Yeah, that's the thing. It sounds horrible, and so everyone ran off and created "EQ without the crappy bits!!", and 10 million people play WoW. And yet, in the end, it isn't a quarter as engaging as EQ1 was back in the day. People really did come together, the boards and sites that were good were awesome, because the people weren't just datamining like Thottbot or whatever; the ones that had REAL information had it because people used their brains and creativity to figure stuff out, and became legendary for it. We all hated Brad for his blasted "VISION" back then, with his incessant talk of "risk vs reward", but in the end, he was actually mostly right (the exp loss on death was wrong tho). The people you met were mostly nice and friendly, and the ones who weren't made bad names for themselves that everyone on the server knew - they only hurt themselves. It's like this, yes there was the possibility for people to really be jackholes in a way you can't even imagine in WoW - but on the other hand, there was the possibility for the exact opposite, and there were tons of people who were helpful to strangers, gave goodies to newbies who were polite to them, helped people out if they were in trouble in the shared dungeons, etc. There was some inanity in general chat, but usually not like Barren's Chat. It was typical to go to a dungeon like Guk and see 10-15 players you knew talking in zone-chat, and it was like hanging out at a party with acquaintences and friends while getting loot and exp. WoW doesn't come close to having anything like that.

You had to trigger the next step of the quest, with the correct dialogue or it wouldn't work They eventually started having fun with it: There was the NPC in Plane of Nature too, if you asked him for "phat lewtz" he'd instantly kill you.

EQ was one of the only games I remember that wanted you to explore but punished you greatly if you failed.

There was that douchebag wizard.. ugh what's his name..SAM DEATHWALKER! he first started 2 boxing, then it moved up to 10 boxing. He played on the full PVP server, people in WoW bitch about people 3-5 boxing shamans in Alterac Valley. Does Sam 'da man still claim the highest serverwide dps? Fuck that guy was annoying and I played on a blue server.

I definitely enjoyed the challenge of EQ....just not some of it's retarded mechanics(corpse runs, exp loss, exp penalties, night blindness, crappy interface). I love being able to solo in WoW and have a bazillion alts but sometimes I wish for a bigger, more dangerous world too. That's why I like going back and soloing older instances....even if I'm not getting any loot out of it I still enjoy the challenge. I really liked the idea of the epic quests too. I had a ton of fun working on my mage epic although parts of it were retarded(trying to get rare drops off ultra-rare spawns for example). It was incredibly satisfying to be able to finish that and kept me playing long after I would have quit otherwise.

You want to bitch about a game being dark, did you play WWII Online at launch? There was literally like 15 minutes every hour or so that you could not see anything, at all. If you were flying when that happened, good luck.

Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler My 4box Crew, doing Gyrospire Beza over and over again ~_~ not pictured: Halfling Warrior and Cleric Mercs.

Are those mercs any good? Are they like the guild wars npcs?

Pretty much game changing is what they are, especially if you can get the journeyman rk4/5 mercs. Level 1-60ish the journeyman rk1 merc will basically make whatever you are playing look like shit, he'll pretty much dominate any mob within a reasonable level range to you.

There was that douchebag wizard.. ugh what's his name..SAM DEATHWALKER! he first started 2 boxing, then it moved up to 10 boxing. He played on the full PVP server, people in WoW bitch about people 3-5 boxing shamans in Alterac Valley. Does Sam 'da man still claim the highest serverwide dps? Fuck that guy was annoying and I played on a blue server. The best thing about Sam da man Deathwalker is that he was a middle aged 40-something that made a bunch of money off of real estate, so he spent his entire life playing EQ or buying hookers. Yes, he bought hookers, and frequently bragged about how many he had sex with (in the 500s last I remember) and would even have them take pictures with signs saying "Sam da Man is #1" and garbage and post it on the forums. He had an insane setup, monitors strapped to the ceiling with chains and his room looked like a basement out of Silence of the Lambs, truly frightening. He graduated to 24 boxing last I heard and had his own guild. That guy was awesome edit: http://www.samdeathwalker.com/images/BEST1.jpg There he is, the man himself. Yes, that is real

Man I read his posts on the FoH forums. That dude was crazy.

I don't know what the source of this image is, but it's been on my site for years: http://xzzy.org/files/games/eq/eq-mad2boxing.jpg Really, WoW botters got nothing on EQ botters.

Thats why I like Vanguard. It reminds me a lot of EQ and feels almost like EQ1.5, but it doesn't have a lot of the stupid shit from EQ. Its a nice blend. I do love the quest system from EQ, though lack of a quest log is something I could not deal with nowadays. I am not a big fan of the standard system: Click NPC, hit accept, follow minimap/compass. My buddy annoys the hell out of me when I play WoW with him. He never ever reads the quest text. He just runs to the quest givers, quickly rounds up all the quests, then heads out. I on the other hand enjoy reading the quest text. But my buddy is more about getting to the lvl cap and I am more for the journey.

i bet every monk has a screenshot like this

Definitely, on my old computer

Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler

fuuuuck, those graphics. I'll tell you what though, despite the fact that wow is a better balanced game in basically ever respect, I have yet to get the same feeling of vastness from wow areas as EQ's. Everything seems small in azeroth, where (and this might just be fuzzy pink memory) in norrath and beyond stuff definitely seemed to be on an epic scale.

