Only 100 hours? Not 10,000? You know you can't judge a game if you haven't invested 10,000 hours into the game.

Rehd here. Thanks for the fun few hours mate, I still haven't had another social experience on the game and I'm level 60 now! Best of luck on your next deep dive, keep up the great content!

I quit around level 34 when the game came out. I was a wizard, cast levitate, ran up the spire in North Karana, bound myself, and turned off levitate to see if it would spawn me on the ground or air. The answer is air... I went to lunch and when I came back, I was level 29 with a game moderator telling me my 100s of corpses started lagging the zone. Good times.

"new players cannot play through your memorys" what a line

My grandma played a lot of EQ! She started around Ruins of Kunark, but stopped around the time SOE was sold off. No matter how many memories I pushed out of my brain, I can't forget some of the stuff she and her sister (Twintime and Twinlet, on Torvonnilous pre-server-merge) did while I watched her play: - Grinding out beetles in the starting zone for wood elves (I don't know why she did this, she was a halfling) - Grinding out giants to get materials for making dyes (*the* moneymaking strat when she was playing) - Constantly getting drunk in-game while she leveled up her brewing skill to make said dyes - Selling Spirit of the Wolf (one of the earlier gaming memes was "sow plz", asking casters for a speed buff) and druid teleports - Burning through her Epic and Epic 2.0 weapon "quests" (when she played, quests weren't tracked, they were just a bunch of flags; this was the same thing for raid keys) - All of the downtime between pulls during raids! Raids were really neat to watch, all the people around and all the special effects back at the beginning of 3D gaming, but it was a lot of "blink and you miss it". - Her unlikely friendship with a dude named Danknugz. Kinnamon was also a friend of hers, I think? - Her rise to become one of the best, if not *the* best, druid on her server, geared to the nines and on top of progression with each expansion. A lot of raiders valued her and trusted her to heal better than the clerics, while also maintaining DOTs and stuff. She was a gamer. It wasn't without bad moments, of course (there was a lot of raid drama, including misallocation of DKP and preferential treatment between guildies and other stuff, as well as her being kinda cyberbullied for playing a halfling because they weren't "optimal" for playing a druid, and she should really change to being a wood elf), but it was some of the happiest time in her life (which, with age and my own similar experiences under my belt, I can say was an absolute horror show). She always said that gaming was what kept her brain sharp, and I guess she was right; she's still around, but not entirely... there. It hurts to watch. Anyways -- I don't know. Hug your grandma.

"Limitations breeds creativity" *Puts normal mic in coffee mug* Well played sir

This game defined my childhood, I couldn't wait to run home and either play my halfling ranger or watch my dad on his enchanter do high end gameplay. I remember my mom and dad taking literal shifts to wait for a giant to spawn on an island so they could get the material it dropped to make the SoW boots. Even with all that nostalgia, I have tried countless times to get back into it and I came to the same feelings you did. I felt alone .. I wished I could find more people to go kill stuff with even if that's all we did. Really great video and thank you for putting in the 100 hours!

I really, really like the way you described the game as Elvis or the original Dracula movie. It’s so relatable and meaningful, and gets a profound point across clearly. I’d be happy with watching a well edited video of a knowledgeable player play an old MMO I’ve only heard of in a historical context, but I think that this sort of commentary is why your videos are really a step above.

"New players can't play through your memories." Well...shit. 💀that one hit home.

I have such nostalgia for EverQuest, it hurts. It was my first MMO, my first obsession. I skipped school (sometimes) to play. Hurried home during lunch hours, forsaking food for time in Norrath. This was during the era of dial-up. What Josh said in that RuneScape podcast he was on recently about *phenomenology* is ultra-true; it wasn't just a game, it was a whole experience. That experience involved dial-up internet, the horrible screeching connection and the blocking-off of the phone line (which my dad took exception to; mobile phones weren't a thing yet). It involved using disks to install, and not being able to tab out of full screen (the only format, windowed mode did not exist) to, say, look up information online.. and if you did look up info, you'd find ultra-simple maps made in MS Paint. And I did that. I *printed* those maps, using up our printer's ink. I wrote coordinates all over them, and filled blank sheets with coordinates of my own. You bet I cherished those damn maps and notes, it was as if I was an explorer, charting a new world. And then there was the social aspect. Josh is spot-on with how crucial, how intrinsic it was. Forming a guild with friends both online and off. Getting into my first online relationship, which started with helping my eventual in-game girlfriend recover hers and a friend of hers corpses from the depths of Blackburrow, which I knew inside and out and was just higher-level enough and better-geared enough to be able to be their hero. Exploring new areas and chatting with the guild while camping mobs for hours. The friends I had in there.. we weren't in touch in other spaces. Sure old ones like mIRC existed, but why would we need them, when we had EQ? They were clunky and full of weirdos anyway. And technologically it just wasn't feasible to tab out of the game anyway. I'm fully aware of my rose-tinted goggles. I've gone back to the game in recent years, playing both Project 99 and grabbing the current version of the game off Steam. The current game was a neat little binge, but Project 99 really grabbed me in the nostalgia, in the memories. I played feverishly for a little while... and then stopped. I had some friends in-game, but it wasn't the same. It can't be. Phenomenology. I'm sitting here with two screens, KZfaq and Discord and the wiki on my second monitor.. not perched on my chair in front of a CRT monitor, deeply focused on *understanding* and *immersing myself* into the game, like back then. Oh, I know lots of people still play and love Project 99, and I have fondness for it too, and will probably hop back in sometime to try again.. but the simple fact is, I have other options now. Other games. And my friends in Discord aren't really focused into any single spot, aside from our common interest in FFXIV. That's just how it is, now. This ramble's for me. I don't really expect anyone read it through to the end. It's a small way of paying tribute to my first video game addiction, my first video game love. I'd never try to sell someone on EQ.. I'm all too aware that Elvis has left the building. But.. I'm still heartened, by some of what Josh has noted. How the game still can be magical, with the right set of circumstances. It CAN still be someone's forever-game.. if they want it to be. If they join a community, a Discord, centred on it. If they get involved, collaborate, play together with these new friends. Immerse themselves.. have another little life, inside Norrath. It can be done, and not just by putting a lot of time in, but by engaging with people who are in it as well. We're in a modern era, so it's inevitable that if you try it now, if you try to get *in,* you'll have Discord and other stuff going on.. but if you like a slow, socially-oriented burn, and find pleasure in figuring out and mastering the arcane complexities of a game made in another time.. well, maybe it's the game for you.

