anytime someone mentions it, i shall repost this.
https://playt1.com/ <----
didn't play on the rpg servers tho
edit:
to the actual question, not much i only heard about EQ because it literally took over the small gaming shop i played magic at, i bought ultima 9 a couple months prior to EQ coming out strictly off the box art from it sitting on the shelf and the only MUD experience i had prior was like 20 minutes of playing around with LORD inbetween downloading wolfenstein/doom mods from a bbs a couple years prior
and DnD proper i guess, was playing that there so that prepared me the most i'd say for systems and stats and fantasy cliche stuff, like i already knew what a half elf was n shit