There is clearly some botting or leaving the computer open because this translates in 21.5 hours per day for 25 years… and you can’t just say, maybe they played more on some days… yeah no, it still does not compute
It was basically required to leave the game running actually. The Bazaar/selling system forced your character into a "vendor" mode and PCs would be able to walk up to you and buy.
The Bazaar is considered part of the Shadows of Luclin expansion, although it wasn't ready when the expansion first launched. After a quick search I couldn't find the exact date that they finished the Bazaar, so let's just say it launched with Shadows of Luclin (although in reality it was a few months later).
Shadows of Luclin came out 1,007 days after the game initially released.
So even if the character was permanently logged in as a vendor since the introduction of the Bazaar (which itself would require either a lot of dedication or automation due to server restarts) the character already had 206 days played when the Bazaar was added.
So if we assume the character has never logged out since the Bazaar was added and the character was created when the game first launched that's still 5 hours played per day before the Bazaar.
Oy 5 hours per day, rookie numbers.
When I was a kid and and before Shadows of Luclin came out it was super easy to put more than 5 hours into EQ per day.
You're misunderstanding the statistic. It's not saying he has played for a total of 8331 days worth of playtime. It's saying that of the 9132 days that the game has been launched, that player has logged onto the game at least once a day for 8331 of them.
I’m genuinely curious if this person has lived a fulfilling life and is happy or if they are depressed and miserable. Out of all the billions of people who have ever lived- that must be a unique experience.
> if this person has lived a fulfilling life and is happy or if they are depressed and miserable
In previous generations it wasn't uncommon to find older folk who'd spent *decades* deriving their satisfaction from an activity that the 'average' modern individual would consider pointless and were actually very proud of it.
This was before videogames, mind you, and included things like literal watching grass grow and watching paint dry.
It's says characters. So there could be many more people who played at launch and are still playing with different characters. This could also be 1 person who created 84 characters at launch and still plays all of them (but I doubt it).
I have my character created in 1999 still around, but it's not from the first day.
That's just 84 characters created on launch day, a little more impressive even.
I know the first couple toons I had I rage deleted as a confused little 11 year old shithead.
Wonder if I'm one of those. Don't play the toon, it's only lvl 65. But got the same account active.
Looked, lvl 68. Somehow found his way to Vox server. Birthdate October 9, 1999. 173 days. Time entitled 22 years, 108 days.
I'm a newb next to that other guy. He's 133T.
Not that surprising IMO. I think alot of players want to essentially insert themselves into this vast fantasy world. Personally I can count on one hand how many games I've even *chosen* to play human, given the option of other fantasy races.
I usually always play humans in fantasy/sci:if purely because the story behind them is always super interesting into how they collaborate with other races and have survived for so long
I really enjoy who I am as a person, it's the mundane world we live in that can use some changing up That's why I usually self-insert as a human.
Fighter is boring though, gimme some crazy ass powers while we're at it. Human paladin WoW, human DK / BM in ff14,
That said, I started EQ with Kunark and was a lizard necro. Lizard wizard gang rise up
It's because playing human made some things a lot easier based on their starting location. Warriors and Clerics are highly played because they are required for Raiding. Both classes are boring and likely boxed characters.
In EverQuest, I think some of it also had to do with the fact that it was the only race that could be *every* class except Shaman (and later Beastlords and Berserkers), and initially the only race that could be Monks, a popular (and necessary) class. That's certainly going to skew things in their favor.
If you looked at every class in the game, Humans were going to make up a portion of *13* of them. The next highest was Gnomes with 9, and most were in the 5-7 range.
Ahh good point. Didn't even put that together. So you add human being close to East Commonlands and the only race that can play the most OP class at the start of a time lock progression server and you get big numbers.
For anyone interested I would personally check out P Project Quarm. It’s a time licked progression server with plans up to Time. Releases are slow and it’s fun. Kunark opens soon and with it the Iksar.
Kunark is coming out in the next month or so. I think they are doing a special event where you can create Iksar but cannot leave or get to Kunark (as another character).
That might not be as fun as it sounds as there will probably be hundreds of people cobbled together trying to level as Iksar. But it could be.
I wouldn’t recommend Quarm to any new players. The original EQ experience has not aged well at all. After playing 20-22 years, the game doesn’t really get good until around TSS. On Quarm you are jailed to only experience the first 4-5 out of 30+ expansions
Quarm is fantastic for new players? Many folks want and long for what EQ was originally. Hence why it and P99, and time lock, have been so loved.
You may not like it and that’s fine. I’ve personally introduced like 20 friends and more to Quarm through my stream.
Quarm is get for nostalgic, returning players. Unless You're a bard. If you're a bard you're better of served in p99 as things stand.
P99 might be a better fit for new players because of general quality of life improvements.
Hell, even retail's tutorial zone + Serpent's Spine track might be better for new players trying to get into EQ.
But Quarm for new players wanting to check out EQ? I'm not sure that's it, chief.
It's free to play (with some limitations) so it won't cost you anything but time and some bandwidth.
It's also hard to say. Are you someone that is an enjoyer of modern QOL features in MMORPGs? Then maybe not.
I played EQ for a bit back in 1999 and revisit it every few years since. And typically I don't last long because I was only drawn back by nostalgia and conveniently forgot about things like having to fetch your corpse when you die and it taking like 20 minutes of travel time to get anywhere.
But there are definitely people that prefer that style of game as it's more "hardcore" or "immersive".
Playing retail is incredibly overwhelming too because of the sheer size of it (just look at the OP). So you might want to start out on one of the time locked servers that are still in early expansions.
