EverQuest's Supposedly Unkillable Dragon | The Stuff of Legends

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Welcome to the second episode of The Stuff of Legends where Frost recounts the story of the unkillable dragon from Everquest!
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[@theescapist]

We hope you enjoy the second episode of The Stuff of Legends! New episodes will drop every other Monday, and you can get a week of Early Access and support the show directly via Patreon or KZbin Memberships!

[@andrecarpenter2432]

Very much so

[@Onikage55]

Do the Assassination of Lord British from Ultima Online please!

[@rocko7711]

😍😎

[@jonajon91]

This was sick, keep em coming.

[@yaddar]

the MMO pandemic would be a great episode

[@YukoValis]

If you give it stats... people will kill it. This is a golden rule in any game or DnD campaign.

[@ianharac5153]

"If it has hit points, we can kill it." (Read in Austrian accent.)

[@legomaniac213]

It's why there are "aspects" of D&D deities (Bahamut and Tiamat for now) that allow players to fight them without risking them destroying the God themselves.

[@ashurean]

If it can bleed, it can die

[@Kenionatus]

I mean... If I had been tasked to dev the thing and to make it seem like fightable at second glance but undefeatable in practice I'd add code in damage handling that regens its HP back to full if the damage would cause it to drop below 25% or so. (Although maybe not if HP is edited directly by the code of each ability. That would be a software engineering nightmare.)

[@davidm.corbin4643]

you can give something stats and make it so it can't be killed. if it drops to X% of health anything and everything that attacks or has attacked it dies instantly and cannot be resurrected or revived.

[@DanGamingFan2846]

Frost's voice is absolutely perfect for narrating such an epic tale of overcomming impossible odds. And it really shows how great their strategy was that the only way to stop them was for Sony to despawn it.

[@watershipup7101]

Agreed

[@blackamaterasuflame]

As someone who absolutely cannot stand to spend a single solitary second playing most MMOs, this was captivating. At this point I'm pretty convinced I would listen to Frost narrate paint drying.

[@azzzanadra]

most popular MMOs have great events, like WOW's plague or runescape's falador massacre.

[@nolanerckert4515]

and most of the greatest surprise events occur because of bugs or players breaking the game (plague was hunter pets getting infected and preserved, and falador massacre was a bug where players in Construction house arenas [enables PVP] who were then kicked from house would keep PVP enabled in non-PVP zones)

[@johnnybensonitis7853]

@@nolanerckert4515 No doubt! Sony clearly didn't fully understand MMO's and that lack of experience led to them underestimating the players' ability to summon an insane degree of determination and absolute willpower when faced with such an obstacle. They will congregate, coordinate, and cooperate before proceeding to systematically break down and dismantle the challenge or learn with 100% certainty it is literally unbeatable. I've never been into MMO's but I've had friends who played them, such as one guy now who has played EQ2 for like 14 years I think? He even went a step further by leveling his battle mage into a goddamn rampaging beast who could solo raids, something he managed to do by mastering the economy and grinding other characters who could make whatever items the mage would need to become what is essentially a demigod. I'm not exactly sure how impressive this actually is but it sure is fascinating to listen to him talk about the game.

[@DRCEQ]

@@nolanerckert4515 What made this special is that such events had never been done before in video game history. The first guild to awaken him didn't know what was going to happen. They didn't know that they were about to witness the first example of massive online game world being permanently altered by their actions, and it would take a few more servers to awaken him to realize that doing so was actually detrimental to everyone in the long run.

[@glittalogik]

Frost: "...but what Dulux didn't factor into their predictions was a phenomenon - unheard-of by all but the most hallowed tiers of chemistry's elite - known simply as 'Diffusion'. They watched, helpless and horrified, as the solvent they had so carefully blended in with their precisely calibrated secret sauce of proprietary polymers and pigments, evaporated into the air, leaving nothing but a hardened shell, irrevocably bonded to its previously unblemished substrate, thus altering its appearance forever. My throat gets dry just thinking about it... or maybe I just need a drink. Until next time..."

[@PlebNC]

Virgin looter shooter players: Wah! I spent a month grinding and the loot was trash! Chad Everquest players: Kills unkillable dragon, gets no loot, best day ever.

[@thrownstair]

No amount of premium currency can buy the prestige of being in the army that killed an immortal dragon.

