I remember it was in 1998, and I read a sort of sneak peak in PC Gamer of Everquest. It mentioned that it was basically D&D minus the stupid dice (awesome!) and a totally open world. But the line that really got me was that in the world, they said that "each raindrop exists" and is rendered individually and that if someone shot a fireball across a harbor, you would see the same trajectory but from your vantage point. For some reason those two things got me really intrigued... maybe the level of detail or something.
At the end of the article there was something about a "Beta Test" and I had no idea wtf that meant, but I sent in a letter, and several weeks/months (cannot remember) later my dad said, "something arrived for you in the mail today" and I had no idea what it could be, but opened it and saw a plastic sleeve with an EQ beta CD inside. I was like OMFG, installed it, but the beta wasn't starting for a couple days, so I played the tutorial with Soandso probably 10 times.
When the beta server launched, I made a barbarian warrior named Korlaorf and unintentionally discovered the polar bear skin armor. We all had theories about how killing the polar bears with clubs gave you undamaged skins, so tons of barbarians were wielding clubs haha. Nobody really understood the power of grouping and downtime, so most people just rolled solo. I was about level 10 and thought I was totally badass because I got a sharpening stone from somebody coming from the the Qeynos area and made a TARNISHED two handed sword. Full tattered/rawhide armor too!
Then this level 30 something ranger zones into Blackburrow one day dual-wielding minotaur battle axes and wearing ring mail, and we all thought he must be a god. He started handing out minotaur battle axes and we were so sad that it was the last day of beta.
He told me about "Ice Giants" way past the frozen river in Everfrost and I got a SoW and invis from a shaman to go check it out. Well, I wondered how tough they were so I shot an arrow at them, and a couple came after me. I sprinted all the way back to Halas, but people were trying to engage the IGs en route. I stopped and saw a bunch of people getting mauled by the ice giants, and a couple people tried to focus on one... but there is not much level 10-20s can do to an IG.
I think a couple hours before the beta ended I sold all my gear and bought booze in Halas to get my alcohol tolerance up, since characters weren't being transferred to live. I also believe I put all my starting points into stamina, thinking that it would raise my resistance to the elements or something haha.
When live hit, I made a Dwarf Warrior named Toehammer. Butcherblock and Everfrost are still my two favorite newbie zones.
The most fun I ever had in EQ is playing a dwarf paladin in Unrest and accidentally finding the bookcase to go down into the basement and getting blasted by a festering hag. A week later we made it to the ghost... got me a sweet set of boots. However, opening weekend on Red 99 was a close close second in terms of pure fun to the exploration of Unrest prekunark.
That first time playing though, stepping on that ferry in halas and seeing the huge size of Everfrost Peaks was magical. The sound effects with the snow crunching while running was just too much immersion... I looked up and saw that indeed every snowflake fell with its own trajectory... HOOKED!
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02-10-2013, 10:03 AM
Hybrid Mode