I still log onto Project 1999's server every now and then...I loved the original game which includes the Classic game with only the Kunark & Velious expansions. It was beautiful - the game is pure magic to me and I have never felt so strongly positive about any other game I have ever played!

This video got me nostalgic and now I've spent the last 2 weeks playing Project Quarm and falling behind on all my TV and other games. EverCrack is still alive and well.

I get this strange sad feeling whenever I see Everquest. It feels like looking at a picture of an old pioneer town, then glancing at it now only to see overgrown ruins and frames of collapsed buildings. If you listen closely enough, you can just about hear the bustle of people long gone, but the truth is that you're alone and nobody's lived there for ages.

The 100 hours thing makes me think he partialy did this out of spite - wich im all here for

as an original EQ player and off and on again for the past 25 years I was screaming at you, yelling "but you did it wrong", "You are using the wrong spell", "You can do it this way better" and so on, then it hit me LOL I am viewing your perspective! This is the perspective of what its like for new players. It is NOT your fault at all. it is the games and with its faults it does offer its charms as well. I am happy to see you got to experience the game for all its good and bad. You did an Outstanding job explaining it, going over the details and showing the world what its like with a fresh perspective like yours. EQ is a time capsule and opening it today, you can see what was and remains of how people used to play and do things. EQ never died and vanished. Its a story your grandfather told you about when he was younger! EQ lives in our memories and you got only a sample of it while playing it. There are much better designed, streamlined, fast paced games for the younger generation. EQ is the model T of the MMO's while games like fortnight and wow are the new cars with GPS and satellite radio that drives for you!

The laugh of the skeleton pet is pure gold.

3:17 BLESS YOU VOICE IN THE BACKGROUND

I think it's hilarious that I've never played any MMO more than a few hours and have no interest in playing one but I still get a lot of value out of your breakdowns because they apply to games as a whole.

This is pretty interesting to watch as someone who didn't play EQ personally (altho i did play EQ2), but literally have it to thank for my existance 😭 My parents met over the game back when it came out, and were hardcore raiders. I believe they still actively played when I was extremely young (Im 21 so its been quite a long time since then)

To this day i know the exact aggro range of every mob in EQ up to planes of power and the exact pathing for nearly every mob in most common zones, because if you didn't you would get gored by a wandering mammoth and lose 3 days worth of experience. Expecting any new player to get to this level obsessive knowledge without any community around them to absorb it from? That is obviously too much to ask but i am grateful that it still exists. This game may have been the most important part of my childhood, it is the only reason I am capable of social interaction today and I still play every once in a while for nostalgia's sake. I can still go back to where I learned that I actually could be a part of a social group and that has helped me many times in the last 20 years. That said everything josh just said is fair and mostly true, I appreciate you giving EQ your time and putting a genuine effort into getting as much of the experience as you possibly could, this game means a lot to many people and you treated it with respect. Keep it up man. and because i can't help myself: /who friend /who (name of a zone) /who all (the whole server) /who guild will give you a list of people online in any of those groups, you can even get a player count for a zone before you head there to know if you're likely to find a group. Guess what inspired my curiosity around terminal commands and gave me a career 😂

Ex Everquest Raider here. The everquest of today is just a different beast to what we knew back then. It was always a group centric MMO, unless you were a necro or bard who could kite entire zones of monsters around. In general you logged in, got into a group and went to your level area and killed mobs in the group. As peeps logged out you invited another in. And you did for this for hours on end. Being in a guild was obviously beneficial, and you progressed until you reached maxlevel and then went looking for raiding guilds. Then you started in the lower raiding guilds and worked your way up to the top server guilds. I raided with Anthem on Tunare for years. I've tried reloading it on and off during the years, but without the player base you're just a solo in a huge land with bugger all to do. No other MMO has come close to givingme the memories I have with Everquest, but I'm happy to leave them as memories.

So cool that you ran into Ghoulhopper again after all that time!

