How did people figure out quest back in the day?

[Ravager]

They just looked for the "!" over the NPC's heads.

[RDawg816]

I remember going to NPCs and actually talking to them.
Hail
What gems?
Who took your gems?
I will find your gems.
Where are your gems?
I want gems.
/gu Anyone know about %t's gems?


Good times.

[Baler]

I remember responding to quest npcs in complete sentences as a young teenager. It was totally awesome. I felt like it was one of those old text based rpgs where you have to type in the correct text and words to proceed.
In the end I never did a lot of quests and ones that gave me items to do what ever with ended up sitting in my bank forever.

[syztem]

I recall following some by text only with no help but mostly the easier ones. I know for a fact though that GMs or devs which ever category you want them in either knew it from the code etc or out slowly got passed down from top dev-friend01 to friend of friend etc eventually turning forums full of half guess half quested epics became full guide. Look at some of the original epic quest finishers, they were always top guild, top player of that class, very far gear wise.

[k3vil]

I remember having npc's with broken texts back in the day. When the NPC's replied with a exception error

[Tupakk]

They actually worked for it, that's how. I love trying to do the broken quests and see how far I can get with no information or partial information besides knowing that it's broken. Makes it that much more fun.

[syztem]

Must admit doing the quests are fun especially considering how bad a lot of them suck. After doing 2 epics recently(using wiki) it's still fun, some parts are annoying every quest in eq has that annoyingly long possibility. I did the monk robe twice again from scratch which is great fun(circle not WF) getting the sashes headband etc only to fail the trivial combine of 41 the times with a skill of 140+.... But yeah doing targin and raster again lots of fun. On live I did a 29hr stint with a 2hr nap only to login and find him spawned the next day. Monks who remember raster on live I don't think they can ever forget that

[Lagaidh]

As a paladin who got his epic when it was useless...

I remember the Ragefire camps in SolB for guild clerics. We'd be there so long we'd get pissy with each other.

Ugh. I can't believe I allowed a video game to subject me to such torture that I was more than willing to accept.

Heh. Maybe camping vanilla Ragefire could be made into an enhanced interrogation technique.

[syztem]

How many did the paw of opolla on live? farming the degenerate guk weed? that was just amazingly fun

[Yasi]

I find it even more fascinating that People went through the epic quest shit without knowing what's in for them at the end. I mean: some random dude on a pyramid telling you to gather some items doesn't really translate into "figure this out and get a best-in-Slot-item" - especially if you consider non-epic quest rewards that were often rather shitty.