Great video, man! I'm brand new to EverQuest, but this still felt very sentimental to me. ☺️

Whenever i get my yearly MMO grind, I play this at the start of every week.

I was looking for something exactly like this so I’m glad you came pretty close to nailing it

My most memorable moment was waking up on a Saturday and turning on my pc,listening to the Everquest music, and when I was logged in finding out that I never turned on my speakers, but I listened to the whole loging on music just to find out that I never turned on my speakers. And telling the whole area what just happened, they all Laughed

It's so addicting... I rolled up a new warrior a week ago, solo'ed to 70 then quit again, its just too fun. A guildmate of my mine got the first 10th ring on any server, which was fun. If I recall the event was bugged somehow, but the GMs sorted it all out (GMs had their moments!). The game brings back some bad memories too, like never trusting a guild you are in competition with... We had Sleepers tomb locked down and could have killed the Sleeper weeks before anyone. But our guild leadership decided to let other guilds in on a rotation, then once everyone farmed up all the Primals desired (say a few months of farming) we could all group up and smoke the Sleeper together. Woke up one day, and the guild Explicit violated our friendly little treaty and killed the Sleeper... Then acted like a bunch of big shots not thinking about any potential ramifications for the future. Granted it was the first event of its kind in any MMO, but the instanced raids of WOW greatly built upon the shortcomings of human nature. But that was part of what set EQ apart, alliances and betrayals really meant something. Most guilds were run by scum who Ebay'ed extra loot and plat in the guild bank to live off of. It was the number one reason guild leadership was ousted or guilds broke up. I remember one Emperor raid when an opposing guild wasn't ready to take him (by that I mean set up and ready to engage), so they cast a growth spell on 2 ogres and blocked the door so we couldn't go in and smoke him like we did every week. GM's would show up, force us to agree to a rotation which other guilds always violated. Because we were good at getting things dead, other guilds resorted to all kinds of tricks. Leapfrogging TOV raids with so many in zone everyone was crashing... But nothing beat what I saw one night when an up and coming guild was trying to take the Statue of Rallos Zek. I asked their guild if they wanted me to tank it for them for a sure kill, and they politely declined.... They bound 70 players strong near where the Statue fight would be, they got him to like 10 percent when all the tanks were down, got him down another 5 percent by the time things went bad and they started to spawn rush him. Every player had like 10-20 corpses when Kael Drakkel crashed... And even after all the rezzing corpses, several had de-leveled to 59. I remember watching the whole time just thinking "Oh the Humanity!"....