I love that you can tell your natural baseline is RuneScape, like how you point out that NPCs can't detect items in your inventory and must be manually used on them, and how the animation doesn't line up with attacks, etc. I've been looking into Quarm a lot the last two or three days and this was awesome as a guy whose main game is OSRS. Perfect comparisons particularly for us haha

As an avid EverQuest player I appreciate this video and I applaud your honesty. I absolutely agree with with your sentiment. It was a very accurate and honest description. And your comments about the Run speed buff was hilarious! I had to replay it a couple times😅

EQ was the 1st MMORG to employ a 3d engine and the fact its still going is a big accomplishment.

My appreciation for you taking the time to play this game for 100 hours.

I grew up playing Champions of Norrath on the PlayStation 2 and I had literally no idea it was set in the universe of an existing mmorpg !!!!This is so exciting, knowing the time I spent on Guild Wars later in my teenage years, i would have loved Everquest

Mr Strife Hayes, watching you play an MMO I played 20 years ago may be my new favorite thing on KZfaq right now :)

Other games would give you a steak dinner prepared to your liking. Everquest is the type of game to bring you to a cow about to give birth, have you help it give birth, and then raise that cow to be your steak. Also, dont forget to learn woodcutting and cooking as a side quest cause you'll need that to make the steak later on.

Honestly the fact that EQ remains a) propped up and b) has a player base at all is, to me, remarkable. Good for them. Quest on.

I actually ran into you when you where doing research for this on Mischief and said hi in the open channel and got kinda fanboyish lol, gotta respect the great work you do on all your videos, its top notch! Thanx for covering EQ and doing it the justice it deserves, its a old game but man does it hold a special place is alot of mmo players hearts that got to play it as ther first mmo

It's amazing how trippy listening to you describe everquest while playing Final Fantasy 11 is. Basically everything you've said about everquest is also true about FFXI with the exception of the progression servers.

Josh's super power is articulating exactly how and why something is boring or frustrating.

22:06 This is the kind of interaction that anyone who plays oldschool MMOs *desperately* craves. Running into an obviously new player doing something just so damn innocent and cute in its naivety, and being able to just smile and ask "What in the fuck are you doing?"

I cannot fully express how much I enjoy seeing you hold the mic in your mug It's just really, really great Edit: wait you didn't answer the question of ''should we play EverQuest for 100 hours", you just told us what to expect if we do decide to play EverQuest. Great video still, absolutely love your stuff, but just something I observed

I loved this review. I really really cherish the magic that I got to experience when EQ first came out but I also recognize that it was a once in a lifetime experience. I can try to convey how incredible it was at the time but it's really something you had to be there for in the moment to enjoy. You were able to understand that and articulated it so well. Great video.

The Elvis analogy got me thinking about how playing old video games is different than a lot of other media. It’s not harder to listen to an Elvis song than a new song. Newer songs don’t have more features for ease of use or time-saving. They have new types of sounds, but having a synthesizer in a song isn’t quite the same as being able to see dialogue options you’ve already picked, or graphical mini maps. Elvis songs also don’t demand 100 hours of your time

I started playing EQ back when it first came out, and it was absolutely magical. I went back recently to see what it was like, and after spending a couple of hours trying to figure out how to get back to the old zones I knew and loved (I left after Planes of Power, so the new starting zones were foreign to me), it was just... bittersweet. The music and the scenery of Kelethin will *always* feel like home, and being there again in that tree city with no railings on the bridges (because wood elves don't have lawyers) tugged hard at my heart. Sneaking into Neriak to relive my time as a dark elf and revisit those super hot female dark elf models I used to lust over (all six polygons of them) was exciting and hilarious, and I was happy to discover that I still remembered all the secret passages. Doing the scary run from Freeport to Grobb, through the high-level zone of South Ro, as every low-level dark elf character had to do on the Team PvP server back in the day, was just as nail-biting as it was the first time I did it. But the emptiness hurt my soul. There was nobody in any of those old zones. Nobody at the dark elf newbie log in Nektulos, nobody camping around the entrance to Najena in Lavastorm, no trading/selling chat spam in the East Commonlands, nobody waiting for the boat in Freeport, nobody sitting outside Kithicor Forest waiting for the sun to rise so the super-high-level undead would despawn and they could make the run across toward Qeynos... I saw all the ghosts of those people, silent, transparent, separated from me by an age of time, never to return. I miss you, Everquest. I don't miss spending all day sitting, spamming my Direction Sense skill as I watched my HP slowly return, I don't miss raid wipes and 12-hour corpse recovery missions, I don't miss a lot of the nitty-gritty details, but I do miss being a part of that world, a part of that community. RIP, Everquest. You were loved.

I played EQ (and still play EQ2 occasionally) for YEARS. was in a high end riding guild on my server (XEV). i still have EQ installed on my computer, and once a year I fire it up, look around and quickly camp. this game gave me life long experiences no other game has ever replicated. i can still close my eyes and 'travel' through most of the maps and know the enemy positioning in a lot of them. i fire up the Kelethin music to relax to this day. I've tried almost all the MMOs after, but non ever grabbed me like EQ did (maybe EQ2 but that was because my entire guild decided to move to it). thanks for this video Josh, it reminded me of both the best and worst of playing. to summarize your Elvis comparison: You just had to be there.

As someone who has played 10,000 hours or more of Everquest - This was incredibly fair, honest, and poignant.

