Do you feel like the early days of EQ are forever lost to time?

[Wakanda]

I started playing in 1999. I was just a kid though, and made a new character every two hours. By the time I got serious about leveling all of the neat items like SSoY, SMR, FBSS etc we’re commonly seen in the auction channel.

(Bronze breastplates sold for 300p on my server, two real life friends stopped talking to each other over this after they got in a fight over one in Unrest).

I also remember when items like exe axe, and exe hood, and even FBR and oracle robes were considered some of the most coveted items in the game. People desperately wanted the oracle robe because it looked ~sO GoOD~

But I’m actually more curious about the first high level players. That part of history. The first people who went into Lower Guk or Sol B without any map and learned the entire zone (think of how huge these zones are). I really wish twitch streaming or YouTube had been a thing back then because I imagine that would have been crazy to witness.

I feel like people leveled really slow back then, but maybe with an initial rush you had a bunch of people basically raiding these zones? Or was it tiny groups? There’s also the fact that they had to add level requirements to the planes, and the fact that many low level players had planar gear, some of which was removed from the game for being deemed too powerful. I just wish we had a more clear idea of what was actually happening during these time periods. I was playing the game, but seldom making it beyond level 15.

My idea of a high level player was a level 20 because they had a last name ! Also does anyone remember freaking out over Short Sword of Morin? Or a plain 6/23 langseax?