Old School what are your memories?Follow

I just read on the everquest.com board about an idea to bring back the original EQ no expansions. I know this forumn is home for some veterns so here goes.

I am very new to EQ. I was broght to EQ by and "old school" player. He played for three years and left two years ago. So when he brought me back he was only use to the expansion up to Lucilin.

Lets see......I started in Queynos and leveled in Antonica till 20+. No idea SOW existed, I have road the boat to the Ocean of Tears for a spell. I have waited at the Karana portal forever to get a port to Lucilin. I know the scarecrows personally and the Millers including Tiny! I never heard of clarity, buffs or farming.

He once told me that it took years to level back in the beginning, there were hell levels that took longer than others. Guilds were like families, parties were abundant and alcohol tolerance was a skill everyone excelled in. The arena in Rath was used for GM hosted tournements all the time. You ran everywhere you wanted to go and depended on guards to protect you and you feared the warewolf outside of Queynos hills.

I got to experience some of this and it wasn't till we got POP that I got to see non-humans! I learned what sow was, didn't get my first clarity for an adventure till about level 50. LOL got my first dose of temp around 50 also. Never heard of power leveling etc.

So I guess by most standards in the new world of EQ I am behind times. I don't know all the zones cause I spent all my time in the old world. But it is pretty cool to be a newbie and have experienced some of the things the old schoolers had to deal with.

Last but not least.....yea I leveled slower than others, never got to the bonus zones for experience. I still level slower because I never join the race to the top. Life is just more carefree without an agenda.

Thanks a good thread!

See the above linked thread for details.

heheh I remember dropping cheap swords on the floor to know where North was...as you dropped them they always fell with the point pointing N :) And half a day to get Sense heading up...

I can't resist this thread.. I've tried but... I want to do Orc Highway again. Orcs coming from everywhere.. pulled Specs attacking everyone, Giants that looked like Saddam stomping around.. sniff sniff.

I can't help it.. I know this is a deadhorse thread..OK I feel better now.

The game you're playing now and the game people played back then is not the same game.

If you want to simulate the experience, take a screenshot of your spellbook and tape it to your screen every time you med.

Ahh, memoires...

The game isn't better, really. Sure, the graphics are prettier and there's more stuff to play around with (gear/levels/zones/spells) -- but the only thing the game's really become, in my opinion, is easier.

Which isn't necessarily a good thing. Back when I first started EQ it was a pretty tough game, especially in the early levels when you were still figuring things out. Dying and losing your corpse was a pretty common thing even in the newbie zones, and if that happened you either found a bard/necro to help you out or you just sucked it up and started over. It gave you a certain appreciation for the difficulty in obtaining your gear, which made you a more careful person in the future (more likely to work on sense heading and learning to use /loc, for example).

A complete idiot would have a very hard time making it past 10th level back then. Newbism acted as a filter of sorts, Norrath's version of survival of the fittest. Today's EQ is the spoon-fed version, because after all idiots have cash too and Sony wanted it. Just my opinion of course.

Some of my fondest (and funniest) memories:

~Finding myself unwittingly involved in a GM event in GFay, which consisted of named pixies running around rooting and blinding people. They usually wouldn't damage you (although they did nuke one fella pretty hard), but I was so new to the game I had this idea in my head that pixies and other fairie sorts were good guys, and I'd better not kill them! Ruin my pixie faction or something! So I ran back to town and hid until people shouted they were dead, lol.

~Telling a kind person in Halas that they were full of crap, NO ONE would pay 20pp for a HQ bear skin, they drop off level 3 mobs for crissakes. You must be an idiot! (I felt like a real idiot after I realized how many of these I'd sold to vendors ...)

~Falling off the boat in OOT (or rather, I was on the boat but it moved and I didn't!), swimming around until I got eaten by a shark and losing my rawhide-clad corpse somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. Shouting in the zone for help and getting a reply from a necro who said he'd summon it for 100pp ... and realizing I'd have to start over from scratch at level 16 because that was more cash than I'd ever seen in my entire EQ career!

~Being amazed when a druid started auctioning in WC that he would pay 3pp each for HQ cat and wolf skins! I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, and was convinced the dude had found some plat duping exploit to be able to afford such exhorbitant prices.