Peak Everquest was an experience that will never be replicated... it was the MMO equivalent of the transition from analog to digital...If you were there, it was communal experience unlike virtually anything else. I actually met my wife and most of my current MMO friend group playing EQ back in the day. I can't imagine returning to it now, as huge empty husk. It's kinda bizarre to hear the active player numbers... back in the Planes of Power days, a full raid was 72 people! We once downed an outdoor raid boss with 118 folks split between two raids...Thanks for making this video and reminding me of some very fond memories.

I watched this video 3 times for fun before I realized it was this long. Time flies when your playing EverQuest. After the first time watching this I had to try it. Now I’m hooked. It’s a great game if you love classic wow but want something….more classic. It’s like classic wow but more “hardcore”.

Great review. Took me two hours to find my way out of Neriak as a baby dark elf necromancer on opening day of the game. So many great memories with EQ. Played many games since but none have been the deep memory making experience.

Funny enough, from as long as I had known him, my stepdad has played Everquest, and to this day is still his favorite game, alongside Gran Turismo(strange enough). Last year around Christmas, we checked his EQ playtime and it came up to just over 7 years spent in game. Incredible stuff.

I had a friend, somewhere around 1999 or 2000 that would make fun of me constantly for playing EQ. On his birthday that year, I gave him a gift card or money or something, but put it in my EQ retail box and wrapped that up; he opened the gift, rolled his eyes and then took the actual gift out. But that box struck a cord with him and he thought what he saw looked pretty cool, so not much later, he picked up the game and started playing. Anyway, almost 25-years later and he's still playing Everquest and is absolutely one of those enfranchised players you speak of in this video. EQ was amazing in 1999, when I was 15, hadn't experienced anything like it and had unlimited amounts of time to just explore, die and grind. But as you've noticed with this video, it is not something I will ever go back to. I have some nostalgia for it, but thankfully that nostalgia is colored by reality of what the game actually is.

I've logged thousands of hours on eq back in the late 90s early 00s. I absolutely loved this game. That being said, here at 2:35 min in to this video I can confidently tell you NO, unless you're playing for nostalgic reasons there is no need to spend 1 yet 100 hours in to this game. God love you, you masochistic bastard 😂

100 hours is just dipping your toe into the game. The progression servers are where it is at, play one at a launch. It's about the closest thing you can get to the nostalgia of the original game. In terms of today, you won't get far unless you are a boxer and play multiple toons or have a steady group of friends to play with. Put it this way I have played off and on for years, I played from day one launch over a crappy 36K dial up connection, my account has 24 years 233ish days on it, and one of my toons has almost a decade of played time. The game is still going on strong after 24ish years. If you have a good core group of friends then this is a great game for you and 12 friends to get together form a guild and destroy stuff, level up and have a lot of fun. Solo you're not going to get too far, it's a MMO not a Single Player game.

My god ... I worked at SOE back in the day. I can't believe this huge monstrosity of a game is still going. Your masochism, Sir Hayes, is rather remarkable.

What I miss about Everquest is the ability to just camp something with a group of people where I have time in between combat to be social. In modern MMOS it's a speed run ADHD reward blast. Everquest felt more personable.

Really enjoyed this video. Eq was my first MMO and I played it for years. Have also played p99 and several progression servers. You are absolutely correct that the worst thing about EQ is the massive time sink to just “do something”. Travel/forming a group will eat up at least 30-60 minutes. Dungeon crawling to your desired camp will take another 10-30 minutes. And by then you’re probably 90 minutes into your session before you’ve actually “accomplished” anything. There are the odd times where it goes much faster but on average the game is just such a drawn out process. It will forever hold a special place in my heart, and by god I always consider starting the new progression server for a solid minute before remembering how much of my life will be erased from attempting it 😂

Whether I find myself agreeing with whatever take is on display at the moment, you really do create some of the best review content out there. Also a big fan of your "theory" videos where you discuss different phenomena in the genre.

Been playing for 23 years, and will probably be playing every day for 23 more. I love Everquest.

These "sagas" where you randomly encounter other players are rare due to the nature of which MMOs you play, as in usually depopulated, but they’re always a treat. Cheers!

Did you know ? : You can turn OFF the combat music in the sound options. Yes, they have a combat music option. You were not the first one to get tired of it. 😁

I started playing EQ back in 99. I have 16 accounts, years of in game play time, played all server types (live, test, pvp, rp, tlp, p99) and I truly have no idea why anyone would ever try this game for the first time at this point in its life cycle. Just a sad truth, but it was true magic when it was new.

This is some top tier masochism, Josh

The history of EQ is really interesting, as it was made from a decades spanning D and D story of a group of friends who then decided to make it an mmorpg, while not having any experience in game design.

I love the effort that went into doing something like this. I have a somewhat fond memory of Everquest. I wasn't an original player as I was too young, but I knew of World of Warcraft for about 4 years before it came out, finding out about it around ~2000. Near the beginning of 2004, I was in an EB games and saw Everquest and thought it looked so cool, and convinced my parents to pick it up and pay for it while I waited for WoW to come out. I only played it for around 7 months, but I guess from what I've heard it was roughly around its golden era, and I'm glad I could have at least been a small part of it. Also, THIS is the kind of thing I'd love to just randomly fund if *I* was a billionaire. You could throw a paltry sum of your wealth at something like Everquest and likely guarantee a renaissance of the entire game and community without even noticing a hit to your wallet, and it'd be so fun.

