12 ms·

I absolutely loved EverQuest and it’s still probably holds some of my fondest gaming memories. My favorite feeling about it is that it felt like a real world fi

I absolutely loved EverQuest and it’s still probably holds some of my fondest gaming memories. My favorite feeling about it is that it felt like a real world first, gameplay second. It had a real sense of danger and wonder that I think will be almost impossible to recreate. Going from Qeynos to Freeport, or crossing the ocean on a boat felt absolutely epic and dangerous. It was wonderful, but not something I would want to play today now that I have real life obligations.

ModernMech 1y ago
Totally, me and my friend used to share an EQ account in school. His parents paid for it so he got to play during the day, and I would play at night from midnight until 6am, then I'd go to school. It was profoundly unhealthy, which is why that game earned the name "Evercrack". Last weekend I played a beta game called "Monsters and Memories" that's trying to be an EQ clone, and it's very faithful in that it's carried forward all the terrible parts of EQ. Just the amount of sitting around waiting that you have to do in EQ that I had forgotten about is incredible. Managing your water and food levels, having to go find your corpse when you die and it taking 5 hours just to get there, pitch black nights so you're forced to walk around with a lantern, camping a spawn with 100 other people trying to get the same items as you to complete the same inane quests, broken quests that you can't even complete to progress the game forward... And yeah, one weekend was enough. I got real shit to do, I have time for nonsense, but not THAT kind of time.
- daeken 1y ago
  There's a musician named Richie Truxillo who made so many comedy songs about EQ back in the day, but your comment just reminded me of "Has Anybody Seen My Corpse." I haven't thought about corpse runs and dragging folks' corpses back to them in ages!
  - Tokumei-no-hito 1y ago
    ohh if i had a million platinummmm wow that's a memory i had lost for many years. thanks
- michaelmrose 1y ago
  Your perception of time is profoundly different when you are a kid with no job. Painful death makes you try hard to avoid it ensuring real stakes.
  - nkrisc 1y ago
    It makes it more realistic. At this age, it would mean I just quit the game - like my character died for real!
- djtango 1y ago
  For me it feels like it was the perfect storm of games like this releasing at a time when a generation of gamers' attentions weren't saturated. I didn't play EQ but on FFXI airships ran on a 15min schedule and if you missed it you would have to sit and wait, not dissimilar to real life. This kind of friction added a charm and immersion to the game but would never fly in a game today [pardon the pun]. Nowadays a lot of the enjoyment I seek out of games is mechanical difficulty and adrenaline because most the other aspects can be fulfilled away from the screen...
thegrim33 1y ago
It was also at the perfect moment in time where you couldn't just pull up the game's wiki on a second monitor and have fully detailed maps and quest details on hand. You actually had to learn things for yourself by exploration and trial and error. You had to learn things from other people by talking to them in game. In my mind back then, I was in awe of people that even had the knowledge of how to get across certain zones safely. You know it took effort/skill for them to gain that knowledge. You couldn't just look it up. I've been thinking how you could possibly replicate a similar thing nowadays, but unless the world constantly randomly changes over time, rendering any created guides/maps/etc moot, I think that window has closed.
- dmbche 1y ago
  You should look at Noita!
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    Noita is the last thing that comment suggests he wants. Most of Noita's content can only be learned by consulting the wiki, which I assume is an intentional legacy of the designers' love of Nethack. And the world is the same every time.
    - duskwuff 1y ago
      > And the world is the same every time. The overall layout (e.g. the progression of zones) and some set pieces are fixed, but the details are randomized. Fun fact: the overall layout is configured by a PNG file, with the color of each pixel controlling which "biome" is used.
    - dmbche 1y ago
      I dont know it's the last thing he wants. I feel like the same "most" of the content which lives on the wiki is very secondary to the gameloop and that the designers did a wonderful job at not letting the player optimize the fun out of the game. The game teaches you nothing and is very cryptic, but the gameloop is simple (go down, don't die). You naturally learn how the sandbox interact (i'm on fire but I have a water flask, water clear up sludge) and the randomized (and shuffle) wands expose you to spell interactions. You can easily spend multi hundred hours just learning through the sandbox and trying to break the game. The cryptic stuff (34 orbs, impressing the gods, the messages) is also very cool and I think motivating to keep playing with the sandbox even after having "mastered" the mechanics of the game. (As in you never know what you could manage to find if you try to break the game) I don't think people play noita with a guide on a second monitor. Sorry if poorly worded, tired
jghn 1y ago
I hated EQ for me the reason was it was not UO nor was it even trying to recreate the vibrancy & real world that UO's designers had gone for. *BUT* I also recognized that EQ represented a game that was much more aligned to what a normal gamer would want, one could already see that path being forged in UO as time went on. And then of course WoW came along and perfected the art. I still lament how UO played out. It quickly became apparent that most players binned into one of two categories, and neither category really fit in with the original UO vision. And of course, one of those two categories drove away the customers in the second category. The rest is history.