the most great game aventure rpg mmo for me

Kinda sad you didn't mention PVP at all. I used to love PVP in this game, sure it felt really unfair at times, but you could always find some way to work around it even if that was to log off that character for a while and play an alt. Or you could use your connections to other high level players, work out some sort of a deal with the person, or potentially outsmart them. But for those who dared to play melee characters on a pvp server it was quite an interesting game to play, mostly because of jousting. The point being it wasn't polished and clean, it had a lot of charm though. It wasn't very balanced but that made it more exciting in some ways. Jousting for those uninitiated to the PVP ways, is where you have hotkeys for auto attack and any melee abilities your character has all set through a macro so that when you ran up to someone you could fire off all your attacks at once and blow by them hopefully avoiding their attack in the process. The reason you would do this is to avoid taking a bunch of damage from auto attack while you gave your cooldowns time to finish for the next pass. Standing there beating on each other was plain suicide for some classes like warriors when they were fighting a monk or rogue. So everyone also carried a really slow heavy hitting 2handed weapon, the most common of which was the 2handed piercer the tantor's tusk. A lucky double attack on that was devastating, and with bards they would be there and gone before you even got halfway through a cast so you had no hope of stopping them especially at low level. But make no mistake this absolutely was a skill, there were people who were so good at jousting that they basically were able to fight 2 or 3 people at the same time without much issue. I was pretty good myself, trained by my guild master in all the intricacies like for example they are much less likely to block if you wait until you are almost past them and turn slightly as you attack since it will count as a back attack if you do it right, avoiding backstabs with feints. The proper time to use spells and which ones, building effective pvp macros that assisted with quickly changing targets and applying specific spells like being able to quickly change targets and activate a bash to stop a caster from healing the wizard you are burning down, (always pointless to beat on a maxed out cleric they basically have infinite life, or at least way more than you do while a wizard is setting fire to your pants) or speed swap in a piece of gear to allow you to activate an ability then switch back to the other gear. This was great for everyone who had to use a shield for bash. I think ogres and trolls didn't have to do this because they could bash with 2handed as a racial trait. May have just been ogres, because I know trolls got regen that was pretty valuable. So this created situations where melee characters would charge at each other spam a bunch of attacks as they pass spin around and repeat until one decided they were losing and did something desperate (usually sprinting for the zoneline) in an attempt to avoid dying. One time, I was meditating in the east commons tunnel, this was after luclin so it was mostly abandoned now but still a main travel route if anyone decided to walk rather than get ported. Though seeing people was not frequent at the time so it was a good place to grind having the mobs I needed to level and a zoneline to save me if something goes badly. I always ran with see invisible, so I saw the little assling rogue appear at the zoneline but he sees me meditating and so he starts working his way up to me to prepare for a backstab as sometimes (especially while grinding) people wouldn't remember to refresh their see invis and rogues would always go stealth when zoning. I didn't click on him so that he wouldn't know that I could see him. (if target of my target is my name means they can see you) So i only have vaguely an idea of the level of this rogue based on the fact he isn't carrying his epic weapon, so he isn't too high (turned out after the fight started I found out he was yellow con so a couple levels above me I think i was mid 40's on my iskar shadowknight "glowers dubiously") So he is working his way up and then I see, what every PVP player fears, a wood elf druid. Who I clicked on immediately because obviously we would have both seen each other...blue con, few levels below me, I have basically built this character for fighting druids so, even though it's a problem I am fairly certain that he won't be able to snare me. The rogue is almost behind me I stand up and back up at the last second causing him to miss his backstab and I hit him with a double attack, hit my macro swap to sword shield to hit the bash and back to my 2hander in an instant. taking about 1/3rd of his life and stunning him. As expected the druid started casting snare, I didn't even change targets cracking him for another 1/3rd of his life. about this time the druid cast a heal on him but I was far from done. "a stinging swarm envelops you" well that's to be expected. But I can take it, so I let it ride while I continue beating on this hobbit. I am getting kind of low on health and now we have started jousting because the stun broke and he got some distance on me. I sprint past the rogue and bash the druid in the middle of a heal cast sending him into a spinning stun, (always my favorite) I then turn around and hit the rogue with engulfing darkness which lands so he doesn't have a lot of magic resist...good...life tap, life tap...dead rogue. now it's time to deal with the druid I had managed to pull the fight away from the zone so when I got on him with bash and stunned him again his life dropped to half, I got him with engulfing darkness as well after stripping off all his enchantments with a golem rod. No more run speed and no more magic resistance. Even so he was picking good enough times to heal and keep moving that he was probably going to make it to the zone...steps in front now, I'm sure he thought he had it in the bag (he was going to blizz* it) HARM TOUCH...not today. It's also important to note that the GM's considered griefing to be a part of the game players were supposed to deal with (really everquest GM staff wouldn't do anything for you most of the time unless they were there to warn you about your behavior, such as exploiting a pathing mistake to make yourself unhittable to a NPC.) So corpse camping was totally a thing you would deal with on a regular basis especially if you managed to make someone mad. But that's where the importance of having a guild on a PVP server was paramount. if someone was messing with you sometimes all it took was to point out which guild you were in (you wouldn't usually have the guild flag up on your name for various reasons) and that would be enough to stop it because if you were in certain guilds that person probably knew that they were going to get it 10 fold or worse, if they didn't move on, they may even start an incident that denies their entire guild access to an important loot camp for days or weeks. This could get them kicked from their own guild. It was a flawed but functional system. actually kind of cool really. Guilds also had well known alliances with guilds on the other sides and would have tentative treaties that would allow access to the harder zones that were made for raiding, we had calendars and forums that would schedule days for specific guilds to raid specific planes, sometimes a guild would break this treaty and it had mixed results. Sometimes it was just a feud between guilds of different alliances, sometimes it would cause an incident that would basically lock all guilds out of a raiding zone entirely as the threat of being "trained" while clearing was too high to even try it. *Blizzing or zone plugging was the practice of going through the zoneline and then intentionally interrupting your internet this would cause you to not make the zone transition and you could get out of the game without dying so long as you could get to a zoneline and pull out the internet cord before you loaded in to the next zone. The reason we called it that was because there was the gnome wizard named blizzy or blizzard I can't remember exactly. but he was notorious for picking fights, losing and then doing this to prevent dying. it was seen as a derogatory slur to shout at your opponent as they were losing in an attempt to get them to stay and fight to the end rather than do what they obviously should and protect their exp and platinum. *Training or aggro transfer was the practice of walking by hostile mobs close enough to cause them to start following you, then you use superior speed to keep out of melee range while you gather up a bunch then you run into an area where someone has taken a camp like the FBSS for example in lower guk and either die and therefor all the mobs that were following you are now standing right next to them and will start attacking, generally causing a wipe, or more commonly you would have a monk or even a shadow knight do it and feign death so that all the players are killed except the one who started the train, who then waits for the mobs to leave and stands up (usually has to feign again immediately because aggro doesn't always clear) but after a few pop tart routines generally they could move into the camp then. If it was a shadow knight, you generally wouldn't want to try to take it back because either you have to clear to get to them, in which case they will train you again, or if you attempt to counter train you will probably end up in a semi stalemate with two monks or a monk and a death knight trying to out feign each other.

