Tunare didn't really have raid guilds.

[Wakanda]

I know people will try and tell me this isn't true or that I'm lying, but I lived this experience and know that it's true. Like there are still archived forum posts from the time because they used the forums to keep up with DKP, loot, epic progress, seniority etc.

I'm not saying it would solve a lot of the problems on P99. I don't even raid on P99, but just saw a thread about how someone got in trouble because of a GM enforced raid agreement or something, and it feels surreal to me because my classic EQ experience was basically like.... anyone who wanted to raid could raid, lol.

It didn't matter what guild you were in. I felt like it was more fun because you didn't need an actual raid schedule and could basically just raid whenever you were in the mood. It also felt like there was endless content because if you were an unemployed kid on summer break, you could find a raid somewhere, all hours of the night. When WoW came out I was a little taken aback by how we only raided once a week because I was used to the culture of an MMO being a raid every night.

Just posting some archived threads for all my haters who will say it's fake.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/tunare/bard-list-for-epic-t1025.html -- they publicly tracked epic progress since it wasn't based on your guild. they also tracked dkp for nag/vox publicly, but archive only goes back until 2001.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/tunare/loot-report-3-20-01-poh-t1474.html -- they reported all loot since it was public raids.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/tunare/fear-hosted-by-disciples-of-darkness-t5056.html -- random guilds or even guildless people would host these raids, and anyone could join and basically random on things. Sometimes if you only need the last 2 pieces for your set you would get seniority though.

I was never in a guild in classic EQ and got my epic, full plane of hate gear, full plane of growth gear and full skyshrine gear (I always wanted Kael, but its ironic because on P99 a lot of people think Skyshrine armor is better?).
Like IDK.

This was actual classic for me. I remember when Tunare split and some players went to Drinal, they were kind of culture shocked by the Mithaniel Marr players having closed guild-only raids.

Another weird thing about Tunare was that the auction zone was GFAY. Remember hundreds of people being there at all times.

When I started playing on P99 it wasn't a truly classic experience FOR ME because suddenly your guild mattered a lot, and the auction zone is in EC tunnel, lol. It still feels so weird to me when I go to gfay and I'm the only person in the zone.

[Toxigen]

cool story

[Ripqozko]

no one is reading that, hope that helps.

[Snaggles]

Most people raided as guilds. They used /gu to give directions since Ventrilo wasn’t released until 2002. They also sold in EC for the most part until the Bazaar.

[Zuranthium]

That would be a nicer method of raiding compared to the current, assuming some kind of size limitation, based on the people who show up first and setting a minimum number of Clerics. There's no meaningful gameplay that happens with standard PvE raiding, so at least making it more free-form is an upgrade.

I don't like Gfay as the trade hub though. Doesn't make sense for evil characters to be allowed to congregate there, and the EC tunnel is such a perfect spot for a bazaar to exist, both in terms of the landmark and where it's positioned in the game world.

[Ciderpress]

What you're describing sounds like a collectivist nightmare where nobody has any real stake in anything, social relationships don't matter and you wait for your participation trophy that means nothing when you get it.

I agree though it's cool that different cultures just organically emerged on each server like that. I played on Povar- we had trade hubs in Gfay, NFP and the EC tunnel. We also had a fiercely competitive raid scene.

[Duik]

I used roger wilco or team speak in early 2000 with the guild An Sli Amach. What did ventrilo add that TS or wilco didnt to voice comms?
ELON and Southern Armada used the same.

[magnetaress]

Weird buttt cool story yeah

[Zuranthium]

What you're describing sounds like a collectivist nightmare where nobody has any real stake in anything, social relationships don't matter and you wait for your participation trophy that means nothing when you get it.

There are more social relationships in the system described, since you're constantly surrounded by different people and need to communicate with them. There's more at stake too, since you don't know exactly how good the group of people will be, and since you're more likely to show up to raids that have a drop you want. This incentivizes people to put more effort in at the raid.

The p99 system is what creates participation trophies, while also rewarding unhealthy gameplay. There's nothing meaningful about being in a zerg guild and getting DKP just for showing up while the zerg trivializes the content, and there's nothing skillful about poopsocking and getting rewarded for destroying your sleep schedule to sit a camp non-stop.