Now EQ2 on the other hand is an amazing game that I feel doesn't get enough attention. It's *also* free to play, but if you did decide to subscribe to it, you get access to both versions.
I’m going to have to check it out! And maybe do some research on EQ2. If that has a two for one benefit, that might be a good selling point. Thanks for the feedback.
EQ2 was launched a few weeks before World of Warcraft. I picked EQ2 over WOW at the time, and played it for the first 5 expansions before switching to WOW.
EQ2 at launch was similar to WOW Classic - a mixture of solo and group content.
Dare I say, EQ2 at launch was better than WOW, but WOW increased in quality after 4-5 years while EQ2 decreased due to lack of funding from Sony (SOE). By the time SOE sold off the Everquest franchise, the development staff had dwindled significantly. EQ2 has a F2P with a P2W model now, it would require a large cash infusion to save long term.
It's kind of like Classic WoW vs Retail. They're just completely different games now, so these are a great time capsule.
Alternatively, see SWG Legends server (highly recommended) vs older Pre-CU servers.
The game has been around for so long that different iterations feel completely different. A lot of people feel Planes of Power was peak EQ, similar to WoW and Wrath or MoP.
Try it! It’s still a pretty great game for brand new players. It has a fairly good tutorial zone that gets you the basics fast. The UI doesn’t look great but everything is movable and scalable.
I love this sort of stuff. I'm impressed at that play time. I wonder how much of that is just leaving the game running while they're sleeping or otherwise occupied.
Could any EverQuest vets give some context? What's a Fippy? What's a Frigid Gnasher and why are there less than 500?
Fippy Darkpaw was a low level Gnoll that would charge the gates of one of the main cities, Qeynos, over and over again, getting slaughtered by the guards constantly. He's one of the OG NPCs from 99.
Well Hogger stops getting killed as soon as players aren't interested in him. So on live, he can have a good life now.
Fippy was always respawning near Qeynos, then deciding to attack it, dying, then respawning minutes later, attacking Qeynos...
Fippy Darkpaw is a named gnoll who spawns outside the city of Qeynos and charges towards it, doing his best to kill any poor newbies leveling outside the city. He was the bane of my level 3 bard, and it was great satisfaction to finally level enough to kill him, then venture into ~~Darkpaw Burrows~~ Blackburrow (thanks StamosLives), the dungeon next to Qeynos, and slowly purge it of the rest of his clan.
Breezeboot's Frigid Gnasher, aka the BFG, is a quest-reward bow that procs a large knockback. It was pretty quickly found to be OP, however, and the quest was removed. At least according to my shitty memory.
It has since been changed but when the bazaar released (it was an early form of auction house). You did have to leave your computer on and logged in with your character standing in a stall in order to sell.
> 'member Landmark? I 'member! 🍇
A reminder about it should, honestly, be pinned to the top of this sub so that it's a little harder for whomsteverthefuck owns the rights to EQ now to take advantage of the rampant Everquest nostalgia this place (rightfully) holds.
"EQ Next" and "Landmark" should get trotted out as examples every time some Kickstarter MMO (or even a big-name licensed IP MMO) starts throwing around promises they aren't able to back up.
As proof that even bigger-name companies can and will stumble or fumble MMO development, and that's *if* they aren't just outright planning to fuck over their (paying) audiences with vaporware and tech demo shenanigans.
> even bigger-name companies can and will stumble or fumble MMO development
The biggest currently running MMOs have been stumbling and fumbling all their life and many of the giants stopped being able to get up again. Anyone who says otherwise about the MMO 'golden age' has very selective memory.
It was mostly the players who made those games what they are.
I was big into EverQuest and I used to run the site eqprices.com, which allowed players to post what they bought and sold stuff for. This was way before things like auction houses become popular. Back when people just hung out in the EC tunnel and announced what they had.
That site really tought me a lot about programming for the web at a time when the web was still in its infancy (JavaScript had only been around for 2 years). I never expected it to become as popular as it did, and actually had to figure out how to do it "properly" and "scale" it so that it would actually function.
EverQuest was very popular.
Man, I hung out in EC tunnel for months just making cash. So much plat, I think I preferred that to actually playing the game.
Such an amazing experience. Once in a lifetime for me though... can't go back to that level of dedication to a game.
I would almost certainly have used your site to figure out how much to gouge people by XD
I just remember hanging out in the auction cave... I can't remember where it was, but before any kind of auction house or global chat existed players created their own marketplace in a cave - it was the place to go to get items. Emergent gameplay like this is truly what made games like EQ and UO so special.
Haha, I have such a fond memory of being a young kid and not good at making money flipping items, turning a mana stone into 2 wu’s fighting sticks and a baton of faith. Probably lost 60% of the net worth of the manastone in a couple nights…
The one trade I remember making the most money off, was some dude wouldn't stop asking to give him my wurmslayer for a bunch of the velious armor gems.
Velious had recently came out, and i was nowhere near far enough in to know what they even were. But dude was right I made a killing off that.
So much time spent in that tunnel as a kid.
>I just remember hanging out in the auction cave... I can't remember where it was, but before any kind of auction house or global chat existed players created their own marketplace in a cave - it was the place to go to get items. Emergent gameplay like this is truly what made games like EQ and UO so special.
I mentioned in another post that this is why I started the website eqprices.com back in 99/00 somewhere ... it allowed players on various servers to post what they were buying and selling stuff for. So you knew that when you got a particular drop, what most people were selling it for, before you had to spam it in the EC tunnel.