I always loved the bazaar method of trade, It was so fun opening up your character inventory in the morning to find out if your items sold and how much you made, even the east commons tunnel thing was not that bad. As you pointed out it's basically forced interaction but everything was generally pretty upbeat and polite. It makes sense, they are getting the money they want from you, and you are getting an item you want from them. The only problem was it was easy to get scammed and no real recourse if you did. In this game it was not uncommon to get to lvl 40 or 50 and still be wearing a couple of items you had gotten at lvl 10 simply because you had not found anything better or seen anything in trade. Also I played on zek (pvp) server so I actually hated the instance based dungeon raids as it was never assumed you were safe from being PK'd when in a dungeon. It lead to some really epic moments. You see because there was a gear race between the three factions. In order to avoid being ganked (we had money looting from player kills and 1 item of your choice, with some items being attuned so unlootable) one time, the guild I was in, "Da' Bashin Iggles" (can't believe I remember that name) created a blockade with fattys (ogres and trolls) at the entrance to guk, the gudz came at us over and over but we had clerics at the zoneline chain healing the fattys while the gudz tried to burn them down from outside and our shadow knights and bards would do hit and run raids on the ones out in the forest, two or three knights would all pick the same target and have a bard run them up at max speed and all three would hit their harm touch, always targeting wizards enchanters and clerics, with was what became known as the HRDT (Hit and Run Death Touch) what was great is that since it was unresistable even our guild members who had lower level shadow knights could burn it. sure they would get killed immediately after in a single hit, but at low level deaths don't matter as much. after 3 hours we managed to break their lines and keep guk for the rest of the day. We collected all the FBSS's we could and even managed to get a monk his raster spawn. (super rare he later made the whistling fist). They still had some minor attacks on our lines but when it was clear we had just posted a small group at the entrance just inside to burn down anyone who stepped in. that didn't get very far. There was also a bug...or maybe they changed something for a while, because of how common it was for high level players to farm and grief low level players. but I remember for a time a lvl 10 wizard was like...TO BE FEARED. mostly because of the level differential and something that caused all of their spells to suddenly become unresistable to anyone more than 20 or 30 levels above them. There were people who had enough magic resistance (like 100 to 150, which was a HECK of a lot) who were getting rooted by lowbie wizards. I created one simply to help out my monk friend who did great DPS but always had trouble finishing people off because of the dynamics of how PVP works between classes since monks have no stuns and very few interrupts. so most of the time they would run away far enough to start gating and by the time he caught them he couldn't do enough damage to finish them or prevent their cast. But for a few weeks there, we were gods a whistling fist monk and a lvl 10 wizard. they also originally had absolutely no safe zones, you could get player killed sitting right in front of your guild master in your home city. I can't remember which expansion it was but they introduced some restrictions and create "adventure zones" if i remember the terminology. So if you were a lvl 6 iskar killing skellies out in the field of bone (oh man all this is really coming back in a flood) you wouldn't get smacked by some bard with a tantor's tusk. (normally a garbage weapon but excellent for melee pvp since jousting was the main way to fight) This post is getting long and I have a story to tell so i'm going to make another comment for it.

