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Discussion - When did the addiction begin for you? (1 Viewer)

Joined
Nov 24, 2021
RedCents
575¢
Question I always like to ask people... when did it start for you? Did it end for a period before returning?

For me, I grew up watching my dad play, started when I was barely in school (TSS/TBS was current??) and I've been playing ever since for the past 14 years
 
I was living in the US for work with young family. Kunark was current with Velious just coming. I remember my first character getting lost in a forest with all these eyes from level 3-5 mobs glaring back and thinking Woot! Remember someone telling me to turn my gamma up and making some of the best friends in EQ; when you had to group/guild and chat via text, medding was 20mins downtime between killing mobs when kiting as a Dru! Raiding was 70 people with STFU in /raid common and graphics on super low, often looking at the floor to help avoid lag lol. Fond memories of 100 plat being a fortune to some. And my kids looking over my shoulder and asking if they can play!!!
 
In late 1999, I had a junior Marine working for me in Japan and I came in around 0530 one day to find him printing REAMS of maps on my work computer. WTF was he doing with government resources printing game maps?!?! I started counseling him (yelling with lots of extra expletives) about responsibility and misuse of government assets.

“But Gunny, I need those maps for EverQuest.”

“WTF is EverQuest Marine?”

“An online game that I play with my friends.”
Another volley of expletives and the discussion was over. About an hour or so later, the rest of my Marines came in and the guy I had yelled at told them what had happened. One of the more senior guys came to talk to me about it (a Staff Sergeant) and he explained that they all played in the barracks and they had asked this Lance Corporal to print the maps for the group.

What? Even my Staff Sergeant played?

I was at the base Exchange about a month or two later and saw the CD for sale - only $19.99. So I bought it to see what the hype was.

And that began my addiction (and yes, I also ended up printing the entire EQ Atlas website, ha ha).
 
I was hooked from day one. Medding whilst staring at your spellbook on my Druid alt. Dying over and over trying to find your corpse in BB or GF. OOC‘s asking for a port someplace. How long it took to get your first toon to 20 when there were limited camps, no rez, and no money to get any gear. My first raid in fear: wiping over and over and having some nice folks from Jade Dynasty break the port in and help us CR. Getting passed by on my warrior for the epic golem ball. I still have yet to finish that epic because of that one thing. My first hate raid: it went well but after the fear raid I was terrified the further we went. I did get my hate epic part though. My first chardok raid: this was my first raid with my first raiding guild. I didn’t know anything about my epic yet and my guild offered to do the queen for me. I didn’t even know what for, lol. They just said, ”Just say yes. You’ll be happy you did. You’ll need it eventually.“ It was my first part of my epic. I could not believe they would take a chance on wiping to a mob that deep in chardok for my sorry ass. I remember being 2nd tank in the rotation Vindi on my first kael raid and having to take over when the main went down. I actually survived and barely kept agro! I was awarded a guild boc after that raid when every saw how bad my agro was, lol.

So many memories. Both at the group level and guild/raid level. So many people willing to give their time to help someone. It set the stage for when I was in the position of being able to help people.
 
May 1999 one of my best friends from high school told me about this new RPG called Everquest. it was a no brainer for me since this friend was the DM for all of our D&D games. He tells me he plays on Innoruuk, but neglected to tell me that he created a DE so of course I decide to play a Paladin since that was my main D&D character. Like everyone else I was instantly hooked. My friend got tired of the game after one month and quit. I have had an on and off relationship with EQ ever since. My first break came in Velious. I don't recall how long that was, I want to say six months. Then in OOW I quit for a long time due to the complete imbalance of the SK vs Pally. My little bro had borrowed an SK from a friend and I was watching him play the toon. Mind you my brother had never played an SK before. He was walking around in Nobles Causway and sees a namer and decides to fight it. He pulls it with two adds. I start laughing because I know he is dead, because I am higher lvl than him and I struggle to kill a single trash mob at a time. He proceeds to kill all three at once. I became so disgusted that I didn't log in for over two years.
 
