TLDR: Time commitments. EverQuest will always be my favorite game. I just don’t have the free time to play as I’d like to anymore. The older I get, the more time I have to spend on work & family. I will miss EverQuest & the community at large. All of you have made making videos for this channel so special & rewarding. I deeply thank you all for the ride. I feel sad about leaving EQ and all of you. But, my plan: I want to make videos on another channel but about different topics. Topics I feel have a greater reach & importance. I use the lessons I learned from making EQ content.
You’ve been my fave EQ content creator for a long time, and our journey through the years are similar, even tho I still haven’t played in a while.... still am a hardcore follower tho
Great video. I understand totally as I went through the same experience a few years back. I'm going to guess I'm about 10 years older than you. I returned to the game after years and years off and treat it like a single player game now with a chat. I have a great time playing again and I'm able to give back to the community with my videos. Good luck in whatever is next for you!
I got my first PC back in '99, specifically so that I could play EQ. It was the talk of the town... or at least every gaming store... back then. My favorite class was the enchanter. Traffic control, buffing, debuffing, handing out clarity to random healers, I did it all. My shining moment as an enchanter was mezzing an entire train in the Estate of Unrest. People were running towards the exit (we were in the outer courtyard at the time), when I mezzed all the mobs in the train. I then shouted "train mezzed, pick one and take them out. I got this!" The train was completely "derailed" as the players dog piled on them while I periodically kept the ones they weren't killing mezzed. But the most fun I ever had as an enchanter were the illusions. I'd go to a newbie area (usually West Freeport) drop a plat coin on the ground, cast minor illusion, pick up the original coin and watch how many people would try to pick me up (this was before they removed the ability to drop coins. Later, I used an empty bag). Then I'd tell them that I was a "magic coin", and cast buffs on them. Another fun trick was to cast minor illusion by a carpet in one of the shops, then travel around the area as a "flying carpet", baffling the newer players. If I was REALLY feeling mischievous, I'd go to the Oasis, where there were occasional drybone skeletons. I'd cast the "Drybone Skeleton" illusion, set up a macro that said "Time to die !", find some low level players and cast "Shallow Breath" on one, which sounded identical to a drybone's attack spell, that came complete with a sinister cackle. The poor newbies had no idea that I couldn't actually hurt them (blue server). They just saw some crazy, named high level drybone skeleton attacking them and they'd run for it, me chasing after them while casting "Shallow Breath". Then I'd do the laugh emote, wave, bow and cast the "invisibility" spell disappearing with another cackle (skeletons cackled when they cast spells). Most of them had a pretty good sense of humor about it. Ah, fun times.
Lol. I sat at the Oasis docks for DAAAYYYS as a Shaman. I'd just regen, sow, and Stat buff all the noobs. There was always some a-hole that would do the random "Shout" message that the specters were hitting you. You'd see everyone scramble. Them, after a while it became a "cried wolf" thing and people would actually die to a train of specters I always enjoyed the crowd control classes though. The shit would get intense, and was always fun when you had a good group that could just fight nonstop Then there was always the dingus that casts a DOT or AoE and breaks all the mezzed/rooted enemies
That's mainly because of PvP. Those games try to balance for PvP which is very different from PvE. You could see this perfectly in WoW where in the early years classes were vastly different but when they introduced arena fights and rankings etc. they also began to changed classes to be more or less the same. It's not JUST PvP, though. Unfortunately players also complained about things like classes like priests being hard to level because they take longer to kill mobs. In the end, players are always to blame. When roleplaying became mainstream, a lot of "players" entered the scene that want vastly different things than you and me.
@@pnmoreno Truth, then there are bards...not a single fucking mmo since original EQ has made a bard class that even comes close to being as amazing. I wasn't even a bard main back then and have always waited for another game to bring something like that back.
I have been playing FFXIV since day one and although I do LOVE it to pieces, no experience will ever be the same as EQ1 was for me. It really was a whole different game compared to any other MMO. If they could make something similar that didn’t suck up so much time I would be fully on board. I had to stop playing because of annoying adult things like work, a social life, and health goals ugh. Great video! Covered all the major things that made EQ something really unique and special.
WB, wish you had got to enjoy classic, kunark etc. Better late than never friend. If you're on Blue add Overrated (60rog), Horribad (60 shm), Fahlen,(52 nec) Alleged (48 SK) & Fail (51 Rng). Currently doing a 2 group+ box team on PEQ due to burnout. Oh, add Haplo, & Darkdusts. Tell him you're a friend of me. Gl, have fun if you're still playing.
@@TheColdbrews It was, for years. Too much inflation of X items, in fact I want to see what Sks, Encs, and Shamans can solo now. Tranix and Hierophant were fun, didn't feel like blowing the $ on Puppet Strings for the Solo Achievement Award thing some kind soul did before green was around. Enjoy the difficulty while you can. If I ever saw first chars in a grp or running through a zone I'd always hook them up with weapons/armor. Haste items even, prob gave away 100k between plat and gear over the yrs. Cheers.
Whenever I see the Everquest box it gives me extreme nostalgia. Not because I played but because when I was a kid I seen the box in my uncles room and it made extremely interested in Fantasy and D&D . And until this day I can see the box and it sends me back to that moment where I was so excited to learn about the world 😁💯
I think you nailed it. I always liked the role faction played in the game. You could be hated or liked based on what you killed or simple by the deity you chose. This dictated where and who you fought. The game had consequences for everything. You became your character.
Reason #4: The dungeon design is just too cool. They're mazes and don't feel like amusement parks. Easy to get lost in them and that's part of the fun.
@@Urothewarrior The dungeon designs in EverQuest were literally my most favorite thing about the game. They were dangerous, risky to explore, loaded with secret passageways, and incredibly interesting. Here we are 23 years later, and it's almost impossible to find dungeons with designs as interesting. Dark Souls did a good job with dungeon design, but I'm having a hard time thinking of anything modern that did it as well as EQ.
Main thing missing from modern mmos... FEAR You don't fear mobs...you don't fear dying. You don't fear losing exp. You don't fear having to recover your corpse and items. You don't fear running into that random high lvl mob walking thru the zone..so there's no atmosphere. You don't fear mobs or pulling too many. You don't remember anywhere you've been because it's just like everywhere else. Fear is what's missing from today's games.
It's not fear, it's adrenaline rush, emotions, I loved it but I hated to get huge death penalty such as losing EQ or skills/levels. Higher you got, more you lost. Losing too much is not fun. Still risk/reward should be a thing. In WoW all you lose is durability which you pay for with gold. Gold doesn't mean much as it's never scarce so you don't care. Travel time is not huge due to teleports being available everywhere, flying so you don't care either. I don't know if you lose anything in FF XIV, do you?
I was playing Ultima Online back when this game was in it's original prime, but all these years later I wanted to go back and try it. I installed P99, created an enchanter, and went off into the world! It was amazing. I love the chill, methodic pacing of the game. I was leveling fine by myself, but now at level 12 it feels like I really need to start grouping in Crush Bone. Unfortunately that's where it becomes hard to play. Ya know, I got a wife, she's not going to be cool w/ me telling her I can't let the dogs out because I'm in some group that's "just sitting there" while we wait for another pull or something. I'll bet if you "no life" this game it's a fuck ton of fun. Maybe when I'm in the old folks home or something I can get a couple of dudes in there to play EQ w/ me all day. :D
My love for this game goes pretty deep, so I've tried a lot of private server options. Live is just too extra for me these days with the insane power scaling and the absurd AA bloat. But the OG game and the early expansions are all pretty compelling. P99 is a great way to revisit it that's rather authentic to the original experience, but it's a toxic cesspool at max level if you want to do raiding content. "No life" players is exactly the right phrase and the way the server exists compels these types of players to play in extremely unhealthy ways. An example of this would be camping for coveted items, especially those that are patched out as the server progresses along the timeline to its final state. When the green server launched, the Mana Stone camp was disgusting. I knew a number of players that got it and the worst camp was ~50hrs. If you miss one afk check you lose your spot to the next person (and there's always a next person). Those checks come at 10-15min intervals, so the longest you can be away is about 8min safely. That's a long time to be forced not to sleep and sit at the keys. You can make the argument that no one had to do this, but that ignores the obvious psychology of your playerbase that is desperate to min/max, be the best, and get those items they always wanted two decades ago when they played this game on live in era. The Evil Eye died on spawn from the minute someone was able to kill it on server launch until the minute the servers went down and its drop table was patched in the timeline. That's the kind of thing P99 actually supports by being completely unyielding in its quest for perfectly faithful recreation without any other consideration. The only change they made was instituting the afk checks, which supports this gameplay and is really just a conceit towards their own convenience in not having to police endless player disputes about whose kill it was by camp rules. All this to say that it's not a community worth subscribing to in my opinion. I personally have chosen Wayfarer's Haven to scratch the EQ itch and it might be more up your alley as well. They allow 3-boxing there, which means you're not waiting as much and you can chill with 1-2 other people to accomplish most any group content (2 and even 3 boxing is quite easy for such a slow paced game, so it's not as daunting as it may sound), and it allows you to experience multiple classes concurrently and be engaged more since you have more you can be doing, but rarely have to in order to survive. It doesn't take much attention to run a healer in early game content for instance. The community is also far more relaxed and even the high end raiding isn't toxic, which is helped significantly by having instanced raid content. The petty, toxic, king-of-the-kill, zero-sum game types aren't incentivized to exist here and people are almost universally helpful and encouraging. I'd call the demographic mature adults. I don't know how game-inclined your wife is, but there are a lot of couples that play together and some families (I know half a dozen people who play with their kids, but young and adult). Anyway, here's a link www.wayfarershaven.com/index.php in case you found any of this interesting and want to revisit Norrath in a healthier way that respects your time. Also, sorry for the long reply. I had more to say than I realized
@@Chris-eh8mi I apricate the long reply! You know, multiboxing might be something I would consider. I 5 boxed WoW:WotLK for a while, and it was good fun. Maybe I'll give that other server a shot. I was playing an enchanter on p99 because I heard they could solo just about anything, although it's an intense play style. Really sounded like a lot of fun. I just never really got high enough to try it I don't think.
@@corgibuttz2550 Enchanter was my main in vanilla and is part of my trio. Charm dps is top tier for group content (and raid content where pets are available) through the era on WFH. As a trio, you can have snare with a druid or ranger, and a tank to keep the mob you're killing from also going for your enc on charm break. Pal/dru/enc is a great combo for this, but you can charm without snare once you get the hang of it and easily go with any tank + any healer + enc and make it work. I'd say play what sounds fun. As you said, charming can be pretty intense because those pets will eat you alive when you give them two weapons and haste them, but it's a lot of fun. Anyway, something to think about. Have a great one!
@@corgibuttz2550 Enc soling was a ton of fun, an interesting mechanic for it on EQ live is that charmed healer mobs actually heal you, your group and themselves and you can give them mana regen too so they have plenty of resources. This really ramps up the soloability of chanter. But there is nothing like P99 Enchanter group play, locking down a room full of mobs and saving your group from certain death all the while keeping an intensely dangerous pet around to do your bidding that could kill you in a few hits is a great feeling and can be intense af. When ur solo charming i keep the mob im fighting rooted usually, that way when your charm breaks you have only 1 mob hitting you while you re-charm. Of course eq utility spells like root have a wonderful knack of breaking fairly often, so relaxing because you have something rooted is definitely going to blow up in your face :) Leaving your group to finish RL stuff was heart breaking sometimes, especially if your deep in a dungeon, a group losing 1 man (especially a chanter) could be the difference between staying in a dungeon and having to leave by death or choice!. But that's cool that you care, the community was and is great because people actually care about each others experience in Old EQ and P99 and in a lot of cases went miles out of their way to help out without expectation of payment, i think it just comes with a tough unforgiving world, we have all walked in the shoes of someone struggling on EQ and because of that we help out when we see someone in need In saying all that i havent played in ages, but I'm backing Pantheon: Rise Of The Fallen and looking forward to calling it my much more casual but still deeply loved 2nd home for all the reasons and many more mentioned in this vid
IMO EverQuest’s greatest strength was very much the world building. You very much feel dropped into a world. There wasn’t a lot “game” about it. There wasn’t a quest hub. NPC didn’t have a lightbulb above their head. At first, there wasn’t highlighted key text or even text in brackets. I know that’s not just it, because there is something about the combat that I like more than others too, but this is the biggest thing imo.
