5 Things You'll Never See in an MMO again.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- For many of us who have been playing MMORPGs for a long time, there's a lot of MMO Nostalgia to go around. But there are legitimate things in MMOs that we won't ever see again. Times have changed and while these epitomized the experience of playing games like Everquest, Ultima Online, Final Fantasy XI and more, they're more memory than anything else now.
Lets take a look together as some Classic MMO history.
Old School MMOs
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Regarding the maps in EverQuest - my entire family was playing EQ in the early 2000s and my dad actually printed out the map of every single zone from EQAtlas and placed them in a binder in alphabetical order. I actually remember, a young pre-teen lad as I was, just looking through that binder and seeing what was out there in the world. Good times.
That atlas was more precious than the Bible I think!
I did the same thing lol
Thanks to that bard who did all those original maps. I forget his name now.
@@LoyalHulk07 Muse, from eq-atlas
@@ChaosSlayerZX that's it, I'd buy him a round if I ever met him
I am 55 and I'll never forget the date I started Everquest. It was Nov 7, 1999. Never before and never again will I have such an absolute thrill like the one I had with EQ when it first came out. I played it for 15 years (1999-2014)
I played for a few months last year. Can still be fun, if ya ever get the nostalgia bug. It's very different, but still fun. Just had my 51st, old man.
@@hohenzollern6025 It's not that I don't think it would be fun. For me, I had 15 years of friendships that I'm sure maybe 5% still play. I had audio triggers, macros, color combos, UI tweaks and everything customized and it would take me weeks to get it set back up again. Even if i spent the time to set stuff up again, I would either have to pay the monthly fee or not be able to use any of my gear as all my gear is top tier raid gear from 2014 and I believe it wouldn't be active if i played for free unless they changed that also
@@frankanon4450 I spend $15 on lunch. Pay the sub... the free AA's alone make that so worth.
Also, 2014 gear might as well be naked. =D
@@hohenzollern6025 It's not a money issue at all. After all that time I had spent, I don't feel like starting over, finding a guild, learning the game again etc etc. It was a blast for a long time but it's over
@@frankanon4450 well of course it wont be the same. But it is still fun.
And maybe yer just weird, because most people like making new friends. ;)
When I logged into Everquest for the first time, despite playing UO and Lineage prior. Getting that Beta CD in the mail, installing and walking out into Greater Faydark with my HIE Wizard. It was raining, the lighting and ... I was absolutely blown away. I spent 20+ years searching for that same high.
Who remembers watching the Latency bar slowly go from green to yellow to red....while you're in old seb, I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life.
Great video as always
Dial up was a nightmare. The dreaded corpse run, go LD, come back, make it to the spot where your corpse was suppose to be and it wasnt there. RIP, time to start over.
All the time, especially in Ultima Online. But in EQ going LD, finding yourself dead and having no idea where your corpse was...oof.
Plane of fear comes to mind.......
Ran to Runnyeye by myself as a lvl 17 or 18 pally. Zone in to explore at midnight. It’s a school night. Somehow I got lost, attacked by goblins and dead deep in the zone. I run back and hang outside zone for a couple of hours. Most people on my server has logged off for the night. At around 2:30am…. A lvl 50 pally with full Valorium armor and Soulfire shows up, passing through headed to another zone. After picking my jaw up off the floor. I proceeded to beg this guy for help to get my corpse back. He happily says yes and proceeds to spend the next hour soloing his way through the zone trying to find my body. Finally he manages to retrieve it and make it out alive at around 3:00am. I thanked him profusely.
I don’t remember the characters name who helped me but I’ll never forget his willingness to help a stranger in the middle of the night.
I was late for school the next day.
From that day on, I promised to pay it forward if I ever became powerful enough to help another player in similar circumstances as the circumstances I found myself in that night!
Me, hating life because I stayed up WAAAAY too late took a micro nap in the wrong place. 2 hours in to a pointless corpse retrieval and some lvl50 zones in, probably juiced up and living their best life next to a gallon of ice water because they physically can't fall asleep. And then the sun rises.
One of my longest lasting friendships started in UO in 98. He lives across the country, but made it out for my daughter's birthday a couple years ago. We still bounce from game to game together. Imagine exchanging numbers during the height of "don't trust strangers on the internet!" Worked out great though...
You guys should try outlands. It’s a free player ran Renaissance server. Pretty lit. New map.
@@joemomma534 We have. Those guys have done a wonderful job bringing UO back to life. We'll probably come back to it some day... For now we're doing WoTLK Classic.
Right?! Met so many people connected online back then.
Meridian 59.. broadcast "Mender in TOS"
flocks of mend request.. bank!
Then menders became so common.. but when they weren't...
Still the greatest game of all time. I still talk to people to this day I met in that game in 1997. It's fucking insane.
"Camp a cleric!" Good old 72 man raids wiping in eq.
Haha , good memories
Lol wow miss those days
72 man? We used to have well over a hundred in some raids. I quit towards the end of Velious though. When did they impose a limit?
@@pazuzu66613 pretty much started with planes of power
@@pazuzu66613 Hrmm I don't remember 100 man raids. Unless you had 2 raids? I was playing since original. I played up to seeds of destruction (14th) expansion.
That no-map thing, I totally forgot about that. And when I think about it now, it made things more immersive and was fun for its own reasons. A brilliant realization on that.
Or the first 30 levels as a caster looking into a book when meditating paranoid about the sounds o.0
100%. And even the early maps didn't show your location.
@@ronnilarsen3024 I still curse Feddie Dooger to this day as I mained a Gnome mage in EQ, for that very reason. Lets just say that once I got over level 10 I would make it a point to find him and kill him every time I ended up back in Steamfont.
nothing will beat my first time walking around Kelethin actually seeing through the eyes of my character, living in one of my precious fantasy books.
Kelethin ambient music is still to this day unmatched.
Same! I got lost in Greater Faydark with no maps and one of my first in game friends saw me, helped me when asked and showed me back to the PoD lift. Point number 5 on the video resonated with me the most. Whilst we still enter worlds, so many were doing that for the first or one of their first ever times. Nowadays it is 'been there done that' - just doesn't hold the same magic.
Playing EQ since 99, i've forgotten more stories that i remember - But the two that are most memorable to me, one for being just super silly and the other for being something that meant something to me on a deeper level:
The first story was of me, about to maintank Lady Vox for the very first time - After clearing the giants and pits for a while, we were standing in safehall buffing everyone. Finally, we were ready, i took my spot in the front, VERY proudly because fuck yeah, i was the goddamn MAIN tank! Then the call came to run in and i got stuck by LOADING, PLEASE WAIT... - My groups druid, had accidently clicked their group port to North Karana... It was silly :D
The second story however, was one of bonding and friendships.