I used roger wilco or team speak in early 2000 with the guild An Sli Amach. What did ventrilo add that TS or wilco didnt to voice comms?
ELON and Southern Armada used the same.

Highly doubt that. It wasn't possible to switch between Everquest and another program back then; EQ took up the entire screen and couldn't be minimized. So you'd be relying on opening Roger Wilco (TS didn't exist until 2002) and having it never disconnect after opening EQ, which is very dubious. Not to mention the fact that most people didn't have computer microphones back then. Even if your story isn't a fabrication, it's something that was done by less than 1% of players back then. Would have been only a small handful of people within a specific guild, nothing close to how voice chat is used now.

[Jimjam]

I’ve never thought about it before, but dkp on p99 does feel much more like a participation trophy than the open time / coa raids on AB did. The open raids had far more of a party atmosphere than the cog in a finely oiled machine of p99. I enjoyed both though.

[cd288]

With respect to OP, yeah open/multi-guild raids existed on most servers. Not all the time, but it was a thing that happened at various points on most servers. At the same time there were guilds that were larger and more coordinated and didn't need to combine together with others to take down content. but yeah early on your ability to raid was much less tied to being in a "raiding" guild.

The open/combined raids happened less and less on most servers as the classic timeline progressed however. A combination of increasing player base size, knowledge of strategies and spawn timers, and pixel lust caused being in a "raiding" guild to become much more of a thing. Certainly by Velious I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of servers had one or two major raiding guilds.

[loramin]

The open/combined raids happened less and less on most servers as the classic timeline progressed however.

I'm not sure that's true. On Bristlebane at least, it was the opposite: the server started out with a competitive guild scene, but then at the end of Velious Vox and Naggy were opened up to anyone (there was a server-wide bulletin board where you could enter a raffle to lead a raid against one of the dragons).

[cd288]

I'm not sure that's true. On Bristlebane at least, it was the opposite: the server started out with a competitive guild scene, but then at the end of Velious Vox and Naggy were opened up to anyone (there was a server-wide bulletin board where you could enter a raffle to lead a raid against one of the dragons).

Yeah outdated raid content is obviously a different story from, say, Velious raid content in the Velious era.

[7thGate]

I don't remember what server I was on, and I never made it to raid level so my only raiding experience was hearing about a Vox raid my friend attended with his level 50 magician in early 2001. But I remember Gfay as the auction zone, I was surprised when I found out it was EC here and a lot of other places.

[Duik]

Posted by someone clueless...Highly doubt that. It wasn't possible to switch between Everquest and another program back then; EQ took up the
Roger that. Ever heard of 2 computers little buddy? Or 3, more?
Before we dismiss things out of hand maybe have a little think first.

[Zuranthium]

Most people didn't have 2 computers. That ties into what I was saying about people generally not even having computer mics back then. It's a total fabrication to suggest that any guild back then was playing with a majority of a raid on voice chat. Like, that's literally documented among the top raid guilds too. It didn't happen. Voice chat was an extremely niche and really wasn't even talked about by players. The freaking EQ devs weren't even playing that way, which is also documented.

Also, people who did have multiple computers were generally 2-boxing. My friend's parents played EQ like that. They never used voice chat.

[Ciderpress]

I actually prefer the native guild text chat for most important raid instruction. Voice too often gets cluttered with people talking over eachother at crucial moments, certain words being dropped or misunderstood due to bad connections or bad headsets yada yada. Text chat is nice cause it's easily logged and can easily be referenced later if you missed something that was said 15 seconds ago for whatever reason.

Obviously voice has advantages too, but you can easily kill all the encounters and content p99 offers without ever using any kind of voice chat.

[Ciderpress]

Oh and it also doesn't help that basically everyone who plays here has the same generic nerd voice and are impossible to tell apart just by hearing them talk. Just type in /gu so I can read your stupid elf name next to the stupid thing you said.

[Grimjaw]

Thank you for sharing these incredible tales from the early days of EverQuest. Your experiences and links highlight the unique aspects that made this game so special. Also it brought back some great memories of my own. This post shouldn't be in Rants and Flames, it should be commemorated in the EverQuest Hall of Fame.

[Duik]

Waa waa waa.
I didnt do it so it didnt happen.
Must be sad being so far behind the times like that.
BTW, girls sound different (to boys) on voice comms.
Other differences as well but you prolly didnt play doctors and nurses back then. Its ok.