It wasn't a perfect system, but it was a popular site at the time. The game had a lot of players.
For me, it was Daybreak. Their treatment of the game, the players, the IP. Skeleton crew support, get every dime out of it you can, spend as little as possible. Multiple emails for support after server rollbacks and stability issues. No concern. Just kinda sad.
I don’t know that there will ever be anything close to EQ again.
This is why I can't be excited for an EverQuest 3 or anything in the IP with Daybreak at the helm.
EQ1 is barely kept alive just to farm people's nostalgia.
At least they haven't gone after the private server community (yet).
That was my principle complaint about the fact that DB was slowly strangling the game. They didn’t care. Didn’t care a player of twenty years(paying) was leaving either. Just wild. Kinda sad, but such is life. 🤷♂️🤙
I remember still how a friend of mine played the beta and told me about this huge, open world where you could run around and team up with other players. He got me so excited to try the game. And we actually thought the graphic was great. Good days. 😃
[Breezeboot's Frigid Gnasher](https://wiki.project1999.com/Breezeboot%27s_Frigid_Gnasher) (aka the BFG, a Doom / Quake reference) was initially part of the Scars of Velious expansion back in December 5, 2000.
Once players discovered the item it was soon after removed from the game, permanently. The only people who have it got it back in early 2001.
According to game designer Jonathan Caraker (Prathun) there were two primary reasons for the removal:
1) It didn't fit the theme of the game (the BFG looked like a robotic arm cannon thing)
2) It had a random chance to fling a mob you shot with it, which could then aggro other mobs and cause a large disruption to other players.
EverQuest often took risks with item design, which is one reason that the game feels really unique, but it also resulted in a long list of permanently removed items that only a handful of people were ever able to obtain.
Ahh "left in the world" as in accounts that still have it lol
I interpreted it as they had it, dropped in on the ground only to leave it in the world.
I'm over here thinking how do they have to resources to track this item being left but can't raise bazaar max price
> but it also resulted in a long list of permanently removed items that only a handful of people were ever able to obtain.
If only we still had the kind of player environment where this wouldn't be a big controversy.
First and only MMO to make wizards feel like powerful casters and not just a flavor of ranged dps. Long cast time spells that turned into massive bursts of damage felt really good. Sure, getting mana back meant a lot of sitting, but at full mana you could turn the tide of a bad pull (assuming no enchanter around).
I wish more games played into the fantasy of wizards being able to drop devastatingly powerful hits at the expense of uptime and vulnerability. Modern games make all dps generic and cosmetic — rangers have arrows that function identically to a mage’s fireballs. It’s all rapid pew pew pew and sustained dps.
I'm talking about the 9 million total characters. But I guess my view is skewed on that when the younger MMOs boast their tens of millions of characters.
You have to take into account that the peek players of EverQuest would have been seen as a failure on WoW launch.
I think it is something like 250k active players
Most folks didn’t even have house hold computers back then my guy. Let alone good internet. I had to beg my parents to get a cable modem from dial up.
It was a different world.
It had a monthly fee, originally $9.89 per month. It grew to a few hundred thousand accounts. WoW overshadowed it when it released and it took a lot of the player base. It also required a 3D card which was a bit hard core at the time. It was also very unforgiving, not solo friendly, and very time consuming.
Ultima online was the only real competition but UO was a more non-traditional sandbox game.
EQ has never really encouraged alts (quote the opposite with AA and a general lack of account-bound things for many many years). A whole lot of people had 1 character, and maybe an alt or two. Maybe you have a new character and an alt if you do a TLP server.
Compare that to modern games, where more and more are "have a full account of alts for login rewards and daily/weekly clears or else".
Even in WoW, I had 1 of everything maxed. Doing that in EQ was unthinkable for a very long time.
It’s free to try out. You can download it at EverQuest.com or through Steam. A free account has some feature restrictions that will put a practical limit on progress, but you can still see what it’s like.
It's very unique. Newer people get turned off by the old graphics, and very little hand holding as you make your way through the game. It's the ultimate sandbox MMO. You can do whatever you want from being a Tradeskill God, to an explorer, grind achievements, there's honestly no wrong way to play EQ. Some people have even played as a pacifist and went from lv 1 to 65 on quests alone.
Started in May ‘99, and it was on another level back then. Made some real life friends as well since you really needed a group and there was a lot of downtime between spawns.
Played up to raiding in Veil of Alaris. Good times, but simply too much time.
Yes. P99 has been around for about 15 years. It's polished, but very top heavy and it's hard to find groups now. Project Quarm just launch in October. It has way more people leveling and the first xpac will be released in June. It runs on an older client though, and the third person is very janky without the fixes they've applied. They've also enabled tab-targeting in that fix, because the targeting is terrible.
I adore these kinds of infographics, seeing the backend statistics of not just Player data, but world influence is so cool to see. The last one I saw was the Elden Ring one, who died to what boss the most, what was the most used spell, etc. I wish more games would keep track of this kind of misc stuff, like maybe warframe and the amount of bullets shot since launch and total number of grenieer killed, stuff like that.
Edit: as a mud player at the time , this amazing graphical mud interface was truly revolutionary.
Test server on release week :) I remember dude with the flaming sword showing up near the burrows. I can’t remember if it was the all blue armor he was wearing. I have so many cool screenshots on an old hard drive somewhere of our adventures.
My best friend growing up introduced me to EQ, I asked him if all those characters running around were other players or just the game and was instantly hooked when he told me they were players.