I call 1999-2004 my EQ years...

Jabbarik shouts: CoF 55K PP! Send tell

Need a retrospective to this retrospective

This video and the Flatt's adventures got me into pj99, only lasted a few months and a few alts - made it to 24 fell off a cliff on my shaman and just gave up lol. It's a great game but far too tedious for me, esepcially when I get home and want a drinkl.

Is there another retrospective, 10 years after the previous retrospective?

Why did your music leave from the stuff.

We grouped together on p99 my dude.. I won't forget it!

Asherons call > Everquest

The best thing about EQ was it didn't hold your hand. It didn't show you a glowing arrow over the head of the NPC you had to talk to. No, you had to read the text and figure it out. Sometimes that NPC wouldn't be where you needed them to be and you had to wait for the right time of day or even the right day of the week.

I always come back to this video for the nostalgia. Never hard to find either. Thank you for this! I played EverQuest when it first came out and it will always be the most memorable game I ever played.

Just started playing Project 1999 yesterday and I love it. My dad played back in the 90's and he showed me this video.

Glad p99 is still a thing. Still going back once every few years to start a new character.

I get nostalgic for EQ like other people get nostalgic for high school or the town where they grew up. I miss the old game with an ache in my heart. Even the early time when you had to look at a spell book while medding and lost experience for dying. A song will come on my Spotify from the (then Winamp!) playlist I raided to, or did an SK gnoll spires level grind to, or often came on when my druid ported into BB and ran to Kelethin...and I wish I could go back. I played WoW for years after EQ and it doesnt have the same power to transport me to another time and place. Thank you for this video, it helped me visit Norrath again for a little while.

Man... I was part of the beta test for Everquest and played it like a fulltime job the first six months it was out. Then my PC died and by the time I got a new one all my friends had moved on and I didn't know anyone who played anymore. And that was the end of my Everquest experience.

Yearly rewatch

The guild I was <Brotherhood of the Spider> woke the Sleeper

Lol named my Ork Char in WoW also Groshak. Never experienced EQ and just want to comment that WoW peaked with its first expansion^^.

This video helped immensely. Now I have a great functional stick to play on my PS2! Thank you!

I started playing shortly after the game came out and played for a couple of years. It was an amazing game but was definitely a huge grind and time sink. But, those moments when you were in a great group and earning XP and having fun were so magical, still gives me goosebumps thinking about it. Great memories, thanks for the video.