[Duik]

Hall of Flame it is then.

[cd288]

Most people didn't have 2 computers. That ties into what I was saying about people generally not even having computer mics back then. It's a total fabrication to suggest that any guild back then was playing with a majority of a raid on voice chat. Like, that's literally documented among the top raid guilds too. It didn't happen. Voice chat was an extremely niche and really wasn't even talked about by players. The freaking EQ devs weren't even playing that way, which is also documented.

Also, people who did have multiple computers were generally 2-boxing. My friend's parents played EQ like that. They never used voice chat.

Maybe other peoples' experiences differ but mine was similar to this. Don't recall voice being used significantly on raids until around Luclin era.

[Namsaknoi]

Almost sure FoH and/or Afterlife used 'Roger Wilco' which was heavily used by Counter Strike players at the time, although in-game shouts/ooc etc were still the default for raids, but in general, it wasn't common in MMORPG games until later. IRC was another option, and that was kind of like a part of 'deep web' of the time.

[Ciderpress]

Waa waa waa.
I didnt do it so it didnt happen.
Must be sad being so far behind the times like that.
BTW, girls sound different (to boys) on voice comms.
Other differences as well but you prolly didnt play doctors and nurses back then. Its ok.

Lol girls don't play eq. How many times did you get burned by that scam in game?

[loramin]

Lol girls don't play eq. How many times did you get burned by that scam in game?

Look, just because the dark elf female you got "naughty in Neriak" with turned out to be a guy, that doesn't mean women didn't exist ... it just meant they weren't talking to you.

I played on Bristlebane with several (IRL) women, during Velious. They definitely existed.

[Ciderpress]

Look, just because the dark elf female you got "naughty in Neriak" with turned out to be a guy, that doesn't mean women didn't exist ... it just meant they weren't talking to you.

I played on Bristlebane with several (IRL) women, during Velious. They definitely existed.

Okay thanks killjoy loramin, it was a joke. I know there are like 2 actual girls who play everquest.

[cd288]

Look, just because the dark elf female you got "naughty in Neriak" with turned out to be a guy, that doesn't mean women didn't exist ... it just meant they weren't talking to you.

I played on Bristlebane with several (IRL) women, during Velious. They definitely existed.

You gotta stop taking things so literally bro

[loramin]

I would have thought that talking about getting "naughty in Neriak" with a dark elf female would have at least suggested that I wasn't being wholly serious.

[Ciderpress]

I would have thought that talking about getting "naughty in Neriak" with a dark elf female would have at least suggested that I wasn't being wholly serious.

This is the "I'm just a comedian" jon stewart defense, as he has the ear of a generation and talks about nothing but politics for 15 years.

[Wakanda]

Almost sure FoH and/or Afterlife used 'Roger Wilco' which was heavily used by Counter Strike players at the time, although in-game shouts/ooc etc were still the default for raids, but in general, it wasn't common in MMORPG games until later. IRC was another option, and that was kind of like a part of 'deep web' of the time.

I never got Roger Wilco to work. We desperately tried to. I remember being so desperate that we started doing 3-way calls with people we met on EQ. My mom got this huge phone bill (several hundred dollars was a lot of money in the 99), and I swore to her that I didn't call anyone, and she believed me and somehow convinced the phone company to drop the charges. She knew that her son had no friends and spent all of his time on the computer, so who would he be calling? He doesn't even know anyone from California !

[Wakanda]

What you're describing sounds like a collectivist nightmare where nobody has any real stake in anything, social relationships don't matter and you wait for your participation trophy that means nothing when you get it.

I agree though it's cool that different cultures just organically emerged on each server like that. I played on Povar- we had trade hubs in Gfay, NFP and the EC tunnel. We also had a fiercely competitive raid scene.

I can see what you're saying, and it makes me wonder if that's why it was so hard to get planar gear on Tunare. Like getting my set of Woven Shadow was a huge under-taking, but it made it feel super rewarding. I had Cleric friends who never had full planar even after years of raiding. Then I come on P99 and get full Planar 2 hours after zoning into Hate and I'm just like wait, what??? I still think that the drop rates are over-tuned for Planar gear, under-tuned for Ravenscale, but that's whatever.