[@PlebNC]

@@thrownstair Chinese whales: "Wait, what?... "

[@ExileHeretic]

For glory and a guaranteed spot in Valhalla. No loot can buy it. They'll be singing songs of their battle for all time.

[@vlim5601]

@@ExileHeretic For real though. As dorky as this story is to 99.9% of the earth's population it's truly gotta be a memorable experience that each and every one of them will treasure for the rest of their lives. Early MMOs were something special

[@LoudWaffle]

@@PlebNC Why Chinese? Pretty sure the whales from all other demographics would have the same reaction.

[@selatorepico5975]

"Overzealous players making a tank resurrecting conga line" is a sentence I'll never hear again. And I'm a little bit sad for it... Keep doing this, whatever it is, you got me hooked

[@MariaVosa]

The best part was, this wasn't a planned strategy beforehand. They adapted and took advantage of what was happening in real time. Mightilty impressed!

[@bikerboysrus1]

All my screenshots from the two times we had to do it were covered in "so and so is resurrected by divine intervention. That's all you could read lol. And for the poster above it was absolutely a planned strategy as it was used on all of the raids. The untold but truly impressive thing is that our 3 guilds were forced into doing the event as some people were purposely attempting to wake him so the sleeper gear wouldn't drop anymore but when we found out like what 150ish people called out of work to make it happen....all to have a gm reset the dragon. I haven't finished the video yet so maybe it was already mentioned but eq2 was already rolling out ads and the artwork was published for the box sets, with the sleeper wakening and changing the world. They had to redo all of it including the "plot" of eq2 because we had our protest and were told the second time they wouldn't interfere and we won. Good effin times. Long live AD

[@DRCEQ]

@@bikerboysrus1 My toon was known as Yuffie, a human Monk. I was watching the game chats from the Plane of Knowledge when it happened. I was cheering you on! Yeah, it was weird how Skyshrine had been revamped to reflect his awakening, but he was still sleeping on our server. I remember getting a couple of Prismatic fistwraps for Yuffie. Even farmed the warders a couple times along with the rest of the server rotation. Good times!

[@GinkgoBalboa142]

Come on kill that dragon baby do the conga I know you can't control this raid any longa

[@MeanderingSlacker]

I know this line Yugioh. A legitimate meta strategy is an endless conga line of self replacing assholes.

[@Pecisk]

Ironically this is kind of oral history is missing about games in general because very few people care to write it down and remember, but this matters, because it is so human :D Also excellent episode, thanks!

[@DRCEQ]

As someone watching the general chat and other channels from the safety of the Plane of Knowledge when it happened, everything described here is true. There's a few minor details that are inaccurate, but that's just splitting hairs. It is told exactly how it played out. 3 days later after all the backlash, Verant Interactive released a statement that they would be resetting the encounter and allowing them to play it out (although they claim they removed the non-agro invisible NPC that was contributing to the damage being done to Kerafyrm.)

[@phillipk4196]

@@DRCEQ i would have asked for the name of that npc if namechanging was possible, IF i had been one of the 300 amd changed my name to it out of spite

[@LawrenceJohnYoung]

EverQuest is probably the most well documented and preserved game ever. The wayback machine has saved a lot of the forums and websites, every patch note has been preserved all the way back to the game's closed beta. The first prototype, multiple alpha and beta builds. Even with all that being the case and the decades-long effort to keep a hold of that stuff, there are still lots of holes and lost information.

[@DeadpoolX9]

These are the legends of our time

[@jrightly]

Keep in mind they did this without a reliable player wide voice chat like discord. I've been in guilds that can barely manage to clear end game zones with full voice chat.

[@TheFloon]

I remember doing an EQ raid a couple years after this where we had 1 group in the raid who had to take care of a crucial mechanic just in a Skype room, and IIRC we couldn't even have the entire group in it due to channel size limitations. Even when I retired from raiding voice chat was more just a luxury hangout thing that was starting to get used, we never used it for raid calls.

[@jrightly]

hardcore@@TheFloon

[@Outsidecontext]

@@TheFloon Yeah, when I was a raid leader, I spoke in ALL CAPS for raid orders. It was a lot of fun pre-setting up the shouts before the raid for different outcomes. We would bribe a lvl 60 cleric and necromancer to be ready for corpse runs and go kill that big red dragon.