On my server a guild had tried to break Plane of Fear for their very first time - This was way back in classic, where you lost your gear if you didnt retrieve it - However, they were unsuccessful in the break, everyone wiping. Now, a full raid of naked people tried, over and over, to break into Fear to retrieve their gear and desperately try to recouperate. Again, unsuccessful after many hours of trying. Eventually, they made the call to ask the "uber guild" for assistance, eventho the two guilds were generally at odds (Everyone was, because the "uber guild" was complete scumbags). They agreed and took a force to fear and established a foothold at the wall and started dragging corpses there - However, before ressing anyone, they demanded that everyone left their guild or they would let them rot. A few agreed and did this, albeit against their will, but the majority would rather see their things rot than do so out of loyalty to their tag and so, the "ubers" left the corpses to rot. Someone told my guild about this and we quickly communicated with the other "good guilds" and within an hour, we had 5 full guilds standing at the fear portal, prepping to walk in and rescue the initial guild. The deep and heartfelt thank yous we received after spending a few hours setting everything right, still brings a tear to my eye and im basically crying while typing this. The friendships and the bond between the guild from that one episode, carried on for years to come. Stuff like that, i sincerely doubt we will ever see anything remotely like ever again.
And these are some of many many stories and reasons as to why EverQuest has and always will be, my game of choice
Yea, the PoF break in was very rough too. Ive spent many Sunday afternoons dealing with it. I was in one of the top guilds on the server and it wasn't uncommon to have to call on one another for help with corpse retrieval and helping breaking in to get a foothold at least. You are certainly correct, there are so many great stories from that great game.
i once missed my shift at work (i was the manager) because of a plane of fear raid to get my childs tear for soulfire... god i hated that zone so muuuuch
EQ: Picture a group of 6 DE just emerging from nektulos forest.. about level 7 or so. We heard there was a dungeon in the next zone, west commonlands. This was the first week eq was out, i doubt anyone was big enough to actually go to befallen at the time. But we didnt really realize the game was super gate locked by zones for progression, it just wasnt something that hadnt been invented in CRPG's. We spent a day or two killing lions and orcs in East commons and got bored tso we packed up our camp and snuck to west commons and we followed the rumored directions to get there, we found it by seeing the green glow at night on the dune. (btw ghouls , zombies in WC.. yeah you know exactly how this all went.) We went in and there were a few people camping the upper floor, killing the sks for keys, so we jumped in and tried and it was going ok, till we found this well. Again fall damage? whats that? We jumped down the well and actually lived long enough to see a horde of necros and ghouls and skeletons kill us in a instant. Yeah so being no one ever went to the bottom yet our bodies were basically unretrievable. My friend petitioned a GM and he just laughed at us for 15 minutes. But he did eventually summon our bodies and told us to go back to East commons .
@Fippy Darkpaw I just killed fippy darkpaw the other day. Seen him hanging outside of Freeport and decided he needed a nap
Don't forget, you lose experience when you die in EQ and can lose your level. Not only did you risk losing your equipment due to a bad PoFear break, but if you died enough times trying to get back in you could de-level and lose access because you were down to level 45 and could no longer access any of the planes!
Its been 22 years and I still havent found a game that could hook me like UO/Siege Perilous did.
Uo outlands. Check it out.
Yer outlands is boss, if you have the time to play
I used to log in at the local public library to refresh my houses when I was without internet.
That being said....anyone want to buy rares from the late 90's on the Pacific server?
Tibia
shadowclan orcs baby
we probably killed each other at some point
I had been playing EQ for over a year on dialup when one day I overheard my parents wondering amongst themselves "Why haven't we had any phone calls in so long??"
They never figured it out.
On dialup, I was camping the ancient cyclops for 36 hours. If you think that sounds like a lot, it was, and note my luck is 100% ass. Hour 36 and 1 minute rolls around, it spawns, I go to attack... Nothing is working... Look at my connection, red. Someone had picked up the phone. In a sleep deprived rage, I literally threw my chair against the wall. Chair didnt make it. I did log back in to get the ring, but it was a rough time for me.
For those that dont know, ancient cyclops dropped a ring for a quest that gives a pair of boots that increases run speed. Anyone who was anyone had them (save druids, rangers, shamans, and beastlords). The kicker is that the average person spent something like 2 hours camping this thing. Not me though. I have to go extreme.
@monoxide4729 Yikes dude, that was Pained Soul on my end, 32 hrs right outside of Seb tunnel, "safe-ish" but not enough to feel AFK safe. Live tho, I couldn't take boats, I'd zone in after 8-15m, (God fofbid the above happened, it was that, then 30m loading back in). I ended up Office Spacing the shit out of that PC in well deserved payback couple yrs later w/ my own PC, had broadband before I upgraded the PC though. Fucking rough.
@@monoxide4729 I camped Phinny for WEEKS on my rogue. When he finally spawned and quickly got the raid formed... storms took the internet out and wasnt able to log in until the next day. And ya know Phinny wasnt an instant spawn
@@monoxide4729 The ole J-Boots
Hahahaha this made me burst out laughing. I started a week after the launch. First UI, dial up. Still loved it. Still do.
As a cleric, I can't tell you how many times I got killed trying to camp out
I remember people doing that as a tactic and trying to camp out during wipeouts. hehe
Plane of Hate raids. Sometimes Fear. Oh yeah. I remember trying to camp out and hoping that the guys fighting would have more aggro then my sitting character.
@joeycote480 I'll take either over fucking Sky man. Such a pita boring lackluster klusterfuck of risk vs reward in general. Even on p99, some of blue's most boring server firsts.
@@joeycote480 without voice you had to just wait 10 mins for that last ranger to die, LOL!
You know the game is hard core when the optimal play is to log out for a few minutes and then back in to rez the group rather than fight your way back naked.
I can't remember how many times I saved my group from that with my necro, having FD, a rez for the cleric and being a mana battery is perfect for that exact situation.
Leading raids and a guild via only text made me such a more proficient typist. More than any of those classes I had to take in school for it in 2000 and 2001.
Me too! I went from 40 wpm to 100 wpm purely because of EQ.
Those macro's you'd spam to the group, "Incoming....." , "HEAL MT NOW", and "EVAC...EVAC...EVAC"
I was already a good typist. Learned in 2nd grade and used a computer regularly. After a year of EQ though, I could almost type faster than I talked.
So much this. I took a typing class in high school that didn't do much but EQ had me typing 60 wpm easy. Leading a guild and raids was no joke and required some fast typing skills.
Gods yes! 150 person Master Level Raid leading whilst twisting Paladin chants in Dark Age of Camelot.
I've played Ultima Online since november 1998 and i still play. I quit a couple times in the middle but its been a magical journey which i'm thankful for. I can only be thankful. I has been an true experience.
Gimme my stuff back
@@dannym2918 Sell you a house in Fel. Bring the check..
How are you still playing? Didn't they close all official servers? Also, what era?
Oh man, getting yelled at by my mom because of the phone bill caused by playing EQ on dial-up all night.
