQuest was magical to me. I stayed with the game until 2002's Planes of Power where the game lost something to me. I would return again in 2006 with Prophecy of Ro, but it wouldn't be the same. I could write here in this little text box for hours, with great passion for what once was, but it would be lost to most. Suffice it to say that the friendships would never materialize again and I soon went to check out other games that would never hold my attention. I miss EverQuest. I've gone though the majority of MMO's released since and have yet to relive that first kiss. ... probably wont. I think it will have something to do with finding the right people.
I have many fond memories of those early days of EQ. I started playing about a year after the game launched. There was a guild that I joined that was a blast. We had a Christmas Part, Drinking parties, lots of fun times. One event, we all created gnomes - so here's 20 lvl 1 gnomes running around Steamfont just outside the city entrance. We started playing leapfrog - which was terribly funny to watch - and just having pure fun. Then there comes along this wood elf, likely a druid from the looks of her and she con's red to us lvl 1 & 2 gnomes(some people actually got some XP!). Our fearless guild leader yells out, "Get Her!!!" and a swarm of gnomes goes tearing after this poor druid. Mind you there's nothing we could have done to her and she did have SoW. So she'd run away and stop and look back. And there we'd be running as fast as our tiny legs would carry us after her.
I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt and my eyes were crying. I so wish I could have known what was going through that druids mind "WTF is going on here? Where did all these Gnomes come from? And why are they chasing me?"
I had a blast playing EQ. I started in October 1999 after buying my first PC (solely for EQ, Planescape: Torment and Baldur's gate) with my first ever signing bonus (woohoo!). At the time I bought my PC, it was about the best money could buy (Dell XPS T550 - it was the tops until a week later when new hardware came out...). I started on Brell Serillis with a Dwarven Paladin, then switched to Lanys T'Vyl the day it went live. After that, I never played on any other server than Lanys. My main character was a Barbarian Shaman named Kragar Frostburn. In regards to EQ, in general, I've never yet experienced a game that had as much social glue as Everquest did. In the early days, it seemed like everybody knew everybody else, reputation was very important and it was easy to make friends. It doesn't really seem that way with modern MMO, sometimes.
In terms of stories, here are a few of mine:
Story 1 - I joined one of the earliest and best-regarded guilds, Solidaire, at least in early Lanys history. It was a small, but very social guild with a lot of great players. As we grew, we started having a weekly "Fight Night" in th Lake Rathetear Arena. The event was well known and very popular. Occasionally other players would come by and join the fun. One night, we were pleasantly surprised when a number of Guides showed up and decided to battle us in the Arena. It was a blast! Killing them was incredibly difficult and we all died often, but it was like having a GM event just for our guild! Unfortunately, the fun ended sooner than we would have liked, due to GMs popping in, forcing us all to sit (essentially in "time-out") while they sorted out what was going on. The end result is that all the guides who participated were banned from EQ. It was a crappy ending to an otherwise great night.
Story 2 - One of my guildmates, Aymen Tadat, was banned. It turns out he was a GM on another server. He was banned because he gave another friend (ex-guildmate named Haxxor Craxxor) epic Kunark dragon loot before Kunark had been fully explored and well before any dragons were killed. Aymen, as it turned out, wasn't just a GM. His RL name was Kevin Scott (I believe) and he was one of the original founders of Fan Faire, when it was actually run by the fans, not Sony. He had been hired by Sony after they took over Fan Faire. Obviously, he was fired for his actions. I certainly don't condone his actions, but he was a fun guy to play with, so losing him sucked. I never had any idea who he was in RL until after this happened.
Story 3 - Friends in RL! I went to what I believe was the first "official" Fan Faire in Las Vegas in either 2000 or 2001 and got to meet lots of people from my server, but especially two of my guildmates, Tranthas (Phil) and Taenia (Marty). I also got to meet some players I grouped with frequently from another guild, Toxs, Challice and Isis. It was a lot of fun! We had a lot of drinks, including at a party hosted by Sony, chatted a lot with Gordon Wrinn, Phil and Marty taught me to play blackjack. I hooked up with Phil and Marty and several other new virtual/RL friends during a couple of subsequent trips to Seattle and Ellensburg the next couple of summers. It was during my last trip, even after I'd stopped playing EQ, that I was introduced to CoH in the basement of our friends in Ellensburg. About 20 folks (most coming from all over the country) camped their place for a week of gaming and partying (blue otter pop shots and maraschino cherries soaked in Wverclear and a hot tub!) each summer. I've since lost touch with all of them, except Phil, whom I chat with once or twice a year via phone or IM, but those were fun times! Heck, one of them (character was named Willey Coyote) gave me spring training tickets to the Mariners (I lived in Phoenix), since he couldn't make the trip down!
Remembering EverQuest - Ten Years of Memories
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