@@IonBlaze1 unrelated, in a prior video you said your dad lead a guild on Bertox. What guild did he lead? I played Bertox 99-2011, beginning when I was about 13 and on and off therein.
There was no map or youtube. You couldn't even tab out of the game, and logging in and out was a lengthy process in the age of dial-up and slow computers. You had to basically learn everything on your own. The only way you got to see zones is if you actually went there and explored them yourselves, there was no videos or anything. As a kid I remember day dreaming about what certain zones must look like inside since I hadn't got to see them, lol.
I played as a Troll Warrior, and my guilds depended on me for Tanking, etc. So, I never played other characters seriously. Just dabbled as Raiding allowed. I quit from the official servers in 2012. Then didn't play for about 5 years or so. Then gave 1999 a shot and made an enchanter. Did a bit of raiding, grouping, soloing, etc. Was an amazingly fun experience! Had an absolute blast. If someone took 1999 and just did fitting modern graphics... I can't imagine it not being a hit.
Sadly it takes a ton of money for these projects. I was hoping Pantheon, or Reign of Darkness even, would be new 'hardcore' entries in this space but they seem to be bogged down in development cycles. It's a bummer as current games are sooo boring.
Everquest. There's no game that has left a hole like Everquest. There's a strange emotional investment in that game which I can never get back, and can never relive again. It was of its time. Auctions in the Commons tunnel, stripping fools of their invis in the Nektulos forest before they changed dispel rules, teleporting raids to Hate knowing full well that it was a 50/50 suicide trip and that adrenaline-high right before the 'go' on a dragon raid. I'll never get that back. It was a unique flame that burned brightly and died. I can just log in from time to time and walk through dusty servers echoing with the heroic deeds of people I once knew. My time is over. All that's left are footprints in the digital dust and the cries of victory in High Pass Hold.
I miss playing the original EQ, however... I wasnt married with kids back then... and I doubt the game today has a high population which would make it easier to find groups.
Yeah not as big of a population as say Pre Wow but still strong on new servers. P99 green & new TLPs can hit 1-2k players. I think 2k is actually the server cap. Just gotta get in before it's too late.
Yap the big dog of mmo , it help start others with good experience for sure. I miss it for sure after it came out played for several years an then daoc came out the next best mmo for pvp , we want never see another 2 games like them, high standard an none have been able to give you back what they gave us.
Thank you for the memories. I have not played this game in years and have many fond memories of playing my Shaman Zarma for hours on end. The versatility it offered, the skill that it required and when played well, the crazy things that you could do solo or in group were super fun. I remember when I would make groups in Kunark that people would not trust that I could buff, CC (more mitigate damage with malosi) and heal so that we had an extra DPS. All melee with me and we could clear stuff with ease that most groups had problems handling thanks to cannibalize and HOTs. So many memories of Hill Giant soloing beside necros or the Aviaks.... I may try that 1999 server as that is the gameplay that I loved.
I just came back to EQ after being away for several years. My very first character was created 3 months after initial release. I have very fond memories of old EQ, but that isn't why I came back. I feel that modern MMO games are far too "hand holdy" . Too much " come here, come here, come here. Talk to him. Kill this mob" whereas EQ still allows you to choose where to go, what to do and what path you follow. Possibly even as a result problems/bugs in the original software.
@Ion Blaze true, going from zone to zone /ooc "lfg" or "camp check" was both annoying and fun. Along with the occasional "train to zone". Those days are probably long gone. I highly doubt that any MMO will ever get that. Now it is a race to max level and raid content/end game, and less about the journey, which is really a shame.
I played the original EQ. It was a buggy grind, but I loved it at the time. The bugs were actually fun like falling off the boat when it zoned. I often solo kited with a Necro or Druid. My first character was a Ranger and it was pretty bad solo or group. People often trained you when you were were killing a named mob so that they could kill it. The Druids harmony was great for pulling, but the Enchanter, Bard, and Monk were masters of pulling. The jboots were once a unique one time event item. I spent two days in line camping for it. People complained and it was added to the game as a quest. Camping for many hours was common. Another thing was Races and class mattered both for attributes and who was friendly towards you. I recall in the original game if you dropped an item on the ground someone else could pick it up. This was the only very risky way of transferring items to alts without a friend. Some spells were hard to get. You had to craft them and it wasn't easy to know where to get what you needed to craft them. The games newbie zones were often crazy on release. You were fighting over mobs because there were so many people killing them to level up. Druids would often come to buff newbies with damage shields and regeneration. Originally there was no limitation on putting high level buffs on low level characters.
While i was in the estate of unrest our group died down at the bottom. I had to log off and wasn't on for days. When i got back on my corpse was hours from decaying and i asked if anyone was down there. Nope. A necromancer told me to give him consent to drag and he would drag up my body (back when they could loot your corpse). The guy never touched it. The money was still on it and everything. He could have stolen every item on my character.
@@IonBlaze1 oh yeah it was. They removed that like halfway through the year 2000? It was a thing for like a year after launch and it was a significant problem with people trying to say they will drag your body to you. Thankfully, GM's actually did stuff back then and they did not tolerate that shit whatsoever.. unlike nowadays all they say in games is basically "sorry, we can 't help you."
Yeah man, back in the day when my family and friends made specific characters to fulfill each of the needs of the group so we would never be without. I certainly miss those days cause they were some of the most fun I have ever had. If that ever came about again, I would go back in a heartbeat.
I play and leave and play again. It's the feeling I get from the time I got on December 2000. I love going back into the old zones and reminiscing of the memories when everyone was there (Rathe Mts hunting Giants when EVERYONE was trying to do the same... It's just.... I don't know. It's been part of my life for 22 years.
I picked up p99 around April or so this last year after seeing one of your other videos about p99, which I hadn't heard of before. Its lots of fun. I was a day 1 EQ player, and its very close other than the ultra refined tactics in raids.
p99 is cool but I was disapointed they don’t have the secret passage behind the waterfall in Neriak that goes to the hidden room with Blossom the Ogre prostitute. The fact that an accurate 1999 Neriak doesn’t exist is sad to me. Neriak was spot on accurate to Salvatore’s Drizzt novels. what Daybreak did to it was a crime.
I also played on P99 and some of the things I noticed that are different: Experience is way faster. 300% ZEMs were not the norm 20 years ago. Everyone knows that Monks, Enchanters, and even Hybrid Tanks are good -- and these classes are everywhere. 20 years ago I was the only monk over level 40 on my server. They weren't a popular class to play due to their restrictions, and no one on my server really understood the power of Enchanters until several years after the game had been released. Shadow Knights were considered one of the worst classes in the game 20 years ago because of the slow exp, and the fact that people didn't know how to play / players didn't realize they could use low level DoTs to become aggro kings etc.
@@BoomerElite4u Yeah, I forget which patch but they did away with hybrid exp nerf sometime after kunark. That is the patch level the game is based on. The main reason I don’t play is the planes are perma camped by guilds just like in 1999. It is too close to original lol.
@@Dorn-Dvinn It may be now, but when P99 Green launched, Hybrid tax was still in the game for quite a while. I had leveled a few characters to 50, but when I tried to level my Troll Shadow Knight it felt like this epic under-taking. I genuinely think I spent more time getting to level 30 than I had getting to level 50 on other characters. Even though I played a lot, I never grouped with the same players twice because everyone I grouped with would out-level me and leave me in the dust. I know they eventually removed it either in Kunark or Velious, but I remember 20 years ago seeing all the forum posts about how terrible SKs were because most of them were trolls with no mana pool and only had enough mana to cast 1-2 of their max level spells. Players back then didn't realize that the best way to play an SK is to use their low level, low mana cost, fast casting spells for aggro and just assumed you would want to use the highest possible level spells at all times because they were perceived as being better. And yeah, the P99 politics is what killed the server for me too. I don't mind competition, which is why I enjoy playing on TLP, but on P99 competition is strictly forbidden unless you're in which ever guild the GMs prefer, in which case you can do whatever you want and if anyone contests you, they will be banned accordingly. The PNP had killed virtually every classic zone too. When P99 Green launched, no one leveled in Guk because of the fact that each group is essentially only allowed 1 camp, which at most is 3-4 mobs. Not enough to actually gain decent experience on. Was so refreshing to play on TLP where you actually go to Guk and level there because you're allowed to pull more than 1 mob. Was much closer to the EQ I actually remembered and gave me nostalgia from leveling in Guk 20 years ago. Something like that was again, forbidden on P99 Green -- the staff took it a step further and even lowered the natural exp of Lower Guk to dissuade people from leveling there, which is like anti-nostalgia.
I played on live from 2000 to 2007. I was a hardcore raider back in the day, member of Cestus Dei. Last year I found a couple of previous guildies that moved to the TAKP server and have been enjoying that for the past year.
Everyone has their own opinion. Mine is that it's only worth playing p99. Do I think its worth playing in 2022? Yeah sure, but don't have high expectations or have your hand held, the starter ui is straight trash, and you'll have to learn from outside sources. I would recommend not to play melee for your first toon.
EverQuest is the best MMORPG ever calibrated. I am convinced nothing will come close. I don’t give a fuck about the graphics. I think it’s charming as fuck.
The biggest reason to play EQ over modern MMOs is that the world is actually dangerous... Modern MMO design is to make everything appeal to the lowest common denominator, which usually means the solo player... the side effect of that is that danger has been sapped from the world... I do think anyone who pushes P99 servers for any reason other than Nostalgia is lying to themselves though... Corpse runs, and huge xp penalties/grinds are not fun mechanics, they don't make the game harder just more grindy. Losing hundreds of hours worth of gear is a quit moment for a lot of players and is why those mechanics have gone away.
You've nailed my biggest complaint about old school EQ. Yes it was ground breaking and social and hard but there were some aspects that just made you waste hours of time without any enjoyment. Anyone who has done CR on raids will know the pain as well as having your corpse unfindable and then disappear with your raid gear :(
That's one of the reasons why I am playing the p99 server. I like that there is a penalty to dieing by loosing exp, and also corpse runs. Been playing p99 on and off for 8 years now.
Modern MMOs don't feel rewarding to play. When I level a new character on EverQuest, even at level 20 or 30, I have a chance of making some decent platinum if I get a good camp. Rare items may drop that even level 50 players will want to pay large amounts of money for. Every time I play a new character, the way that character plays feels drastically different, and the areas I level in may be completely different than the areas I leveled in with my other characters. I generally make friends and meet people who I will level with for the next couple of weeks. On WoW, nothing matters 1-59. The loot is irrelevant, the experience is irrelevant, and if you've done it once, it's the same exact process over and over again. The exact same boring quests over and over again. All characters play the same, and you never make friends until you're level 60 and start applying for guilds.
@@BoomerElite4u You are right (unless it's about Classic, then low levels mattered for social aspects, you still had to form a party, go to dungeons together, some items from lower lvl Dungeon (pre 60) were still good at max lvl (Maraudon ring for dps as example). In retail, nothing matters except Mythic raids, maybe Heroic but I did Heroic raids in PUG in Legion and it wasn't too hard so idk.
I played since it started in 1999 and quit about 4 years later. This EQ you are talking about is the original game and perhaps the first 2 expansions. From Luclin onwards, the game got easier and easier. I agree with the social points - EQ forced you to communicate with others. There were some things though that were a pain and detracted from the enjoyment. CR (Corpse retrieval) was tiresome. Having to spend hours each raid night doing CR means you are spending a big percentage doing that and not actually playing the game by raid attempts. The sheer size of the world and limited ways of fast travel went beyond "Ask someone for a port". Only having 4 classes who can speed up their movement meant a lot of people created those classes to move around - the Druid for example not only had SOW (movement) but also ports so that was a big bonus. I agree with the types of classes - EQ certainly made it more varied - and forced you to use shaman/bards to complete content. Some bosses were impossible without slow and malaise. It was a great game and I haven't played for over a decade so I guess I should download it and run around the commons and soak up some memories. Lastly, thank you for your guides - they are well thought out, easy to understand and well reasoned.
Sounds a lot like Vanilla to BC WoW - they greatly simplified the game as its userbase grew, which I think is why the social aspect of the game died so long ago.
Us playing the game from start in '99, loved it because it was hard. We hated the CRs, but later hated they removed it.. and so on.. Still log on from time to time, but the charm has disappeared..