Also like there was low incentive, virtually no incentive for me to raid Plane of Hate on my Monk unless I thought we were going to be killing bosses. If we were pulling trash, no way, I ain't interested. That's one cool thing about the way DKP works, there's always incentives for Clerics to raid PoF and monks to raid PoH, but that wasn't really a thing on Tunare, at least from MY perspective.

They did have some seniority rules. I would say you are wrong about people not building meaningful relationships without guilds. I feel like it was the other way around. You're desperate for more people to join your raid, so you have everyone reach out to their FRIENDS to join. I remember being shocked when I did my Rogue epic. I wasn't super knowledgeable about the game back then, but a married couple and friends teleported me out to Steamfont and helped me kill Renux or whatever it is you do out there, and then when it was time to kill the General, I was so worried that it would be too hard for me to do. Then 80+ people showed up to help me with this fight even though I wasn't in any guild.

On P99 I feel like guilds.... make people anti-social. There are certain raiding guilds who will treat outsiders like they don't even exist, or are irrelevant. There are people who will join a guild, make a lot of friends, and then bounce to join a raiding guild filled with people they don't even like. My few experiences with being in raiding guilds felt like I was in a guild with actual nazis and that I better be really careful if I type anything because I might get in trouble by simply trying to make banter or conversation.

Then people literally just get loot they want from a guild and then bounce. There's no real friendship there and it's super obvious.

Also the hatred of people in certain guilds. On early days of P99 green I had groups fall apart because someone invited a player from <Seal Team> and everyone started freaking out. Or I've been on Blue and having a chill experience when someone goes on an angry rant about how bad they hate Riot etc. and starts ranting at a player they don't even know because of their guild tag, lol.

I think when guilds are based off of common interests and friendship it's a more social experience than when you join a guild solely to get loot, and might even have guild officers threaten you if you get caught engaging in casual conversation in guild chat. Like nah, man.

I still know people from EQ 25+ years ago (some have passed away). I've never really made that many tight friends from P99, it always feels like everything is more of a business arrangement. Meanwhile even on WoW I have random friends who tag along with me everywhere I go simply because they like playing with me.

There's something about P99 and the guilds / raids that feels very anti-social to me compared to my own experiences with original everquest and other more modern MMOs.

[Jazzy]

I played classic on Tunare through to velious and dont recognise any of what you are spouting here.

(Guilded with JLoN / Tide then Stars)

[Jazzy]

Apart from yea Gfay was the auction hub

[Wakanda]

I played classic on Tunare through to velious and dont recognise any of what you are spouting here.

(Guilded with JLoN / Tide then Stars)

Justice league of norrath wasnÂ’t a raiding guild 😹 they were incredibly small, and casual
Guild

https://i.imgur.com/GnXy3L5.jpeg

Weird how this main tank was tanking for PUG raids huh
If you google JLoN there are a ton of people talking about completely pugging their epics and how that was true nostalgia for them

My guess is that JLN became a thing after everyone quit playing EQ because I notice a lot of them bragging about being badass from 2004-2017

A time period where all of the top EQ players had already quit playing EQ to go MAKE world of Warcraft

The tide / stars thing is weird to even bring up

For outsiders they were an Asian guild who used their time zones to kill all raid mobs while Americans were sleeping

American players got pissed and ended their existence

It actually went stars > tide > doesnÂ’t exist in a matter of like 2 weeks

[Wakanda]

You’re actually bringing back a lot of nostalgia for me ;)

https://i.imgur.com/pq5EoHq.jpeg

i went on a ton of raids that Tiluna led ��

But yeah literally no one cared what guild you were in

Like what guild was Musk in when they got the first and only fiery avenger? Literally the only one in the game on any server? What guild was Kaylum in when he got the first ragebringer on any server?

It’s just really weird to have a very vivid memory of what tunare was + a ton of friends who still talk about it, and then have someone just randomly show up and be like nun unh

[Wakanda]

https://i.imgur.com/aYts7t2.jpeg

I just went to the Facebook page for Tunare and this was the first thing I saw ;)

Lot of JLN people in it btw, you should join if you haven’t already. Super intense nostalgia trip.

[Jazzy]

Didnt say i raided with JLN, just was in the guild for a short time before i realised being euro that my play times didnt match up with any american friends i made.