Those were the days!
This is the first time I've heard someone mention Ultima Online in a long time. Good times!
might wanna check out outlands.
In everquest 1 I remember falling off a boat in the ocean and there was a island nearby that had mobs that could easily kill me. I somehow stayed alive until the boat came by again and I swam in front of the boat and glitched into the boat. No idea where I was just knew I couldn't die there. Was very scary at the time. Now you don't have that fear if you die in a game.
There are two things that will always stand out for me about the topics you talked about. #1 is the early days of EQ I started out as a Erudite Magician. The forest was so dark that once the torch-lights faded from the tunnels archway to the city, you were 100% lost and low level sense heading didnt help. To make things worse, Rungupp, a Troll npc would spawn and yell zone-wide. You were always on the lookout for him due to he was a L5 Shaman and would kill you in the newbie zone. You were always a bit scared in the zone. To get back, you just ran a random direction until you hit a zone wall and followed it. As Redd said, I dont think something like that will ever be in another game again and it is a shame. It added so much fun and you actually worried about dieing and even finding your corpse. I bet there were times Ive spent 20 minutes running around, dodging Kobolds, while looking for my corpse. Even though there were alot of fond memories in UO, #2 still has to go to EQ and not having voice chat. The best thing about having to use chat channels was back then being a very tight knit community with real drama, there were the all dreaded miss-tells. Reply to tells went to the last person who sent you a tell...even the ones that came in while you were typing. This created some very awkward situations and caused even more drama and turmoil. Alot of people put their foot in their mouths! If you were in the middle of telling someone something private, you always dreaded hitting that enter key in case in that split second, a tell would come in from someone who shouldn't hear what you had to say! It was so stressful! This happened all the time to people. Haha!
Kithicor was scary even at 50! So dark and dangerous.
Bro. I feel this so much! But my issue was Qeynos and blackburrow with my lol 4 shadow knight. 2000 was the best year every
Yes, getting lost at night in the rain as a human and then bumping into a dread corpse :/
One of my fav things about DAoC was legitimately getting lost. No map there either. Made the world feel so much more huge.
Funny, used to play a troll shamen...
I used to keep a notebook full of all kinds of lore, hand drawn maps, and notes from original EverQuest. My level 50 Ogre warrior decked out in crafted armor was making the run from Freeport to Karanas when a low level wood elf begged me for help getting his corpse from RunnyEye. I never really went deep into RunnyEye (did anyone lol?). The next two hours was a brutal run and gun with prodigious use of bandages but I finally got his corpse. I still talked to that woodelf all the way to GoDiscord/Omens before I finally quit EQ for good. Nothing will ever capture that mystery because everything is online, often datamined before you get to even experience it.
I remember getting a cloth map with my original copy of UO. I took it to school with me one day and spent my entire study hall decoding the runic markings on it based on the few city names I knew. It was a fun little adventure.
Cloth maps are so underrated for a collectors edition of a game.
Man, that last one where he paused and started talking about the first time you log in, and showing old footage of EQ... That brought back memories bro...
One thing I can remember back in the old days, there was no race to get to end game. In a game like Everquest, you had lots of players advancing at different paces. Now, the day an MMO is released, there is a mad rush to get to max level. If you get left behind, then most of the lower level players are going to be alts. Also, MMOs back then were about exploration and you had no idea what to expect. Now days pretty much all MMOs follow the same formula of providing a chain of easy quests to get to max level, and then grinding dailies for character progression.
EverQuests first few years is like if Souls games had an ultra torture difficulty level. Losing your level and ability to enter a zone to get your stuff back was terrifying.
My claim to fame was getting Death Touched by both Terror and Dread while pulling.
my favourite memory is my old clan members and in game friends. wonder what theyre doing today. various games ive played in the past and met some great people. hope theyre all healthy and enjoying life
That last part man, I think about it every so often. It also makes me think about the idea that one day my characters will be gone. I have original characters in UO who recently turned 25 years old. They're just pixles on a screen, but mean so much more. All the people I met a long the way, and ones who by some miracle I still keep in touch with, suddenly gone. Why'd you have to do this to me!!!
This was awesome, brought back some good memories. One thing you didn't mention was finding quests in EQ. No exclamation/question marks above an NPC's head, you had to randomly go talk to all of them and then try to get them to respond to you responding to keywords in their response. Good times!
Honestly, that was one of the things in EQ I didn't like. And the vagueness of the information of where you might find whatever it was you are looking for. Searching through all of Splitpaw looking for one a maybe named gnoll hoping it might have a quest item? Infuriating and frustrating.
I always wondered how they figured out epic weapons. Heard rumors of data mining or even cataloging and dedicated websites. All i remember is after the first year of EQ there were only a handful of level 50's and no epic weapons, even hate raids were still in the 40's with levels.
Yeah, we _did_ walk uphill both ways to get our corpses, and, yes, we _did_ like it. You know why? Because it made for a more exciting game. It was _better._
And maps? The only reason you would usually want a map was when you were looking for your corpse, in which case there were people with a spell called "locate corpse." And if you really felt like you needed a map, you made a map. Also fun.
Text only? Better. Why? Because I don't ever have to hear that Galadrial the high elf was really some dude named Leon with a heavy Brooklyn accent. It was more immersive.
As far as better internet, that's true of all online games. And of course it was horrible.
As far as that virgin experience, no one but the earliest players ever got to feel that. And it was _mind-blowing._ I will never forget when I made my halfling and went out into Misty Thicket and how the face of another halfling peered out at me through the darkness - and realizing that was a real person. His name was Sauza, and we became instant friends, both of us endlessly revelling in the awe of it all together. And how the next night, a tall high elf named Axebattler, who had somehow traveled a great distance from another land, came to join us little people in the thicket. And how the three of us went on our first big adventure to the Gorge of King Xorbb and found ourselves under the power of floating evil eyes. They blinded us, and our screens went black for 10 seconds at a time (another greatness you will never see again) while the sounds of our friends dying rang out all around us.
I've played every major MMO since then. I was in the #1 PVP guild on Emerald Dream in WoW when Battlegrounds were new (High Impact, a hunter named Barticus).
Nothing has ever come close to my time spent in the truly immersive world of Norrath in Everquest - nothing. In fact, Project 1999 is still the best MMO going today.
@RedBeardFlynn, Thanks to EQ and the consistent and accurate typing I had to dish out quickly and continuously back then, I can now type 120+ wpm with 100% accuracy without even trying.
I have been chasing that dragon since 1999 myself.
Hugging the wall on the clif from Qeynos (SonyEQ) to Freeport (High Hold Pass) because it was immersive enough that I thought there just MAY be wind effects in this game and I don't want to get blown off.... Years later after knowing better, whenever I wenth through HH Pass, I would hug the wall, afraid to fly off.