Character reputation was so big in eq. There was this good but not great druid on my server that basically had to solo because everyone had him on mute since he was an asshole.
Project 1999 is overrun with cheaters at the end game raid scene. People using bots in races to get the "First To Engage" yellow text on raid targets, and guilds doing blatant exploits to get targets faster so they can compete for other targets. One time a GM literally said "don't do this, its an exploit" and less than an hour later that guild DID it and got no punishment. So I wouldn't recommend Project 1999 if you plan on doing end game stuff.
What I loved about EQ is that every class had a purpose. Also how some classes had specific gear to make them way better... like the Mage and their broom to make their Earth Pet that much stronger. Or the Bard and his instruments. Then the weapons and armor. Lammy was a beautiful weapon. And the weapons stats really worked. And the Bard's Lambent armor... loved it. Then the Beastlord's Warder, when it proc'd lightning or whatever was always a treat.
To add to this, I loved that classes weren't balanced against each other. Instead they were just made to fill a role, appeal to different playstyles and be fun to play. It was primarily a PvE game so who the hell cared if Class A was better an one aspect of the game than Class B, I never did. I mean a Cleric was OP as hell as a healer but that was balanced by it not being able to solo. Enjoy Solo, whelp you had the the OP solo Necro but no one wanted them in a group. Want a jack-of-all trades, well you had the Druid or Shaman to cover you. Wanted a class that could solo and was highly demanded in groups, bring on the Enchanter which was balanced by it being extremely skill intensive to play well. Each class was designed to appeal and accommodate a certain type of player and playstyle at least in the early expansions pre-PoP anyway. Now everything has to be "Balanced" because it is unfair if a class can solo better than the one you choose or is more desirable in groups or frankly can do anything better than your class, even if your class is better at something they aren't.
@@bengaming3649 don't forget that REALLY good bards could twist enough songs to make up for not having a chanter or various other classes in the game. It just took a ton of skill and specific song setup for that role. Soloing as one would be like half the zone but would need to be specific zones and take a ton of skill.
Great video! You hit on a lot of key points about not just why eq was so ground breaking when it came out (I jumped from uo to eq simply because it was full 3d and you could be multiple races) but also what makes it still special. Like you said in your comment, though, the time commitment can just be too much in my current stage of life. I had a great time from 2015-2020 playing progression servers because they made a lot of changes to the raid scene that allowed me to streamline raid days but now in 2021 I don't even have time for that. I'll forever love those experiences though and keep an eye on the game...and others in development *cough*
This is a great video and really does describe what made EQ stand apart from most other MMO's. Remember in the day when classic WOW was considered insanely easy to play low or no death penalties, corpse runs etc. EQ built real fear when if you died and couldn't get to your corpse you were not only going to lose so much XP but so many valuable items. Ever been a non gating class in a raid when everyone is wiped and after the rez's they start leaving and you are praying someone will teleport you out because if they don't it is over for that character there was no way to get out by yourself. Scary stuff but as addictive as anything ever experienced in my lifetime it was called Evercrack for a reason.
By the way Mr. BLAZE... I like your videos, I too have the bard bug! Are you at any point planning on getting into the Alpha for Pantheon? I think you'd make good videos of that as well. I will be pledging next month, hopefully alpha isn't far off.
I've been following that game since it was just rumors on the internet. It's been about a decade of promises. Development has sped up in the past few years (more so since Brad's passing), but don't expect a launch for years still. They're building a game studio from grassroots as they make it and the funding moved away from player-base only awhile back, taking company investors whose interests now have to be considered. It's not going to be the game that was promised anymore and everyone has their own conception of what they think it will be and many will be disappointed. Some of the recent roundtables and community podcasts talk about this, such as with semantic confusion with terms like hardcore and oldschool. Everyone uses their own personal lexicon for what these terms mean reflected through Pantheon and no one is really seeing eye-to-eye. This has been clear to me for years since I subbed to the Pantheon subreddit and saw the discussions about what the game "should be" according to the community. Everyone has a personal vision of the game, many buying into the "EQ spiritual successor" tagline that used to be bandied about, and everyone is going to be disappointed to some degree.
mmmm...i played this when it first came out yeeeeeears ago. back when grpyhons were instant death to anyone, when bodies were everywhere and freeport markets were fresh. fun timef! bosses with death touch, losing lvls due to experience loss *granted you had exp resses and soul stone res from necs* pretty much off all of my toons got erased, so stopped playing.
I enjoy both old School RPG's and MMORPG's and I don't have time to play both. If I go P99 and OS Runescape way than I miss out on lot of classics such as Gold Box games. If I go other way around then I miss on great MMO's. Never satisfied with anything :( .
Reasons not to play EQ: - not beginer friendly - no party groups available for starting low levels - SLOW exp - No quest or poor quest available - Learning curve set to "Fuck Off" - Duel boxing and botting - Death potentially, finding your corpse, find a rezz, etc. - Graphics - Software or hardware issues to play the game - No direction on what to do next - Gear stats are trash - Raid groups are laughable and only for the prestige players - Pay to win Go play good current MMOs and let the past die. Burn it of you have too.
TLDR: Lack of information and Immersion. Amazing music choice, glad you picked some EQ2 tracks! One thing I thought should have been more honed in on: Lack of information given to the player. Whether it was no maps, not using wiki, quest npcs dont tell you almost anything, etc. The lack of information is really what makes the game hard/mysterious in a good way. Likewise, modern games give you information like its free candy. Yeah, im a quest NPC and you need to go exactly here and get this exact thing and then do this exact thing with that exact thing. Somehow, games should be able to make the player experience dynamic and unique every time without being too dynamic that everything feels chaotic and nothing feels familiar or that it doesnt make any sense. Which isn't an easy task, but it would help solve the issue of everything being documentable. Dont know if you've ever raided without knowing the boss mechanics, but I've heard stories and oh boy, does it sound like SO much more fun/immersive than raiding on a TLP server where everything is already known.
That’s why I both loved it, and hated it, and ultimately left forever. It’s a MASSIVE time sink. EQ was a game you got nowhere unless you sank countless hours upon hours. I remember doing 13 hour days for raids etc. these days, who has that kind of time. More importantly you realize that in this one life we have, burning your life away in front of a computer playing a video game where all your hard work equates to absolutely nothing is the epitome of pathetic and worthless. #truth!! Video games have evolved past drug addict style play, realizing that a video game is something you do in a small amount of time you have to relax and have fun. But too much of anything becomes toxic. RIP EQ!
I played a Barbarian Shaman and loved making SOW potions, mana potions and was quite proud of my SOW boots. Some of the best time gaming. Unlike WOW, when you died it actually hurt.
I’m having a blast on the Mischief server. Almost nothing is no drop and random loot adds a welcome element to boss kills. I’m really liking instanced zones; every guild has a chance to do their thing at their own pace without worrying about griefers and cock blockers blowing 7-day flagging spawns. And for anyone who misses corpse runs, I remind you of group wipes in deep Sebilis or Chardok, or maybe an Emp wipe. Yeah you run back with gear but it’s still annoying. The game is still fun today, maybe a sliver less than back in the dial up days, but I’ve not found another game in all these years (EQ2 is close) that is as engaging and makes time seem to stand still even when you’re in front of the computer for hours.
1. I don't think it is unsocialable but some have limited play time. 2. I can say lack of healers and tanks is always an issue on new TLPS. 3. Some just want make real world money is why they box army's. 4. I box until I can find an actual group or solo when I'm not feeling it talk. 5. I work grave shift and on those hours zones are empty so boxing gives me a way to play.
After cutting my teeth in EQ, all these wow clones are easy-mode. I remember going on a corpse run that ended up taking me 4+hours, and a few boat trips. There were "hell" levels and guild wipes. The graphics unfortunately slowly timed out. The solution was EQII. The problem was no one wanted to start over after putting in years of work. All they needed to do was over-hall to a new graphics engine, and just rebuilt all the zones/content, and we all would probably still be playing.
What I liked was dungeons being a place to hang out in, camping nameds, framing exp or both. There was no quest to rush from start to finish where you just speedrun through to get it over with and reap some streamlined questreward. Taking and holding a good camp spot was the reward. Efficiency was measured in how many named spawns you could hold, not how quickly you could leave and go back to complaining about having nothing to do. The slower combat also meant you could always tell whos doing what and whats going on, in modern MMOs I usually hit max level without even knowing what all those short term duration buffs and effect icons of other classes even mean lol. Like 10% haste for 3 seconds... yay who cares
Well that sounds absolutely horrible. Why would still wearing starter gear at level cap be something to brag about? "Dude you should play this game, there's absolutely zero quality of life enhancements, it takes a couple thousand hours to equip your character, it's awesome!"Seems like the only way to "have fun" in this relic is to completely no life it, I don't understand the draw, but that's just me and my personal responsibilities talking.
No... not unless you've played it before and want some nostalgia back then it's fun but for new players who want to see what the fuss was about, trust me you'll be disappointed.. the meme "kill 10 rats" came from kill 100s of rats to collect some items for a tick of XP.. it's an endless slog of a grind that unless you played in the golden good ol' days (the days where you absolutely had to make friends and have guildmates just to do anything but that was the appeal of it was the community, both good and toxic, back in the day) and have some idea or plan of what to do next you'll just find yourself falling asleep at the keyboard. Love eq though but it's boring guys.. tlp servers are fun for a bit for nostalgia but just Krono farmer havens and then they get dead
I play P99, never played any mmo that had the same sense of community as everquest. Your name carries reputation.. if you're an asshole everyone knows and it will make grouping hard. Nowadays everythings cross realm no incentive to really talk to the group because you'll probably never see them again. Just not as fun.
I'll never forget trying to interact with an NPC and forgetting to open chat before BEFORE I pressed the A button to "HAIL" said NPC and ....Crunch...Corpse run...
I would pay a monthly fee to play EverQuest 3 IF it was like EQ 1 with all the penalties. If you die you have to get your corpse or lose it. I think EverQuest died when instant zones were created and graveyards. The risk and reward of original EverQuest was why EverQuest was awesome
I started playing EQ in the Public Beta. I was s troll DK named "Snotbobber Gobblesloder" and played for 3 years and ran with the Army of Grobb PVP guild - was great! I still have the original map framed and hanging on my wall above my gaming station. Hit me with SoW :)
Honestly if they just copied Everquest over to a new engine and gave it a face lift with some new quests or playable races I would gladly pay for it and buy a monthly subscription to play. The base game, it's world and stories are still solid but the graphics are what would hold it back from becoming a mainstream MMO that everyone from old players to new player could pick up and enjoy.
I like where you're going. Yeah it'd be nice to play an EverQuest when the "new" models aren't from 2000-2001. But what do you think about Pantheon OG Joe Rogan from 2006?
@@IonBlaze1 I wont lie.. I know very little of Pantheon. I remember looking into it like 4 years ago. They had a plan to use a lot of good ideas that were pioneered by games like EQ. Which I like, but at the time I was very sketched out by Crowdfunded and Early Access games so I didn't keep up with its development. You can just call me TH-cams Original Joe Rogan.
I guess your ignorant of FF14 ? I played Everquest for a decade and your right, it became a beginning point of the do's and don'ts. Like catering to the whiners too much, for experience penalties for evil classes, the flaws in nearly every patch, nothing done about the early "Hong Konger" guilds that ran over people and stole their mobs. Then there was the over powered Paladins which at its peak could solo Cazic Thule in the plane of "Fear. Point is, it was riddled with problems, bad guilds, some toxic people and alot of items that people camped that they nerfed later. And when you had to destroy a faction to get the item it is not appreciated. I think you will find the variety of classes in FF14 is just as equal if not better since its updated. Now I will say that the game may have gotten better over the decades, HOWEVER it was at a cost of all the crap they put the early players through. Most of us have no interest in returning as the new sponsors started giving away level 80 just to play it now. Considering the grind we all had to go through to level, that is an insult to hard to bear. I will say it had a few unique features and idea's, but not so much so that it would entice me personally to return to the game. And lets not white wash it, back then it was required to have a high end 3D graphics card to play, thus attracting the those devoted to put time and money in the game. I recall mobs you had to camp for 3 days to get a quest item, to say Everquest was a stepping stone for success for other MMO's would be an understatement. They pushed the boundary back then on just how far you can push your players yet still have them interested, but today ? I didn't know people still played it, given the way they've alienated the old players and have nothing on todays MMO's. I moved on obviously to FF14 and haven't looked back. I have no interest in filling my whole life up with playing games and Everquest was a time sink from hell. But of todays choices, I find Guildwars 2 lacking ever so slightly, WoW of course has been crashing and I never did get into the other Final Fantasy games at their time although the 7 remake looks interesting.
um everquest 3 was coming out till some greedy CEO got in power and pulled the plug on everything fired every 1 and put all game teams on like 3 man dev teams :(
I use to Molly whop people on the zek server my rogues name was coldcut if anybody remembers me comment here I had a blast with friends and foes ( more foes then friends )
The older I get the more I can leave competing against others on the table. It adds nothing to a game for me. Ruining someone else's time does not make me feel good. I hate competing over limited resources. It just sucks.