~Every moment I spent with Followers of the Stars and Shards of Chaos. For better or for worse. All their members, past and present, were some of the most amazing people I ever had the pleasure of playing this silly game with. /salute

Or wait for the boat, get on board, and /q.

I do miss the newness, and the shared "wow".

I don't miss the inconvenience, the bugged boats, the massive crowds in the only 3(?) 40+ zones available. Though it was kinda cool to be able to walk through Lower Guk in complete safety, in a way. Oh, yeah, you can still do that because of the faction farmers.

My son plays and I get a link on each new thing to see. They have become his prize possession! The things I give him are not as dear as the ones he has earned!!

The SHOUT "Specs to the dox!" as a newbie in Oasis.

Rescuing a guy I used to group with when his and his girlfriend's characters fell into the basement in Befallen. I was level 19 and was just barely able to handle the basement mobs with 2 naked group members. Was more fun than any LDON rescue mission, I'll tell you.

The first time I could solo Dorn and Specs.


The Tower of Frozen Shadows. My first real "raid".

Rangers were the god class when EQ first came out. You must have started playing around late Kunark to have that oppinion.

Without a word of a lie, in the past month my regular group mates and I have hunted in the following;

Numerous LDoNs, Mirragul, Guk and Mistmoor.
PoJ trials.
Plane of Storms
Plane of Nightmare
Plane of Tactics
Umbral Planes
Akheva
Grieg's End
Veksar
Plane of Mischief

Places we plan to go to in the next few weeks;

BoT
Sirens Grotto
Ssra
Grieg's
Veksar
PoT
SoL C

Sure beats the hell out of fighting over a couple of spawns in the "Disco" or the "Hand" room in my opinion.

And how does this make the game worse for you to play?




The old UI wasn't that bad???? The mind boggles. Just what game are you talking about?



No, Yes, So do are you agreeing or not?

I never said that it was a substitute for gear, but that it added another pathway.




Maybe a small part of the game if all you do is solo, for groups it has added immenses depth and richness to the game play. From quests to trials to ring events to LDoN and much much more.

You should give them a try.




Now that is just plain stupid, on two fronts.

How can having the abilty to combine components you have already stacked in you inventory, instead of having to load them one by one into the tradeskill container make the slightest bit of difference to your game play. Neither require any degree of inteligence or skill. Just the ability to click a mouse.

So you now "remember" the recipes for things that you succeed in making? How is this different from keeping a print out of the recipe on the desk next to the computer?

Rareity/buying components for tradeskills has nothing what ever to do with my comment. In the early days you could persevere (which ever way you chose) all the way to 200 only to find that the stuff you could now make was valueless, now at 200 and up most tradeskills can make very useful and valuable items. Stat food and drink, weapons as good as anything that drops, stat jewelry with focii that is as good as any items that drop.




I have no idea what you are on about here, your statement has nothing to do with what I said. Some of the best items in the game now can be obtained via questing. This was never the case in the "old days" you could spend days questing for a reward that was no better than something you could pick up from Chardok or Sebilus "yard trash".



And how does this make the game worse for you to play?

If others do not go to "a lot of the great dungeons" does this not leave even more space and opportunity for you?

Why would you choose to group with someone who has "fast tracked to 65"? Just leave them be.

Ditto pick up raids. I can't imagine that you mean a guild raid?





What on earth has this got to do with Paladins being able to hold a position as alternative tanks, Druids being able to fill in as pinch healers, Beastlords able to fill in as pinch buffers and slowers, Rangers finding a place for themselves and ranged DPS??

Instead of raids being called because Clerics, Warriors and Enchanters didn't show up, we now have classes that can provide a workable substitute.




Umm, I don't get it, why does the fact that Druids get a large enough heal to make a reasonable susbstitute for a Cleric, make the game more attractive to the "Diabloesque crowd"?

If you were trying to broaden my statement by suggesting that it applied to the broader game rather than class balancing, I will accept the challenge.

Explain to me how introducing something like the "hedge trial" in PoN makes the game more attractive to the "Diabloesque crowd"?


Edited, Tue May 4 04:23:19 2004 by Iluien
Edited, Tue May 4 04:25:24 2004 by Iluien

Edited, Tue May 4 04:26:48 2004 by Iluien