@@NicholasBaldwin-om9xv
I made that run so many times it is crazy. Thinking back now I don't really know why I did it. Nowadays I just wouldn't have the time to commit to something like that. Looking for another player to bind me along the way, having to get my corpse if I was ever killed, the waiting to load every new zone, having to run all the way back to zone to break an encounter, having to con so many damn npc's in case my faction was too low with them or I was the wrong race etc..
Games really are much more convenient now but for someone who doesn't have the 12+ hours a day to sink into games that I used to have as a kid I really appreciate all those conveniences.
We are probably missing out on those kinds of stories in exchange for that convenience and the younger crowds just joining mmo's now will never understand just how epic even a simple adventure could turn out to be because of the inconvenience of getting lost without a map, falling down a hole in the dark because your race doesn't have nightvision or just accidentally opening the wrong door and pulling something you weren't expecting which wipes your group and now you need to spend 30 minutes fighting your way back down to your gear which is rotting on your dead corpse.
My worst connection loss ever...
It was in Ultima Online, near the Trinsic swamp. Over a period of time I had bought a number of houses on multiple accounts, and now finally had the four I needed. The houses were emptied, I had four computers logged on, with each of the house owners logged in...
.. and I collapsed them all, to build that castle I had craved for years. Just as the fourth building collapsed, "connection lost".
Anyone who played the game will be feeling my pain right now.
It took about two minuted to log back in, and when I did I found myself in someone else's castle. They had found the empty plot, and built their own. My heart broke.. I'd been working on this for so long, and in a second it was lost. But then I saw the house owner's name... it was a friend of mine.
He'd been logged out of one of the houses of mine, and when he saw the massively open space he built the castle for me, guessing something had gone wrong. That was the moment I realised, your online MMO friends are *real* friends.
Wholesome!
I ran a Vesper thieves guild on Pacific. My rules were, dont steal from each other, and give me copies of keys you steal. So that was what my "thief" did... I'd run around the map, with this bag full of keys, and try to find buildings i could open.
One day I happened to get into some prime real estate. Right outside the north east exit of Vesper, just across the bridge. Right on the road. PRIME real estate. So I told the guy who had given me the key to give me all he had of that (we were friendly enough that he did) and I just moved in. I didnt steal anything from the owner, I made it off limits to the guild and just moved right in. Set up my vender on the steps, and waited for the owner to log on.
"Hi. I'm your new roomate"
She took it in stride and we actually spent a lot of time playing together. She even followed me to EQ.
You really did make life long friends in games back then,
Wonderful video - That last point really hit home because it’s so true. There was something magical about it that is taken for granted these days.
Amazingly recognizable, as are most of your videos ;) I had a binder of printed-out EQAtlas maps, and I loved it. My most memorable maps-related event was as a lvl 11 Bard from Qeynos, wanting to buy the lvl 8 Lull song that was only available in Kelethin. I planned the entire route, had the maps in front of me, and on one afternoon walked the entire route from Qeynos to Kelethin, needing some help to get through Highpass, watching a lvl 40 PC fight a skeleton in Kithicor Forest, taking the boat from Freeport to Butcherblock, walking the last part and buying the song. Then I cheated the way back, put all my gear on the bank, jumped out of the tree, and was back in Qeynos :D
To this day I get asked why I follow the roads when traveling in MMOs. I try to explain the time when MMO had no maps and that the roads were the most reliable landmark, but some people just don't understand ;)
I got sucked into MMORPGs when I got into the beta for EverQuest. I connected from my AOL account on my 56.6 K modem. Those were the days. 😊
My first Everquest memory is seared in to my mind, I started the game for the first time in Halas as a Barbarian Rogue. Running around the featureless white ravines in Everfrost Peaks, killing decaying skeletons and goblin welps until I happened upon a vengeful lyricist skeleton that promptly beat me down in 3 hits. I immediately realized that this online world was - dangerous - to be in. No hand holding, no guarantee that monsters are only as strong in a region as you are, like most RPGs of the time. I spent hours looking for my corpse, lost in those snowy drifts and ultimately just had to give up on recovering my equipment. I both loved and hated every moment of that experience. Everquest was a totally unique experience, that I've never been able to recapture in any MMO since.
Good times :D
My first horror story was Befallen. The wife and I had to give permission for someone to drag us out, and those were they days people with permission could loot your corpse...
I logged in, ran strait to a skeleton holding a staff, and was promptly beaten to death. Even even con mobs at level 1 the RNG could turn south on your real fast lol
I printed up almost the entire selection of EQ Atlas maps. Kept em in a 3 ring binder to navigate. EQ was, mind-blowing at the time. Now days there is a massive digital world everywhere you look. I still play EQ. It's still fun, but it's more game than living world now.
I played UO from Beta; it was on a CD. I was 9 or 10 when it first came out. I remember leaning over my dad's computer chair, looking at that bulky white monitor, and pointing to a black pearl on the screen, asking him what it was. Now, almost 30 years later, I have a habit of carrying around 1 single black pearl in every game I play, if the game has it. I was there when Lord British was "assassinated" by bad code and player ingenuity. I almost repeated a grade in middle school because of truancy because I was skipping school to play in-game events. Every once in a while, I download the client and make a quick character; not because I truely want to play the game again, those days are long over, but because I want to try to recapture the nostalgia for those days. Thank you for reminding me of the small things that made it that way. Yes, even the AOL noise.
I printed every last map on EQAtlas on a colour printer at work. I had a huge binder with all the maps next to me when I played. ;) And my character got named on one of the EverQuest maps drawn by Osqura.
And I never led a raid, but I led the raid puller crew regularely. That is how the raid-through-text-instructions work. Raid Leader instructs crew leaders. The healer crew had a leader, the DPS crew had a leader etc.
When I ran raids, I also had hotbuttons made of every command I might need to say, and memorized the layout of those buttons for each raid I led.
@swegunner71 @fribur I hope both of you are now leaders in your respective jobs. The creativity needed to run raids back in 99-02 and be successful is something every company would want.
I remember how MMORPGs used to be like 3D chat rooms where we’d just hang out and chat. In the old EverQuest days light/neutral races would chill in Kelethin outside of the bank and people would just chat and hang out. In Anarchy Online Baboons was always packed with characters dancing and chatting. People would role play as bouncers and tell you to unequip your weapons when you’d enter. Sometimes those hubs would be more fun than leveling.
I remember before EverQuest’s cartography system, discovering a camp full of bandits in the Greater Faydark, or the shock when the rumors of a cat village past the river in Toxxulia were true, or having to be led to the Butcherblock zone line from the camp in Dagnor’s Cauldron. There was so much wonder and excitement. I remember getting so lost in Neriak that I deleted my dark elf necro. Or my brother telling me how he found docks in Butcherblock that took him all the way to another continent. Or being scared to run from the Druid rings in Tox to Erudin after getting a teleport. Or showing off the secret corridors behind the wall in Felwithe.
I even remember waiting in the Commonlands until daylight because the undead in Kithicor Forest came out of nowhere.