Yeah that's true, it is a drawback having to roll for everything constantly lol. I don't really miss that aspect all that much but the gear maintained a certain rarity i must admit. That made it much cooler to have so it's one of those give and take things.
@@IonBlaze1 The luxuries we have today. I was organizing guild raids over the phone and through emails. Then using a mechanical keyboard with no macros and a mouse with a fucking ball in it.
The downfall of EQ are things like "Spend 6 hours going 'Rogue 57 LFG' in a zone" and never get invited. When you do get invited you spend x hours just killing the same group of enemies over and over again until you hit the next level and then go somewhere else and do it again. Don't have a group? Not a Necromancer? Can't fear kite? then you don't get to do anything so make an enchanter and go sell K3. The best thing about EQ was the social game and spending hours talking to people you think of as friends. Without the social interaction this is a dull game with no advancement for single player without paying for AI to follow you around. It was amazing in 1999. Just let it go. =)
"When you do get invited you spend x hours just killing the same group of enemies over and over again until you hit the next level and then go somewhere else and do it again" Well? Every mmorpg has the same grindfest until u max or get bored and quit
I find myself going back every 12-18 months and starting over on a new TLP server. It never gets old and even though I have started over 3 times on a new server, leveling the same race/class combos over and over, it has never gotten old and I alway find myself having new experiences. The game is just so big, with so much to do and so much to acquire, that I always find somewhere I haven't been before or did before. Also the fact that the game requiring cooperation between players prevents the game from being boring because even if your doing the same grind, the fact that people are unpredictable in both good and bad ways, keep everything fresh and provides memorable experiences. Lastly, it is not just nostalgia that keeps me on the EQ bandwagon, because if it was, I wouldn't have returned to start over from nothing 4 times in the last 6 years.
@@chilledgamezone4950 Time Locked Progression server. They basically start out in classic EQ then every few months open up another expansion. Unfortunately they newest one they have is like 5-6 months old. Best time to start back is when they open a brand new one.
@@chilledgamezone4950 I am hoping sometime after the first of the year but there is no news of one at the moment. Also, yes it starts at the very beginning, back when the game was actually all about cooperative play, something I really miss in today's MMOs. From a nostalgia standpoint I really miss it. Each server could only hold about 3,000 people at a time with a max population of probably 10k-15k unique characters. Being group-centric and with such a small population, reputation actually mattered and because the game was so punishing, you had to know your class inside and out or fail. If you sucked at your class or where a pain to deal with, no one would group with you but on the other end, if you were a really good player and knew how to play your class to the max, you became famous and had people sending you dozens of tells (PMs) asking you to come group or raid with them. No other MMO has ever captured that aspect to my knowledge.
Group Finder doesn't make the game less social. It makes it easier to find people who have common interests. I never got into EQ because the tools that you were given to find people were too primitive by any standard.
In the summer of 2000 I made a Barbarian warrior. I accidentally fell into a well and drowned. I accidentally attacked a merchant and was killed so fast I didn't even know what happened. I accidentally stood in a campfire, then burned to death when I ran around trying to put it out. I hadn't even left my hometown of Halas when I realized that this game is every bit as cold and heartless as the Barbarian Northlands themselves. I lost at least a half a dozen corpses in the Everfrost Peaks just outside of town. Sometimes it would get unexpectedly foggy. Sometimes everything just looked the same on the way back. Sometimes the local ice goblin whelps would stun and spin my character around. Some of the corpses I lost had a few copper coins and basic gear. I had long since lost all my starting food & water (in that well), so it was all I could do just to afford to feed myself. So I started methodically learning my way around the peaks and vallys close to Halas and just sticking to the familiar areas. Then I met a friendly player who gave me a bunch of food/water, about 10 silver coins, and showed me the way to the Gnoll stronghold of Blackburrow. Eureka! He had to log off right away but I spent the rest of the evening picking off Scrawny Gnolls near the entrance and acquiring a nice set of loot, including a bag to hold even more stuff. But when I went to log off, for some reason I decided to camp out inside a hollow tree stump. And the floor inside the stump was false, so I fell about 2 stories down into the bowels of Blackburrow. The fall damage took about half of my character's life, and the realization that I was now surrounded by about 5 Elite Gnoll Guardsmen took about half of my remaining RL life. I ran where I could but had no idea where to go and ended up slaughtered by a huge mob of Gnolls led by Splitpaw Commander himself. I logged off naked (no gear) and had a hard time getting to sleep that night. The next day after work I frantically logged on to start trying to retrieve my corpse. At level 7 you only had 24 hours until your corpse rots. I had no idea what I was going to do, but somehow the stars aligned and there just happened to be a level 30 Druid in Blackburrow who was happy to locate and drag my corpse back to the entrance for me. What a saint he was! Later on I made a Bard who ended up becoming my new main. I always loved helping people get their corpses back using his skills. One guy somehow fell off the boat in the middle of the Ocean of Tears. I must have walked along the bottom of the ocean for 30 minutes before I finally arrived at his corpse, and then I had to drag it all the way back lol. Can't wait for Pantheon!
@@IonBlaze1 Glad you appreciated that. :) Probably my greatest moment was finally getting keyed for the Plane of Valor, back when all but 4 of the PoP zones were locked behind quests. At the time it was VERY difficult to pass that trial, so PoV was an exclusive place to be. A right of passage even. Everyone you grouped up with in that zone was guaranteed to be a high speed power player who could single-handedly carry a normal group in a normal zone. There was almost no chance of grouping up with someone who didn't know virtually everything about the game. That kind of thing emanated throughout the entire game from about level 20 on. The overall difficulty served as a filter to weed out the faint-hearted and those who couldn't handle the complexity, frustration, and stress. So the higher level you got, the more likely others your level were great players to group up with. At max level, you could put together a PuG just using the /who list and be confident that everything should go smoothly, as long as nobody bought their character on Ebay lol.
Sadly the Krono and other 'innovations' make EQ a deeply unpleasant game to play. I tried TLP but its a mad rush to level, mad rush to cash in on items for that point in time and mad rush to raid. Despite the 'true boxing' label you see entire groups where the character names are Bob1, Bob2, Bob3 etc. It is an unpleasant mess in my eyes.
Pantheon? What's that? I heard of it long ago, when I was but a wee lad, but now I am old and decrepit. In all seriousness, even if the devs deliver a well made game someday, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to satisfy the uncompromising middle-aged losers who haven't moved on in 20+ years while also satisfying a potentially larger MMO market. There's some things about EQ that just can't be replicated that were a product of the time, as well as others that SHOULDN'T. Even maps are a contentious issue, and shit, most modern gamers have never even navigated RL without a a map that has location indicators, much less a game.
Thank you for your comment. I'm coming to that opinion as well. Saw some video that said MMOS need a hell of a lot more money than a Kickstarter can fund. Might not happen anytime this century
I started playing again 4 days ago. The free to play eq. Did a shamen barb. Got sow spell, telepprt3d to qeynos, buffed myself and did the old run to Freeport. Lol 1 hour and 40 mins cause I got lost q few times. I didn't use the map it has jow or the find either. I just ran all the way there, oh and the boat ride was so much fun....I will play casual and not lose myself like I did in 1999/2000. Angels of the Mist was my guild btw 😉👍
Run all that way just to miss the boat and have to wait another half hour 😂 I played for 16 years with a Barbarian Shaman. It took hella long to get my class epic weapon. Say hello to Tundra Jack for me!
1999/2000 warrior-cleric. Stopped after the Merc class house of Thule era very hard as Cleric to keep getting groups. When I raided I was #65 cleric of player list on my server.
1. All characters have a role and purpose. 2. People have to work together to accomplish goals. 3. Your reputation actually matters. 4. Monsters are actually dangerous. In most modern mmorpgs, you don't need anyone. You can accomplish most things by yourself which defeats the purpose of an mmo.
![Why do people play MMO's solo? [MMOPINION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AcGezDYNLIU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Why do people play MMO's solo? [MMOPINION]](/img/tr.png)
![Why You Should Play Project 1999 Green Server [Everquest Classic]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2fCvU5Jbipw/mqdefault.jpg)
![ผัวเถื่อน - ยูริ โตเกียวมิวสิค [ OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/P08ORRVDGl8/mqdefault.jpg)
TLDR: Time commitments. EverQuest will always be my favorite game. I just don’t have the free time to play as I’d like to anymore. The older I get, the more time I have to spend on work & family. I will miss EverQuest & the community at large. All of you have made making videos for this channel so special & rewarding. I deeply thank you all for the ride. I feel sad about leaving EQ and all of you. But, my plan: I want to make videos on another channel but about different topics. Topics I feel have a greater reach & importance. I use the lessons I learned from making EQ content.
Like any good addiction, EverQuest eagerly awaits your return
You’ve been my fave EQ content creator for a long time, and our journey through the years are similar, even tho I still haven’t played in a while.... still am a hardcore follower tho
The good news is that at some point you will find that you have more time to play.
I played from early 2000 to 2004, and now at 61, I'm starting back.
Great video. I understand totally as I went through the same experience a few years back. I'm going to guess I'm about 10 years older than you. I returned to the game after years and years off and treat it like a single player game now with a chat. I have a great time playing again and I'm able to give back to the community with my videos. Good luck in whatever is next for you!
sad to see you quit. all your videos were great!
I got my first PC back in '99, specifically so that I could play EQ. It was the talk of the town... or at least every gaming store... back then. My favorite class was the enchanter. Traffic control, buffing, debuffing, handing out clarity to random healers, I did it all. My shining moment as an enchanter was mezzing an entire train in the Estate of Unrest. People were running towards the exit (we were in the outer courtyard at the time), when I mezzed all the mobs in the train. I then shouted "train mezzed, pick one and take them out. I got this!" The train was completely "derailed" as the players dog piled on them while I periodically kept the ones they weren't killing mezzed.
But the most fun I ever had as an enchanter were the illusions. I'd go to a newbie area (usually West Freeport) drop a plat coin on the ground, cast minor illusion, pick up the original coin and watch how many people would try to pick me up (this was before they removed the ability to drop coins. Later, I used an empty bag). Then I'd tell them that I was a "magic coin", and cast buffs on them. Another fun trick was to cast minor illusion by a carpet in one of the shops, then travel around the area as a "flying carpet", baffling the newer players.
If I was REALLY feeling mischievous, I'd go to the Oasis, where there were occasional drybone skeletons. I'd cast the "Drybone Skeleton" illusion, set up a macro that said "Time to die !", find some low level players and cast "Shallow Breath" on one, which sounded identical to a drybone's attack spell, that came complete with a sinister cackle. The poor newbies had no idea that I couldn't actually hurt them (blue server). They just saw some crazy, named high level drybone skeleton attacking them and they'd run for it, me chasing after them while casting "Shallow Breath". Then I'd do the laugh emote, wave, bow and cast the "invisibility" spell disappearing with another cackle (skeletons cackled when they cast spells). Most of them had a pretty good sense of humor about it.
Ah, fun times.
Thank you for those stories. Mezzinh big trains, trolling newbies, & the illusion trick. Didnt know you could do that.
King
You are a Legend
You can traffic control? I'm sold. Lol
Lol. I sat at the Oasis docks for DAAAYYYS as a Shaman. I'd just regen, sow, and Stat buff all the noobs. There was always some a-hole that would do the random "Shout" message that the specters were hitting you.