[@ElMountainMan]

we all used ventrillo back then.

[@Steamedhams578]

This series just might be my new favourite on the channel.

[@magnusofbackwater2054]

Try one of Manykudos’s videos, he covers similars event quite often.

[@luffy11234]

I wouldn't know how to have felt back then since I was 10 during this event, but hearing the boss your fighting spending hours on gets removed mid fight from a publisher/developers because you were doing too good would crack my brain.

[@ShadyAugur]

As an OG Everquest fan who still plays classic Everquest to this day (on an unofficial server), I never would have expected the Escapist to cover the story of Kerafyrm.

[@MissPoplarLeaf]

Whoa, people still run unofficial servers for old MMOs? That's very cool

[@azzzanadra]

i want to find an unofficial server for tibia

[@milo8425]

@@MissPoplarLeaf oh it's the best. Project 1999 man. Thousands of people playing.

[@bird3713]

What a surprisingly inspiring and demoralizing story

[@M4ruta]

Kind of like the guy who grinded to level 99 in the first dungeon of _Final Fantasy VII._ Took him 500 or so hours of mind-numbing repetitive activity and all for no other reason than being the guy who did it.

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

Don't give things numerical stats if you want them to live. Any finite number is an explicit challenge.

[@ashurean]

Unless your system can handle infeasibly large numbers with only small amounts of damage being possible. I'm talking in the quadrillions or higher.

[@dryued6874]

@@ashurean It's still finite. Challenge will be accepted.

[@MonsterBandage]

"The most legendary raid boss in all MMO history didn't drop any loot." 🤣🤣🤣

[@meapickle]

The best part is that it makes sense. It wasn't meant to die. Why would they bother coding that in

[@acoupleofschoes]

@@meapickle No idea what kind of ingame items Everquest had, but if Sony had time to add an exp drop on death they could've at least added a "I killed the unkillable dragon and all I got was this t-shirt" kind of item drop.

[@orangeboi3387]

​@@acoupleofschoesthe boss didnt drop xp, the admins themselves gifted the players the bountiful xp because the dragon didnt even have xp coded in lmao

[@herczy]

Perhaps the loot was all the friends we made along the way.

[@johnnybensonitis7853]

Learning about Sony's reaction to it all is pretty damn hilarious, too! It didn't come off as them being malicious in any way despite the cheating accusations, because they seemed to just not fully understand how an MMO's player base can become unified and prove capable of displaying an impossible degree of single-minded determination. They will come for the biggest, "insurmountable" challenge, they will find it, and they will kill it. They absolutely will not stop!!!

[@IronBabyFists]

I didn't know this story! Wow, that was so, so fun to listen to. When you said they despawned Kerafyrm, I said "you motherfuckers!" Man, that was cool. Thanks for this new series, crew! You all rock 💙

[@jonlangthorne7924]

What a bizarre footnote in the history of MMO’s. Really engaging and interesting story.

[@DRCEQ]

Kerafyrm's Awakening was the first instance of a massive multiplayer game world being permanently altered by the player's own actions. The concept hadn't been done before. You look at games like Fortnite and they change things up on a regular basis like when they did that Rocket launch event way back when. This is small-scale in execution compared to other events like WoW's plague, but none of the players knew what was going to happen. Much like how a player in Ultima Online was eventually sued for finding a way to kill Lord British, the guilds on Rallos Zek were determined to prove it could be done.

[@MaNameizJeff]

If I had to name 2 others... the council of six was unbeatable for months until they relented and nerfed it, and there was a monster on ff11 that took more then half a day and multiple free companies to kill. It was nerfed after that like wise.

[@samadams8533]

A good old legend to talk about for this series is “The Falador Massacre” I remember hearing rumors about it when I was a kid

[@ultimatecalibur]

Some other Legendary MMO events to talk about are WoW's Corrupted Blood Incident and FFXI's campaigns to kill Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden.

[@rushi5638]

@@ultimatecalibur EVE Online alone has probably had about 1000 legendary events that'd be a good fit here. I hope for April Fools 2024 we get Sleeps-On-Bridges though.