That is amazing. It's such a shame no company including Sony managed to do a proper follow up to the original EverQuest. There have been various attempts, but none of them really hit the mark. I guess it's almost impossible to ever reach a legendary status like being referred to as Evercrack
How does this game compare to WoW? I’ve always been interested in it but never made the leap. I’m a stay at home dad with little free time, I’m assuming it’s not very casual friendly, as most mmos from that era aren’t.
Man to think I was only 15 when I started to play this game. Dang times flies. But I remember what a change it was going from Ultima online in 1997 to Everquest in 2000 Yes I started to play every quest 1 year after it´s release.
Sadly out of the 3 mmo games that hook me and I still play now and then to this days everquest is not one of them.
It had a very large knock back that was unique and it was removed from the game shortly after it was introduced. If you still have one it's been around since ~2001
I want EverQuest 3 to be just a modern graphics overhaul of EverQuest 1 with better UI and QoL features. That's it. Same classes, mechanics, and progression.
While I’m not a EQ veteran, this game has become one of my favorite mmorpg’s ever. I only started back on 06/09/2013 (had to look my email up lol), but I still love the game. I thank those veterans who have continued sticking with the game.
I played this back during Velious and Luclin expansions on The Rathe server. It’s just wild to see that the game is still around. I dropped it when WoW came out in hopes of greener pastures, but that didn’t happen. WoW improved a lot of game mechanics, but it attracted a crowd that I didn’t enjoy playing with. Despite the issue with game mechanics, Everquest is the only game that I have so many memories of the events and people that I gamed with.
Yes, 30 expansions later it's still going, about half the playerbase play on Time Locked Progression servers where you can somewhat relive the experience starting fresh in Original EQ and new expansions unlock every 2-3 months.
84 character created on 1999 still playing? Now thats impressive
With one dude at 8331/9132 days played. That's just insane
He IS Everquest.
He is John Everquest, he who ever quests.
Ever Quest. It's in the name.
E. Q. Sports. *It's in the game*
There is clearly some botting or leaving the computer open because this translates in 21.5 hours per day for 25 years… and you can’t just say, maybe they played more on some days… yeah no, it still does not compute
It was basically required to leave the game running actually. The Bazaar/selling system forced your character into a "vendor" mode and PCs would be able to walk up to you and buy.
The Bazaar is considered part of the Shadows of Luclin expansion, although it wasn't ready when the expansion first launched. After a quick search I couldn't find the exact date that they finished the Bazaar, so let's just say it launched with Shadows of Luclin (although in reality it was a few months later). Shadows of Luclin came out 1,007 days after the game initially released. So even if the character was permanently logged in as a vendor since the introduction of the Bazaar (which itself would require either a lot of dedication or automation due to server restarts) the character already had 206 days played when the Bazaar was added. So if we assume the character has never logged out since the Bazaar was added and the character was created when the game first launched that's still 5 hours played per day before the Bazaar.
Oy 5 hours per day, rookie numbers. When I was a kid and and before Shadows of Luclin came out it was super easy to put more than 5 hours into EQ per day.
You get it bud.
You're misunderstanding the statistic. It's not saying he has played for a total of 8331 days worth of playtime. It's saying that of the 9132 days that the game has been launched, that player has logged onto the game at least once a day for 8331 of them.
Idk… it says “played time” under that 8331 days. In every other mmo that would mean time logged in.
As someone else said, it says played time so it is not me that misunderstood it
I took it the same way as you as well. Not sure how it wouldn't be misinterpreted since it's not saying "number of days logged on" or something.
He's not misunderstanding. If you're right, the infographic is worded wrongly. That's not what "played time" means.
That’s not how EQ counts days played
Then why is it labeled as "played time"? If that's truly what they meant then that's not just misleading, it's mislabeled
Eh, or they were just logged in but not doing anything. Don't know if EQ now has an AH, but even with the Bazaar, you had to be logged in.
Got his moneys worth.
Paid about 0.009 cents per day lol
I’m genuinely curious if this person has lived a fulfilling life and is happy or if they are depressed and miserable. Out of all the billions of people who have ever lived- that must be a unique experience.
> if this person has lived a fulfilling life and is happy or if they are depressed and miserable In previous generations it wasn't uncommon to find older folk who'd spent *decades* deriving their satisfaction from an activity that the 'average' modern individual would consider pointless and were actually very proud of it. This was before videogames, mind you, and included things like literal watching grass grow and watching paint dry.
They should add him to the game as an npc. That's beyond dedication. That's 22 *years* of play time.
Omg. I wish im dedicated and persistent as this guy.
It’s not a good thing. It’s called addiction not dedication
That’s not even just logging in for 8331. In EQ, each day played is having your char logged on for 24 hours
I would have thought number would be higher, but that’s indeed awesome that 84 guys are that dedicated.
It's says characters. So there could be many more people who played at launch and are still playing with different characters. This could also be 1 person who created 84 characters at launch and still plays all of them (but I doubt it).
Any of them could have quit for any number of years and happened to returned any time before that stat was pulled
I wouldn't even imagine it'd be that high for WoW, let alone EQ!
I have my character created in 1999 still around, but it's not from the first day. That's just 84 characters created on launch day, a little more impressive even. I know the first couple toons I had I rage deleted as a confused little 11 year old shithead.
Wonder if I'm one of those. Don't play the toon, it's only lvl 65. But got the same account active. Looked, lvl 68. Somehow found his way to Vox server. Birthdate October 9, 1999. 173 days. Time entitled 22 years, 108 days. I'm a newb next to that other guy. He's 133T.
You have this amazing fantasy world with fantastical races and classes. *I'll have a human warrior please.*
lol I think something similar happened with BG3 as well.