You'd see everyone scramble. Them, after a while it became a "cried wolf" thing and people would actually die to a train of specters
I always enjoyed the crowd control classes though. The shit would get intense, and was always fun when you had a good group that could just fight nonstop
Then there was always the dingus that casts a DOT or AoE and breaks all the mezzed/rooted enemies
Every class has a purpose, something newer MMOs lack. If everyone can do everything then you aren’t needed.
That's mainly because of PvP. Those games try to balance for PvP which is very different from PvE. You could see this perfectly in WoW where in the early years classes were vastly different but when they introduced arena fights and rankings etc. they also began to changed classes to be more or less the same. It's not JUST PvP, though. Unfortunately players also complained about things like classes like priests being hard to level because they take longer to kill mobs. In the end, players are always to blame. When roleplaying became mainstream, a lot of "players" entered the scene that want vastly different things than you and me.
Preach my brother. Modern MMOs are so watered down and boring
Nailed it.
@@pnmoreno Truth, then there are bards...not a single fucking mmo since original EQ has made a bard class that even comes close to being as amazing. I wasn't even a bard main back then and have always waited for another game to bring something like that back.
I have been playing FFXIV since day one and although I do LOVE it to pieces, no experience will ever be the same as EQ1 was for me. It really was a whole different game compared to any other MMO. If they could make something similar that didn’t suck up so much time I would be fully on board. I had to stop playing because of annoying adult things like work, a social life, and health goals ugh.
Great video! Covered all the major things that made EQ something really unique and special.
Just joined p99 a couple weeks ago. So much fun!!!! Life happens. I quit playing a long time ago, and now with much more freetime, im BACK! 🙌
WB, wish you had got to enjoy classic, kunark etc. Better late than never friend. If you're on Blue add Overrated (60rog), Horribad (60 shm), Fahlen,(52 nec) Alleged (48 SK) & Fail (51 Rng). Currently doing a 2 group+ box team on PEQ due to burnout. Oh, add Haplo, & Darkdusts. Tell him you're a friend of me. Gl, have fun if you're still playing.
Everquest p99 is pretty brutal.
@@TheColdbrews It was, for years. Too much inflation of X items, in fact I want to see what Sks, Encs, and Shamans can solo now. Tranix and Hierophant were fun, didn't feel like blowing the $ on Puppet Strings for the Solo Achievement Award thing some kind soul did before green was around. Enjoy the difficulty while you can. If I ever saw first chars in a grp or running through a zone I'd always hook them up with weapons/armor. Haste items even, prob gave away 100k between plat and gear over the yrs. Cheers.
Hey how did you do it. Will it work on my hp notebook it's about two years old.
Whenever I see the Everquest box it gives me extreme nostalgia. Not because I played but because when I was a kid I seen the box in my uncles room and it made extremely interested in Fantasy and D&D . And until this day I can see the box and it sends me back to that moment where I was so excited to learn about the world 😁💯
I think you nailed it. I always liked the role faction played in the game. You could be hated or liked based on what you killed or simple by the deity you chose. This dictated where and who you fought. The game had consequences for everything. You became your character.
Thank you for adding that. Completely forgot about faction, diety, & race.
and Karana forbid you ever kill a bixie.
Nah, the consequences largely disappeared after the introduction of the Plane of Knowledge.
@@joejackson3091 this video is suggesting you play p1999, which does not have the plane of knowledge.
Reason #4: The dungeon design is just too cool. They're mazes and don't feel like amusement parks. Easy to get lost in them and that's part of the fun.
especially if you can't see in the dark.. cant count how many times i got lost from Qeynos to Halas because i couldnt see in the dark .. good time
I’m sorry maze like level design is a good thing?
@@Urothewarrior If you like a dungeon to be actually like a dungeon and not a hallway with monsters, yes.
@@Urothewarrior The dungeon designs in EverQuest were literally my most favorite thing about the game. They were dangerous, risky to explore, loaded with secret passageways, and incredibly interesting. Here we are 23 years later, and it's almost impossible to find dungeons with designs as interesting. Dark Souls did a good job with dungeon design, but I'm having a hard time thinking of anything modern that did it as well as EQ.
I played EQ for 20 years. Just recently gave it up for FF14
Man I love coming back to this game now and again. It’s still one of if not my favorite game of all time
Yeah it's really fun to play with others
Main thing missing from modern mmos...
FEAR
You don't fear mobs...you don't fear dying. You don't fear losing exp. You don't fear having to recover your corpse and items. You don't fear running into that random high lvl mob walking thru the zone..so there's no atmosphere. You don't fear mobs or pulling too many. You don't remember anywhere you've been because it's just like everywhere else.
Fear is what's missing from today's games.
It's not fear, it's adrenaline rush, emotions, I loved it but I hated to get huge death penalty such as losing EQ or skills/levels. Higher you got, more you lost. Losing too much is not fun. Still risk/reward should be a thing. In WoW all you lose is durability which you pay for with gold. Gold doesn't mean much as it's never scarce so you don't care. Travel time is not huge due to teleports being available everywhere, flying so you don't care either. I don't know if you lose anything in FF XIV, do you?
I was 14 years old when this game came out and like many people, was totally obsessed with it for the next year or two. Nostalgia level 100.
built my first comp to play this game when it came out ...
I was playing Ultima Online back when this game was in it's original prime, but all these years later I wanted to go back and try it. I installed P99, created an enchanter, and went off into the world! It was amazing. I love the chill, methodic pacing of the game. I was leveling fine by myself, but now at level 12 it feels like I really need to start grouping in Crush Bone. Unfortunately that's where it becomes hard to play. Ya know, I got a wife, she's not going to be cool w/ me telling her I can't let the dogs out because I'm in some group that's "just sitting there" while we wait for another pull or something. I'll bet if you "no life" this game it's a fuck ton of fun. Maybe when I'm in the old folks home or something I can get a couple of dudes in there to play EQ w/ me all day. :D
Yeah I feel you on the time sink part. Good on you for trying. If a new tlp server, you might want to try it cause it's more time friendly.
My love for this game goes pretty deep, so I've tried a lot of private server options. Live is just too extra for me these days with the insane power scaling and the absurd AA bloat. But the OG game and the early expansions are all pretty compelling. P99 is a great way to revisit it that's rather authentic to the original experience, but it's a toxic cesspool at max level if you want to do raiding content. "No life" players is exactly the right phrase and the way the server exists compels these types of players to play in extremely unhealthy ways. An example of this would be camping for coveted items, especially those that are patched out as the server progresses along the timeline to its final state. When the green server launched, the Mana Stone camp was disgusting. I knew a number of players that got it and the worst camp was ~50hrs. If you miss one afk check you lose your spot to the next person (and there's always a next person). Those checks come at 10-15min intervals, so the longest you can be away is about 8min safely. That's a long time to be forced not to sleep and sit at the keys. You can make the argument that no one had to do this, but that ignores the obvious psychology of your playerbase that is desperate to min/max, be the best, and get those items they always wanted two decades ago when they played this game on live in era. The Evil Eye died on spawn from the minute someone was able to kill it on server launch until the minute the servers went down and its drop table was patched in the timeline. That's the kind of thing P99 actually supports by being completely unyielding in its quest for perfectly faithful recreation without any other consideration. The only change they made was instituting the afk checks, which supports this gameplay and is really just a conceit towards their own convenience in not having to police endless player disputes about whose kill it was by camp rules. All this to say that it's not a community worth subscribing to in my opinion.
I personally have chosen Wayfarer's Haven to scratch the EQ itch and it might be more up your alley as well. They allow 3-boxing there, which means you're not waiting as much and you can chill with 1-2 other people to accomplish most any group content (2 and even 3 boxing is quite easy for such a slow paced game, so it's not as daunting as it may sound), and it allows you to experience multiple classes concurrently and be engaged more since you have more you can be doing, but rarely have to in order to survive. It doesn't take much attention to run a healer in early game content for instance. The community is also far more relaxed and even the high end raiding isn't toxic, which is helped significantly by having instanced raid content. The petty, toxic, king-of-the-kill, zero-sum game types aren't incentivized to exist here and people are almost universally helpful and encouraging. I'd call the demographic mature adults. I don't know how game-inclined your wife is, but there are a lot of couples that play together and some families (I know half a dozen people who play with their kids, but young and adult). Anyway, here's a link www.wayfarershaven.com/index.php in case you found any of this interesting and want to revisit Norrath in a healthier way that respects your time.
Also, sorry for the long reply. I had more to say than I realized
@@Chris-eh8mi I apricate the long reply! You know, multiboxing might be something I would consider. I 5 boxed WoW:WotLK for a while, and it was good fun. Maybe I'll give that other server a shot.
I was playing an enchanter on p99 because I heard they could solo just about anything, although it's an intense play style. Really sounded like a lot of fun. I just never really got high enough to try it I don't think.
@@corgibuttz2550 Enchanter was my main in vanilla and is part of my trio. Charm dps is top tier for group content (and raid content where pets are available) through the era on WFH. As a trio, you can have snare with a druid or ranger, and a tank to keep the mob you're killing from also going for your enc on charm break. Pal/dru/enc is a great combo for this, but you can charm without snare once you get the hang of it and easily go with any tank + any healer + enc and make it work. I'd say play what sounds fun. As you said, charming can be pretty intense because those pets will eat you alive when you give them two weapons and haste them, but it's a lot of fun. Anyway, something to think about. Have a great one!
@@corgibuttz2550 Enc soling was a ton of fun, an interesting mechanic for it on EQ live is that charmed healer mobs actually heal you, your group and themselves and you can give them mana regen too so they have plenty of resources. This really ramps up the soloability of chanter. But there is nothing like P99 Enchanter group play, locking down a room full of mobs and saving your group from certain death all the while keeping an intensely dangerous pet around to do your bidding that could kill you in a few hits is a great feeling and can be intense af.
When ur solo charming i keep the mob im fighting rooted usually, that way when your charm breaks you have only 1 mob hitting you while you re-charm. Of course eq utility spells like root have a wonderful knack of breaking fairly often, so relaxing because you have something rooted is definitely going to blow up in your face :)
Leaving your group to finish RL stuff was heart breaking sometimes, especially if your deep in a dungeon, a group losing 1 man (especially a chanter) could be the difference between staying in a dungeon and having to leave by death or choice!. But that's cool that you care, the community was and is great because people actually care about each others experience in Old EQ and P99 and in a lot of cases went miles out of their way to help out without expectation of payment, i think it just comes with a tough unforgiving world, we have all walked in the shoes of someone struggling on EQ and because of that we help out when we see someone in need
In saying all that i havent played in ages, but I'm backing Pantheon: Rise Of The Fallen and looking forward to calling it my much more casual but still deeply loved 2nd home for all the reasons and many more mentioned in this vid
IMO EverQuest’s greatest strength was very much the world building. You very much feel dropped into a world. There wasn’t a lot “game” about it. There wasn’t a quest hub. NPC didn’t have a lightbulb above their head. At first, there wasn’t highlighted key text or even text in brackets. I know that’s not just it, because there is something about the combat that I like more than others too, but this is the biggest thing imo.
Yeah definitely. I like your answer. Combat was slower & methodical. It wasn't about grinding through endless repetitive questlines.
@@IonBlaze1 unrelated, in a prior video you said your dad lead a guild on Bertox. What guild did he lead? I played Bertox 99-2011, beginning when I was about 13 and on and off therein.
@@Melchior11 yeah you're right. Warlords of Steel I think
how the fuck did people figure out any of these quest with ultra specific placeholders and no rent
There was no map or youtube. You couldn't even tab out of the game, and logging in and out was a lengthy process in the age of dial-up and slow computers. You had to basically learn everything on your own. The only way you got to see zones is if you actually went there and explored them yourselves, there was no videos or anything. As a kid I remember day dreaming about what certain zones must look like inside since I hadn't got to see them, lol.
I played as a Troll Warrior, and my guilds depended on me for Tanking, etc. So, I never played other characters seriously. Just dabbled as Raiding allowed. I quit from the official servers in 2012. Then didn't play for about 5 years or so. Then gave 1999 a shot and made an enchanter. Did a bit of raiding, grouping, soloing, etc. Was an amazingly fun experience! Had an absolute blast.
If someone took 1999 and just did fitting modern graphics... I can't imagine it not being a hit.
Welcome back to the game. I'm glad your experience in P99 is fun.
Sadly it takes a ton of money for these projects. I was hoping Pantheon, or Reign of Darkness even, would be new 'hardcore' entries in this space but they seem to be bogged down in development cycles. It's a bummer as current games are sooo boring.