Was about to ask if ya still had the link to that UI, but then I realised how old the video is and figured that'd probably be unrealistic to hope for

I quit playing EQ in like 2004. I started playing on an EMU server in like 2016. Despite having 12 years where I hadn't touched the game, I could (and did) run all the way to Lower Guk without getting lost. I spent a *lot* of time in Lower Guk when I played the game originally ;)

I miss my time playing EQ on the Veeshan server had some great time and knew some great people. My 1st ever guild Legends of Veeshan. Stopped playing 2005 and went to WoW and it just wasn't the same. I sometimes play on Project 1999 and while that's great I find the population base just isn't high enough. P99 though is currently the best alternative for an EQ fix at the moment.

I remember when a boss was up my group would creep along walls skipping trash to steal another groups boss . I remember holding all the loot for hr and then the enc clickable KEIPants dropped. I looted and hit the power button . Everything was reputation so if u were an evil class and wanted to play evil u could . The game was completely self governing

lol, the epic weapon showcase left out my two favorite classes: Rogue and Beastlord. *sob*

Hey, a friend sent me this video! I play Sebekkha, who won the guise that night! I've just made a comeback to the server after many years inactive

Stat points need to come back to mmorpg gaming. Let the player pick how to play their character. modern mmo's are all a "set path" for each class and you can NEVER deviate from that. I mean hey, you could actually pound charisma, playing a bard, and then teaming up with others. and thus you don't need to attack, instead you use charisma to buff party members and debuff enemies. sure solo wise you might be gimped but team wise you could be OP. I miss that ideal in modern gaming. hell modern rpg's dont even have strengths and weaknesses. dungeons and dragons wise, a skeleton is IMMUNE to piercing, takes less damage from slashing weapons, but takes extra damage from fire and bludgeon weapons, and critical damage when you use holy spells on it. that doesn't exist in modern gaming. it doesn't matter if you use a mace or cast holy spells, the skeletons take the same damage as any other attack you throw at it. a bow should be useless against a skeleton but noooooo, modern gaming ruined that. the biggest issue with modern gaming, is that YOU are the hero. Its like OPRAH made modern video games.... "you are a hero, and you are a hero, and you are a hero, you are ALL heroes!!!!" and that makes no sense. how can my friend be the hero, how can some random dude in front of another computer be the hero. I want to see MMORPGS go towards a more "random living in this world" aspect. You are some guy/girl/whatever living in this fantasy world. YOU CAN DO HEROIC THINGS, but you are NOT the hero. Hell the story could even be amazingly complex thanks to this. A hero slays a dragon and then leaves. They didn't clean up the dragons corpse. So now the local town is being poisoned air/water because of said dragon. A timed event starts. Players have to go up the mountain and find out what is going on. You learn that the hero slayed the dragon and lefts its rotting corpse. So players now have to "mine" the corpse like skinning and mining skills. But its extremely difficult and even with a success, there is a VERY low chance of getting an item worth choosing. as you do this mini event, there will be a "hot bar" above the dragon corpse. little do you know, this is the dragons health bar. and the more you knock off, the closer you are to getting rid of the corpse. HOWEVER, if the time limit ends and there is still a health bar, the dragon comes back to life as "undead dragon" and now you have to fight it. maybe NO ONE does the event so the dragon comes back to life at full health, requiring a RAID TEAM (multiple parties working together) to kill it. BECAUSE you are NOT the hero! but you ARE doing something heroic! the more mining and skinning you did to get materials, the less health it had. maybe you got lucky and it was such a popular event, that you completely mine the dragon before the timer ends, so the corpse just disappears, no extra fight. that kind of dynamic story telling where you essentially follow int he heroes footsteps. the best part? you always hear stories about the heroes but you never meet them. because in this aspect, they dont exist. players will scour the world looking for the hero (if they chose) and find nothing but stories and quests. its an epic idea for modern gaming. AND WITH THIS ASPECT, you are not the hero, you will have limited stat points, limited skill points, and you will most likely focus on one or two main skill groups. maybe you are a dungeon diver so you take dungeon delving skills (like map making and finding hidden passageways) and your other skill is fire magic. using fire magic, you would be naturally weak to water magic and water type creatures. you will pretty much NEVER be able to solo the water temple dungeon. you just can't survive. now you might survive in a party, but even then its risky. you shouldn't be able to "master everything" and "go everywhere" you should have strengths and weaknesses, just like the enemies do.... modern gaming sucks. basic bitch, simplistic, any retard can play it mentality. and it blows. all modern games are too easy. hell, elden ring doesn't even have strengths and weaknesses (not really) and its only "hard" in the aspect that you have to learn monster/enemy patterns. once you learn that, the game is easy.... actual fun hard rewarding games no longer exist.