Good old Felwithe. I used to transfer items between characters by dropping them in the catwalk/rampart you could access through the paladin guild. It was a pretty good spot since Felwithe was always pretty empty and I had never even seen anyone else in those walkways. It is also the place where I died the first time because I did not know how to swim up. I drowned in the small lake.

fuuuuck, those graphics. I'll tell you what though, despite the fact that wow is a better balanced game in basically ever respect, I have yet to get the same feeling of vastness from wow areas as EQ's. Everything seems small in azeroth, where (and this might just be fuzzy pink memory) in norrath and beyond stuff definitely seemed to be on an epic scale. I never got beyond the low teens due to altitis, but yeah, EQ felt absurdly large. Part of it might have been the emptiness of the world, the game was filled with vast areas of space that were essentially filler, while later games like WoW give every area in the game some purpose. Also, the cities were awesome. This discussion reminded me of an anecdote. I still played EQ around the time of September 11th, and after getting bored of staring at the same news being repeated over and over, I decided to log into the game for some much needed escapism. However, when the server list appeared, all of the servers were listed as completely empty. At that point, I was shell-shocked enough to actually believe it, and quit to go back to feeling miserable. I eventually logged back in a few hours later and joined my usual server despite the player counts, and of course people were playing. The player counts never returned. When exactly did the player counts stop showing? I assume that it was probably a few days earlier, and that just happened to be the first time I logged in since then.

I think the disappearance with the population counts coincided with the launch (or impending launch) of DAoC. It was the first time in the game's history when the population actually dropped, and though they never admitted it, it was pretty clear they wanted to avoid creating the impression the game was failing.

The only epics I thought looked really cool were the monk one, and the warrior one. The rest were pretty meh. Seriously, ugh. This was my favorite look of all: Robe of Enshroudment is the armor, but I forget what the weapons were. Dual wielding necro? Yes please! The scythe was called the Harvester. You could hold it in either hand, and while you held it, you had the Deadeye buff, which let you see invisible creatures and players. I loved that thing. Also, I always thought the best looking characters in the game were dark elf females in shining metallic robes with golden efreeti boots, holding a glowing black stone and a harvester/another item with the gbs look. I loved the whole city of Neriak. I used to explore there all the time. The problem was all the different factions in the city. My halfling rogue had killed a lot of crushbone orcs, which decimated your faction with the indigo brotherhood - the dark elf warrior guild. Even while wearing my dark elf illusion mask, they would attack me on sight. Also, the ghouls out in the shadowknight/necromancer area (the lodge of the dead wasn't it? looked like a big chinese barracks) were on a different faction and you had to invis past them. I think they were on Queen Cristanos Thex faction. You could give stacks of red wine to a guy in the wizard guild I think, and get faction with the Dark Bargainers, the merchant faction in neriak. You just had to learn which areas you couldn't go to. Exploring the city was great too, there were these crazy magic looking markings in a bunch of random out of the way places in town, I never did find out what they were for. Also there were these hidden tunnels and sometimes you would run into a Leatherfoot Raider, one of the halfling rangers sneaking around in there. I also remember when this cool shadowknight in my guild quit. Her name was Nadru, and she had a full set of darkforge armor (red and black plate armor). before she logged for the last time, she went into the water that you could see through the window in that underwater bar in neriak, and let her character drown there. So her (awesome looking) corpse was there up until they put a limit on how long a corpse would last before decaying if it had an item on it. I would usually log out of the game down by the window, was kind of like visiting a friend's grave I guess.

Pretty much game changing is what they are, especially if you can get the journeyman rk4/5 mercs. Level 1-60ish the journeyman rk1 merc will basically make whatever you are playing look like shit, he'll pretty much dominate any mob within a reasonable level range to you. The mercs feature actually sounds really slick. I better stop reading these EQ threads on various forums or I'll end up resubscribing! Oh wow and I was just lookin at the wiki and it says EQ on the mac never got any updates? Its still the way it was in 2002? That actually sounds more awesome than it probably is.

The scythe was called the Harvester. You could hold it in either hand, and while you held it, you had the Deadeye buff, which let you see invisible creatures and players. I loved that thing. I didn't even know about that thing until after it was useless, and by then I had Dead Man Floating so I could always see invis (DMF/lev also made traveling through the Dreadlands easy if you came in through the snowy side since you could float over a lot of enemies). I also remember when this cool shadowknight in my guild quit. Her name was Nadru, and she had a full set of darkforge armor (red and black plate armor). before she logged for the last time, she went into the water that you could see through the window in that underwater bar in neriak, and let her character drown there. So her (awesome looking) corpse was there up until they put a limit on how long a corpse would last before decaying if it had an item on it. I would usually log out of the game down by the window, was kind of like visiting a friend's grave I guess. I'm a packrat in most games so I even kept my starter items. When I finally cancelled I removed my equipment and put on my newbie robe & dagger, then logged out at the entrance of the Necromancer guild in Cabilis.