- CSMastermind 1y ago
  UO had such a huge influence on me. It was amazing.
  - whatwhaaaaat 1y ago
    Both of these games are still going. Atlantic has a huge player base. It’s not the cutthroat game it once was but it’s still very much exciting. You can still die and all your shit poof. Housing on Atlantic is still in demand and hard to get if that gives an idea how healthy it is. Eq has of course had some major server merges but your old account will still be on both UO and EQ. To me UO is a breath of fresh air after 20 years of trash games except for a stand out few. Seeing my old wood elf ranger with swift wind and lupine dagger still glowing was magical. Almost as magical as re-exploring kelethin.
    - jghn 1y ago
      Not only is it still going but it's possible to dust off your ancient account. An old guild mate reported that he had recovered his account originally closed ~2000. Sadly, of the two accounts I had back in the day the only one still recoverable was my alt/mule account. My original account was one of the, well, original accounts from opening day, so it's a shame it was lost. But still, it was fun to run around with one of my guys for a couple of hours. One thing I thought was cool was there had been some custom content involving my guild added near the bank where my guild hung out. It was still there, all these years later!
blueblimp 1y ago
The inter-city travel was my favorite part of EverQuest. (The rest of the game, I didn't find too interesting.) The level of challenge was about right: if you looked at maps and planned your route, you could generally get to where you wanted to go, but it was hazardous. I wonder if there's a game that focuses on that sort of travel experience.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  Depending on what you do and how you play, Eve Online has a harrowing navigation system.
  - smogcutter 1y ago
    And part of the joy of Eve Online is that if you want, you can be a reason travel is dangerous.
- michaelbarton 1y ago
  Perhaps death stranding and its sequel might be the closest?
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  As another commenter pointed out, Death Stranding focuses on the travel experience, where you have to plan your route according to how much 'effort' and risk you want to take. Back when there was Morrowind, which didn't have map markers and whose in-game map had to slowly be uncovered. You get a description and that's it. The game did come with a paper map, which was stuck to my wall for years and frequently consulted. A modern one would be Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2; when you turn on hardcore mode (which was only added after release, but the game was designed with it in mind), you don't get your position on the map, compass, or map markers; every quest involving a location has the NPCs give you a description (and at least in normal mode, your character making a remark when you've reached a landmark). It's not so much about planning your route though.
reactordev 1y ago
My first memory of EverQuest was leaving the tutorial quest, running along a road at night, and being eaten by a lion. I had no idea what I was doing but I was hooked on figuring out.
- kwk1 1y ago
  For me, I made a high elf, didn't know page up/page down were needed to control swimming, and died in the water by the bridge leaving Felwithe, I didn't even get beyond the city gate.
- djtango 1y ago
  Based on my experiences playing FFXIV, there's an entire generation of gamers now that get completely despirited by experiences like that and give up on the first sign of a wipe, even though these days there's no penalty for even dying...
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    IX is probably the most accessible "traditional" MMO there is, but it's still very intimidating because it throws a lot of information and a complex UI at you right away. If you've never played an MMO before, it's a lot.
  - reactordev 1y ago
    And then there’s Dark Souls and Elden Ring… I think you are generalizing on a stereotype. Gamers love experiences. If you give them enough to know there’s more beyond the wipe, they will keep wiping.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 1y ago
Oh my, that long journey is one of my fondest memories of the game as well. Absolutely terrifying as a low level with barely any information on how to pull it off, having to ask strangers for help. The fear of losing all of your stuff on the way and having to run all the way back. Magical. I was just a humble human paladin on the Mithaniel Marr server. I agree with everybody else commenting here, it was a truly unique experience that I would love to be able to re-live, but our expectations as players have moved on a long while back, you can no longer capture that magic because it's now all rote and routine. In 1999 it was the first time many of us had ever experienced anything like it, it flooded the senses and it felt like a world full of interesting people and epic adventures. It was the frontier at the time.
mixxit 1y ago
i remember doing the staff of the wheel quest as a newbie level 16 wizard who had barely seen any of the world i met so many people who helped me get into some really scary places (lguk at 16 is terrifying) as i wondered in all sorts of climates and places, what a fantastic place! looking back the world felt so different and huge and alive with life i will never get that experience again
markbnj 1y ago
> crossing the ocean on a boat felt absolutely epic and dangerous Given the way death was implemented ("LFG @ EC tunnel for a corpse run to Guk!") and the fact that you could fall off the ships in the middle of the ocean when the game lagged, it _was_ epic and dangerous. I remember the first time it happened to me and players in public chat coached me through a 20 or 30 minute swim to get my wizard and stuff to an island with a portal.