Those were the days.
That's how it was in UO as well. People would hang out in towns next to the bank and just chat. The game was a sandbox for social interaction, like a world of its own, and it was great.
In EQ we had to watch chat for guild leader instructions during raids. "Move up" "hug wall" "no casting" etc. You had to actually pay attention kiddos 😜
I once traveled from Everfrost to gfay. My only world reference was the cloth map that came with my edition of EQ. Fortunately I was playing a shaman and I had SOW. I died multiple times. Crossing Kithicor forest at night was the worse. I had no idea it was full of high level undead. When I heard that ghoul howl for the first time I nearly peed myself.
Agreed!
as young lev 9 barb shaman i picked a bard letter quest to deliver to HighPass. With no real idea where I am going I made it all way up to ramp up to HH, when I ran into this wizard dude who told me that I was too low level to go to HH and I would die instantly, so I gated back home. I was literally 5 min away from my target =)
@@ChaosSlayerZX Hardest part was getting past the gnolls to High Keep. But I made a wrong turn into a small cave once and there were bandits or something that attacked me. I died.
@@ChaosSlayerZX I remember when a Hill Giant used to patrol that ramp. You really had to pick your spot to get past him.
The dreaded Kithicor! Only the foolhardy would try to run through the middle.
I would certainly join a guild when Pantheon launches where we never use voice chat, only keyboard chat, raiding or not.
When Everquest first dropped, my friend and I bought it on launch. LOVED it. Well, we happened to be neighbors too... and military housing in Guam had wide open yards between houses. We both had our computers set up in our dining rooms, so we invented our own voice chat.... by opening the dining room windows and yelling back and forth to each other all through the day or night when we were playing. Your video brought up some great memories from back then. Thanks.
My friend/neighbor was a phone technician, and hooked up an intercom system between our houses. We so felt like we were cheating in UO/EQ.
I remember playing EverQuest over dial up, chatting with an acquaintance from 1000 miles away, and being in kelethin, and both of us taking the elevator up at the same time - over dial up… holy crap
I could wax on for hours about the times I cherish from playing Final Fantasy XI back in the early 2000's. You're certainly right about the early days of online MMORPG's - we weren't nearly as connected as we are now. It felt so unreal. I still remember seeing the commercials for FFXI and being in disbelief that I could play a Final Fantasy adventure with other players simultaneously online.
On Christmas day in 2003, after specifically asking for it, I opened the game and began the installation from 5 CD-ROMs. While it installed, I pored over the thick manual, reading chat commands and learning as much as I could about the game. After the installation, getting an account set up, and working my way through the PlayOnline launcher, I discovered the game needed to be patched - so it downloaded updates overnight.
The next day I logged in for the first time and made a hume Thief. I have vivid memories of running around the starting city of Windurst mistaking NPC's for other players; running out to Sarutabaruta and getting my ass kicked as a level 1; finally reaching level 10, which felt like a monumental task in itself, and getting my first party in Tahrongi Canyon to kill dhalmels. Twenty years later, I still remember a few of the names from that first party - Mepakepa, Hathfuri, Djj. I remember the name of the person who started a linkshell with me, Omacore.
Everything in the game was a journey. Traveling to new cities, completing epic quests to get the airship pass so you could fly to new lands, unlocking new level caps. It all felt so meaningful. Obtaining maps was a task in itself. Various maps of zones/regions had to be acquired either via quests, or by purchasing them at a specific vendor somewhere in the world for a pretty penny - so it really felt like you were charting out the game world as you went along.
I do sometimes get a sense of serious melancholy when I think about those days. It was pure magic, no two ways about it. Can't be replicated ever again. Like you said, it was my first experience with an online game, and it was during a time when being online was still a novelty, so it felt extra special. I've played plenty of other MMORPG's over the years, and invested monumental amounts of time in some. But none of them leave me with the lingering, vivid memories like FFXI did. It really comes down into making the game feel meaningful, not like the player is just walking on a treadmill.
I've rambled enough - great video! Really enjoy retrospective looks at the old days of MMORPGs.
I still remember my first invite to party in the Dunes. I was wandering around in South Gustaberg wondering why I was not getting levels as quickly when someone sent me a tell. I still remember his name. He spent over an hour sending me tell on how to get to the Dunes, including warning me about rams in the Highlands. I got to the Dunes and they had to explain what an exp party was to me, I had no idea. I also learned what a tank was and how I needed to let them build hate before I started stabbing or curing as a RDM. The first few months were absolute magic. Nothing has ever come close, and I have accepted that nothing ever will.
@@dan537 I've accepted that, too! It took some time to realize all the factors that can't be replicated. We'll always have those memories to cherish, at least.
I would buy PRIMA strategy guides for EverQuest, just for their maps lol
I also used them to keep track of what spells I had or needed.
Good stuff here!
I played Ultima Online for the first 9 years the game was out. It was one of the best games I ever played. It was so immersive. I was super active on the Atlantic server with the RP community. Loved it. Great time period.
Lol Atlantic was crazy fun! X at Crossroads, AWM the East Road bandits of Britain! , the goblin rpg clan. Ah such memories!
@@jarredstrohl3503 I was super active with the Stormseekers RP group and the Ebon Hand RP group. Great people, great memories. I miss my old house inside town limits too.
One thing from Everquest that I've never seen in other mmo's is being able to buy things that other players have sold npc vendors (high level trash is a poor newb's treasure;). Nothing quite like stumbling on a Velium War Maul (9-24 damage delay) being sold for a few silver or a Shiv (5-22) for a plat. When even shopping becomes a treasure hunt you know you have a good game;).
I would spend hours and hours hunting... the shops for crafting supplies! Who needs to kill bad guys, all the high level folks were already doing it. :)
Eve online still uses custom chat channels to coordinate. When you have possibly hundreds of people you need to be able to listen to as few voices as possible but it can be essential to hold six separate communication Pipelines or more
The old 1998-2000 uo was still the best game I ever played. I don’t understand how no one has figured out a way to replicate their rune/mark/recall system. Because it was still the absolute best way to travel. The PvP was amazing and fun, and not having voice comma made it so real in that universe
Rune, Mark, Recall for travel is an awesome call out. It really was a great way to travel. And an interesting way to lure people places before they made the gates red or blue based on where it was leading.
@@Redbeardflynn i remember the time when you could gate monsters and stuff, around any where, they did how ever stoped that after some time, but it was hilariuos to drag a whole bunch of balrones, deamons, helhound and what not, in to despice where lots of players was slaying skeletons
If you want some good UO Nostalgia and some much needed improvements, there is UO Outlands. It is what UO should have become.
Absolutely on point about all of the things that made the early days what they were. Every single thing you say, every pain you list, experienced them all. Including a video game being our chat room, phone call knockjng you offline, typing out raids because nobody had bandwidth for both voice AND raid spam :)
It was new, it was scary, it FORCED you to socialize, and there was no agreed right way to play. You learned it from scratch until websites on EQ were common.