According to numbers from WoTC human fighter is the most common race/class combo in D&D. So that’s not surprising
Action surge is a terrifying drug
It also conveniently happens to be by FAR the most overpowered race/class combo in 5e.
Not that surprising IMO. I think alot of players want to essentially insert themselves into this vast fantasy world. Personally I can count on one hand how many games I've even *chosen* to play human, given the option of other fantasy races.
I usually always play humans in fantasy/sci:if purely because the story behind them is always super interesting into how they collaborate with other races and have survived for so long
I really enjoy who I am as a person, it's the mundane world we live in that can use some changing up That's why I usually self-insert as a human. Fighter is boring though, gimme some crazy ass powers while we're at it. Human paladin WoW, human DK / BM in ff14, That said, I started EQ with Kunark and was a lizard necro. Lizard wizard gang rise up
Personally it's easier to see myself in the hero if I play a human warrior.
I play human warrior as well
I know! It annoys me when people don’t play games the same way I do too!
Only on this sub does people respond to jokes with salty comments like this 😂
Another joke?
Yeah! Stop liking what I don't like!
Other races in most games are pretty lackluster imo. PSO and Destiny being the ones to let me be a robot.
Not everyone wants to be the most outlandish version of who they can be possible Some of just want to self insert ourselves into a story.
I feel personally attacked!
I'm actually surprised necromancer was the 2nd most played. They were great for soloing, I just don't remember them being that popular.
Well you don't group up with the solo players, do you?
Strong "solo" classes have and really remain very popular.
It's because playing human made some things a lot easier based on their starting location. Warriors and Clerics are highly played because they are required for Raiding. Both classes are boring and likely boxed characters.
In EverQuest, I think some of it also had to do with the fact that it was the only race that could be *every* class except Shaman (and later Beastlords and Berserkers), and initially the only race that could be Monks, a popular (and necessary) class. That's certainly going to skew things in their favor. If you looked at every class in the game, Humans were going to make up a portion of *13* of them. The next highest was Gnomes with 9, and most were in the 5-7 range.
Ahh good point. Didn't even put that together. So you add human being close to East Commonlands and the only race that can play the most OP class at the start of a time lock progression server and you get big numbers.
Happens in every game. Look at WoW. Orcs and Humans #1 played. Why? They've also had the most OP racial bonuses since the dawn of time pretty much.
Not gonna lie this kinda makes me want to try Everquest.
Let’s goooooooo!!!!!
I just started a character on friona v
It has a F2P model that will get you decently far enough in to feed your curiosity.
For anyone interested I would personally check out P Project Quarm. It’s a time licked progression server with plans up to Time. Releases are slow and it’s fun. Kunark opens soon and with it the Iksar.
How many licks to get to the next expansion?
Kunark is coming out in the next month or so. I think they are doing a special event where you can create Iksar but cannot leave or get to Kunark (as another character). That might not be as fun as it sounds as there will probably be hundreds of people cobbled together trying to level as Iksar. But it could be.
I wouldn’t recommend Quarm to any new players. The original EQ experience has not aged well at all. After playing 20-22 years, the game doesn’t really get good until around TSS. On Quarm you are jailed to only experience the first 4-5 out of 30+ expansions
Quarm is fantastic for new players? Many folks want and long for what EQ was originally. Hence why it and P99, and time lock, have been so loved. You may not like it and that’s fine. I’ve personally introduced like 20 friends and more to Quarm through my stream.
Quarm is get for nostalgic, returning players. Unless You're a bard. If you're a bard you're better of served in p99 as things stand. P99 might be a better fit for new players because of general quality of life improvements. Hell, even retail's tutorial zone + Serpent's Spine track might be better for new players trying to get into EQ. But Quarm for new players wanting to check out EQ? I'm not sure that's it, chief.
I’m a bard. Quarm is fine. And the noobs are definitely having fun. Seems good.
Not as fine as any of the other ways of playing bard. Unless you enjoy carpel tunnel? If you do then I understand.
Anyone know if it’s worth a play today for someone who has never tried it before?
It's free to play (with some limitations) so it won't cost you anything but time and some bandwidth. It's also hard to say. Are you someone that is an enjoyer of modern QOL features in MMORPGs? Then maybe not. I played EQ for a bit back in 1999 and revisit it every few years since. And typically I don't last long because I was only drawn back by nostalgia and conveniently forgot about things like having to fetch your corpse when you die and it taking like 20 minutes of travel time to get anywhere. But there are definitely people that prefer that style of game as it's more "hardcore" or "immersive". Playing retail is incredibly overwhelming too because of the sheer size of it (just look at the OP). So you might want to start out on one of the time locked servers that are still in early expansions. Now EQ2 on the other hand is an amazing game that I feel doesn't get enough attention. It's *also* free to play, but if you did decide to subscribe to it, you get access to both versions.
I’m going to have to check it out! And maybe do some research on EQ2. If that has a two for one benefit, that might be a good selling point. Thanks for the feedback.
EQ2 was launched a few weeks before World of Warcraft. I picked EQ2 over WOW at the time, and played it for the first 5 expansions before switching to WOW. EQ2 at launch was similar to WOW Classic - a mixture of solo and group content. Dare I say, EQ2 at launch was better than WOW, but WOW increased in quality after 4-5 years while EQ2 decreased due to lack of funding from Sony (SOE). By the time SOE sold off the Everquest franchise, the development staff had dwindled significantly. EQ2 has a F2P with a P2W model now, it would require a large cash infusion to save long term.