Wonderful, yet sad video. Sooo many great memories of EQ, but it is the people AND the currency (of level and progression); that makes it special, it's a whole lot of empty loneliness otherwise as you say :( that said, I'd love to restart EQ from level 1 as it was when I first played (2000) WHAT a journey!!!

As a 13 year old playing this on release, it was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen. Still the pinacle of all my gaming experiences.

Ahhh, good old EverCrack! Had a lot of fun back before WoW released with this gem. Memories of people begging my enchanter for crack (Clarity or Haste, depending on their class), yells in chat of "TRAIN TO ZONE!" which is a phrase with a whole other meaning these days if you're familiar with ZoneToons, the impromptu bazaar at the East Commons Tunnel, and my favorite hero moment when I saved an entire hodge-podge Chardok raid mid-wipe when the entire Library got pulled by mistake and all the other raid enchanters died followed by much Mezzing and joining the Purple Club twice before everything was locked down enough for rezzes to begin on the half-killed raid. But yeah, without the sense of community? ummmm.... yeah that's gonna show it's age pretty badly. I'm honestly surprised it's still developed and happy for those still playing away.

Really good video. I love EQ. I started playing in 1999 and have played off and on ever since. I can still remember vividly the first time I left Feydwer because I needed to get to Qeynos so I could by a song I couldn't get in my home town. I remember getting to Freeport and thinking how different everything was from the Elf, Dwarf and Gnome cities. Walking out into the open rolling hills and seeing my first hill giant and not realizing how many more giant enemies I was going to see in this part of the world. Ran into few people who also wanted to make the trek to Qeynos so we grouped up, I fired up my bard song so we could travel faster and we were off to an adventure. This was back when death had even more penalties than just xp loss. In those days your money and all of your gear would stay with your body. I remember making so much money pulling people corpses in dungeons like Lower Guk, Sol B and Old Sebilis. And raiding for the first time. Clearing out the planes of Hate and Fear, sitting around for hours chatting while waiting and clearing the Plain of Sky. Killing Nagefen and Lady Vox. Many great memories.

My friend had a Troll named KazKaz. With that troll he trolled. Was pvp:ing and owning up everything. Eventually high level people got involved. Now, they can't directly kill you, but they can buff lower level player. So they started healing and buffing, until they went out of mana. 15 years later I ran into a dude who remembered that fight but from the other side. It was so nostalgic to talk about that fight, and it was just because they remembered his name even to this day.

EverQuest created a foundation for the MMO genre(which was originated by the previously created single-player games of Ultima and others as such). It was originally an Social activity of talking to people, and THEN go on an adventure - some short others long - over the years that changed to be less of the talking(typing) when voice comms became an external thing. In the Prime days, there was ALWAYS someone to group with in low and mid - level areas. Sometimes you would spend WEEKS and/or MONTHS in these areas, and making acquaintances and eventually friends made for better enjoyment of this time. I do miss the days of MMO games actually being less individually grindy and more group grindy, encouraging us to find a full party of a proper mixture of various classes that would balance and compliment the combat. Current MMO are all about the DPS being the highlight of a group and NOONE wanting to be the beefy Tank or the linchpin HEALER. Whatever happened to the greatest of classes - Crowd Control - ? Anyways, great presentation of a great game, the fact you survived for 100 hours solo in a game intended for group play is a testament of your natural talents of a gamer to the core.

I miss these days. I almost failed high school because of this game lol. 1999 was a hell of a year!

Loved this video and earned my sub from it! As a long time EQ Player I enjoyed your honest / not tainted from nostalgia opinion on the game and your criticisms are honestly what I love about the game. It's treacherous, no hand holding, could possibly make you rage quit at any given moment but all of those make the juice worth the squeeze once you get past the learning curve. I wish there was a version of this video where you got the proper beginners experience (which is still definitely possible) but it would ruin the essence of a true review of the current state of the game. If for w/e reason you're (the viewer) reading this comment and maybe considering playing EQ I have a suggestion that will solve one of Josh's main critiques, find the latest progression or emulated server that has a decent population and your adventure will be less lonely. He is 100% right this game's fun is tied to doing things with people. "Live" is a graveyard, Progression Servers after the first 6 months or so will die off but if you can get the timing right on the release of an emulated server or progression server you can experience what the game is truly about and maybe have a core gaming memory or two. As of writing this the one I'd consider are P99 Green and Project Quarm. When it comes to Progression Servers from day break I'm not sure when the latest came out so sift through their announcements and jump in on release day. Find someone who's a vet of the game when you start out. If there's one thing that's consistent server to server from my experience is the considerate community; we know the newbie experience can be brutal but the "Ah-Ha!" moments are very much burned in our brain. We want to help you through the pains so you can have your own and make the world of EQ a little less scary. Thanks again and looking forward to another video that catches my eye!

I gotta say, I took my first stab at a TLP with Oakwynd and have never had an issue finding people to play with. Always groups going, aside from maintenance days and the pre-expansion lull, found a great guild that raids regularly, there are quite a few other guilds too - what im getting at is, I expected to be playing mostly alone, and it’s surprisingly the exact opposite. Would highly recommend giving the next TLP a try once that releases, cause it’s been a massive nostalgia kick the last month and a half or so, and I’ll be honest, I got sucked right back in.