ModernMech 1y ago

Totally, me and my friend used to share an EQ account in school. His parents paid for it so he got to play during the day, and I would play at night from midnight until 6am, then I'd go to school. It was profoundly unhealthy, which is why that game earned the name "Evercrack". Last weekend I played a beta game called "Monsters and Memories" that's trying to be an EQ clone, and it's very faithful in that it's carried forward all the terrible parts of EQ. Just the amount of sitting around waiting that you have to do in EQ that I had forgotten about is incredible. Managing your water and food levels, having to go find your corpse when you die and it taking 5 hours just to get there, pitch black nights so you're forced to walk around with a lantern, camping a spawn with 100 other people trying to get the same items as you to complete the same inane quests, broken quests that you can't even complete to progress the game forward... And yeah, one weekend was enough. I got real shit to do, I have time for nonsense, but not THAT kind of time.

daeken 1y ago
There's a musician named Richie Truxillo who made so many comedy songs about EQ back in the day, but your comment just reminded me of "Has Anybody Seen My Corpse." I haven't thought about corpse runs and dragging folks' corpses back to them in ages!
- Tokumei-no-hito 1y ago
  ohh if i had a million platinummmm wow that's a memory i had lost for many years. thanks
michaelmrose 1y ago
Your perception of time is profoundly different when you are a kid with no job. Painful death makes you try hard to avoid it ensuring real stakes.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  It makes it more realistic. At this age, it would mean I just quit the game - like my character died for real!
djtango 1y ago
For me it feels like it was the perfect storm of games like this releasing at a time when a generation of gamers' attentions weren't saturated. I didn't play EQ but on FFXI airships ran on a 15min schedule and if you missed it you would have to sit and wait, not dissimilar to real life. This kind of friction added a charm and immersion to the game but would never fly in a game today [pardon the pun]. Nowadays a lot of the enjoyment I seek out of games is mechanical difficulty and adrenaline because most the other aspects can be fulfilled away from the screen...

thegrim33 1y ago

It was also at the perfect moment in time where you couldn't just pull up the game's wiki on a second monitor and have fully detailed maps and quest details on hand. You actually had to learn things for yourself by exploration and trial and error. You had to learn things from other people by talking to them in game. In my mind back then, I was in awe of people that even had the knowledge of how to get across certain zones safely. You know it took effort/skill for them to gain that knowledge. You couldn't just look it up. I've been thinking how you could possibly replicate a similar thing nowadays, but unless the world constantly randomly changes over time, rendering any created guides/maps/etc moot, I think that window has closed.

dmbche 1y ago
You should look at Noita!
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  Noita is the last thing that comment suggests he wants. Most of Noita's content can only be learned by consulting the wiki, which I assume is an intentional legacy of the designers' love of Nethack. And the world is the same every time.
  - duskwuff 1y ago
    > And the world is the same every time. The overall layout (e.g. the progression of zones) and some set pieces are fixed, but the details are randomized. Fun fact: the overall layout is configured by a PNG file, with the color of each pixel controlling which "biome" is used.
  - dmbche 1y ago
    I dont know it's the last thing he wants. I feel like the same "most" of the content which lives on the wiki is very secondary to the gameloop and that the designers did a wonderful job at not letting the player optimize the fun out of the game. The game teaches you nothing and is very cryptic, but the gameloop is simple (go down, don't die). You naturally learn how the sandbox interact (i'm on fire but I have a water flask, water clear up sludge) and the randomized (and shuffle) wands expose you to spell interactions. You can easily spend multi hundred hours just learning through the sandbox and trying to break the game. The cryptic stuff (34 orbs, impressing the gods, the messages) is also very cool and I think motivating to keep playing with the sandbox even after having "mastered" the mechanics of the game. (As in you never know what you could manage to find if you try to break the game) I don't think people play noita with a guide on a second monitor. Sorry if poorly worded, tired

jghn 1y ago

I hated EQ for me the reason was it was not UO nor was it even trying to recreate the vibrancy & real world that UO's designers had gone for. *BUT* I also recognized that EQ represented a game that was much more aligned to what a normal gamer would want, one could already see that path being forged in UO as time went on. And then of course WoW came along and perfected the art. I still lament how UO played out. It quickly became apparent that most players binned into one of two categories, and neither category really fit in with the original UO vision. And of course, one of those two categories drove away the customers in the second category. The rest is history.