[@Onikage55]

@@rushi5638 I know there was a big battle that caused something in the $100,000s of losses but for a Legend story, there was story from years ago where a player named Bobby (I think) had a years long scam planned for a corporation called Titans4U where he stole like $50,000 worth of stuff. Now THAT is legendary

[@CrysJaL]

The fally massacre was truly a legendary event. I joined Runescape too late to enjoy the golden age of mmos :(

[@mariemcnew4870]

I play on zek...wasn't around when this happened, but have always heard stories about it. You did a great job with this! Some of the old players are still around, too. I'm sure they're going to enjoy watching this.

[@milo8425]

come to project 1999, current EQ is nothing like this story

[@GayBearBro2]

Honestly, spunds like the kind of legend I'd have stuck around for. Being a tank main means soaking damage for everyone else and I've done a rez conga line for the Odin field boss in FFXIV.

[@Pecisk]

this is why people liked immersive MMOs in the past - second life, work even, but this is something you remember for the rest of the life.

[@15oClock]

I love how stories from MMOs can be told with such drama.

[@lordsaile]

I liked the first episode but this.... was.... BETTER! Really great, I look forward to the next episode

[@Mene0]

I remember hearing about this. But this video was so good. Frost's voice, the script, the editing. Great stuff, Escapist

[@deadhead4077]

This story is enthralling!!! Love these stories and can't wait to learn more about amazing niche gaming moments

[@jasonb1316]

Everquest was my first MMO as a teen, well before the days of WoW. I loved my days spent wandering the deserts and wastelands around Freeport, the snows of Everfrost and the jungles of Kunark. Loved this little bit of nostalgia from 20 years ago. Thank you!

[@ryodark]

I loved this story time so much. I’m getting on in years but was a WoW geek from 2005 on. I never played EverQuest, but my husband, who I met playing WoW was BIG into it before we met. Would love to hear you narrate other fun old gaming stories!

[@davidlazerz8564]

Everquest is much better as a retelling than experiencing live. There is a reason WoW became a mmo juggernaut: it basically took every good thing from EQ and removed the mountains of unfun shit that surrounded those pearls of fun.

[@manavsridharan3811]

What an amazing story. Also fucking shame on the suits for trying to pull it. You have a once in a lifetime opportunity for amazing organic storytelling and you drop it? What a bunch of sooks. This stuff is great. I'm not into MMOs but loved this. keep up the good work Frost!

[@DRCEQ]

Yeah it was pretty lame. 3 days later they admitted they were going to give the guilds another try and just let it happen. A few weeks later, Game-wide messages across all servers played out a story telling of the armies traveling across the frozen snow-covered Eastern Wastes of Velious and entering into the Sleeper's Tomb, then killing he warders and eventually killing him.

[@yavorvlaskov5404]

This should have been the first episode, it's awesome and entertainingly presented as well. Looking forward to the next installment.

[@axthelm]

A little background that was glossed over. The Sleeper's part was to be awakened during Scars of Velious to enact a quest in the Secrets of Faydwer expansion (if I remember right). His script was to awaken, be invincible, send out a zone killing AoE, and 'fly away'. During the Shadows of Luclin expansion his script was broken which took away his invulnerability and something with his 'flying away', but by that time the only servers that had yet to awaken him were the 3 pvp ones (Tallon Zek, Vallon Zek, and Rallos Zek). Tallon and Vallon were both team pvp and eventually got their stuff together enough to awaken him and noticed he was no longer invulnerable. That let the guilds on Rallos Zek better understand how to keep the Sleeper from despawning and do actual damage.

[@thepurplemarauder]

Love the story. But especially Frost's storytelling, it was great. And the ending was great.

[@VerdsTheWord]

I played a halfling druid on the Povar server. When Sleepers Tomb was finally cracked it was one of the most immersive experiences I ever had in 30 years of gaming. Such a badass story.

[@GamingTonberry]

I really loved this. It was inspiring, dramatic and taught a lesson. When people come together we can kick some ass, someone always want to shit in your cereal, and sometimes even high aspirations and goals can still result in nothing.

[@spacebarisntworking7530]

Damn this series is great. You always hear about the stuff that goes on in MMOs so having a series documenting it is an incredible idea.

[@sweetyd]

I was there on that day, 20 years ago. Such great memories.

[@Tomixx1199]

now I want Froste to go over the Corrupted Blood incident

[@schw4rztee502]

I wouldn't expect him to. Yahtzee did an "occasional guide to 'special' moments in gaming history" on it 3 years ago.