The catalyst that led into the golden age of MMO's. I still play this from time to time today. I still love it
Everquest.
There's no game that has left a hole like Everquest. There's a strange emotional investment in that game which I can never get back, and can never relive again. It was of its time.
Auctions in the Commons tunnel, stripping fools of their invis in the Nektulos forest before they changed dispel rules, teleporting raids to Hate knowing full well that it was a 50/50 suicide trip and that adrenaline-high right before the 'go' on a dragon raid.
I'll never get that back. It was a unique flame that burned brightly and died. I can just log in from time to time and walk through dusty servers echoing with the heroic deeds of people I once knew.
My time is over. All that's left are footprints in the digital dust and the cries of victory in High Pass Hold.
Thank you for sharing that Rekaert. What people went through has been lost to time.
I miss playing the original EQ, however... I wasnt married with kids back then... and I doubt the game today has a high population which would make it easier to find groups.
Yeah not as big of a population as say Pre Wow but still strong on new servers. P99 green & new TLPs can hit 1-2k players. I think 2k is actually the server cap. Just gotta get in before it's too late.
Yap the big dog of mmo , it help start others with good experience for sure. I miss it for sure after it came out played for several years an then daoc came out the next best mmo for pvp , we want never see another 2 games like them, high standard an none have been able to give you back what they gave us.
Thank you for the memories. I have not played this game in years and have many fond memories of playing my Shaman Zarma for hours on end. The versatility it offered, the skill that it required and when played well, the crazy things that you could do solo or in group were super fun. I remember when I would make groups in Kunark that people would not trust that I could buff, CC (more mitigate damage with malosi) and heal so that we had an extra DPS. All melee with me and we could clear stuff with ease that most groups had problems handling thanks to cannibalize and HOTs. So many memories of Hill Giant soloing beside necros or the Aviaks.... I may try that 1999 server as that is the gameplay that I loved.
Modern MMOs are like a bunch of teenagers at a party, all looking at their cellphones. Everquest was a huge frat party.
I just came back to EQ after being away for several years. My very first character was created 3 months after initial release. I have very fond memories of old EQ, but that isn't why I came back. I feel that modern MMO games are far too "hand holdy" . Too much " come here, come here, come here. Talk to him. Kill this mob" whereas EQ still allows you to choose where to go, what to do and what path you follow. Possibly even as a result problems/bugs in the original software.
Welcome back. Yeah a lot of handholding now. More of an endless quest grind now to level. I miss the zone immersion from exp grinding in groups.
@Ion Blaze true, going from zone to zone /ooc "lfg" or "camp check" was both annoying and fun. Along with the occasional "train to zone". Those days are probably long gone. I highly doubt that any MMO will ever get that. Now it is a race to max level and raid content/end game, and less about the journey, which is really a shame.
Eh, I'd play again but have no idea where to go anymore 😥
Let’s be real here, all we really want with EverQuest in 2022 is a remake of Champions Return to Arms.
Thank you for so well articulating the exact reasons i play EQ.
Nostalgia also wasn't called evercrack for no reason
People actually learned real-life skills in this game. Leadership in guilds and more.
I played the original EQ. It was a buggy grind, but I loved it at the time. The bugs were actually fun like falling off the boat when it zoned. I often solo kited with a Necro or Druid. My first character was a Ranger and it was pretty bad solo or group. People often trained you when you were were killing a named mob so that they could kill it. The Druids harmony was great for pulling, but the Enchanter, Bard, and Monk were masters of pulling. The jboots were once a unique one time event item. I spent two days in line camping for it. People complained and it was added to the game as a quest. Camping for many hours was common. Another thing was Races and class mattered both for attributes and who was friendly towards you. I recall in the original game if you dropped an item on the ground someone else could pick it up. This was the only very risky way of transferring items to alts without a friend. Some spells were hard to get. You had to craft them and it wasn't easy to know where to get what you needed to craft them. The games newbie zones were often crazy on release. You were fighting over mobs because there were so many people killing them to level up. Druids would often come to buff newbies with damage shields and regeneration. Originally there was no limitation on putting high level buffs on low level characters.
Games change--gotta change with them. Otherwise you get nostalgia googles.
While i was in the estate of unrest our group died down at the bottom. I had to log off and wasn't on for days. When i got back on my corpse was hours from decaying and i asked if anyone was down there. Nope. A necromancer told me to give him consent to drag and he would drag up my body (back when they could loot your corpse). The guy never touched it. The money was still on it and everything. He could have stolen every item on my character.
That had to be a long time ago. Nice of them not to steal.
@@IonBlaze1 oh yeah it was. They removed that like halfway through the year 2000? It was a thing for like a year after launch and it was a significant problem with people trying to say they will drag your body to you. Thankfully, GM's actually did stuff back then and they did not tolerate that shit whatsoever.. unlike nowadays all they say in games is basically "sorry, we can 't help you."
Yeah man, back in the day when my family and friends made specific characters to fulfill each of the needs of the group so we would never be without. I certainly miss those days cause they were some of the most fun I have ever had. If that ever came about again, I would go back in a heartbeat.
Oh that's the best scenario
I play and leave and play again. It's the feeling I get from the time I got on December 2000. I love going back into the old zones and reminiscing of the memories when everyone was there (Rathe Mts hunting Giants when EVERYONE was trying to do the same... It's just.... I don't know. It's been part of my life for 22 years.
I picked up p99 around April or so this last year after seeing one of your other videos about p99, which I hadn't heard of before. Its lots of fun. I was a day 1 EQ player, and its very close other than the ultra refined tactics in raids.
p99 is cool but I was disapointed they don’t have the secret passage behind the waterfall in Neriak that goes to the hidden room with Blossom the Ogre prostitute. The fact that an accurate 1999 Neriak doesn’t exist is sad to me. Neriak was spot on accurate to Salvatore’s Drizzt novels. what Daybreak did to it was a crime.
@@Dorn-Dvinn well Mr. Salvatore plays p1999, so it's not all bad.
I also played on P99 and some of the things I noticed that are different: Experience is way faster. 300% ZEMs were not the norm 20 years ago. Everyone knows that Monks, Enchanters, and even Hybrid Tanks are good -- and these classes are everywhere. 20 years ago I was the only monk over level 40 on my server. They weren't a popular class to play due to their restrictions, and no one on my server really understood the power of Enchanters until several years after the game had been released. Shadow Knights were considered one of the worst classes in the game 20 years ago because of the slow exp, and the fact that people didn't know how to play / players didn't realize they could use low level DoTs to become aggro kings etc.
@@BoomerElite4u Yeah, I forget which patch but they did away with hybrid exp nerf sometime after kunark. That is the patch level the game is based on. The main reason I don’t play is the planes are perma camped by guilds just like in 1999. It is too close to original lol.
@@Dorn-Dvinn It may be now, but when P99 Green launched, Hybrid tax was still in the game for quite a while. I had leveled a few characters to 50, but when I tried to level my Troll Shadow Knight it felt like this epic under-taking. I genuinely think I spent more time getting to level 30 than I had getting to level 50 on other characters. Even though I played a lot, I never grouped with the same players twice because everyone I grouped with would out-level me and leave me in the dust. I know they eventually removed it either in Kunark or Velious, but I remember 20 years ago seeing all the forum posts about how terrible SKs were because most of them were trolls with no mana pool and only had enough mana to cast 1-2 of their max level spells. Players back then didn't realize that the best way to play an SK is to use their low level, low mana cost, fast casting spells for aggro and just assumed you would want to use the highest possible level spells at all times because they were perceived as being better. And yeah, the P99 politics is what killed the server for me too. I don't mind competition, which is why I enjoy playing on TLP, but on P99 competition is strictly forbidden unless you're in which ever guild the GMs prefer, in which case you can do whatever you want and if anyone contests you, they will be banned accordingly. The PNP had killed virtually every classic zone too. When P99 Green launched, no one leveled in Guk because of the fact that each group is essentially only allowed 1 camp, which at most is 3-4 mobs. Not enough to actually gain decent experience on. Was so refreshing to play on TLP where you actually go to Guk and level there because you're allowed to pull more than 1 mob. Was much closer to the EQ I actually remembered and gave me nostalgia from leveling in Guk 20 years ago. Something like that was again, forbidden on P99 Green -- the staff took it a step further and even lowered the natural exp of Lower Guk to dissuade people from leveling there, which is like anti-nostalgia.
The short answer is no, but the long answer is love is complicated.
I played on live from 2000 to 2007. I was a hardcore raider back in the day, member of Cestus Dei. Last year I found a couple of previous guildies that moved to the TAKP server and have been enjoying that for the past year.
I will always think of EQ as the best MMO.
That EQ Intro music takes me back.
First day I logged in back in the day my jaw hit the desk. It was amazing. I played it for about 11 years.
Everyone has their own opinion. Mine is that it's only worth playing p99. Do I think its worth playing in 2022? Yeah sure, but don't have high expectations or have your hand held, the starter ui is straight trash, and you'll have to learn from outside sources. I would recommend not to play melee for your first toon.
EverQuest is the best MMORPG ever calibrated. I am convinced nothing will come close. I don’t give a fuck about the graphics. I think it’s charming as fuck.
Can't argue with you there haha
The biggest reason to play EQ over modern MMOs is that the world is actually dangerous... Modern MMO design is to make everything appeal to the lowest common denominator, which usually means the solo player... the side effect of that is that danger has been sapped from the world...
I do think anyone who pushes P99 servers for any reason other than Nostalgia is lying to themselves though... Corpse runs, and huge xp penalties/grinds are not fun mechanics, they don't make the game harder just more grindy. Losing hundreds of hours worth of gear is a quit moment for a lot of players and is why those mechanics have gone away.
You've nailed my biggest complaint about old school EQ. Yes it was ground breaking and social and hard but there were some aspects that just made you waste hours of time without any enjoyment. Anyone who has done CR on raids will know the pain as well as having your corpse unfindable and then disappear with your raid gear :(
That's one of the reasons why I am playing the p99 server. I like that there is a penalty to dieing by loosing exp, and also corpse runs. Been playing p99 on and off for 8 years now.
Modern MMOs don't feel rewarding to play. When I level a new character on EverQuest, even at level 20 or 30, I have a chance of making some decent platinum if I get a good camp. Rare items may drop that even level 50 players will want to pay large amounts of money for. Every time I play a new character, the way that character plays feels drastically different, and the areas I level in may be completely different than the areas I leveled in with my other characters. I generally make friends and meet people who I will level with for the next couple of weeks. On WoW, nothing matters 1-59. The loot is irrelevant, the experience is irrelevant, and if you've done it once, it's the same exact process over and over again. The exact same boring quests over and over again. All characters play the same, and you never make friends until you're level 60 and start applying for guilds.
@@BoomerElite4u You are right (unless it's about Classic, then low levels mattered for social aspects, you still had to form a party, go to dungeons together, some items from lower lvl Dungeon (pre 60) were still good at max lvl (Maraudon ring for dps as example). In retail, nothing matters except Mythic raids, maybe Heroic but I did Heroic raids in PUG in Legion and it wasn't too hard so idk.
My two main characters were Monk and Enchanter so all I did was pull and crowd control. Those early Plane of Fear breaks as a monk were BRUTAL.
I played since it started in 1999 and quit about 4 years later. This EQ you are talking about is the original game and perhaps the first 2 expansions. From Luclin onwards, the game got easier and easier. I agree with the social points - EQ forced you to communicate with others. There were some things though that were a pain and detracted from the enjoyment. CR (Corpse retrieval) was tiresome. Having to spend hours each raid night doing CR means you are spending a big percentage doing that and not actually playing the game by raid attempts. The sheer size of the world and limited ways of fast travel went beyond "Ask someone for a port". Only having 4 classes who can speed up their movement meant a lot of people created those classes to move around - the Druid for example not only had SOW (movement) but also ports so that was a big bonus. I agree with the types of classes - EQ certainly made it more varied - and forced you to use shaman/bards to complete content. Some bosses were impossible without slow and malaise. It was a great game and I haven't played for over a decade so I guess I should download it and run around the commons and soak up some memories. Lastly, thank you for your guides - they are well thought out, easy to understand and well reasoned.
Sounds a lot like Vanilla to BC WoW - they greatly simplified the game as its userbase grew, which I think is why the social aspect of the game died so long ago.