Those days were as magical as they were painful
Thanks for the walk down memory lane sir.
I remember in Everquest when people would complain for hours about the lag but refuse to log out.
You can still experience text led raids on City of Heroes. I highly recommend anyone who loves classic MMOs to give it a shot. Amazingly friendly group of people. Btw they have macros set up to spam instructions and a lot of raid leaders did the same thing back in the day.
Would like it more if I could find a supergroup that wasn't a bunch of 30-50 year olds that come off as toddlers. Bunch of people larping as furries and such is really a turn off, no matter how 'nice' they are.
I thought they shut down CoH? I played it in it's original release.
Used to cost $0.60 an hour to play Meridian59 back when it was launched in the UK, my phone bills were HUGE.
Fortunately the world caught up and unlimited internet for a fixed rate became a thing.
UO was one of the greates games ever made, full stop. Full loot PVP in a zoneless open world created REAL risk, resulting in REAL success. The skill caps made the game alt friendly. Shards made the worlds matter. !REAL HOUSING! Vance Kylathew, you were THE MAN!
to be fair, while ICQ is a thing of the past, I don't think there are any mmo players out there who haven't used some form of 3rd party communication software (IRC, TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, Roger Wilco, Discord, even Skype). Even in the very early days there were ways to communicate with other players. We were using these back in the mid 90's in various games.
I really miss the days of when voicechat wasn't a thing. That is the single most influential thing that makes me less immersed in a game. Also, I'll miss never seeing a true naked corpse run in a modern mmo. I do like how Pantheon has struck a balance though, we'll actually need our gear on us if we plan to get back to our bodies to retrieve our items lol.
/Loc was super important in EQ1. I remember the first time I played I was probably 11 or 12 and rolled an iksar warrior, I ended up falling in the canals and didn't know how to look up because back in the day you couldn't use your mouse to look, it was page up/down, I ended up drowning and couldn't find my body but continued with the character. Eventually I realized the quest item to do the warrior questline was lost when my body disappeared but I continued to play that warrior regardless into the 50's and he was pretty good still!
HAHA same thing happened to me as a Barb warrior. You pop up right near the front of Halas which is right on the lake. I spawned in and accidently hit backward and fell into the water. Drowned...as I didn't know how to look up and swim. Spawned outside in the dark and cold...and killed by a polar bear cub... ALT-CTRL-DELETE and quit game...
Came back later and started playing...and didn't know that the zone I died in was in the back of the cave with the merchants untill level 10ish when someone with a lantern ran past me into the cave and dissapeared when they zoned...I was like WTF is back in the blackness? I had no idea my home town was RIGHT there...thought it was a wall!
I played EQ and UO. This is 100% accurate.
Having to shout out for people to yell out random numbers 1 - 6, then telling your group 15th number. to see who gets loot
I remember trying to play MMOs with a dial-up connection, and, those were truly the bad old days!
You ever play Legends of Kesmai,had way worse death penalties you had to find all your stuff because the monsters would pick up your stuff,and certain monsters (sharks,dragons) used to swallow you whole and you had to run through underworld to get out,(which was a chore)
Legends of Kesmai was a ton of fun too. Played it on Gamestorm. Played Magestorm on there too.
I wish I had known how everything would turn out. I always assumed everything would be better, more fun, more immersive as time went on. It turns out that in those early days I was having the most fun I would probably ever have playing games online. If I had known that, I would have taken more time to soak it all in.
Most people feel that way. But it is less about the games they played, and more about where you were in their life when playing them. Lots of people who reminisce about the old games, were playing them when they were kids, or teenagers. They could spend all day playing games and goofing off with their friends. Their memories are filled with lots of low stress, happy, fun times spent doing what they love, playing games with friends.
Trying to play a game now will never give you the same feeling, because you are in a different place in your life. It is a lesson most people should learn, make the most of your childhood, you only get it once.
EQOA on PS2 i still miss this game and what you said on number 5 hit me right in the feels
I started in 99 and I fondly remember playing EQ on dial up and getting disconnected on the boats. I also remember leading my first raid on Berrtox for My key... Cazic-Thule
the first time we were able to organize and punch into the plane of time was organizing two raid groups of 140 players in the plane of water to deal with all the adds that accumulate and annoyingly happen underwater.. where casting is a nightmare.
whats worse is i was the paladin lead off tank, and the only shaman on the raid as i two boxed Fairin and Kitaynia back then... good times >;3
met my wife in WoW years later, and current girlfriend in eq2 (and they get along too, yay!) i since decided D&D westmarches are more my style where the mods cant nerf my class into the ground and make me quit (enchanter during velious, paladin during spine of the world, wow bear druid during ulduar, eq2 troubador during the magic expansion... to name a few (also screw you daybreak devs)
We didn’t run raids with text. We ran raids with macros filled with text. You saved a full set of macros for each and every current fight.
Well this whole thing was a trip down nostalgia lane.
I'm an old-timer who has led and followed raids in just chat. The short version is: preparation is CRITICAL. And by that, I mean MORE preparation than modern raids.
I'll give you a simple metaphor-- in the days before mobile phones, organizing your social circles required a lot more attention to detail, and more decisions had to be made in advance. You needed contingency plans if you ran late or got separated. Meeting places and times were less fluid than today. Same sort of thing with chat-only raids.
And although I'd never go back to chat-only raids, I will say this in their defense (yes, defense!): They merged the flow of communication into the same format as all the other information coming at you. Any competent raider will have their windows arranged with great care. Panes are prioritized by importance-- toolbars, health meters, et al. Carefully orchestrated into this mix were chat channels. Raid chat, group chat, leadership chat, and any channel that could help segregate and route the correct signals to their appropriate windows.
So in a way, I MIGHT argue that we could process more "concurrent" information than after we transitioned to voice, which has to be half-duplex by nature. Of course, this is a spurious argument, but there's a kernel of truth in it. Voice chat demands its own set of protocols to be effective, but once mastered can greatly outperform the older typed messages (macros and shorthand notwithstanding!).
Still, I miss the silence of those older times. I found I was more focused and immersed. And I used to have to WALK to the merchant to sell my loot-- uphill both ways!
Oh man, as a kid I don't know what I would've done without EQ Atlas. So many things in MMO's of later years that are just taken for granted!
WTF happened to Muse?? The guy should have an NPC dedicated to them in PoK
I used to lead full text pickup raids well into 2015 in WoW, toward the end of WotLK if I remember correctly. It was a moment in time that these particular raids were somewhat easier, and either 10- or 20-man (20 typically being more complex; harder), but I basically had a set of pre-typed instructions set as macros to overview each boss fight, and any special instructions for noteworthy segments. Surprisingly these raids usually went quite well!
Mics were like 10 bucks back then. Why use text?
