Marino

Late entry here, but I just found a screenshot I thought I'd lost from this experience. Zellana was the enchanter I referred to in the story. He was casting spells on me (one called Bedlam) just to mess with me I think.

This is what my screen looked like for the majority of the 19 hours or so.

@Jams: D'oh. Missed your response yesterday.

I don't know. A video/audio production seems like a lot of work for what not many people are interested in. I wasn't really even sure I'd get any readers/replies on these blogs at all. If someone were to ever do something like that, it should be a group project with more than just one person's screenshots/experiences.

@icytower38: Done.

@AjayRaz said:

great read. can people rob your corpse if you're dead. if so then that'd totally be like in Runescape which was the worst.

also, it's pretty amazing that you still have these screenshots

No one could take your stuff. You could give someone consent to move your corpse to help you get it back. Originally, giving /consent did give them permission to loot it as well, but they took that out fairly early on.

As for the screenshots, I actually lost all the ones from my first year playing in a hard drive failure. It still sucks thinking about it. My second main character (Slowride, as you can see in the last screenshot) was a rogue, though. And rogues got an ability in Luclin called Shroud of Stealth that amplified your sneaking ability to the point that practically nothing in the game could see you. That made it pretty easy to go get screenshots of all the memorable locations. It also makes it easy to revisit those places if/when I ever feel like logging back in. So, I was able to sort of document a lot of places, but the original screenshots included guild mates and friends that I'll never get back.

@MideonNViscera said:

hahaha Lurik was there, awesome. He took up leadership of the Veiled Alliance (all rogue guild) when I refused. Way to be second best, Lurik!

Never had any problems with Lurik. They often put the rogues in one group during raids and we'd compete to see who could click the boss to announce the loot first. He was in Echoes in Eternity, led by Jeet, by that point. We (Dol Amroth) allied with them from late 2001 til DA folded just a year or so ago.

@Ravenlight said:

Again, I love hearing about the EQ mechanics in play, but I would have absolutely hated actually playing.

It's hard to think back to what other games looked like at the time. Was EQ ever praised for having great graphics, or did everyone always know that they were kinda bad?

I don't think anyone ever thought it was amazing, but you have to imagine being in 1999-2000 with the ability to play with literally hundreds of people at once and still look pretty good. What you don't see in these screenshots are the spell effects, which added a lot to the graphics. They totally revamped the graphics engine with the release of Shadows of Luclin in 2001. Zones from that point forward looked considerably better than what you see in the "old world." While the character models looked way better, the animations weren't as good if you ask me. Lots of people continued to use the old models.

@Jams said:

@Marino: Great read. I've been looking into playing again, but the game has changed so much, that it's not worth it anymore. I'm desperately hoping EQ next is going to be the late and great. From some things I've been reading about what Smed says, it might be true. Are you looking forward to EQN?

I'm cautiously optimistic. The whole MMO genre seems kinda chaotic right now. While I'd like to know more about EQN, I'm kinda glad they're not really talking about it beyond that original announcement nearly two years ago. Hopefully they're taking notes from all the problems others are having in the field.

@Redbullet685: Bumped this up to a front page promo. Hopefully will get some more people involved.

As always, nice work. I went ahead and put this up on the front page.

Done up to here.

@fiye: Done.