Sadly for me the only way I was able to experience the "golden" era was via TLPs... I started when things started getting streamlined around 70-75ish, but I remember 5 year old me coming downstairs at 7am sharp every day just to watch my dad play his enchanter. Then there was the constant begging to play on his account with my Iksar SK, only ever got him to 64 soloing mostly because I was a child and could barely read group chats lol

eventually he quit I think around call of the forsaken, and I ended up making my own account, and over time I ended up rerolling my main to this day, Iksar SK and playing on FV

Game has cost me relationships and friendships, which ended up naturally forcing me to take some RL time to focus on myself but I always come back

(edit) I also did play on Wayfayer's Haven(p2002) for a good bit, one of my favorite experiences was raiding plane of time in era for the first time ever
 
Joined during Kunark expansion... played a monk until around 2005 then sold the account and vowed to quit. A year later I returned and played for another 5 years, this time with Redguides and then had a year off after selling the account yet again. Happened again for another four years then gave up and then again and gave up again in 2018.

Now I'm looking at returning again... yes, this game has really burrowed it's hooks in me like a digital herpes - you just can't get rid of it no matter what comes along to fill the void in the interim!
 
From April to July 1999 I played a Paladin. In July of 1999 I started a monk. Monks needed no gear. No plat to speak of. Monks just needed to "play". I was hooked.
 
In late 1999, I had a junior Marine working for me in Japan and I came in around 0530 one day to find him printing REAMS of maps on my work computer. WTF was he doing with government resources printing game maps?!?! I started counseling him (yelling with lots of extra expletives) about responsibility and misuse of government assets.

“But Gunny, I need those maps for EverQuest.”

“WTF is EverQuest Marine?”

“An online game that I play with my friends.”
Another volley of expletives and the discussion was over. About an hour or so later, the rest of my Marines came in and the guy I had yelled at told them what had happened. One of the more senior guys came to talk to me about it (a Staff Sergeant) and he explained that they all played in the barracks and they had asked this Lance Corporal to print the maps for the group.

What? Even my Staff Sergeant played?

I was at the base Exchange about a month or two later and saw the CD for sale - only $19.99. So I bought it to see what the hype was.

And that began my addiction (and yes, I also ended up printing the entire EQ Atlas website, ha ha).
That’s so weird, in 2001 at Kinser we had about 20 people playing EQ in the barracks. We had a guy get caught printing maps out and he got a page 11 and extra Duty.
 
I was hooked from day one. Medding whilst staring at your spellbook on my Druid alt. Dying over and over trying to find your corpse in BB or GF. OOC‘s asking for a port someplace. How long it took to get your first toon to 20 when there were limited camps, no rez, and no money to get any gear. My first raid in fear: wiping over and over and having some nice folks from Jade Dynasty break the port in and help us CR. Getting passed by on my warrior for the epic golem ball. I still have yet to finish that epic because of that one thing. My first hate raid: it went well but after the fear raid I was terrified the further we went. I did get my hate epic part though. My first chardok raid: this was my first raid with my first raiding guild. I didn’t know anything about my epic yet and my guild offered to do the queen for me. I didn’t even know what for, lol. They just said, ”Just say yes. You’ll be happy you did. You’ll need it eventually.“ It was my first part of my epic. I could not believe they would take a chance on wiping to a mob that deep in chardok for my sorry ass. I remember being 2nd tank in the rotation Vindi on my first kael raid and having to take over when the main went down. I actually survived and barely kept agro! I was awarded a guild boc after that raid when every saw how bad my agro was, lol.

So many memories. Both at the group level and guild/raid level. So many people willing to give their time to help someone. It set the stage for when I was in the position of being able to help people.
Its not the super awesome moments that hook u.. its the stress you go through sometimes. U get thru that... DAMN... now you are hooked. most of my best memories are about those times that beat u into submission and make you sit ther laughing your ass off off when u somehow squeek thru to victory. . My introduction to everquest was watching a couple rl friends play... watching them get destroyed over and over in lesser fay by the bixies... losing 7-8 lv... before getting help lol. i was hooked right there.