@@SpankyNiger lol good question. I guess bc these were pick-up raids on easier content it was easier to simply have a fight summary typed up on macro to blast to all than to get everybody coordinated enough to have all logged into and paying attention to whatever VOIP program was used at the time. Sometimes even the bare minimum like that was like pulling teeth to get some people to cooperate, so just didn't bother
I tried to raid in classic wow in 2020 with text only but they quickly forced me to use discord.
Ive been playing MMOs since 1998 Ultima Online. Eq, Eq2, SWG, WoW and Eve. This video hits hard
I used to be a raid leader before I was a Guild Master. It actually works better for me because I'm better at managing more people at my own convenience. I can't deny that MMOs and the internet really helped me grow as a person, not only in terms of meeting new people and being a Guild Master, but also by watching videos like this and learning things I never would've learned from the people in my local area.
Brainstorming possible keywords, NPCs, locations for Temple of Sol Ro quests on a class message board. Learning to quad-kite as a wizard from a written guide. Staring down at the top of my characters head for hours at a time because 72 man raids lagged me out in 1st person/eyes up view.
Oh man, hand written guides! I completely forgot about stuff like that. I had stuff like that for Ultima Online on how to get places and where to find rares. (I never found rares...)
Imagine a bard getting you through the great divide in eq when on dial up. Much death when lev wore off, then getting the corpses >.
Oh I normally had those because I'd lag and the bard would run out of range lol
Started EQ as necro in Paineel, realized I need to travel to the main continent but can’t take boat ride as evil class…until a friendly high level druid Lovetree teleported the noob me, showed me around, and buffed up. Not long later I started my druid Lifetrees, good times!
the chances of this are next to impossible but the name lovetree sounds familiar. I wonder if it was just a popular druid name because I'm sure there was one on Brell Serilis.
Thank you for sharing the wonderful story!
When a lot of people thought they were in the text only days, they didn't know the leader and officers were using Roger Wilco.
When I first showed my friends voice over IP on Roger Wilco, they'd all auditably gasp, you know, cuz I could hear them, because VOIP....
I was playing UO when it first started and the ecology system that richard garriott touted before the game release just failed because everyone was killing everything. I believe this was on Lake Superior or Great Lakes. At Any rate, gangs started setting up PK areas at the crossroads, esp outside Brittania and Vesper/Minoc Led by someone named Aes Sedai. Now it came to my attentiont hat this group who started the PK trend in UO were actually GM's an it made me think maybe management put them up to it to detract from the disaster of there being actually zero things to do in the wild because once you got past the PKs ALL the animals were gone, there was literally zero wildlife for weeks. Things panned out later but you have to wonder if PK's in UO were actually a experiment by the Management of the game gone wild and it morphed into the thing it became 6 months later with all out red vs blue wars when the ecology got back on track. (which was some of the best gaming moments of my life, I had a great lord and a dread lord)
Thank you for sharing the story! I dont think I've ever met anyone who was there for the very beginning of UO. I want to say I started in 98 or 99. It was still one world when I played and I was there for the change to trammel/feluca which I actually liked at the time, probably because I was terrible at pvp.
@@Redbeardflynn Ill tell you one of the biggest wow moments ive ever had in a game was like the 2nd say UO was live, about 5 guys in full armor and horses that rode through minoc and we was like jesus christ.... Those dudes are so Awesome. I had never seen a mount in a game and to have these guys just parade through like they were kings blew my mind. Reflecting later that it took a lot to tame a horse, not even sure you could buy them at that time, they were probably GM's or friends of GM's also.
@@Redbeardflynn I played in the beta test for UO, and helped to set up a guild of anti-PKs named TFF, Trinsic Freedom Fighters. PKs were always camping the road out of Trinsic, so we banded together to help deal with them. Lot of fun trying to do pvp on dialup.
@@namtaru1 Your story reminded me of a funny one. I used to mine in Minoc cave, the one just outside town over the bridge all the time and there was a PK there named "Cave Floor" so when you clicked on him to get his name as he was running off it would say "Cave Floor" and you thought you lagged lol.
Unfortunately all the people knew him so we would pop up as ghosts in front of the bank and there was a crew there always on horseback that would rez us and be like "cave floor again?" and we would be like "yup" and then they would go find him, kill him, rez him, kill him rez him again (6-7x) then chop up all his corpses and spread his body parts all over town. I miss stuff like that from modern games a lot.
I loved seeing all the unique "/shout Train INC to Zone" messages. There were some real funny ones. I honestly miss the long days of camping with a group in Lguk in EQ. There was so much downtime it forced everyone to be social and talk during spawns. Don't think I have played a game since with something like that. It is why I still go back to P99 and similar emulators from time to time.
First mmo was Runescape playing on dial up and being able tto buy premium directly on the phone bill no credit card required was really cool
I remember my first time seeing a MMORPG I was watching my brother running around the caves killing golems at Crater in Asheron's Call. There were other people running around too and I thought that was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
When he got me into the game he told me which starting outpost to start on and he ran me through that seemed like endless hills and towns and multiple portals to get to his "home" town of Tou-Tou. It was a quiet, low level coastal village that not many people went to, had an awesome ancient lighthouse and easy portal access to the main trading hub of Arwic so it was a nice place to call home. But that run was terrifying to me, even when he was high level and going with me.
Oh this is awesome, thank you so much for sharing! My brother was a few years older than me and he briefly got interested in Everquest with me but then went of and started doing teenager things like, dating, imagine!
What Minecraft did with pixelation I can certainly see a future MMO implementing map creation. AI assisted analysis could make it very intuitive, the map may even talk to you like it's a person, shoot the map AI might legally be a person soon enough. A living game, magical map telling you to come explore it, go in it's holes, I think my imagination molested me just now. I'm going to stop commenting tonight
This comment took a turn...I was imagining clippy from Microsoft for a little bit.
@@Redbeardflynn haha yeah clippy! That is very true. If it wasnt for viruses with all those AI cartoon helper screen overlays, that method of interface i think would have taken off more.
Ah dial up. Wanting to play Everquest almost got me a visit from the cops cause my dial up got jacked up. Was attempting to connect to the dial up server when I heard a 911 dispatcher pick up and talk thru my modem. I froze and disconnected. As soon as it disconnected they called back and I told them what happened. They said if it happened again they'd have to send someone out to the house. The next day I called to get DSL.
Do you remember on dial up when the servers were down, there was this program that you would run that would keep "calling" EQ for you and when it was able to connect, it would sound off some loud bells to let you know the servers were back online? I spent many hours waiting to hear that sweet sound.
Dude, twice when I was playing EQ back in the day on dialup I heard what sounded like police radio dispatch and it tripped me out!!
Nice nostalgic video. I liked the Sepia colored intro lol. I was there, 3000 years ago, I started MMO's with Meridian 59 and played most since. You have some great points.