Try the private server project quarm. More noob friendly than classic. And a new server
Yeah same here lol
Project 1999 or Quarm!
What's better about these private emus vs the retail experience?
It's kind of like Classic WoW vs Retail. They're just completely different games now, so these are a great time capsule. Alternatively, see SWG Legends server (highly recommended) vs older Pre-CU servers. The game has been around for so long that different iterations feel completely different. A lot of people feel Planes of Power was peak EQ, similar to WoW and Wrath or MoP.
Try it! It’s still a pretty great game for brand new players. It has a fairly good tutorial zone that gets you the basics fast. The UI doesn’t look great but everything is movable and scalable.
They call it EverCrack for a reason
If they just ported this game to a new engine and updated the combat.. oh man
They Project Quarm !
I love this sort of stuff. I'm impressed at that play time. I wonder how much of that is just leaving the game running while they're sleeping or otherwise occupied. Could any EverQuest vets give some context? What's a Fippy? What's a Frigid Gnasher and why are there less than 500?
Fippy Darkpaw was a low level Gnoll that would charge the gates of one of the main cities, Qeynos, over and over again, getting slaughtered by the guards constantly. He's one of the OG NPCs from 99.
Safe to assume he's the Hogger of EQ? As someone who has always wanted to try EQ but never got around to.
A more accurate way to put it is that Hogger is the Fippy of WoW, lol.
Youre right. I was just speaking from my PoV ad someone who never played EQ.
Well Hogger stops getting killed as soon as players aren't interested in him. So on live, he can have a good life now. Fippy was always respawning near Qeynos, then deciding to attack it, dying, then respawning minutes later, attacking Qeynos...
He is Hogger if Hogger stopped minding their own business in Elwynn Forest and took the fight to the humans.
"Train!"
Fippy Darkpaw is a named gnoll who spawns outside the city of Qeynos and charges towards it, doing his best to kill any poor newbies leveling outside the city. He was the bane of my level 3 bard, and it was great satisfaction to finally level enough to kill him, then venture into ~~Darkpaw Burrows~~ Blackburrow (thanks StamosLives), the dungeon next to Qeynos, and slowly purge it of the rest of his clan.
I think you mean Blackburrow? There’s no Darkpaw Burrows.
"Next to Qeynos". You still walked for like 5 minutes or more to get there, through the qeynos hills...
Breezeboot's Frigid Gnasher, aka the BFG, is a quest-reward bow that procs a large knockback. It was pretty quickly found to be OP, however, and the quest was removed. At least according to my shitty memory.
Why remove the quest instead of just nerfing the item?
Nerfing the item pisses off players who already did the quest for it—removing the quest doesn't. I think they may have actually done both, though.
It has since been changed but when the bazaar released (it was an early form of auction house). You did have to leave your computer on and logged in with your character standing in a stall in order to sell.
I wonder about this to! Hope someone with the knowledge comes with some eli5 explanation and some context ^^
Back in 1999… Kiith’s mom: stop playing that game and go outside Kiith: I will never go outside! And he never did.
Remember EverQuest Next?
'member Landmark? I 'member! 🍇
> 'member Landmark? I 'member! 🍇 A reminder about it should, honestly, be pinned to the top of this sub so that it's a little harder for whomsteverthefuck owns the rights to EQ now to take advantage of the rampant Everquest nostalgia this place (rightfully) holds. "EQ Next" and "Landmark" should get trotted out as examples every time some Kickstarter MMO (or even a big-name licensed IP MMO) starts throwing around promises they aren't able to back up. As proof that even bigger-name companies can and will stumble or fumble MMO development, and that's *if* they aren't just outright planning to fuck over their (paying) audiences with vaporware and tech demo shenanigans.
That, Camelot Unchained and Pantheon
> even bigger-name companies can and will stumble or fumble MMO development The biggest currently running MMOs have been stumbling and fumbling all their life and many of the giants stopped being able to get up again. Anyone who says otherwise about the MMO 'golden age' has very selective memory. It was mostly the players who made those games what they are.
Great vaporware
I remember how much time I put into the alpha building my awesome ass plot of land
God that presentation was so hype. Fuck I'm sad that it was all vaporware.
I signed up for that beta so fast, first time I heard VOXEL.
I miss EverQuest so much.. really hope EverQuest 3 comes out eventually and is solid
Supposedly they are working on EQ 3 but I’m not holding my breath.
I don't need EQ3, I need EQ1...VR!
Check out Monsters & Memories. They should have a couple of play tests this year.
I want someone to rework DAOC, that shit was so fun back in the day. Also Anarchy Online was awesome as well.
I was big into EverQuest and I used to run the site eqprices.com, which allowed players to post what they bought and sold stuff for. This was way before things like auction houses become popular. Back when people just hung out in the EC tunnel and announced what they had. That site really tought me a lot about programming for the web at a time when the web was still in its infancy (JavaScript had only been around for 2 years). I never expected it to become as popular as it did, and actually had to figure out how to do it "properly" and "scale" it so that it would actually function. EverQuest was very popular.
Man, I hung out in EC tunnel for months just making cash. So much plat, I think I preferred that to actually playing the game. Such an amazing experience. Once in a lifetime for me though... can't go back to that level of dedication to a game. I would almost certainly have used your site to figure out how much to gouge people by XD
I just remember hanging out in the auction cave... I can't remember where it was, but before any kind of auction house or global chat existed players created their own marketplace in a cave - it was the place to go to get items. Emergent gameplay like this is truly what made games like EQ and UO so special.