Reminds me of the many hours of torture I endured leveling my characters. WTF was wrong with me?!? To those who didn't know, that at one time there was a thing called Hell Levels which started at level 25. then 30, then 35, etc till I think level 45. These levels were 100 times harder to gain than any other level before. This was cause by a code error which wasn't fixed for many many years.

Josh, thank you for giving P99 a chance later on, it's a VERY different "Immersion heavy" experience and honestly it feels more what us Nostalgious people love. thanks for that man!

I played Everquest for... I don't know, 6 or 7 years, starting in 1999... it just dominated my time around then. I had thousands of hours racked up on multiple characters, so as a 'veteran' of the game, I feel qualified to critique your critique of the game. And you're basically spot on. The experience you had with your bard friend was what the game used to feel like; everything was unknown, and it felt like an adventure, and having two people made you exponentially more powerful than one, and you could do things together you couldn't dream of alone, and it felt great... but really, the game was a chat room, and it just doesn't hold up. My best friend, still, is someone I met playing Everquest. We still reminisce about it, and occasionally, he'll point out a new progression server that's starting up soon, and ask if I want to go play it for a while with him, and I just can't help but think about how *bad* the game inherently is. It's slow, it's fairly boring, it doesn't respect your time *at all*, but invariably, when he asks if I want to go play it again, in spite of all that, I find that I do, and we do. And a few months later, we quit again, remembering why we quit the first time, but the next time a progression server rolls around, we're right there again. The Elvis Presley analogy is honestly great, because that's what it's like. The nostalgia is what keeps us going back to the game; I can't imagine a new player having anything but an awful time trying to go play it now, and it honestly surprised me that you had as not-terrible of a time as you did. Anyone who gives you shit for your opinions here is clearly viewing it through rose tinted glasses and refuses to admit that, objectively, EQ is a bad game, and the fact that some of us still, for some reason, enjoy it doesn't change that.

Video is pretty good from a new player perspective, but wanted to give some tips for people just starting to really enjoy the experience. To get close to the old-school way of playing with many people is to start playing Everquest when a new Time-Locked progression server (TLP) launches---it completely changes the experience. TLP's usually launch in May every year. If you start playing TLP's more than 2 months after launch, you are going to have a similar experience as in the video. So if you want a fun experience start playing when a TLP launches. Also, there was another thing I noticed in the video that was misrepresented or missed--you can change the chat font size in Everquest by typing /chatfontsize and a number 0-10. My favorite on a 2k screen is /chatfontsize 8 . Hope this encourages others to play.

If you continue this 100 hours idea into a series with more games, I would like to see a timer or clock somewhere on the video so I know how far into the 100 hours you are while watching. I realized this @25:30 soon after you said you left the tutorial area. Cause you make no mention of how long the tutorial it's self took in relation to the 100 hours.

I played it a year after it came out, it was an amazing experience that I will never forget. Being a woodelf in the tree city, fighting orcs with "people online". Truly happy I got to experience it in its trend setting glory.

Everquest is like a real life experience. You need food and rest. If you don't know what you're doing or have no direction it is overwhelming. If you don't know anyone it is challenging and gets lonely.

The reason why so many people such as myself played Everquest for so long (me since the beta), was the community. Each server had their own heroes and villains. The downtime you spent medding for mana was time that you talked to your groupmates or made trouble in ooc chat. Soloing was never really an option for most classes, so forcing you to group actually made the game much better. Taking down a world boss for the first time with people you both loved and hated was a feeling I have not experienced in another game before or since. This game consumed my college years, and I have nothing but fondness for it. The game today is much different than the original inception, and most of the OG people will admit that the game strayed from its roots starting with POP.

God, this game saved my damn life back in 1999. I was about to finish Highschool, I had retreated so far inside myself by that point I didn't see myself ever opening up. But holy crap did I open up, I had so many friends a wife, friends who I played with for 15 years across multiple games etc. I can never forget you Erolisi Marr!!! Edit: Regarding strafing and stuff you can use the Left Control periodically to help you circle strafe.

As an original EQ (yes, zero expansions) player. This video was so amusing. You hit almost every nail on the head. There is a nostalgia that most of us cant shake, but then again I don't play live anymore. Instead I play Emulated servers (which I'm sure you can't cover other than p99 for legal reasons) and still you have to know what you're doing in order to enjoy those as well. Good video. I award this 10... out of Evercrack.

I remember my year playing everquest back in 1999. It was a great experience at the time, and have realized since that games can never go back to that sort of community driven game. Years later when I went back I played Shards of Dalaya mod server, for nearly 2 years! That had a hard core player base that was really fun, but can't see myself drowning into a game like I used to.

Great work. EverQuest was a very special game for me in my youth. I occasionally log into P99 and mess around with a friend to get my nostalgia fix.

one of the strange things about EQ was that there was an utter imbalance in the starting cities (P99 era). So the high elf city is 2 zones. real nice. all the shops you could ask for. the troll city was a long ditch with several horrible little buildings and ...some features. the barbarian city was 'okay' but you had to wait on this weird boat to leave. anyway, it could be humorous to see you start a guy on the (early progression server) of each race and review the town.