Lol. i still have some of the original cd's etc i think. I do have that map of Norrath for sure. Great memories> Enjoyed the visuals Slade
 
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My son started when it first launched and that summer he played a lot while off from school so I saw the game on his computer a lot.

Got interested in it and we made a "spin off" account for me. In other words back then, at the beginning, you could make a character on an account and spin him off to his own account free. (now there are not even paid account to account transfers)

So I dabbled up to OOW then the 4 x a week mandatory raiding became stressful and the pressure to maintain that pace became no fun. I was burned out. It was too many rules, restrictions, guilds were failing right and left. Those still in the game were expected to do hard and I mean hard recruiting. And my dial up sucked. 😁 So I left

Never touched it again until 9 years ago when I was no longer working and needed something to do. Brought up my old account and logged in, totally lost at level 65!!!. Ran thru the tutorial, did a bus load of research for everything that came up in the game. Loved the new features like mercs, in game guild for ports, easy walk thru of quests and mission, daily hot zones. All this great stuff they put in the game to help a player who perhaps does not want to play with others.

Am now the proud controller of 12 accounts with average of 3 characters per accounts and play at least 2 to 6 hours a day. On DSL!!!!

This game is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment you can find :)
 
We started out in Neriak in April 99, gathered about 20 people fellow Dark elves to be brave enough to enter commonlands. Back in the day there were giants and griffons in EC. Eventually we went into befallen, and fell into 'the well' like lemmings. *Splat*

Loading please wait, and 20 naked DE outside Neriak. =P
 
The year was 2000. I was 12, going on 13. I had just wrapped up a week of school, it was a Friday afternoon. My family didn't own a PC, that I remember, but I had a friend who's family was what would be considered "well off" in that time period. We were hanging out at the entrance of our school, sporting our Vans and JNCO jeans; Listening to Linkin Park, Jimmy Eat World, or Gorillaz probably.

"Hey Slade, what are you doing this weekend? Want to come over and play games?"
"Absolutely, nothing would make me happier than playing Dreamcast or Playstation 2 all night"
"Sick, ask you mom to come over tonight. Call me and let me know"

Little did I know that would be a life changing all nighter. We walked through his computer room and he offhandedly told me about a game he had been playing called Everquest. He described it similarly to how you'd describe a Final Fantasy game. Adventurers on a quest, gain levels, get magic, upgrade armor. Typical fare. The difference was, it was with actual real people. This concept completely blew my mind, even then. I had this image of something far more grandiose than what EQ really is/was. I imagined players filling roles. That NPC that was sitting at the end of the dock fishing, and would maybe sell bait or fire off some one liners about the fish or the boats? I thought that was a real person. AMAZING! That's so cool! I am getting ahead of myself though.

So I was interested in this game, but that's all. Never heard of it or played it up to this point. We played some Tony Hawk Pro Skater together, my friend fired up Spyro while I watched, then I loaded Grandia while he watched. I had been hammering away at the story for a bit when I realized my friend wasn't around. He had chores to do, im sure that's all it was. I walked out of his room and saw him on his PC. I grabbed a chair and sat next to him. He was playing (what I know now) a Gnome Wizard. He was in Freeport at the dock to Ocean of Tears. At the time I knew none of this, I was just being overloaded by what I was seeing.

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3D environment? Other people walking around and talking? People playing together? WOW IS THAT A SHARK IN THE WATER?! What are you doing? That was a spell? IT SHOWS THE SPELL?! Oh you're getting hit. That other guy attacked and killed the monster, saving you?! WOW!!

I was absolutely hooked a this point and never had touched the game. I had to play it though. Funny enough my friend wasn't super into it. He played it for maybe 45 min at a time just to brew beer and kill a few things, or port people around. He told me to play a bit, see if I liked it. He had some gear he could give me depending on what I decided to play. I don't remember what class I made, but it was a Woodelf. The world to me was so big and had no end at this time. The idea that there were actual continents filled with zones and cities and everything was too much. An actual world in this game.