Black bear pelts - 30p 🤣🤣🤣
Us playing the game from start in '99, loved it because it was hard. We hated the CRs, but later hated they removed it.. and so on.. Still log on from time to time, but the charm has disappeared..
@@randzopyr1038 BC is basically the same game as vanilla. Really no quality of life changes were made until Wrath, with dungeon finder.
Character reputation was so big in eq. There was this good but not great druid on my server that basically had to solo because everyone had him on mute since he was an asshole.
Old school player here. HAIL VALLON ZEK! HAIL MERCENARIES OF DARKNESS/INFECTUS, Sadaraa, a dark elf warrior, was my toon.
Project 1999 is overrun with cheaters at the end game raid scene. People using bots in races to get the "First To Engage" yellow text on raid targets, and guilds doing blatant exploits to get targets faster so they can compete for other targets. One time a GM literally said "don't do this, its an exploit" and less than an hour later that guild DID it and got no punishment. So I wouldn't recommend Project 1999 if you plan on doing end game stuff.
What I loved about EQ is that every class had a purpose. Also how some classes had specific gear to make them way better... like the Mage and their broom to make their Earth Pet that much stronger. Or the Bard and his instruments. Then the weapons and armor. Lammy was a beautiful weapon. And the weapons stats really worked. And the Bard's Lambent armor... loved it. Then the Beastlord's Warder, when it proc'd lightning or whatever was always a treat.
To add to this, I loved that classes weren't balanced against each other. Instead they were just made to fill a role, appeal to different playstyles and be fun to play. It was primarily a PvE game so who the hell cared if Class A was better an one aspect of the game than Class B, I never did. I mean a Cleric was OP as hell as a healer but that was balanced by it not being able to solo. Enjoy Solo, whelp you had the the OP solo Necro but no one wanted them in a group. Want a jack-of-all trades, well you had the Druid or Shaman to cover you. Wanted a class that could solo and was highly demanded in groups, bring on the Enchanter which was balanced by it being extremely skill intensive to play well. Each class was designed to appeal and accommodate a certain type of player and playstyle at least in the early expansions pre-PoP anyway. Now everything has to be "Balanced" because it is unfair if a class can solo better than the one you choose or is more desirable in groups or frankly can do anything better than your class, even if your class is better at something they aren't.
@@bengaming3649 don't forget that REALLY good bards could twist enough songs to make up for not having a chanter or various other classes in the game. It just took a ton of skill and specific song setup for that role. Soloing as one would be like half the zone but would need to be specific zones and take a ton of skill.
Great video! You hit on a lot of key points about not just why eq was so ground breaking when it came out (I jumped from uo to eq simply because it was full 3d and you could be multiple races) but also what makes it still special. Like you said in your comment, though, the time commitment can just be too much in my current stage of life. I had a great time from 2015-2020 playing progression servers because they made a lot of changes to the raid scene that allowed me to streamline raid days but now in 2021 I don't even have time for that. I'll forever love those experiences though and keep an eye on the game...and others in development *cough*
This is a great video and really does describe what made EQ stand apart from most other MMO's.
Remember in the day when classic WOW was considered insanely easy to play low or no death penalties, corpse runs etc.
EQ built real fear when if you died and couldn't get to your corpse you were not only going to lose so much XP but so many valuable items.
Ever been a non gating class in a raid when everyone is wiped and after the rez's they start leaving and you are praying someone will teleport you out because if they don't it is over for that character there was no way to get out by yourself.
Scary stuff but as addictive as anything ever experienced in my lifetime it was called Evercrack for a reason.
Pantheon! just sayin. Brad would be proud!
By the way Mr. BLAZE... I like your videos, I too have the bard bug! Are you at any point planning on getting into the Alpha for Pantheon? I think you'd make good videos of that as well. I will be pledging next month, hopefully alpha isn't far off.
I've been following that game since it was just rumors on the internet. It's been about a decade of promises. Development has sped up in the past few years (more so since Brad's passing), but don't expect a launch for years still. They're building a game studio from grassroots as they make it and the funding moved away from player-base only awhile back, taking company investors whose interests now have to be considered. It's not going to be the game that was promised anymore and everyone has their own conception of what they think it will be and many will be disappointed. Some of the recent roundtables and community podcasts talk about this, such as with semantic confusion with terms like hardcore and oldschool. Everyone uses their own personal lexicon for what these terms mean reflected through Pantheon and no one is really seeing eye-to-eye. This has been clear to me for years since I subbed to the Pantheon subreddit and saw the discussions about what the game "should be" according to the community. Everyone has a personal vision of the game, many buying into the "EQ spiritual successor" tagline that used to be bandied about, and everyone is going to be disappointed to some degree.
mmmm...i played this when it first came out yeeeeeears ago. back when grpyhons were instant death to anyone, when bodies were everywhere and freeport markets were fresh. fun timef! bosses with death touch, losing lvls due to experience loss *granted you had exp resses and soul stone res from necs* pretty much off all of my toons got erased, so stopped playing.
I enjoy both old School RPG's and MMORPG's and I don't have time to play both. If I go P99 and OS Runescape way than I miss out on lot of classics such as Gold Box games. If I go other way around then I miss on great MMO's. Never satisfied with anything :( .
Reasons not to play EQ:
- not beginer friendly
- no party groups available for starting low levels
- SLOW exp
- No quest or poor quest available
- Learning curve set to "Fuck Off"
- Duel boxing and botting
- Death potentially, finding your corpse, find a rezz, etc.
- Graphics
- Software or hardware issues to play the game
- No direction on what to do next
- Gear stats are trash
- Raid groups are laughable and only for the prestige players
- Pay to win
Go play good current MMOs and let the past die. Burn it of you have too.
TLDR: Lack of information and Immersion.
Amazing music choice, glad you picked some EQ2 tracks! One thing I thought should have been more honed in on: Lack of information given to the player. Whether it was no maps, not using wiki, quest npcs dont tell you almost anything, etc. The lack of information is really what makes the game hard/mysterious in a good way. Likewise, modern games give you information like its free candy. Yeah, im a quest NPC and you need to go exactly here and get this exact thing and then do this exact thing with that exact thing.
Somehow, games should be able to make the player experience dynamic and unique every time without being too dynamic that everything feels chaotic and nothing feels familiar or that it doesnt make any sense. Which isn't an easy task, but it would help solve the issue of everything being documentable. Dont know if you've ever raided without knowing the boss mechanics, but I've heard stories and oh boy, does it sound like SO much more fun/immersive than raiding on a TLP server where everything is already known.
I don't know man grinding in KC With little to no drops on regular mobs by the thousands. Sure I like the nostalgia. I'll re roll to 60 maybe.
That’s why I both loved it, and hated it, and ultimately left forever. It’s a MASSIVE time sink. EQ was a game you got nowhere unless you sank countless hours upon hours. I remember doing 13 hour days for raids etc. these days, who has that kind of time. More importantly you realize that in this one life we have, burning your life away in front of a computer playing a video game where all your hard work equates to absolutely nothing is the epitome of pathetic and worthless. #truth!! Video games have evolved past drug addict style play, realizing that a video game is something you do in a small amount of time you have to relax and have fun. But too much of anything becomes toxic. RIP EQ!
I beta tested eq1 and 2 I quit around 2010
I played a Barbarian Shaman and loved making SOW potions, mana potions and was quite proud of my SOW boots. Some of the best time gaming. Unlike WOW, when you died it actually hurt.
I’m having a blast on the Mischief server. Almost nothing is no drop and random loot adds a welcome element to boss kills. I’m really liking instanced zones; every guild has a chance to do their thing at their own pace without worrying about griefers and cock blockers blowing 7-day flagging spawns. And for anyone who misses corpse runs, I remind you of group wipes in deep Sebilis or Chardok, or maybe an Emp wipe. Yeah you run back with gear but it’s still annoying. The game is still fun today, maybe a sliver less than back in the dial up days, but I’ve not found another game in all these years (EQ2 is close) that is as engaging and makes time seem to stand still even when you’re in front of the computer for hours.
1. I don't think it is unsocialable but some have limited play time.
2. I can say lack of healers and tanks is always an issue on new TLPS.
3. Some just want make real world money is why they box army's.
4. I box until I can find an actual group or solo when I'm not feeling it talk.
5. I work grave shift and on those hours zones are empty so boxing gives me a way to play.
After cutting my teeth in EQ, all these wow clones are easy-mode. I remember going on a corpse run that ended up taking me 4+hours, and a few boat trips. There were "hell" levels and guild wipes. The graphics unfortunately slowly timed out. The solution was EQII. The problem was no one wanted to start over after putting in years of work. All they needed to do was over-hall to a new graphics engine, and just rebuilt all the zones/content, and we all would probably still be playing.
What I liked was dungeons being a place to hang out in, camping nameds, framing exp or both. There was no quest to rush from start to finish where you just speedrun through to get it over with and reap some streamlined questreward. Taking and holding a good camp spot was the reward. Efficiency was measured in how many named spawns you could hold, not how quickly you could leave and go back to complaining about having nothing to do.
The slower combat also meant you could always tell whos doing what and whats going on, in modern MMOs I usually hit max level without even knowing what all those short term duration buffs and effect icons of other classes even mean lol. Like 10% haste for 3 seconds... yay who cares
Well that sounds absolutely horrible. Why would still wearing starter gear at level cap be something to brag about? "Dude you should play this game, there's absolutely zero quality of life enhancements, it takes a couple thousand hours to equip your character, it's awesome!"Seems like the only way to "have fun" in this relic is to completely no life it, I don't understand the draw, but that's just me and my personal responsibilities talking.
No... not unless you've played it before and want some nostalgia back then it's fun but for new players who want to see what the fuss was about, trust me you'll be disappointed.. the meme "kill 10 rats" came from kill 100s of rats to collect some items for a tick of XP.. it's an endless slog of a grind that unless you played in the golden good ol' days (the days where you absolutely had to make friends and have guildmates just to do anything but that was the appeal of it was the community, both good and toxic, back in the day) and have some idea or plan of what to do next you'll just find yourself falling asleep at the keyboard. Love eq though but it's boring guys.. tlp servers are fun for a bit for nostalgia but just Krono farmer havens and then they get dead
I play P99, never played any mmo that had the same sense of community as everquest. Your name carries reputation.. if you're an asshole everyone knows and it will make grouping hard. Nowadays everythings cross realm no incentive to really talk to the group because you'll probably never see them again. Just not as fun.
I'll never forget trying to interact with an NPC and forgetting to open chat before BEFORE I pressed the A button to "HAIL" said NPC and ....Crunch...Corpse run...
I would pay a monthly fee to play EverQuest 3 IF it was like EQ 1 with all the penalties. If you die you have to get your corpse or lose it. I think EverQuest died when instant zones were created and graveyards. The risk and reward of original EverQuest was why EverQuest was awesome
I started playing EQ in the Public Beta. I was s troll DK named "Snotbobber Gobblesloder" and played for 3 years and ran with the Army of Grobb PVP guild - was great! I still have the original map framed and hanging on my wall above my gaming station. Hit me with SoW :)
I am contemplating playing again. I loved this game sooo much.
New tlp servers in May :)
Honestly if they just copied Everquest over to a new engine and gave it a face lift with some new quests or playable races I would gladly pay for it and buy a monthly subscription to play. The base game, it's world and stories are still solid but the graphics are what would hold it back from becoming a mainstream MMO that everyone from old players to new player could pick up and enjoy.
I like where you're going. Yeah it'd be nice to play an EverQuest when the "new" models aren't from 2000-2001. But what do you think about Pantheon OG Joe Rogan from 2006?
@@IonBlaze1 I wont lie.. I know very little of Pantheon. I remember looking into it like 4 years ago. They had a plan to use a lot of good ideas that were pioneered by games like EQ. Which I like, but at the time I was very sketched out by Crowdfunded and Early Access games so I didn't keep up with its development.
You can just call me TH-cams Original Joe Rogan.
Pantheon is probably our best chance at a "new" EQ. Will do TH-cam's original Joe Rogan.
love how you showed traveling up karana through high pass as your example that shit was BRUTAL!!!