Your experience with Rehd is exactly why we loved it. Logging in after work or school and typing /friend and seeing your bros and broettes on and talking, explaining areas and just killing enemy after enemy (specifically in a spawn point like Derv 2) while chatting about life and the game as well as DND. It wasn't about all the content modern games have, it was about living at the time, being smart enough to get on the internet and other system's barrier of entry etc. If you were smart enough, had this thing called a credit card and could install a Voodoo2 in your computer and update drivers, you were given a whole new world with people you could have never met otherwise to explore and figure out. Modern slang started getting spread through EverQuest, everything from INC to WOOT all started there.

The game has progressed so incredibly much since release. There was no tutorial in the old days, very few actual quests (which made the Quest part of the name a bit ironic), no mapping ability (I think that finally came with LDON or Ykesha), no glowing trail to find an NPC and absolutely no "hero's journey" questline (there wasn't really anything like that until Epic weapons were introduced). Like maps, the full impact of spells (damage, buff, etc. amounts) came from the player base doing the research then putting it up online somewhere rather than having it spoonfed by the devs. The levelling has been smoothed out considerably. Back in the early days, it took the first player (a ranger, I believe) a year to hit level 50. The amount of exp needed increased quickly as you went up in levels and then there were "hell levels" (which was something like 2x the amount of exp needed for the last level) that you hit every so often (can't remember the specific ones now, old age sucks :p ). There is definitely something to be said for having played it back in its primacy. Things like "TRAIN TO ZONE" or waiting for the boat to go to a different continent do not have the same impact when you're the only one in the zone. Along with that, when looking back at the countless hours I spent playing the game, the biggest draw wasn't the game itself nor the people I played it with, it was the combination of both.

Well done man. Good on you and I appreciate the video. Nostalgia keeps me going back to EQ. It's still my favorite over any other. The group play is better than newer games but the in game systems are obviously very dated to make that work easily. I play with 3 or 4 of the same people every time so we always have a group and I know the game well. I would love EQ with updated movement controls, characters, animations, world, graphics etc. I love the philosophy behind EQ. The hardcore, group centric class design where everyone is super OP for their role. Modern MMOs are so easy you never need to group. It's just solo quest hub grinding and I hate it.

Oh man, the discussion about maps... I remember having entire binders of laminated printouts per continent that I made for each map

Yes great point in splitting the product from the circumstance. I think thats why everybody has such a fun experience when Classic WoW re-released back in 2019 because it was the nostalgia plus the ability to share that with 1000's of other fans on the server. Just going through it alone would turn that nostaliga in to sadness most likely because it will only remind you of how great it once was and thats its all gone now. And thats even besides the impact on the gameplay itself, like the abiltity to easily find a group for dungeons or benefit from a thriving economy on the auction house.

Played EQ back from just before RoK released up until until DoN... then WoW happened for the next 15+ years. But Back in the day EQ was a lot of fun, made a lot of friends, had a lot of sleepless nights, many raids and even dabbled in multi-boxing. Primarily played a Bard or Necromancer... and was even part of the Guide program when it was run (thus getting the game for free during that time), and had a lot of fun interactions with players either socially or helping them out (probably in ways I really shouldn't have at times). But, alas, all good things eventually came to an end. Haven jumped in occasionally to check things out but its so quiet these days. And if I am brutally honest, probably had a negative effect on my school grades at the time. Wasn't called EverCrack for nothing. If you think that screen real estate is bad, you should check the classic UI. It's funny watching you gripe about things that were, back in the day, considered new and 'cutting edge.' But I totally agree though, what was good then, isn't now. Still, I think if you had chosen a DPS class you'd have enjoyed things more.

25 years ago I logged into EQ for the first time. March 8th at 8pm, I was a young lad and completely blown away while in dial-up on a 16meg video card, voodoo banshee I think it was. Started up a High Elf Wizard and never looked back. You are absolutely correct Josh, the community was indeed INSIDE of EQ and yes its brutal solo and yes it is indeed group play orientated, it was then..especially then. Before the nerfs on experience loss upon death, was 8 to 10 hours of grinding..gone. Not only that, you would lose levels and one could go all the way back to level 1 from 50. Many a tortured souls fell asleep back then only to lose months of hard earned grinding. There were zero quest in the game ( mean other than the one or two you got at the very beginning) and we had our own memes back then, when meme's weren't even a thing yet, would mention, "No damn quest in everQUEST!" We were hooked on simply killing mobs and the famous, "Where's my corpse!" meme started *face palm* corpse runs only to die again on the way to your corpse...hoping to find a necro to summon *shivers* memories. Either way, indeed EQ and AO (Anarchy Online) helped define what we have today...45 folks in a raid and we didn't have voice?! but we did it. From all the comments here, you can see the hell we went through and had a blast doing it..

Man, this brings me back. I started playing when I was just a kid right when Velious came out. My entire family got into it, my mom, aunt, her boyfriend, 2 uncles. Even just within our household we always had people to play with. Then we all joined a guild, which did exist in EQ from the start, and that was a core community. But you're right about how important it is for the community to exist and how huge it was for the game. I'd go into the big grinding zones and shout around until a group had a spot open. Groups in the zone would all have their own camps, as in spawn camping, and it was a huge taboo to poach mobs from another camp. Honestly, a lot of times myself and everyone I knew would log in just to talk to people since it was more interesting than having to use msq or AOL chat. EQ was why I bothered learning to type as an 8 year old kid and why I got so good at it. I have great memories of the game, but it's just not that anymore. I tried Project 99 and the magic was gone. You're right, without people it's just a dead, slow, lonely world.

