This was bar none the best EQ experience ever for me.
I was one of the five winners, along with my TZ buddy Tryndamere.
I played a DE Cleric and got him to upper 30's - was the defacto "leader" of the non-Darkenbane people up until the very end.
Started out with a bunch of TZ/TZT people, and we had a loose alliance with the SZ people (which was broken eventually). Darkenbane (RZ) was the major force on the server. The blue server people did not make any sort of impact - FoH guys including Furor getting mopped up before they even cracked past the newbie levels, and then of course ranting about how the server was trash.
In a way it kinda was - Verant made the mistake of giving people a free pass to exploit and hack. I've never used a hack when playing EQ, even on emulated servers, although I'd use every trick in the book and every cheap LoS/zoning advantage (including zone plugging). There were some blatant hackers on this server - these two barbarian guys in particular who would warp on top of you immediately after they entered the zone, moved at GM speed, etc. No one would go into South Karana because of them. I had to give the Darkenbane guys props for being so damn organized and good at PvP, but I don't think all of them were clean/legit by any measure. Some may have been. This server pop died down to <100 because of the hacking, though. It's a shame.
There was a level 30'ish showdown of my force and the DB guys around Butcherblock/Gfay, which was intense as hell. NO ONE wanted to engage - because we knew that if you died then that was it.
Most of my ragtag group died - there was a halfling ranger that managed to make it past level 30. One Necro I allied with, Vumil, made it into the last week of the server and was in the high 40's. He would have been in the winners for sure, but died to a bad pull of spectres (lol). Felt so bad for that guy. There was also a guy who died on a bad Unrest pull.
The last week of the server I didn't log on much because Darkenbane had taken over by that point and I had no allies left. I had logged out in neriakc, and these guys had enchanters with DE illusion on coming after me in there.
People scoffed at my choice of Cleric for that server, but there's no way I could have survived with any other class. People underestimated how effective Clerics are on a server where nobody has any MR. With Smite (80'ish DD) + Flash of Light / Root + melee with bash, I could kill people easily. I got a Screaming Mace early on (from killing someone) and the DE Cleric newbie quest armor. Divine Aura + Divine Barrier saved me countless times where I should have died.
Scoring a kill on that server was like fucking Christmas. Not only did you get the kill (with the serverwide announcement), but also PvP points based on the guy's level.... and then the best part - looting everything they had on them.
Last thing: the winners were all supposed to get custom-made items, and SoE never delivered on this. Tryndamere and I both bugged them on the forums and they just locked/deleted our threads.
I did get "the Executioner" title + a server transfer over to Tallon Zek, though.
I'll post some pictures later.
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