Thank you so much! Glad you liked the intro. I think I was aware of Meridian 59 but I dont think my parents ever considered it because it was too expensive due to how AOL was charging back then.
I remember the days of playing a cleric and setting up healing rotations and setting up that macro to let the next healer know when it was their turn to cast Compete Heal. Good times.
CHeal rotations made me too nervous to play a cleric! So I played a lame dps instead.
You bringing that thing up about first time. I remember playing Everquest back in the Beta days and was so impressed and in awe of how neat it was. Alot don't realize on EQ Beta, factions didnt have a name, they had an assigned number. Fippy Darkpaw hadn't become a legend yet, but people would still laugh. Also wondering what the faces at Verant looked especially Brad Mcquaid when they found out Lord Nagafen was killed on Beta. I know Brad didn't believe it, so the guild "Fires of Heaven" raided again and Brad went with them and witnessed it first hand. I started on the Veeshan server, the Fires of heaven led by Furher were a bunch of fucking asshole and it was because of them the "Might Makes Right" rule was passed, to please assholes like them.
Oh dear god, FoH!!! Why did you bring up that painful memory? I used to work for Verant/SOE as a GM back then. We absolutely hated those twerps. 😝
@@hathi444 If i have to remember the pain, so does anybody else who remembered them or faced them do lolI wanted to pimp slap those guys when ever i saw them in the zone. Damn shame the crazy GM didnt summon those guys to Veeshan's peak and bind them under a dragons feet that time
@@christopherfoley8322 I'll be honest with you. Our real hatred was reserved for Lum the Mad. 😝
@@hathi444 My hatred was for him and Furhur or how ever his name was spelled, he was the leader. Some members were pretty cool and even helped low levels, but alot steam rolled right over those who weren't spoiled by being apart of an uber guild
@@christopherfoley8322 Post in game names Veeshanites!
(Noysyrump, Gnome mage)
Course it depends on whether or not you consider mobile games as MMOs. But there has been poorly constructing multiplayer games that alternative chat becomes ideal. I'm curious if there's something that's going to replace Discord and I think whatever something like that may offer will help reveal how games will evolve. Take Nexus for example with modding. A Next Generation chat system out of game May become Plug and Play for future MMOs
I think Discord at least so far has allowed games to stop trying to force in-game voice chat on players. Some games have done it well but most it seems to struggle. But proximity voice chat may be the next "old" thing to become more the norm. It's used heavily in some FPS games now and in some multiplayer horror games.
@@Redbeardflynn That is perfect way to put it! Mumble i knew was trying to become what zoom ended up being as a meeting software that used proximity so that you can get a feel for where people are sitting around a meeting table. I heard they dropped that off, BUT simple hardware with software support in speaker setups could overcome a lot of the bugs and driver issues that made it chaotic in the past.
I think what got me when I first started playing EQ was that it actually felt like there was an entire unknown world to explore. I remember calling my friend who introduced me to the game one day right after I started playing back in 1999 and trying to describe where I was to see if he know how to get back to a city from there.. He did not. - Geideon Underforrest
Good ol' EQ. My Uncle had printed out the entire database of spells and bard songs in a binder along with every colored pencil map available, the binder is still used as a paper weight/coffeetable read.
Holy shit, the awe and goosebumps I got when I first logged into Everquest in 99 and realized that those weren't NPCs, they were actual living breathing people like me. We were very fortunate to get these experiences because they will never be available again.
For my story of the ridiculous things we did back then: A friend and I spent two REAL LIFE WEEKS, without ever leaving, in Permafrost Keep trying to get a 'Silvery Two Handed Axe'. We had a Wizard friend who had set a Bind right outside and would bring us food and supplies and carry our loot off to sell. I can no longer remember why we were so determined. Maybe because I was a Barbarian Warrior and was therefore blind most of the time?
That's a cool story!
I remember, I remember 13 years of EQ in total. I remember my hand drawn maps to get the hell out of Neriak to get to Nektulos. I remember 5 years of WoW, then Vanguard, then Conan, AION,Warhammer, Horizons and others and some other forgotten MMO's, still dabbling in Lost Ark, but no more raiding for me. Waiting on Pantheon though. I will honour Brad
I still play Ultima Online to this day on UOForever. A free client set around the 1998ish era before Trammell.
Still the best fucking MMO in existence and I've played a lot of them.
First raid guild I was in was the last one that used text instructions (all the later ones had moved to discord). And I'm pretty sure the leader used pre-typed hotkeys to spam the instructions at the right time.
Just listening to you talk I can tell we have had very very similar experiences in MMOs start way back in MMO history
I’ll do you one better. When I started, Ultima online didn’t exist yet. So I started with MUDs. All text with ansi art on certain rooms. It did open whole new worlds and I made friends all over the country, and a couple in Canada. Then EverQuest came out, and MUDs pretty much died.
I can still remember the anxiety of hoping not to time out when we did raids and you just had a wall of text as the computer tried to process everyone acting at the same time. You would often not know you died until your computer unfroze and the pages and pages of text flew by ending with “You died”.
I played Meridian 59 before EQ and UO. Good times!
my first mmo was runescape in 2006 and i remember fondly being so ungodly lost for the first week playing. That sense of not having a bearing for directions the first time playing an mmo is definitely a thing. here i am 16 years later still playing runescape.
first MMO for me was "Earth and Beyond" followed by "Dark Age of Camelot" and eventually "WoW", all of which i spent a LOT of time and monthly fees in, since then i've settled for games that tend towards single player viable as MOST of them DON'T need a monthly sub....
The first time I logged into EQ and I saw a bunch of "people" running around, was more mind blowing then any gear I got or mob I killed.
What a freaking GREAT video as always!!
As a low-40s gamer ...that intro was pretty darn funny.
And yes, I played Ultima Online & had ICQ
I still remember playing RuneScape without voice chat. Back then, RuneScape 2 was still around and I was just a teenager. I talked to my RuneScape only friends via the clans chat and private messaging daily and even for hours at a time. It taught me how to type better than school ever did. The world felt alive, like I was in another world, not playing a video game.
One of my most prominent memories is doing Vyrewatches with my friends where we had to snake through the labyrinth of a city called Myreditch to get to our spot. And the random sort of event that would happen where you had to give a tithe that is blood to the Vyrewatches which would stop combat and how it would happen to me super often which really annoyed me but not as much as my friends not believing me when I said I was being forced to give the tithe super often though on the bright side, I would often get the best loot.
I also remember going into the wilderness with a couple friends with these special orbs that would allow us to see where we ordinarily couldn't back before the Dungeoneering update in RuneScape 2 because we heard a rumor about something being where the Dungeoneering dungeon ended up being so we went there with practically nothing on us at low levels to check it out and speculate on what it was and what it was going to be.
It's been a long time since I've had fun like that. MMOs these days feel too much like games and not enough like worlds to be immersed in.
I still have my ICQ # memorized and i absolutely loved UO. I do miss it.