[@MaNameizJeff]

the corrupted blood was just an exploit for a mechanic that was never intended to be in the open world. It wasn't something you could beat. And no one DID beat it. you just died.

[@raistlarn]

@@MaNameizJeff Doesn't matter the corrupted blood incident was legendary enough that governments actually studied it to see how it can effect real life pandemic models.

[@Lastkoss]

This is perfect video game story telling. Great video.

[@Abdelxvn]

I am loving this series, feels better than watching a documentary.

[@Raida7]

When he despawned I was outraged! Great storytelling

[@sharkkebunni]

Amazing story, never going to have that again. As MMO's probably don't make raid bosses like that anymore (no plans for "unkillable" bosses) . Also thank you for making me realise that Dabarella has Heterochromia, one blue eye and one green eye, that's neat

[@sleeplessindefatigable6385]

The narrator on this has one of the most soothing and relaxing, yet clear voices I've heard in my life. There's an almost Terry Wogan quality to it and it gives me the warm-n-fuzzies.

[@rikou1986]

another cool MMO story would be the final stand in the original final fantasy 14 online.

[@malachichampion]

Love this! I did not know this story, and I love that this video is just recounting it. Nothing wrong with a nice little history lesson

[@Raskoril]

I played eq from 2002-2012 and I was online when both fights were happening, and the subsequent systemwide message a day or two later. Truly an incredible achievement. I miss the old days of EQ, an d while I'll likely never go back due to the state of the game I'll still always have that itch.

[@roshtar2k8]

Holy crap,I remember this! I remember the unkillable dragon, but don't recall someone actually killed it! That's crazy! What a fun story.

[@MattH039]

Sleeper's tomb is something I will never forget playing for the rest of my gaming life. We actually had a GM friend of our guild teleport us around the tomb when only about 7 people in the guild had keys. We couldn't really do much at the time, but it was a really unique experience. Also, it was actually kind of common for certain fights to have a team dedicated to "first aid" duties. Usually one person to drag corpses back to a safe spot with clerics ressing and maybe a shaman/enchanter to rebuff, and a bard to be mana battery.

[@GloomRng]

I am loving these episodes, so good, cant wait for the next one!!

[@Why_Contain_It]

Great telling of a fun story. It'd be nice if modern MMOs realized that the shared world leading to collaborative experiences is what they were all about and not the single player stories crammed into always online games like they are now.

[@ImmortalInflames]

Absolutely loved this series, I started withthe EVE one as I'm most familiar with it.. but Jumped on the next two videos instantly. I have heard vague stories in Everquest, but nothng rich and full of detail like this! I really hope this becomes a long standing series as there really are so many stories in & around games since the very beginning! Thank you so much for working on a fun way to archive some of these really epic &/or interesting stories!

[@varice2248]

God this episode is a banger, great story and chops to go with it. I don't know how many more of these you can make but boy do I love it so far.

[@Cortaal]

This was incredibly entertaining and also incredibly distracting whenever Frost said the server's name, lol.

[@jexy_marshall]

I was standing in Shadowhaven just near the zone in from Nexus when I saw the Yellow text : BROADCAST message to all of the servers from the GM's giving congratulations to the adventurers for their victory. I was playing a monk on the Quellious server at the time. Now I currently play on the Time locked progression server called Mischief, the server is currently on the Secrets of Faydwer expansion now where Kerafyrm is the final end game raid boss. So much Nostalgia and fun.

[@coreysierchio4650]

And that's why it is called "Never Rest!" *Thanks for the Content!*

[@ironwolf5802]

That must have been so bad ass to be the only player to survive 2 hits but such blue balls to have the plugged pulled the first time.

[@shipkipsamazingchannel3248]

A stunningly well told story, I cannot wait for episode 3!

[@Cordis-Ater]

We need this as a weekly show!

[@theescapist]

Every other Monday for now!

[@Outsidecontext]

I feel like fricken' Elrond saying, "I was there, 3000 years ago..." Although I was on Saryn, not their server, it was the talk of the entire community for weeks after.

