How did people figure out quest back in the day?

[Sajuuk]

Some seem straight forward, others... not so much. Hell, I'm trying to fathom how someone figured out the fifth ranking skullcap for iksar necros. When I read the discription of what the NPC quest giver wanted me to do, I tried thinking about which dock I should go to find Ryx. Where the quest actually wants you to go was somewhere I would have looked last.

To be fair, I guess the fact that the OT evil outpost would of made sense since there are skellys at that dock. So maybe that quest is a bad example. But I would of never figure out which drink he wants.

And, of course, their are much more complicated quest.

With no wiki, no google, and before alakazam was established, how do people figure out those crazy quest? The only thing I can think of is being friends with someone who is part of the EQ team, or, I play ARK and have met paid testers for the game who have told me that they get to know all the ins and out of the game. So maybe testers for original EQ were the same way and they slowly leaked info?

Same for how people know how to make certain items with no schematics or ingredients. How much trial and error did it take to raise research skill and figure out which words/runes make certain spells?

Boggles my little mind I tell ya...

Anyone here play on live in 1999 and completed a quest on their own with no outside help? Besides noob quest [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Bummey]

For some things, it's utterly beyond me. I just did the platinum speckled powder step of the druid epic and I can't begin to comprehend how someone came to the conclusion that they should hand the wood painting to that human skeleton hiding behind the giant fort in Frontier Mountains.

[Freakish]

Message boards. There were boards completely dedicated to solving EQ quests. Communities came together and said "Ok I turned this item in and it worked, this is the next step" and someone else might be able to figure out the next step, and so on.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

Originally Posted by Freakish [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Message boards. There were boards completely dedicated to solving EQ quests. Communities came together and said "Ok I turned this item in and it worked, this is the next step" and someone else might be able to figure out the next step, and so on.

This was the main conduit. I remember when the epics came out, the various boards were collaborative. The main enchanter site had a thread, and people just brainstormed and tried things out, and if they solved something, they posted it.

If I am remembering correctly, it was still laborious. I know my own personal story. I decided to try to be first chanter to 60 on my server instead of doing the epic (I ended up being second chanter to 60, on Quellious). I hit 60 before the chanter epic had been solved. I had VoG. So then the epic gets solved and I see the effect, and I'm like wtf.

Never did the epic.

But also I highly suspect sometimes devs playing the game would leak out infoz on the quests.

But one thing is sure, during classic, quests were not solved at lightning speed. Likewise with encounter strats. I remember Trakanon being a "mystery" when Kunark came out, and it took a fair while before my server killed it.

Those were different days. People were playing **tons** but at another level they sometimes played like casuals -- ie, not really knowing how to tackle content, not being super-efficient, etc. My take on how players do games these days, they want solutions and maximum efficiency to quests and encounters ASAP. That is one reason why designing a modern MMO is nearly impossible. We all are too good at this shit now. We chew through content too fast. What company wants to spend a year+ developing content that will be beaten in less than a week? We done beat the genre -- to death.

[Cecily]

Packet sniffers? There's absolutely no reason to give the wooden painting to the human skeleton in FM for the druid epic, but somehow we know to do that.

[Kagey]

The GM's that would play back in the day would spill info to their guilds and it would slowly branch out.

And early sites like everlore

[JayDee]

Originally Posted by Kagey [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The GM's that would play back in the day would spill info to their guilds and it would slowly branch out.

This has to be the case. No way in hell people were experimenting and losing valuable quest pieces as a long shot for some of these quests with vague instructions.

[radda]

I've thought the same thing OP, but it wasn't till the epic 2.0 for enchanted that I realized by that time it was the community of class forums or obviously violates and random friends

[radda]

I mean guilddmates and that I happen to be on the bleeding edge for completing the new 2.0

[Troxx]

Originally Posted by Kagey [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The GM's that would play back in the day would spill info to their guilds and it would slowly branch out.

And early sites like everlore