I read through all the posts all the way to here and realized... WOW! EQ has robbed so many of hours of thier live [myself included]! LOL! Nah, really though, good times.
I started EQ about 2-3 months after closed beta started, before it went "live."
I remember my best friend and #1 D&D Player [the old P&P game with character sheets and dice] disappearing for like a month in the late summer of 1998, and out of concern visiting him. When I arrived his mother greeted me and warned, "If you're here for ----- I don't think you'll have much luck getting him out of the den." I found him in front of a computer all strung out and haggard looking as if he hadn't seen a bed in... well a month. LOL! The piles of Mountain Dew bottles and empty cartons of cup'o'noodles were strewn about. He was sitting in the dark, staring expressionless at the screen, glare upon his face... slowly he rotated his face towards me and said, "hey man, how you been? I just hit 37 and me and a bunch of guys are going to go and camp these giants for a while, so I can't be long because they need me as a back up tank."
I was just like, "Huh? Okay want to step out for a smoke?" We chatted and he convinced me to come in and take a look. He was a wood elf ranger and for it's time, graphics were nice, game seemed like everything I imagined D&D would be if they made a worthwhile video game. However, seeing my friend like that I was afraid at first to get involved. There were all the media people out on the "EverCrack" witch hunt. My church was telling people, "never let your kids play this it absorbs your soul," and such... But finally, I missed my best friend, and loved RPGs, so I caved. Back in 2002-2003 that ranger became one of the founding fathers of Triality on the [I believe, could be wrong] Rallos Zek server.
My bro and I wound up founding "Ministry of Pain," on several servers but finally landed to stay on Vazelle. Played many characters. Usually with a dwarf paladin main with a dwarf cleric as a secondary and my bud was usually dark elf shadow knight or iksar monk with full plate armor and swords. LOL! I have made several Flynt's/Kurzesblatt's and he several Drakularr's/Draklarr's. We ended up getting many RL friends to sign up and into the guild. At one point we were in the top 10 largest guilds, could never keep up with guilds that'd recruit level 1 noobs though. MoP and Triality became raid allies for a while then there were some internal conflicts and we started drifting apart.
People started losing interest after Planes of Power expansion was released but when The Serpent's Spine came out most of the older players began to quit. It was almost embarassing to see a bunch of new players come in and in a week or two have better gear, higher levels, and hundreds more AA's than those that've been playing for years. All the Argeant Defenders, Centi swords, Swiftblades of Zek, and Silver Chitin Handwraps obsolete.
I mean there were people coming out of Gloomingdeep with gear that seemed comparable to my level 64 Paladin. When the cap was bumped to 75 that seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back. There were suddenly people that were on full raid geared 75's standing around asking how to get to the Bazaar, what's a PoK, and the infamous "today is my first day here, I just EBay'd this account, where should I go to hunt?" LOL. That was when the majority of the remaining veterans quit with me also. Drak stayed around a bit longer, but now he is here also.
Glad to be here, very nostalgic after a few years away from EQ. Still getting the swing of things but having fun.