Stars was a fun time. Used to get so much hate from the rest of server at certain periods

[Mendo]

I loved Gfay as the market. One zone had a bank, merchants, things to kill, and a direct port in. You also got to hang out in the forest rather than the tunnel which is super meh. I mean why don't we at least move our tunnel over to shady? Seems more market like back there.

[Wakanda]

Didnt say i raided with JLN, just was in the guild for a short time before i realised being euro that my play times didnt match up with any american friends i made.

Stars was a fun time. Used to get so much hate from the rest of server at certain periods

What were you saying then? I hate to come off as this hateful and ornery old man, but pretending like raiding guilds were a thing on Tunare triggers me because it’s like y’all trying to rewrite history and my memories from this game is a big part of my life experiences that I reflect on for happiness

so it hurts when people try to steal that away and turn it into something it wasn’t ;)

I imagine if we dig deep enough we can find old threads from the emergence of drinal ;) was a huge culture shock to tunare players who were used to logging in and having fun and now they had these people from mithaniek mart (cats in hats) telling them they were no longer allowed to play the game

They were super hostile and aggressive about it too

[Jazzy]

My apologies man, didnt mean to start anything.

My experience is vastly different to yours, presumably due to the guilds i was part of for raiding (i stopped playing before luclin).

I dont remember Stars ever doing open raids and needing outsiders. I could be remembering incorrectly. There were perhaps a few ToV raids come to think of it done in cahoots with a smaller guild from HK.

That guild Talisman seemed to boss the server through this time period, always assumed they were raiding on their own but its cool if it was all open raids

[cd288]

Justice league of norrath wasnÂ’t a raiding guild 😹 they were incredibly small, and casual
Guild

https://i.imgur.com/GnXy3L5.jpeg

Weird how this main tank was tanking for PUG raids huh
If you google JLoN there are a ton of people talking about completely pugging their epics and how that was true nostalgia for them

My guess is that JLN became a thing after everyone quit playing EQ because I notice a lot of them bragging about being badass from 2004-2017

A time period where all of the top EQ players had already quit playing EQ to go MAKE world of Warcraft

The tide / stars thing is weird to even bring up

For outsiders they were an Asian guild who used their time zones to kill all raid mobs while Americans were sleeping

American players got pissed and ended their existence

It actually went stars > tide > doesnÂ’t exist in a matter of like 2 weeks

I like how you ranted about how you have no close friends on P99/people aren't nice/anti-social and then displayed the exact type of behavior you're complaining about all because someone disagreed with you. Sometimes you have to look in the mirror.

[zelld52]

I played on E’Ci (which got merged into Tunare at some point) and there was maybe 2 raiding guilds: Venerate and Arete.

But they didn’t lock down all the targets. Vox / Naggy were left up until someone hosted a server wide open raid. Kael Arena , Plane of Hate, and Growth trash were like the top tier for the average player. Shit, I hosted a Naggy raid when I was 13 during Velious era because someone left Naggy up all week.

[loramin]

I like how you ranted about how you have no close friends on P99/people aren't nice/anti-social and then displayed the exact type of behavior you're complaining about all because someone disagreed with you. Sometimes you have to look in the mirror.

Two people are having a nice reasonable discussion. Person 1 makes a claim. Person 2 challenges it. Person 1 respectfully defends their claim with evidence ...

... and then CD288 wades in to a conversation he wasn't even participating in to insult person 1 with no basis.

https://24.media.tumblr.com/486e18ae6eecfff97fdc19dbc33ab4ca/tumblr_mhqc9iSDIg1qed7g8o2_400.gif

(The most "rant-y" and "anti-social" thing in that entire quote was "Weird how this main tank was tanking for PUG raids huh" ... which is positively tame by P99 forum standards.)

[cd288]

Two people are having a nice reasonable discussion. Person 1 makes a claim. Person 2 challenges it. Person 1 respectfully defends their claim with evidence ...

... and then CD288 wades in to a conversation he wasn't even participating in to insult person 1 with no basis.

https://24.media.tumblr.com/486e18ae6eecfff97fdc19dbc33ab4ca/tumblr_mhqc9iSDIg1qed7g8o2_400.gif

(The most "rant-y" and "anti-social" thing in that entire quote was "Weird how this main tank was tanking for PUG raids huh" ... which is positively tame by P99 forum standards.)

Thanks for sharing Loramin!