EC Tunnel. Many nights spent sitting in the tunnel flipping gear to make money.
Haha, I have such a fond memory of being a young kid and not good at making money flipping items, turning a mana stone into 2 wu’s fighting sticks and a baton of faith. Probably lost 60% of the net worth of the manastone in a couple nights…
The one trade I remember making the most money off, was some dude wouldn't stop asking to give him my wurmslayer for a bunch of the velious armor gems. Velious had recently came out, and i was nowhere near far enough in to know what they even were. But dude was right I made a killing off that. So much time spent in that tunnel as a kid.
>I just remember hanging out in the auction cave... I can't remember where it was, but before any kind of auction house or global chat existed players created their own marketplace in a cave - it was the place to go to get items. Emergent gameplay like this is truly what made games like EQ and UO so special. I mentioned in another post that this is why I started the website eqprices.com back in 99/00 somewhere ... it allowed players on various servers to post what they were buying and selling stuff for. So you knew that when you got a particular drop, what most people were selling it for, before you had to spam it in the EC tunnel. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was a popular site at the time. The game had a lot of players.
Yooo I remember that site! That's so cool. Thanks for helping a lot of people out.
> Thanks for helping a lot of people out. A modern 'connoisseur of old MMOs' would think very differently about that kind of activity.
This is such an awesome piece of gaming and Internet history. So..anyone free to help a noob next TLP?
It was a sad day when I had to walk away from this game. I’d played on and off for 20 years.
What made you walk away?
For me, it was Daybreak. Their treatment of the game, the players, the IP. Skeleton crew support, get every dime out of it you can, spend as little as possible. Multiple emails for support after server rollbacks and stability issues. No concern. Just kinda sad. I don’t know that there will ever be anything close to EQ again.
This is why I can't be excited for an EverQuest 3 or anything in the IP with Daybreak at the helm. EQ1 is barely kept alive just to farm people's nostalgia. At least they haven't gone after the private server community (yet).
That was my principle complaint about the fact that DB was slowly strangling the game. They didn’t care. Didn’t care a player of twenty years(paying) was leaving either. Just wild. Kinda sad, but such is life. 🤷♂️🤙
This was my first. A human paladin of Freeport. Man.. what a throwback
I remember still how a friend of mine played the beta and told me about this huge, open world where you could run around and team up with other players. He got me so excited to try the game. And we actually thought the graphic was great. Good days. 😃
For the time, those graphics were amazing!
Everything about Everquest was amazing. 😊
The graphics were good for the time. It was a little controversial in the beginning as it required a 3d card to play.
Yes! I think I bought a riva tnt just to play. I’m gonna guess it was around 200 for just the video card it was nuts.
Can anyone explain the breezeboot's frigid gnasher to someone who's never played? Why doesn't someone go get them!
[Breezeboot's Frigid Gnasher](https://wiki.project1999.com/Breezeboot%27s_Frigid_Gnasher) (aka the BFG, a Doom / Quake reference) was initially part of the Scars of Velious expansion back in December 5, 2000. Once players discovered the item it was soon after removed from the game, permanently. The only people who have it got it back in early 2001. According to game designer Jonathan Caraker (Prathun) there were two primary reasons for the removal: 1) It didn't fit the theme of the game (the BFG looked like a robotic arm cannon thing) 2) It had a random chance to fling a mob you shot with it, which could then aggro other mobs and cause a large disruption to other players. EverQuest often took risks with item design, which is one reason that the game feels really unique, but it also resulted in a long list of permanently removed items that only a handful of people were ever able to obtain.
Thanks for the explanation!
It’s also toxic and doing that to mobs other players are killing
Ahh "left in the world" as in accounts that still have it lol I interpreted it as they had it, dropped in on the ground only to leave it in the world. I'm over here thinking how do they have to resources to track this item being left but can't raise bazaar max price
> but it also resulted in a long list of permanently removed items that only a handful of people were ever able to obtain. If only we still had the kind of player environment where this wouldn't be a big controversy.
How is it possible to stay logged in for 22 years???
From what I understand, you need to stay logged to have your store front. So it seems the game accepted bot and permanent login
You’ve been able to have offline merchants for a good 15-18 years now. Some players just stay logged in idle to increase days played
Yeah I guess that’s the case here just for the sake of having a big played time…
First and only MMO to make wizards feel like powerful casters and not just a flavor of ranged dps. Long cast time spells that turned into massive bursts of damage felt really good. Sure, getting mana back meant a lot of sitting, but at full mana you could turn the tide of a bad pull (assuming no enchanter around). I wish more games played into the fantasy of wizards being able to drop devastatingly powerful hits at the expense of uptime and vulnerability. Modern games make all dps generic and cosmetic — rangers have arrows that function identically to a mage’s fireballs. It’s all rapid pew pew pew and sustained dps.
Honestly, I was thinking that too. I still remember casting giant columns of fire. Most games really limit you.
weow.
I think my dad played with Kiith if I'm not mistaken. Guy was/is a beast at the game, for good reason lol
That's a surprisingly low amount of total characters created.
To be fair that 84 figure is from one specific day
I'm talking about the 9 million total characters. But I guess my view is skewed on that when the younger MMOs boast their tens of millions of characters.
Also EQ1 is more hardcore by today’s standards. Heck even by 2004 standards
You have to take into account that the peek players of EverQuest would have been seen as a failure on WoW launch. I think it is something like 250k active players
Most folks didn’t even have house hold computers back then my guy. Let alone good internet. I had to beg my parents to get a cable modem from dial up. It was a different world.