[@WulfRanger]

Thank you for this delightfully narrated retelling of an epic story

[@granttaylor9338]

Holy shit guys, this is fantastic. I don't think the escapist has put out content this great since the day it signed Yahtzee. No offense Yahtz, I have bought all your books on physical and audiobook, but this is probably the best content I have seen from the escapist in years. I am so excited to see where you guys take this series and Frost your voice and delivery is on a whole other level. I am more than excited to follow this series as long as it will go on and I hope to bug him too tell him I'm a big fan while Yahtz and Marty are talking in a podcast:)

[@TheLordDracula]

As the Joker put it. "It's not about the loot. It's about sending a message!"

[@Seloliva1015]

I had already hear this story but the way it was told, and the details trully made it better

[@jwcrafty402]

Yup, that's humanity for ya. Everything is immortal, until proven otherwise. And we refuse to lose.

[@Superslayer1234]

I need more of this. PLEASE. This voice, the animations, the story.. its all too good!

[@thetruemandalorian2637]

Wow...I'd never heard of any of that. That was fascinating and kickass.

[@ZoobKillbiscuit]

I knew it would pay off to read that whole phantom menace crawl.

[@HanCurunyr]

the Yathzee portrait in the back is just the icing on the cake

[@milo8425]

Similar experiences can still be had on p99 red server. Warring guilds, near-impossible dragons that require unlikely alliances and months of work to bring down, and even, sprinkled throughout the server, bits of the no longer available loot from the Warders that guarded this very dragon before the great heretics awoke it.

[@jamesk8147]

I remember this so well. I had several real life friends in AD and watched the raid at their apartment.

[@pahnazd]

I could listen to you reading stories while I fall asleep and have nice dreams. Dude, you have a great voice for this kind of stuff.

[@Chris_Sizemore]

Kerafyrm was one of the coolest looking dragons ever. He was humongous. Way bigger than what was shown in that video. Kerafyrm was just a white almost prismatic outline of a dragon. Nothing about him looked like scales, flesh or anything with substance. Once he escaped the Sleeper's Tomb he went on a set path that took him around the world killing every single First Brood dragon in the game before he permanently despawns. I managed to catch up to him in the Cobalt Scar. He slew hundreds of players that herd about Kerafyrm being released that came to see him. Honestly it was a great experience. Almost everyone on the server was racing to get ahead of Keryfyrm just to catch a glimpse of him before he was gone.

[@MegaChickenfish]

So not only did they not want to unleash the boss but, with pvp, actively had to battle the players who tried. That's awesome. That's emergent gameplay if ever I saw it.

[@hanniballahr94]

Never got into EverQuest back in the day but it looked like fun. My only memory of it is seeing the guy who had his character deleted by his wife lose his shit.

[@Nuthouse01]

Oh man, this series is amazing! Keep making more please! I never even heard of this story before but what an epic saga

[@fissionphoenix4995]

Man would I love to hear Frost tell the story of the Falador Massacre or the devolution of RuneScape into RS3 and eventual resurrection as OSRS.

[@The1MrYanu]

LOVE this series! So many good stories to be had from old games and the narration is silky smooth. Keep up the good work!

[@xethier]

Should go over the Thistledown defense in Asheron's Call. Hell, Asheron's Call itself is still king in oh-so-many ways of the MMO.

[@MonsterBandage]

I love interesting gaming stories like this. Hope they make a bunch more of these kinds of videos

[@mtcp122]

I'm liking this series a lot. One of my favorite ZP bits are the gaming history related ones and this whole series seems like it'll be just that.

[@j-sin3344]

Conquest, formerly Soul Assassins, were the ones that first used the ramps to avoid the AoE, hence they were all Banned, at least any corpses in the zone were. There is a video of it. Server: Lanys T'Vyl. I was there for it. After the ban they went to Dark Age of Camelot, which was just released and proceeded to get the whole guild lvl capped 50 in 2 weeks, heh so developers had to add the first expac and increase the lvl cap to 60, Itzlegend, Rurog, Diirk, Kestui and dozens more were a small guild that did Epic things!

[@databasekitten]

I had forgotten everquest even existed until now. Thanks for an amazing video

[@legomaniac213]

If you're going to end a fictional world to progress the storyline, the best thing to do is have the players work to mitigate the damage instead of stopping it entirely. See FFXIV 1.0 or Exandria Unlimited: Calamity for examples of how to pull it off successfully.