I started playing it in 2002. I had a Barbarian Warrior named Barudil. I was in a decent guild called The Well of Souls? Anyone remember it? Finally I drifted away and started playing Rift and a lot of Battlefield. But EQ was a good time! And didn't Firiona Vie have the coolest name, lol?

I met my wife on EQ over 20 years ago so it's still my favorite game ever. :)

I spent 8 years playing EQ in a top tier raiding guild (Grey Horizon) on E'ci. The memories and interactions I have will always be remembered and even though I split off to WoW, that platform as great as it was will never rival what orignial EQ was. Butcherblock trains and that was just the start. If you don't know, you don't know...This was the pinnacle of online gaming.

Best building game ever made. Don't know how much running a single server would have cost, but DayBreak made a colossal mistake shutting it down without even trying to serve the community of players who were passionate enough to fund its development.

just the intro of this video gave the chills, i love everquest classic with all my heart, the music, the danger, the pvp, the game was great

I love watching this video... I watch it this time every year for about seven years, this is the time of year when I first logged on back in 2000.

Camped for a Ghoulbane for months. Evergrind indeed.

Time to die, a_Vareous_bard! My friends and I in high school were OBSESSED with this game. I played an Enchanter. Used to run around newbie areas handing out Clarity buffs so they'd never go out of mana for 20 minutes. Hey, I had to pay it forward after all those Druids ran by giving me Spirit of Wolf so I could run fast. I remember Hell Levels. 35 and every 5 levels until 50 took 3 times as long to grind through, and dying and losing that exp you just spent your whole weekend accumulating was HEARTBREAKING. BUT... it was totally worth it. That sense of accomplishment of getting your punk ass to 50 through 60 was epic and there was no way you could have done it alone. "Massively multiplayer" indeed. P.S. High Elf agnostic Enchanter was easy mode. Need to sell? Far from a neutral or friendly city? ILLUSION: [friendly race] and BOOM, vendors buy your stuff. Just had to hope your illusion buff didn't run out before you could zone back out. P.S.S. INC TRAIN TO DOCKS.

I remember early days EQ I had to get the details for my Druid Epic Weapon “Leaf Blower” from Guild Members, My GF notebook and asking people online. It was a real quest alone trying to track down the details. And, to do it properly. Crazy! Loved it as it meant something after obtaining it.

G.O.A.T

On Xegony, it wasn't East Commonlands Tunnel, it was Greater Faydark ... known as "G'Faymart" by most of us.

I go back to this video every time I wanna feel nostalgic, but I just realized that it's almost 10 years old.... I'm getting to the point where I need retrospectives of my retrospectives.

How about trying to communicate in chat channels.. especially on a raid. Omg that was probably the most difficult part for me. But damn we had fun. My first main was a human pally out of FP. I didn't know jack about diety or stats or nothing. What an awesome game

you have become better at youtube (200)

"Magic" is the word I always use to describe my EverQuest experience. A Friend and I was there in "99" and 4 years after. I wasn't satisfied when EQ2 came about and moved on to other games. but I will never forget the sites, the music, the ambient sounds...The Adventure, Good and Bad.... and even the plastic Slurpee pee cup I kept next to my side when I played EQ.

I find it amazing that I never played this game