I guess your ignorant of FF14 ? I played Everquest for a decade and your right, it became a beginning point of the do's and don'ts. Like catering to the whiners too much, for experience penalties for evil classes, the flaws in nearly every patch, nothing done about the early "Hong Konger" guilds that ran over people and stole their mobs. Then there was the over powered Paladins which at its peak could solo Cazic Thule in the plane of "Fear. Point is, it was riddled with problems, bad guilds, some toxic people and alot of items that people camped that they nerfed later. And when you had to destroy a faction to get the item it is not appreciated. I think you will find the variety of classes in FF14 is just as equal if not better since its updated. Now I will say that the game may have gotten better over the decades, HOWEVER it was at a cost of all the crap they put the early players through. Most of us have no interest in returning as the new sponsors started giving away level 80 just to play it now. Considering the grind we all had to go through to level, that is an insult to hard to bear. I will say it had a few unique features and idea's, but not so much so that it would entice me personally to return to the game. And lets not white wash it, back then it was required to have a high end 3D graphics card to play, thus attracting the those devoted to put time and money in the game. I recall mobs you had to camp for 3 days to get a quest item, to say Everquest was a stepping stone for success for other MMO's would be an understatement. They pushed the boundary back then on just how far you can push your players yet still have them interested, but today ? I didn't know people still played it, given the way they've alienated the old players and have nothing on todays MMO's. I moved on obviously to FF14 and haven't looked back. I have no interest in filling my whole life up with playing games and Everquest was a time sink from hell. But of todays choices, I find Guildwars 2 lacking ever so slightly, WoW of course has been crashing and I never did get into the other Final Fantasy games at their time although the 7 remake looks interesting.
*PROJECT 1999 IS REAL EVERQUEST!!!!COME JOIN US!!!!*
Yeah P99 is awesome. A lot of fun to be had there.
um everquest 3 was coming out till some greedy CEO got in power and pulled the plug on everything fired every 1 and put all game teams on like 3 man dev teams :(
Playing Project 1999 on Blue is easily the best times I have in online gaming. It’s the people that make this entire experience worth it.
Your point of newer MMO are glorified single player games. Couldn't have said it better.
I played years ago. I miss the good people I used to play with. Not sure what server is good if I can play maybe over the winter months.
I use to Molly whop people on the zek server my rogues name was coldcut if anybody remembers me comment here I had a blast with friends and foes ( more foes then friends )
Evercrack was a great game. I played from vanilla up till about 5 years ago. Would I do it again? Hell no.
Iksar SK tough to kill super addicting main to play.
The older I get the more I can leave competing against others on the table. It adds nothing to a game for me. Ruining someone else's time does not make me feel good.
I hate competing over limited resources. It just sucks.
Yeah that's true, it is a drawback having to roll for everything constantly lol. I don't really miss that aspect all that much but the gear maintained a certain rarity i must admit. That made it much cooler to have so it's one of those give and take things.
True, you just want to have a blast and make it so others have fun as well.
everquest,, my life!
Should I play EverQuest? ....... ...... .... No ....... ...... .... Boy that was easy.
If this game hangs on for another 10-20 years; a lot of former players will be retiring and have time to play again.
My carpal tunnel is already flaring up watching you twist songs and instruments with bard.
Best investment ever was an MMO mouse. Gonna show using it when I reboot EQ adventures.
@@IonBlaze1 The luxuries we have today. I was organizing guild raids over the phone and through emails. Then using a mechanical keyboard with no macros and a mouse with a fucking ball in it.
Back in the day eq was great, then the corpse runs stopped, so did I....nuff said.
I just want a modern mmo that promotes group content with downtime so you can actually talk to people while you play.
The downfall of EQ are things like "Spend 6 hours going 'Rogue 57 LFG' in a zone" and never get invited. When you do get invited you spend x hours just killing the same group of enemies over and over again until you hit the next level and then go somewhere else and do it again. Don't have a group? Not a Necromancer? Can't fear kite? then you don't get to do anything so make an enchanter and go sell K3. The best thing about EQ was the social game and spending hours talking to people you think of as friends. Without the social interaction this is a dull game with no advancement for single player without paying for AI to follow you around. It was amazing in 1999. Just let it go. =)
That's why I see topics like "they were never meant to be single player" and go "wow that is gatekeepy as fuck."
"When you do get invited you spend x hours just killing the same group of enemies over and over again until you hit the next level and then go somewhere else and do it again"
Well? Every mmorpg has the same grindfest until u max or get bored and quit
@@mago32443 Did the whole "you had to spend hours looking for a group to even start and then you're not even having fun" bit go over your head?
@@UltimaKeyMaster if you have to spend hours waiting for a group AND grind for hours the same mobs, then its a bad mmo imo
@@mago32443 That's...literally the point I'm making, but lots of MMO's today aren't that.
I find myself going back every 12-18 months and starting over on a new TLP server. It never gets old and even though I have started over 3 times on a new server, leveling the same race/class combos over and over, it has never gotten old and I alway find myself having new experiences. The game is just so big, with so much to do and so much to acquire, that I always find somewhere I haven't been before or did before. Also the fact that the game requiring cooperation between players prevents the game from being boring because even if your doing the same grind, the fact that people are unpredictable in both good and bad ways, keep everything fresh and provides memorable experiences. Lastly, it is not just nostalgia that keeps me on the EQ bandwagon, because if it was, I wouldn't have returned to start over from nothing 4 times in the last 6 years.
Whats tlp? Im coming back to play
@@chilledgamezone4950 Time Locked Progression server. They basically start out in classic EQ then every few months open up another expansion. Unfortunately they newest one they have is like 5-6 months old. Best time to start back is when they open a brand new one.
@@bengaming3649 when will they open a new one. Any idea,? So when it starts from the beginning there is no mercs?
@@chilledgamezone4950 I am hoping sometime after the first of the year but there is no news of one at the moment. Also, yes it starts at the very beginning, back when the game was actually all about cooperative play, something I really miss in today's MMOs. From a nostalgia standpoint I really miss it. Each server could only hold about 3,000 people at a time with a max population of probably 10k-15k unique characters. Being group-centric and with such a small population, reputation actually mattered and because the game was so punishing, you had to know your class inside and out or fail. If you sucked at your class or where a pain to deal with, no one would group with you but on the other end, if you were a really good player and knew how to play your class to the max, you became famous and had people sending you dozens of tells (PMs) asking you to come group or raid with them. No other MMO has ever captured that aspect to my knowledge.
Group Finder doesn't make the game less social. It makes it easier to find people who have common interests. I never got into EQ because the tools that you were given to find people were too primitive by any standard.
Omg Everquest , this game is around ? This game is the future of Wow .
In the summer of 2000 I made a Barbarian warrior. I accidentally fell into a well and drowned. I accidentally attacked a merchant and was killed so fast I didn't even know what happened. I accidentally stood in a campfire, then burned to death when I ran around trying to put it out. I hadn't even left my hometown of Halas when I realized that this game is every bit as cold and heartless as the Barbarian Northlands themselves.
I lost at least a half a dozen corpses in the Everfrost Peaks just outside of town. Sometimes it would get unexpectedly foggy. Sometimes everything just looked the same on the way back. Sometimes the local ice goblin whelps would stun and spin my character around. Some of the corpses I lost had a few copper coins and basic gear. I had long since lost all my starting food & water (in that well), so it was all I could do just to afford to feed myself. So I started methodically learning my way around the peaks and vallys close to Halas and just sticking to the familiar areas. Then I met a friendly player who gave me a bunch of food/water, about 10 silver coins, and showed me the way to the Gnoll stronghold of Blackburrow. Eureka! He had to log off right away but I spent the rest of the evening picking off Scrawny Gnolls near the entrance and acquiring a nice set of loot, including a bag to hold even more stuff. But when I went to log off, for some reason I decided to camp out inside a hollow tree stump. And the floor inside the stump was false, so I fell about 2 stories down into the bowels of Blackburrow. The fall damage took about half of my character's life, and the realization that I was now surrounded by about 5 Elite Gnoll Guardsmen took about half of my remaining RL life. I ran where I could but had no idea where to go and ended up slaughtered by a huge mob of Gnolls led by Splitpaw Commander himself. I logged off naked (no gear) and had a hard time getting to sleep that night.
The next day after work I frantically logged on to start trying to retrieve my corpse. At level 7 you only had 24 hours until your corpse rots. I had no idea what I was going to do, but somehow the stars aligned and there just happened to be a level 30 Druid in Blackburrow who was happy to locate and drag my corpse back to the entrance for me. What a saint he was!
Later on I made a Bard who ended up becoming my new main. I always loved helping people get their corpses back using his skills. One guy somehow fell off the boat in the middle of the Ocean of Tears. I must have walked along the bottom of the ocean for 30 minutes before I finally arrived at his corpse, and then I had to drag it all the way back lol.
Can't wait for Pantheon!
Thank you for sharing that Binary. Rare to hear how the game used to be like. Magical
@@IonBlaze1 Glad you appreciated that. :)
Probably my greatest moment was finally getting keyed for the Plane of Valor, back when all but 4 of the PoP zones were locked behind quests. At the time it was VERY difficult to pass that trial, so PoV was an exclusive place to be. A right of passage even. Everyone you grouped up with in that zone was guaranteed to be a high speed power player who could single-handedly carry a normal group in a normal zone. There was almost no chance of grouping up with someone who didn't know virtually everything about the game.
That kind of thing emanated throughout the entire game from about level 20 on. The overall difficulty served as a filter to weed out the faint-hearted and those who couldn't handle the complexity, frustration, and stress. So the higher level you got, the more likely others your level were great players to group up with. At max level, you could put together a PuG just using the /who list and be confident that everything should go smoothly, as long as nobody bought their character on Ebay lol.
@@binarydigit0942 Yeah I like how you put that. You get better as you play. Higher level people tend to know what they're doing.
@@carolinaraeper That would be an amazing coincidence, but sadly no, this was on Zebuxoruk (before it was merged with, I think, Xegony).
yes the project 1999 version . its still the best mmo ever made period.
Sadly the Krono and other 'innovations' make EQ a deeply unpleasant game to play. I tried TLP but its a mad rush to level, mad rush to cash in on items for that point in time and mad rush to raid. Despite the 'true boxing' label you see entire groups where the character names are Bob1, Bob2, Bob3 etc. It is an unpleasant mess in my eyes.
At the time I watched this video, I was playing P99. :)
Great video! I hope Everquest never goes away. It's truly a incredible game.
Thank you Blue Energy :)
Pantheon? What's that? I heard of it long ago, when I was but a wee lad, but now I am old and decrepit.
In all seriousness, even if the devs deliver a well made game someday, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to satisfy the uncompromising middle-aged losers who haven't moved on in 20+ years while also satisfying a potentially larger MMO market. There's some things about EQ that just can't be replicated that were a product of the time, as well as others that SHOULDN'T. Even maps are a contentious issue, and shit, most modern gamers have never even navigated RL without a a map that has location indicators, much less a game.
Thank you for your comment. I'm coming to that opinion as well. Saw some video that said MMOS need a hell of a lot more money than a Kickstarter can fund. Might not happen anytime this century
I started playing again 4 days ago. The free to play eq. Did a shamen barb. Got sow spell, telepprt3d to qeynos, buffed myself and did the old run to Freeport. Lol 1 hour and 40 mins cause I got lost q few times. I didn't use the map it has jow or the find either. I just ran all the way there, oh and the boat ride was so much fun....I will play casual and not lose myself like I did in 1999/2000. Angels of the Mist was my guild btw 😉👍
Run all that way just to miss the boat and have to wait another half hour 😂
I played for 16 years with a Barbarian Shaman.
It took hella long to get my class epic weapon.
Say hello to Tundra Jack for me!
Why not to play Everquest in 2022. I played this shit in
2000, kunark
1999/2000 warrior-cleric.
Stopped after the Merc class house of Thule era very hard as Cleric to keep getting groups.
When I raided I was #65 cleric of player list on my server.
How was it ranked? What decided on number other than level (since every top player would be max level)
1. All characters have a role and purpose. 2. People have to work together to accomplish goals. 3. Your reputation actually matters. 4. Monsters are actually dangerous.
In most modern mmorpgs, you don't need anyone. You can accomplish most things by yourself which defeats the purpose of an mmo.
Except for raids, unless there is LFR and you don't care about higher difficulties (WoW, FF XIV etc)
Daybreak are such exploitive, evil bastards. Playing a game run by these people, especially one you love, is just masochistic.