[@DRCEQ]

The details of this video aren't *entirely* accurate. In the game's lore, Kerafyrm is a Prismatic dragon (not a dragon of pure energy, but I'm splitting hairs). He grew up to be a great general among the dragon armies, but started growing unstable and wanting to raze the world and bring about a new age. The other dragons managed to subdue him and put him into stasis. His awakening saw him storm through the dragon city of Skyshrine and killing the city's leader Lord Yelinak before he flew off over to the Temple of Veeshan and rampaged against the dragons there. From that point, he flew off into parts unknown and the game world kept moving on with its conflicts and whatnot. Skyshrine was eventually revamped where four new Crusaders took up the mission of subduing him and becoming the new four Warders to keep him asleep, but they never get the chance to do so. It's not to say that his awakening was going to bring about the complete destruction of Norrath (the evil God of War Rallos Zek would later try to do that by using a gigantic magical Nuke, but would also be thwarted), but he was completely opposed to the current dragons and their rules and wants to start a new age of dragons at the extermination of the lesser races.

[@Nacalal]

Stories like the raid on the sleeper ended up echoing through the world of MMOs long after they'd occurred. There is no more satisfying a feeling than being told by the people that made the game "that fight is literally designed to be impossible" only to win anyways. Sometimes just actually pulling it off is worth far more than any loot.

[@gamhuin]

I played on the Rathe server. Had no idea Kerafrym had been woken up until he suddenly appeared in Skyshrine where we were playing and massacred everyone there.

[@SC2Nightshade]

I won't lie, I tune in to these because I would listen to this guy read the phone book. He has the perfect voice and tone for the pieces he does, and I am 100% here for it.

[@leightonpetty4817]

I love whenever MMOs act as these microcosms of humanity. Things like the Corrupted Blood incident.

[@DRCEQ]

Kerafyrm's Awakening was the first instance of a massive game world's storyline being advanced by player interactions. Nobody knew what was going to happen.... and then people were proud of it.... and then people shunned those that did it because they knew it would be best for their own loot options to leave it alone.

[@stabgod]

I was a member of a top raiding guild and one of the first worldwide to “kill” the escaped Kerafyrm in EQ2. He didn’t die but I don’t want to spoil the plot. The only time we had a WTF moment was when we outraced another guild to a god Avatar spawn and had it to 1% after about 15 minutes of fighting only for it to charm our tank (a paladin) and then use the paladin’s lay hands ability (essentially a full heal) to get back to 100% health. Without our tank, and the god at full heath, the rest of us dropped fast. All in front of a competing guild.

[@NachtVolk]

I'm really enjoying this series. Frost is great at this sort of storytelling! Can't wait for more!

[@sarleonseverquestadventures]

Great story! This is probably the quintessential Everquest moment of all time.

[@ridwanurrahman1967]

Frost's videos deserve more views. A lot more

[@romulious4971]

I was there for both attempts. Gotta give credit to the Shadow Knights and Wizards using their Harm Touch and Manaburn!

[@avi_rivera]

Wow, what a gut punch of an ending, hahaha. Good stuff, y’all digging the story time aspect of it.

[@DB240sx]

That was an unexpected nostalgia trip. Thanks, Frost.

[@TheDucky2009]

this is brilliant, please, let there be many more

[@shutupandpick740]

There's an old Listverse list of these things that I like to dig out and read from time to time. Seeing it in video form is excellent. If you're interested, I'll try to find the link.

[@smirky101]

Ah, a truly great story. Well done!

[@Pecisk]

Also if people wonder why MMO golden age was a thing, this. Yes, these days it is just a theme park for most - with few exceptions like EvE Online - but people dedicated time to their communities and got rewarded with stories to remember.

[@BK-ku1zt]

They never intended to have the dragon be killable, so no loot, but they still made a death animation for them

[@LL-yd8zz]

The video did say there were other dragon bosses, so it probably just used one of theirs. I would assume the devs made Kerafyrm by basing him off the assets of another dragon boss or some sort of dragon preset.

[@Raida7]

The intro is a nice touch 😁

[@ryke-raptor]

Gods, such pacing and delivery. Thanks for the fun story!

[@janvangils5560]

I know it is just a game but the story of 100s of mortals killing a god like an army of ants slaying a horse will always be glorious.

[@LabrnMystic]

I'm loving this series.

[@evraght]

That's the true stuff of legends!! I loved the story.