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So there I was, young Slade ready to begin my adventure in Faydwer. Okay... What do I do? I stood in game figuring out controls. Oh, I died? Weird. I guess I attacked someone? How did that happen. Okay, movement keys are the arrow keys and I click stuff with my mouse. Neat. Yes that's how I played, by default for years. Arrow keys to move, A was autoattack, D was duck, and completely in first person mode. Wild times for sure. My friend gave me some information, how to get my body back, where I was at the time, etc. Okay, I got a fancy new tunic from my class trainer and was ready to fight.

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I jump off the top of Kelethin to my death again. I respawn and find my way down after what felt like hours. I walk around under Kelethin looking for my body. I find it after a while. Follow the trees supporting Kelethin back to a lift where "other players" will protect me (the guards who I thought were actual people standing next to the lift). I sit and collect myself. Okay lets get to killing. Walk around this busted down stone hedge thing, click a skeleton, and follow it. Follow it. Keep following it. Oh, gosh, I forgot to attack it. Turn on auto attack. BAM one good round, he was half dead. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Oh I died?

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Go back and retrieve my body again. Anyone would be frustrated at this point. I had been playing for a long time at this point, tying up a phone line, and hadn't killed a single monster. Died more times than I could count. I was hooked. I loved this. At this point my friend had gone to bed. I continued to play well into the morning. I played all morning. My mom came to pick me up, and I really didn't want to stop but I did. I told her all about this game. I wanted it so badly. I told my step father about it. He was an RPG fan as well, and he this piqued his interest. In less than a year, we had a PC and were switching phoneline from phone to PC.

There is so much more story to this whole experience, looking back on is so funny to me, but this is the story about how I got completely addicted to Everquest.
 
Not sure what year but I'm guessing around early 2001 ( I would have been 13 at the time) my uncle was talking about getting EQ and he had got this given from his friend. I remember reading through it for weeks upon weeks waiting for him to get this game. Came home from school and he was sat playing, I sat next to him for hours watching him play a mage, and he let me have a go and make a character! I had been waiting for this for weeks.. I made a Halfling rogue (in my childish dreams I was thinking I go and burgle homes, pick pocket other people etc etc) only to fall in the water in Rivervale and had no clue how to get out and drowned.. that put me off this stupid game for abit. Returned not to long later and made a necromancer and it took off from there, I stopped when I was around 17 to have a life! learned a trade, got drunk alot, got married, had kids then came back around rof time and I have been back ever since.
 

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It was late summer of 2001 for me. My 2nd child was just a baby. I was a stay at home mom with a husband who worked long hours 6-7 days per week. He had been playing EQ almost a year already. I was bored one day while my girls were napping and decided to make a wizard on his account. I was hooked and by that Thanksgiving / Black Friday he brought home an HP computer he got on sale and a copy of the game for me. I xfered my wizard to my shiny new account and have been playing ever since. We've taken a couple of breaks though the years when RL poop hit the fan...but we always come back.
 
Worked nights while wife was home with the toddler. We only had one car so she was stuck at home while I was at work usually. One of her friends played this game called everquest. Not very costly I thought....gave her something to do while being stuck in the house. She started a druid on Torv.... played for a few months....I wasn't the slightest bit interested. My games were on console the computer was for work and other things. The devil child(sorry son!) was keeping her up all night and I was usually off work and home by 8 am. She wouldn't wake up till noon or later. Most times the baby would wake up ...sometimes not so I would watch him until she got some sleep and eventually I would go to bed and get a few hours rest before starting it over. Was bored...had my baby boy...had to be quiet so did what i could around the house ........hmmmm I started an account on hers to play till she woke up. A month later she told me to get my own account and she deleted my toon off hers haha. My boy just turned 22 and is much better behaved lol. Wife traded me in for a younger model with a limited warranty and I still play eq she does not. Even paying for 6 to 8 accounts and mq it is way cheaper than she was.... errr I mean being married and stuff. Ex and I are still friends but I got eq in the divorce so for me that was a win.
 
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Started playing in 2001 I think. I rolled an erudite wizard and I was stuck in Toxxulia forest for what felt like years. I didn’t know anyone else that played, and the game was very challenging for an eleven year old. In retrospect, it was fucking hard.

I was so happy when I discovered the paineel newb yard with the skeletons that dropped weapons that retailed for about 1g.