CSMastermind 1y ago
UO had such a huge influence on me. It was amazing.
- whatwhaaaaat 1y ago
  Both of these games are still going. Atlantic has a huge player base. It’s not the cutthroat game it once was but it’s still very much exciting. You can still die and all your shit poof. Housing on Atlantic is still in demand and hard to get if that gives an idea how healthy it is. Eq has of course had some major server merges but your old account will still be on both UO and EQ. To me UO is a breath of fresh air after 20 years of trash games except for a stand out few. Seeing my old wood elf ranger with swift wind and lupine dagger still glowing was magical. Almost as magical as re-exploring kelethin.
  - jghn 1y ago
    Not only is it still going but it's possible to dust off your ancient account. An old guild mate reported that he had recovered his account originally closed ~2000. Sadly, of the two accounts I had back in the day the only one still recoverable was my alt/mule account. My original account was one of the, well, original accounts from opening day, so it's a shame it was lost. But still, it was fun to run around with one of my guys for a couple of hours. One thing I thought was cool was there had been some custom content involving my guild added near the bank where my guild hung out. It was still there, all these years later!

blueblimp 1y ago

The inter-city travel was my favorite part of EverQuest. (The rest of the game, I didn't find too interesting.) The level of challenge was about right: if you looked at maps and planned your route, you could generally get to where you wanted to go, but it was hazardous. I wonder if there's a game that focuses on that sort of travel experience.

aspenmayer 1y ago
Depending on what you do and how you play, Eve Online has a harrowing navigation system.
- smogcutter 1y ago
  And part of the joy of Eve Online is that if you want, you can be a reason travel is dangerous.
michaelbarton 1y ago
Perhaps death stranding and its sequel might be the closest?
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
As another commenter pointed out, Death Stranding focuses on the travel experience, where you have to plan your route according to how much 'effort' and risk you want to take. Back when there was Morrowind, which didn't have map markers and whose in-game map had to slowly be uncovered. You get a description and that's it. The game did come with a paper map, which was stuck to my wall for years and frequently consulted. A modern one would be Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2; when you turn on hardcore mode (which was only added after release, but the game was designed with it in mind), you don't get your position on the map, compass, or map markers; every quest involving a location has the NPCs give you a description (and at least in normal mode, your character making a remark when you've reached a landmark). It's not so much about planning your route though.

reactordev 1y ago

My first memory of EverQuest was leaving the tutorial quest, running along a road at night, and being eaten by a lion. I had no idea what I was doing but I was hooked on figuring out.

kwk1 1y ago
For me, I made a high elf, didn't know page up/page down were needed to control swimming, and died in the water by the bridge leaving Felwithe, I didn't even get beyond the city gate.
djtango 1y ago
Based on my experiences playing FFXIV, there's an entire generation of gamers now that get completely despirited by experiences like that and give up on the first sign of a wipe, even though these days there's no penalty for even dying...
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  IX is probably the most accessible "traditional" MMO there is, but it's still very intimidating because it throws a lot of information and a complex UI at you right away. If you've never played an MMO before, it's a lot.
- reactordev 1y ago
  And then there’s Dark Souls and Elden Ring… I think you are generalizing on a stereotype. Gamers love experiences. If you give them enough to know there’s more beyond the wipe, they will keep wiping.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 1y ago

Oh my, that long journey is one of my fondest memories of the game as well. Absolutely terrifying as a low level with barely any information on how to pull it off, having to ask strangers for help. The fear of losing all of your stuff on the way and having to run all the way back. Magical. I was just a humble human paladin on the Mithaniel Marr server. I agree with everybody else commenting here, it was a truly unique experience that I would love to be able to re-live, but our expectations as players have moved on a long while back, you can no longer capture that magic because it's now all rote and routine. In 1999 it was the first time many of us had ever experienced anything like it, it flooded the senses and it felt like a world full of interesting people and epic adventures. It was the frontier at the time.

mixxit 1y ago

i remember doing the staff of the wheel quest as a newbie level 16 wizard who had barely seen any of the world i met so many people who helped me get into some really scary places (lguk at 16 is terrifying) as i wondered in all sorts of climates and places, what a fantastic place! looking back the world felt so different and huge and alive with life i will never get that experience again

markbnj 1y ago

> crossing the ocean on a boat felt absolutely epic and dangerous Given the way death was implemented ("LFG @ EC tunnel for a corpse run to Guk!") and the fact that you could fall off the ships in the middle of the ocean when the game lagged, it _was_ epic and dangerous. I remember the first time it happened to me and players in public chat coached me through a 20 or 30 minute swim to get my wizard and stuff to an island with a portal.