User blog comment:Raylan13/EverQuest 15th Anniversary Sweepstakes/@comment-24725771-20140323175111

That fateful day in March 1999 when my brother came home with some new game that he insisted was unlike anything we’d ever played before. Like Dungeons & Dragons, he said, but with much better graphics. We used to fight over the old Dell computer, the only one in the house, as to who was going to play first that day. And w hen the servers were down, again, we’d just sit around strategizing about what we were going to do next with our characters – he had a Warrior, and I had a Shaman.

I remember camping a rare spawn in Befallen for an essential item for The Paw of Opalla quest – 23 hours straight; corpse runs to the bottom of Runny-Eye – dragging your corpse while invisible to some marginally safe location so that you could loot it as quickly as possible and get out before you died again; trains in Blackburrow when someone aggro’d too much in the Commander room and pulled the entire zone to the top, and then everyone sitting just outside the zone in the hallway at ¼ health waiting for the train to clear; ten full groups sitting along the perimeter wall of Unrest pulling one thing at a time from inside, and waiting for their turn in the basement; some NPC waxing the guy next to you in one blow because he accidently hit the “A” button (which was mapped for auto-attack) while trying type something; the little smirk on your face when you looted “a cracked staff” because it actually sold for 6 gold, and that was a lot; 150 people hanging out in East Commons on Sunday morning spamming the chat box with items they were trying to sell; waiting on a crowded dock 30 minutes for the boat to arrive; running from Qeynos to Freeport and deperately searching for a bind at your destination; "sowing for donations"; "camp check"; jumping off the edge of the top ramp in East Karana just for the hell of it.

Fond memories… mostly because it wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t easy. You used paper and pencil to keep track of your quests, to make maps of dungeons, and to remember names. The way the game was back then forced interaction between people - you had to group, at least some of the time, and word of mouth was how you learned about quests and items. You played carefully - making damn sure you had all of the correct items for a turn-in, because if you were missing one the quest NPC would eat them all. Y ou had to really work for things too, they weren’t handed to you - if you had a nice item, running around Qeynos with it, showing it off, everyone knew that you’d earned it, that you put in the time and sweat to attain it. You didn’t box it or merc it or pot it, or buy it – you couldn’t buy it, the economy sucked. And you feared death, because a corpse run meant that you were going back into the lion's den naked, and there was a possibility, if too much time had passed, that wouldn't get your items back at all.

So, I left the game to play EQ2, WoW, and for number of other RL reasons, but I always came back over the years. Im back again, and glad that it’s still up and running. Happy Birthday EQ! I look forward to trying EQNext and am hopeful for it, but nothing can take the place of the original.

Sorry to spam, everyone... site logged me out while I was typing! Gotta love it :P

-Jasemana