Then, some awesome Druid ported me to civilization over in GFay and the rest is history.
 
I still remember my first EQ death, on day 1 of live. I was wondering why all these corpses were around my guildmaster. Well, I targeted him and started to type hail.... Well as soon as I hit A I was splatted to oblivion, staring at a zoning screen. I had no idea what happened. Then I saw I attacked the guildmaster, and he responded accordingly. That was the harsh environment of early EQ. The sandgiants and griffins that are hardly annoyances now were a constant and real danger, you quickly learned to always watch your surroundings. Good times....
 
It started back in 2002 when I brought a magazine that included the EQ New Dawn edition (promo introducing new Euro servers).

I've taken a few breaks (from 1-4 years) but I always seem to come back. No other Mmorpg has managed to keep my attention for longer than 6 months
 
I still remember my first EQ death, on day 1 of live. I was wondering why all these corpses were around my guildmaster. Well, I targeted him and started to type hail.... Well as soon as I hit A I was splatted to oblivion, staring at a zoning screen. I had no idea what happened. Then I saw I attacked the guildmaster, and he responded accordingly. That was the harsh environment of early EQ. The sandgiants and griffins that are hardly annoyances now were a constant and real danger, you quickly learned to always watch your surroundings. Good times....
My first death was with my first character - a level 5 Ranger in Kelethin (yeah, I was pretty lucky to live that long, ha ha). One of the guys from work wanted to show me around Crushbone (while on the phone at the same time, ha ha) and as soon as we zoned in, I was hugging the wall and fell into the ravine - and drowned. I couldn't figure out how to swim and was literally jumping up and down trying to figure it out. I was screaming at him, he was screaming back on what to do and I gave up. I left the game forever!

Or at least the rest of the weekend, ha ha.

He came over after work on that Monday and "taught me to swim" and a few other things in game. Since then, I've taken several breaks from EQ; most of them due to deployments while I was on Active Duty, but also a couple when doing other RL things (finishing my Master's, starting my Doctorate (still haven't finished), and when our kids were tiny, tiny babies for about the first month or two.
 
Started on day one in1999, well actually started the next day.

My cousin and I bought the game at a store near his house and then went to his place and loaded it up and I watched as he built a char and got started, could not wait to get home and try it out.

Funny story had a buddy that built a cleric in Qeynos(however you pronounce it) and the others that were playing built in Freeport. If you remember back then you had to build in a city of your god. So it took him days to run to freeport I think he died 1 thousand times, first death was, he came up at night and on the doc so he could not see where he was so he ended up falling off and drowned because he did not know he was in the water and if he did he did not know how to swim on day one. I hope he does not read this he would be embarrassed.
 
It was Fall of 2001, right before SoL release. I played casually through the rest of high school, barely graduating due to late night group sessions. Played for a few more years and eventually moved on.

Now that life is a bit more relaxed and settled (career, family) I was able to return for the Mischief launch and have been having an absolute blast.

I’ll always have fondness for Velious, running around the crunchy snowy lands, trying desperately not to die.
 
I was at a friends house in February 1999 and around 6 pm she yelled at her brother it was time to log on for the raid..... I asked Raid? what are you Talking about ...she then told me about Everquest and I said hmmmmm so I said show me and they did. they let me sit at the 3rd computer and walked me through making a toon. thus was born Bassaam a wood Half elf ranger and was hooked ever since.
 
Some friends played this at a LAN party in 2001 I think. Another friend bought it and I got to try it on his account. and I was hooked. That music in the beginning still takes me back to when I first tried it.
 
So I already posted once, but that was my experience of playing EverQuest for the first time. It was not my experience playing from the comfort of my home at the time.
Fast forward a bit of time and my family had a computer. Pentium II processing, blazing fast 512Mb RAM, 20Gb storage, and both a 3.5" floppy drive AND an optical drive. Not to toot my own horn here, but I feel like we had a pretty sick machine for EverQuest if we had all settings on low, no draw distance, no particle effects, and ALWAYS looked at the ground if possible (especially in East Commonlands tunnels, which was my servers commerce zone of choice). Here is the thing though... We had no internet. This wasn't uncommon in the time, but it was a major issue for connecting with EverQuest and what felt like my destiny!

