The first thing to strike me, is that EQ now bears almost no resemblance to the EQ at launch, except for the artifacts of old graphics and the legacy player classes. It seems like every minute detail has been altered since - and all for the better. I didn't know what an MMO was in 1999, had never played any sort of first-person, real-time game and was not a gaming nerd. I was convinced to join by my boss at the time who owned a small computer services company. He'd hired me as the general manager. We built custom PCs and servers, we did the 90s version of network construction and support for a number of small businesses, and we repaired and upgraded PCs. I was the business guy, as the owner knew nothing about business. Anyway... I was given the impression that if I didn't join my co-workers and friends in this game that they would disown me, so I played.
For those of you who never experienced the original game, things were pretty bad. Bad in the sense that gear had no stats on it at all except AC. Invisible gear, like earrings, rings, and cloaks, was particularly hard to obtain. I remember that Blackened Iron was the uber armor back in the day and if you had a Ring Mail cloak and belt to go with it, then you were GEARED, motherfucker. Nothing - even grinding for XP - at any level could be done without a group. There were classes that could solo for XP effectively, but not for loot mobs (unless you were high enough for the loot mob to be trivial). /OOC was constant with players LFG and seeking then indispensable classes like WARs and ENCs to join their group.
One "feature" that was truly despised by all was the spell book screen when you meditated. Whenever you sat to meditate, your entire screen was blocked by your spell book and you could not see what was going on unless you stood up. This was especially bad because the rate at which players regenerated mana and hps out of combat back then was abysmally slow. Much slower than it is now. I'm not sure when they changed it, but the rates were much less then. So you were stuck staring at your spell book for minutes. Speaking of mana, hybrids had much smaller mana pools than they do now. The other issue which seems kinda quaint now, is that no one boxed. Why? Because computers were total potatoes in 1999. If you had a 486 CPU, you had a hoss machine. There was no highspeed internet. It was dial up, so going link dead was a common occurrence.
The biggest negative was the player base. The first thing that struck me on returning was how helpful, polite, generous, and pleasant everyone was. Chat channel conversations now are full of witty humor and fun banter. It's like a group old friends. Not so in 1999. Nope, the player base was overwhelming teenagers bent on ruining the experience for as many people as possible. Flame wars in /OOC. Goofs who could sit motionless for days on end in front of their computers ran their characters around constantly like they had Attention Deficit Disorder and just took a hit of speed. And the immaturity. Oh, the immaturity. If you think teens are @ssholes now, they learned from the last generation. Entitled, narcissistic, thin-skinned, egotistical, viscous, malicious, and rude. People trained for poops and giggles. They ninja looted. They would NOT shut the F up. You couldn't get them to follow simple instructions when taking on a boss. And you were constantly getting killed by their stupidity. And every little point in the game was a source of ego, peacocking, and struggle.
On the positive side, one of the things I really miss from those days is the player-to-player economy. I remember that I had a real business in EQ making cloth and leather armor, bags, and quivers with my little tailoring kit outside Kelethin. I understand that the Bazaar and your summoned merchant are much superior and trade skills are only useful for crafting quest armor sets and some bags, but I miss the bustle and importance of crafting in those early days. The other thing I miss is leveling slowly. Now I know that sounds ridiculous, but in 1999, leveling was S L O W. This had the beneficial side effect of allowing you to travel and spend some real time in a variety of level-appropriate zones in the Old World before you leveled out of them. I miss that. Now if I fart forcefully enough, I'll level. Seriously, I killed a blue-con mob recently and gained an entire bubble of XP at 21 from one kill. Had a simple quest give me a similar amount of XP. I feel pretty confident that a couple weekends is enough to go from 1 to 50. I understand why most people would see that as a positive change, but man, you miss out on so much content.
Well, that's it. Just reminiscing. If you read this whole thing, you gained a bubble of XP.
For those of you who never experienced the original game, things were pretty bad. Bad in the sense that gear had no stats on it at all except AC. Invisible gear, like earrings, rings, and cloaks, was particularly hard to obtain. I remember that Blackened Iron was the uber armor back in the day and if you had a Ring Mail cloak and belt to go with it, then you were GEARED, motherfucker. Nothing - even grinding for XP - at any level could be done without a group. There were classes that could solo for XP effectively, but not for loot mobs (unless you were high enough for the loot mob to be trivial). /OOC was constant with players LFG and seeking then indispensable classes like WARs and ENCs to join their group.
One "feature" that was truly despised by all was the spell book screen when you meditated. Whenever you sat to meditate, your entire screen was blocked by your spell book and you could not see what was going on unless you stood up. This was especially bad because the rate at which players regenerated mana and hps out of combat back then was abysmally slow. Much slower than it is now. I'm not sure when they changed it, but the rates were much less then. So you were stuck staring at your spell book for minutes. Speaking of mana, hybrids had much smaller mana pools than they do now. The other issue which seems kinda quaint now, is that no one boxed. Why? Because computers were total potatoes in 1999. If you had a 486 CPU, you had a hoss machine. There was no highspeed internet. It was dial up, so going link dead was a common occurrence.
The biggest negative was the player base. The first thing that struck me on returning was how helpful, polite, generous, and pleasant everyone was. Chat channel conversations now are full of witty humor and fun banter. It's like a group old friends. Not so in 1999. Nope, the player base was overwhelming teenagers bent on ruining the experience for as many people as possible. Flame wars in /OOC. Goofs who could sit motionless for days on end in front of their computers ran their characters around constantly like they had Attention Deficit Disorder and just took a hit of speed. And the immaturity. Oh, the immaturity. If you think teens are @ssholes now, they learned from the last generation. Entitled, narcissistic, thin-skinned, egotistical, viscous, malicious, and rude. People trained for poops and giggles. They ninja looted. They would NOT shut the F up. You couldn't get them to follow simple instructions when taking on a boss. And you were constantly getting killed by their stupidity. And every little point in the game was a source of ego, peacocking, and struggle.
On the positive side, one of the things I really miss from those days is the player-to-player economy. I remember that I had a real business in EQ making cloth and leather armor, bags, and quivers with my little tailoring kit outside Kelethin. I understand that the Bazaar and your summoned merchant are much superior and trade skills are only useful for crafting quest armor sets and some bags, but I miss the bustle and importance of crafting in those early days. The other thing I miss is leveling slowly. Now I know that sounds ridiculous, but in 1999, leveling was S L O W. This had the beneficial side effect of allowing you to travel and spend some real time in a variety of level-appropriate zones in the Old World before you leveled out of them. I miss that. Now if I fart forcefully enough, I'll level. Seriously, I killed a blue-con mob recently and gained an entire bubble of XP at 21 from one kill. Had a simple quest give me a similar amount of XP. I feel pretty confident that a couple weekends is enough to go from 1 to 50. I understand why most people would see that as a positive change, but man, you miss out on so much content.
Well, that's it. Just reminiscing. If you read this whole thing, you gained a bubble of XP.