Watching this as I'm grinding level 70 on Mischief TLP. Great effort, Mr. Hayes! Having played EQ back in 2001-2003, I couldn't imagine starting fresh today without the knowledge base from back then. The key to window management in Everquest is to rebind all the window shortcuts. Watching Josh fighting with all those windows open gives me OCD vibes lol

I think it's really interesting you mentioned that you have a rabies debuff that lasts 45 minutes because that -really- takes me back to when I played as a kid in 2000 and how social the game was. There is so much behind just that "rabies" debuff that I kind of want to list out what I remember. 1. The rabies debuff was from rabid wolves and bears in Qeynos Hills, The Level 3-10ish zone right outside the city of Qeynos with the rabid wolf being around level 5 and the bears being around 8-10. 2. Qeynos has a healers guild that resides in a Spaceship in Qeynos because the god of healing in that realm is an alien (Rodcet Nife) and inside one of the NPCs if you talk back and forth with them through a combination of hailing and saying their keywords in sentences, (You couldn't click on keywords to progress dialogue before, You actually had to have conversations with NPCs in the early days.) You'll get a quest about hunting those rabid animals and bringing them the pelts. 3. You can turn in those pelts for a minor amount of XP to the NPCs in the healers guild but also just from knowledge gained from what my older brother/other players told me, That NPC will also cure that rabies debuff if you ask them to. There are a lot of NPCs in Everquest 1 that will cast spells/buffs on you to cure effects if you provide the right dialogue and coin so it was really magical finding out this information. 4. There is also a crazy ranger who is mid 20+ in level that also roams Qeynos Hills and she will help out any animal rabid or not and is not somebody you want to mess with also adding to the charm/world building of the game. I can't say that all starting areas/zones are that fleshed out but when you dive into some areas they have some -depth- to them.

I have so many great nostalgia-fueled memories from EQ. It was the perfect game for its time, even if that time has passed and you can't catch that sort of lightning in a bottle ever again. I'll always remember camping Pickclaw goblins in the Highpass Keep basement, group-wiping pulling recondite bandits in the Peludal Caverns, or having an almost complete raid-wipe to Derakor the Vindicator in Kael Drakkel where I was the only survivor thanks to Feign Death

I found this video so interesting. I grew up playing this game and I think the last expansion I played was Omens of War and that was because EQ2 launched and I moved on. You kept my attention this whole video because of showing me all the things that have changed. This is such a different game than when I last played. We had no mercenary, no quest journal, and definitely none of those pay to progress systems (gross!).

I grew up on EverQuest, and it will always have a special place in my heart. But, it's so old now, and it definitely shows its age. If we got an EverQuest 3, with all the QOL updates and amenities of modern MMOs, but with the spirit and atmosphere of old EverQuest, it would be a dream come true.

33:45 - Same thing's happened to me where I've run across people from previous MMOs seemingly completely randomly.

Long time lover and player of EQ. I started right before velious came out back in 2000 and it was exactly as you described. I quit right before gates of discord partly because I didn’t have the time. I came back in 2019 and then again in 2022 and 23 for some TLPs (Yelinak, oakwynd though I never saw you on hahaha) and have tried P99 and now Quarm a tiny bit but you’ve hit the nail on the head with the most overall description. In order for this to be a really fun game to play it’s ESSENTIAL to play with others. Both due to the difficulty and just because the nature of the game is slow and grind heavy and the social aspect makes that much more fun.

Oy Josh, I finished the video now, and I gotta say that this is probably your most enjoyable format. I know that it is probably a tremendous amount of work, but please keep making these. I love them.

My parents played everquest when I was a kid (I destinctly remember getting my mom's gnome killed...she was gracious about it and I got my own toons to kill instead). Every once in a while I end up back in, and it always occurs to me that the fixes are small; shorter regen times, tighter wilderness maps, more heavily quest populated cities (Josh is right about the comedy of the everyone loves someone else quest set. Every quest that has you exploring the cities is about the best fun in the world). A lot of things about EQ are still really cool; your toon has starting faction (good, neutral or evil) but you can alter that...to a point. The robot zoo in Accanon is the funniest thing to me. The twisted and nested lore that would take any other series years just to catch up (meet Zelda and...WOW.)

I'd would love to see you put like 10-20 hours in a random MMO, but in 2 different versions. one where you identify yourself and allow the community to boost you as much as possiable and another playthrough where you are anonymous. thank you for all your good content! a rare thing left on youtube imo.

Great video, as a EQ player who quit about 12 years ago you really captured and understood the essence of the game and it’s pros and cons

Quality video. I played as an early teen in the early 2000s and taught me so much about online/internet/communities even as early as the first "dungeon" Gnoll Hill. Then going on to raiding and being enthralled with "boss/Gods" killing and giant raids of so many people. With honestly the best flagging system for raid proggression I have ever experienced in PoP raiding. And the "Traning!" God the Plane of Justice Trains!!! I fell in love with the pet systems with equipping end game weapons and shields and buffs on level 8-12 mage or skeleton pets turning them into mini-dieties. Then, I fell in love with the support classes enchanter and bards. I have never experienced anything like that class wise in 27 years of mmoing. Really wish those useless on your own, but required classes still existed. Best boat music and voyage all in open worlds! You fall you swim or die!