After having a taste at my friends house, I needed EverQuest. Luckily there was a way I could play without the need of internet. A little thing I like to call "The Tutorial". Ah yes, big brain me, I can get my fix and stave off the hunger for a bit each time. I was Soandso, champion of... well Tutorial Zone. (Screenshots I am about to provide are from an EMU server I am playing on called Dreadbox. Don't mind the, well probably everything about them).


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I played the Tutorial at least daily. I explored every inch of this zone. Checked every nook, cranny, swam in the water, explored the graves, and every house/tent there was. Not's not saying a lot since the zone is rather small. I love this zone even to this day. Anytime I play a server where I can access this place It's fantastic, especially if they do something nice with it. That aside this is about my early childhood addictions here.

I walked across the bridge, hailed the NPC, sold the Ruby to the merchant. Did it all. I loved it. I would sit and imagine what it'll be like to make a character of my own. What race will it be? Not a Human, surely, that's silly right? Who would want to be a Human in a fantasy game. No thank you. Anyway, my step dad made all of his characters Human and some variation of his real life name.

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Before long we had internet one way or another. As much as I loved this zone I could kiss it goodbye and explore the world proper! Nothing to set me back! The world would be my oyster! FREEDOM!
That's would I would have been saying if it weren't for one tiny little problem. What the heck was a subscription? I bought this game, and have internet now. I can blaze through the world wide web at 56 kbit/s. What do you mean I have to pay each month to play a game I already bought?! It was true. I had to pay $12/mo to play this game. The goalpost keeps getting moved. My stepdad, I had to get him on board with this. My mom didn't mind, but he was the one handling the money here. I had to get him to want to play this too. With all the time I spent oogling the manual you would have thought I had seen this all coming.

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Luckily he wasn't a hard sell. He was into it, and worst case he would just cancel the subscription if he needed to punish me. I was a good kid, so I knew that wouldn't be a problem. I liked being home or playing with my friends. Playing Pokemon, watching anime, and now only ever playing Everquest always. FINALLY I CAN PLAY! Click launcher, no longer select play Tutorial, click play online. Oh, patching? What does that even mean. OH. MY. GOD. Literally hours? Sometimes an entire day of patching? What is this now? Oh man yes, patching on dial up was an experience. It was a true test of patience. I had never patched this game for live. So this was at least a 12-14 hour process which also involved occasional internet disconnects and restarting, not to mention someone needing to make a phone call. The expert strategy from this point forward was to leave all patching for overnight while everyone was asleep.

Now, the moment of truth. It's Friday afternoon. School is over for the weekend. I have no plans to go anywhere but home and finally play Everquest. It is magical. I actually got to get in this time. There I was, at character selection screen on the Ayonae Ro. What was I going to play? Maybe an Ogre with their ULTRAVISION? A Barbarian? No way they are just bigger more ripped Humans. At this point I was reading the 'Lost Years of Merlin' series of books. There was a character in the books named Shim, a tiny giant. I liked this name a lot so I was stealing it for sure. Yoink. What to make Shim though? Shim is small, so he has to be a tiny race. Dwarf? Halfling? Gnome? Well let's look at the classes first. There are so many that look awesome. Something about Magician really stood out. Maybe the promise of unlimited food, drink, a force of nature to defend me no matter what element I choose, and conjure weapons. I was sold. Who wouldn't like to use stamina to cast spells, right? That settled it was Gnome, because they were the only ones able to be Magicians.


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Shim was born. What a feeling. Being in Ak'anon. All the ambient clockwork noises, steam, green neon lights. How awesome.
Check out my note, I have a guild master to visit. I learned from previous mistakes. I would not attack my guild master this time. Got a gross yellow robe and the promise of spells and skills in the future should I return with levels and money.


--- To Be Continued ---

I have some chores to take care of around the house and I'll be back a bit later.
 
Great posts Slade. I still have my original EQ discs and manuals around here somewhere, but just looking at the artwork and the maps makes me nostalgic.