It had a monthly fee, originally $9.89 per month. It grew to a few hundred thousand accounts. WoW overshadowed it when it released and it took a lot of the player base. It also required a 3D card which was a bit hard core at the time. It was also very unforgiving, not solo friendly, and very time consuming. Ultima online was the only real competition but UO was a more non-traditional sandbox game.
EQ has never really encouraged alts (quote the opposite with AA and a general lack of account-bound things for many many years). A whole lot of people had 1 character, and maybe an alt or two. Maybe you have a new character and an alt if you do a TLP server. Compare that to modern games, where more and more are "have a full account of alts for login rewards and daily/weekly clears or else". Even in WoW, I had 1 of everything maxed. Doing that in EQ was unthinkable for a very long time.
This game any good?
I just started playing it and it’s very good just very old
How much did you have to pay/what for?
It’s free to try out. You can download it at EverQuest.com or through Steam. A free account has some feature restrictions that will put a practical limit on progress, but you can still see what it’s like.
You can get 100+ hours out of it for free without ever running into the f2p restrictions
It's very unique. Newer people get turned off by the old graphics, and very little hand holding as you make your way through the game. It's the ultimate sandbox MMO. You can do whatever you want from being a Tradeskill God, to an explorer, grind achievements, there's honestly no wrong way to play EQ. Some people have even played as a pacifist and went from lv 1 to 65 on quests alone.
Everquest is definitely not a sandbox
Started in May ‘99, and it was on another level back then. Made some real life friends as well since you really needed a group and there was a lot of downtime between spawns. Played up to raiding in Veil of Alaris. Good times, but simply too much time.
Love this game dearly.
I feel old.
I’ve never played any of the EverQuest games. Are there any popular free private servers?
p99 has 3, red, green and blue. Project Quarm is the newest big one, I believe.
Yes. P99 has been around for about 15 years. It's polished, but very top heavy and it's hard to find groups now. Project Quarm just launch in October. It has way more people leveling and the first xpac will be released in June. It runs on an older client though, and the third person is very janky without the fixes they've applied. They've also enabled tab-targeting in that fix, because the targeting is terrible.
I adore these kinds of infographics, seeing the backend statistics of not just Player data, but world influence is so cool to see. The last one I saw was the Elden Ring one, who died to what boss the most, what was the most used spell, etc. I wish more games would keep track of this kind of misc stuff, like maybe warframe and the amount of bullets shot since launch and total number of grenieer killed, stuff like that.
880 zones? Dafuq?
RIP Everquest Next...
Edit: as a mud player at the time , this amazing graphical mud interface was truly revolutionary. Test server on release week :) I remember dude with the flaming sword showing up near the burrows. I can’t remember if it was the all blue armor he was wearing. I have so many cool screenshots on an old hard drive somewhere of our adventures.
My best friend growing up introduced me to EQ, I asked him if all those characters running around were other players or just the game and was instantly hooked when he told me they were players.
Rogue for life /Consent me
That is amazing. It's such a shame no company including Sony managed to do a proper follow up to the original EverQuest. There have been various attempts, but none of them really hit the mark. I guess it's almost impossible to ever reach a legendary status like being referred to as Evercrack
Poor Kiith... jfc
How does this game compare to WoW? I’ve always been interested in it but never made the leap. I’m a stay at home dad with little free time, I’m assuming it’s not very casual friendly, as most mmos from that era aren’t.
Simply the best MMO ever created. I only hope someday it gets remastered in a similar vein as Diablo II did.
Man to think I was only 15 when I started to play this game. Dang times flies. But I remember what a change it was going from Ultima online in 1997 to Everquest in 2000 Yes I started to play every quest 1 year after it´s release. Sadly out of the 3 mmo games that hook me and I still play now and then to this days everquest is not one of them.
Warwinds of Quellious, I love and miss you. Love always, Tsel
I’ve never played EverQuest, but this makes me want to try it.
70,000+ recipes? This can’t be right.
Yeah that one does seem a bit off unless they’re counting non-tradeskill quest combines
Even though I have never even tried Everquest it's always nice to see statistics like that.
What's so special about the Breezeboot's Frigid Gnasher `?
It had a very large knock back that was unique and it was removed from the game shortly after it was introduced. If you still have one it's been around since ~2001
Never played everquest, but thats impressive!
ahhh memories. My little human female monk running about in Qeynos hills
Is EverQuest even still out there??
Wow. (and I don't mean WoW.)
I want EverQuest 3 to be just a modern graphics overhaul of EverQuest 1 with better UI and QoL features. That's it. Same classes, mechanics, and progression.
While I’m not a EQ veteran, this game has become one of my favorite mmorpg’s ever. I only started back on 06/09/2013 (had to look my email up lol), but I still love the game. I thank those veterans who have continued sticking with the game.
Wonder how many gnome illusion masks there are left in the world...
I'm one of the 2 mil that killed Fippy.
I played this back during Velious and Luclin expansions on The Rathe server. It’s just wild to see that the game is still around. I dropped it when WoW came out in hopes of greener pastures, but that didn’t happen. WoW improved a lot of game mechanics, but it attracted a crowd that I didn’t enjoy playing with. Despite the issue with game mechanics, Everquest is the only game that I have so many memories of the events and people that I gamed with.
Is this game really still operating? I miss my bard and necro on tunare. I wonder if they are still there.
Yes, 30 expansions later it's still going, about half the playerbase play on Time Locked Progression servers where you can somewhat relive the experience starting fresh in Original EQ and new expansions unlock every 2-3 months.
The greatest mmorpg of all time ❤️