I played from 2000 through maybe 2004. At the time, I had room mates and AOL via a land line. Had to explain to them very patiently that if they wanted to make a phone call they had to clear it with me first, as it was pretty much a given that if they were awake, I was online.

Took a long break until late 2019. Was curious and checked to see if EQ was still going. It was, my accounts were dormant but waiting, and MQ2 was a thing. I felt like a kid again.
 
Well, When I was a child, I had a fever
My hands.. they felt just like 2 balloons..
Then I got that feeling once again,
I can't explain you would not understand.
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.
Okay (okay, okay, okay)
Just a little login screen.
There'll be no more, Downtime.
Updating makes me feel sick.
Can you character select?
I do believe it's working, good
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on it's time to raid.
There is no pvp you are receiving
A distant ship, Kunark on the horizon
You are only coming through the Gates
Your mouse moves, but I can't see what you're slaying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The EQ is on
I have become comfortably numb
 
I started in 2000 because I had some friends at work playing. I was hooked right away when they let me play on one of their computers. Soon after I got my own computer and come to enjoy the love of 56.6k dial up and looking at the spell book and playing gems. I have played mostly since then but have taken a couple years off here and there. I have played other games but nothing compares still today for me.
 
My addiction began in October 98 during the last of the closed betas. I had become bored of Ultima Online and turned Dread Lord. I started a cleric, but played mostly solo. I knew I was addicted when I spent most of my Thanksgiving in my office because it was way better than dial up at home. There are probably few who remember when a burst of dial up lag would cause your character to catch up to all those keystrokes and then you watch them helplessly run into a massive mob and start casting all those buffs you mashed when it lagged.

I knew I was fully addicted on launch day when I showed up to Egghead at the local mall 30 minutes before they opened, expecting a huge line, but it was pretty much me and one other dude.

I recognized that I had a problem when I spent 36 hours straight camping for a Rubicite Helm in Cazic Thule.

I quit maybe 2002 for about 10 years. I revisited it maybe 2010 but couldn't get the fire back.

Then I started 3 boxing again in 2019 and liked exploring the 20+ expansions I missed. But the addiction came back in May of 2020 when I decided to really look into RG. So yea, 23 years ago with a 18 year hiatus in between. Gods I'm old.
 
Started on day one in1999, well actually started the next day.

My cousin and I bought the game at a store near his house and then went to his place and loaded it up and I watched as he built a char and got started, could not wait to get home and try it out.

Funny story had a buddy that built a cleric in Qeynos(however you pronounce it) and the others that were playing built in Freeport. If you remember back then you had to build in a city of your god. So it took him days to run to freeport I think he died 1 thousand times, first death was, he came up at night and on the doc so he could not see where he was so he ended up falling off and drowned because he did not know he was in the water and if he did he did not know how to swim on day one. I hope he does not read this he would be embarrassed.
ohhh that was me..... Nobody told me you might need to swim!! I never did make it Freeport. Just created a new character.
 
Started probably late 99 early 2000. I can remember looking at a pc gamer magazine and seeing an ad for it in there and thinking man, this game looks pretty cool.

Bought it, loaded it up, had never played an online game before. Took me awhile to figure it out, not sure how long I played but made a wood elf probably got a few levels and then logged out. Loaded it up the next day and couldn't find my character. Well not much to go on so I just decided to create a new one. Played a while, got a few levels, logged out. Logged back in later and no character again on character select!

I'm not sure how many times, maybe 3 or 4 before I finally figured out my problem. I didn't know about picking a server, I thought that your character would just always show up, and the servers didn't have an order back then to loading, think it was just random. So by not remembering my server and it not coming up first with my character when I logged on I had no idea where my people where going.

Once I figured that out I was good to go! Made my wood elf ranger on Fennin Ro and played for quite a long time, maybe up to LDON or so. Met my wife on F'Ro, we duo'd a lot of stuff as a wizard and ranger, talked a bunch online, decided to meet, and then the long distance relationship. But years and years and 2 kids later we are both back to playing EQ again and having a blast!
 
Discussion - When did the addiction begin for you?

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