Great video, as always. Unfortunately I've probably played more hours in WoW than EQ over my entire life but I firmly agree EQ>WoW. I do believe EQs first instanced dungeon, if you would, was Plane of Time. I do know that LDON, which was many instances, came out over a year before WoW came out. I blame wow for a lot of things but I guess we can't blame that one on them. I love to hear all of your stories and I wish my memory wasn't so bad. I remember a decent amount of the original EQ days but fine details are rough. That's why I record everything now, haha. Even if raiding on p99 blue or p99 in general isn't a great set up, I think the memories that you have were definitely worth putting up with it! Still waiting for the Quarm videos to start. I know it hasn't been that long since the teaser and I fully understand your vision. You did mention hell level so you're at least 30! Thanks for the teaser. I wish people didn't hate on Luclin so much. It's not so bad! Anyway, love the vids. Hopefully see you soon.

I've always said that instances kills mmo's. So nice to hear someone else say the same

Yes! Sage is back! I’m recovering from some spine surgery and there’s nothing like a new hour of the best EQ content around! Keep it up, Sage. When I’m back on my feet, I’ve got a 40ish enchanter, I’ll hit ya up in game sometime.

Fun fact: The fires of heaven hirees of blizzard got their vitriolic rant thrown back at them verbatim with just a few points altered to suit the context after the release of a AQ40, a raid first deemed mathematically impossible to clear by the playerbase at the time. The cycle was completed. 😂

I liked Luclin for the most part. Never understood what people had against it, apart from the updated models. They were a little wack when not universally applied

It's the return of the king!

I love your videos! Hope you can get a server up and running and keep telling stories to us people who never experienced EQ

So glad to see a new post from ya. Have you decided to drop all the quarm content a year later like you planned? Either way, always I look forward to it!

P99 made me realize I disliked raiding in general. I was an officer in a raiding guild on there for a time, but it was nothing but drama, backstabbing, frustration by other raid "leaders" due to time issues, leaders being paranoid of poaching (both of players and spawns) and endless loot related internal conflicts. Over a 20 year old game. To contrast, I was also a raid leader in a swath of WoW WoTLK era. That also sucked. Basically the same issues but it was less frequent. In my experience P99 isn't a true classic Everquest experience either. Everyone playing either knows the entirety of the game, or are family/relatives thereof. The fun of Everquest is (in my experience) found in comradery formed through the exploration of a world unknown. The magic of discovery is lost now. It has become a game of 'congregate here for best exp rate' -- 'Go here for loot drops.'-- 'Funnel hard into raiding or start a new character.' and a lot of the playerbase has that mentality. Its ironic because that is what WoW did to MMO design for itself and many MMOs going forward. Myself I played Everquest since the start (my brother did Beta testing for the game and got our family into it). I actually started on the Test server. It was a much smaller server but it had a community as well (about 300 population). It was fun. But it was a test server. One day they decided to "test" something on the test server that had apparently broken the loot tables. Kobolds in Sol B , for instance, were dropping red dragon loot, but apparently it was the same all across Norrath. I wouldn't know because I was sick the day it happened and never got to log in. So in their infinite wisdom to fix the problem they decided not to do a rollback, or get the items from players that actively exploited their mistake. No, instead they wiped the entire server of every platinum, every item, related or unrelated. Then they gave us the option to server transfer because we made such a fuss about it. Many of us took the offer and transferred to the 7th Hammer server with naked characters. The group that moved there helped each other recover as much as possible. We would craft items for each other (banded armor and the like) and it is a memory ingrained in my gaming mind. I stopped caring about items so much and just tried to have fun in games. I enjoyed the company of people more than the items and experience I was grinding for. I imagine if that experience hadn't happened, I might have become one of the many loot goblins that plague P99 and MMOs in general.

100% agree about how shitty raiding P99 was. I thought that was how it was always done, as I never played EQ back when classic > velious was live. Made me happy to learn that all the cheesy pulling mechanics were pretty much born on the emulators and never happened on live, I would've liked playing the game the way it was envisioned, i.e. actually adventuring through the raid zones instead of just standing at ent and waiting for your loot pinata to arrive.

If you are uncertain about Pantheon I highly recommend Monsters and Memories. Limited scale and all the right feels.

Just found your channel yesterday. Great content. I remember reading FOH forums back in the day. Also, remember the Warrior strike Furor led until Sony buffed their defense. I enjoyed your boss mob fights, now I know why there is not more of them…. Your server died.

These videos are great! I was there during the velious launch in P99 and it was entertaining to witness the chaos. Do you remember any stories involving GM Sirken? He was a very funny guy.

EQ baybay!

As much as I've always wanted to raid and fight dragons in EQ it just never really happened in the official capacity. My tolerance for BS and toxicity is low, but on the flipside it's been made clear by the guilds in MMOs that they share the same opinion of me, and to this day I have yet to find a lasting guild. It's alright though as I've gotten my fill of that on Live, just seeing these older places with boosted levels, gear, and OP mercenaries. I actually just killed Bertoxxulous and Rallos Zek recently on an 88 ranger. XD Speaking of guilds too I've always found guilds like FoH filled with entitled, petulant manchildren. Gotten crap for that opinion but not too long ago I felt vindicated when the former FoH leader was outed from Blizzard for SA. On the subject of Luclin I've always liked it in a weird way. The factions were interesting and I wonder how many folks have ever made "d*** of Seru" jokes throughout its lifetime, lmao. Also The Deep is one of my favorite zones ever in EQ, gives off creepy Metroid Prime vibes. Great video as always, gave lots to talk and think about there. :)

I say kwaynoes

You didn't miss much with eq2. I avoided wow and went to eq 2 when it was released. The first day when i tried to save a newbie from dying and realized there was locked combat, i knew it wasn't going to be the real eq experience. I ripped my way to max level and got bored due to lack of content and quit. Barely have any memories of that game compared to all the ones i have from the original live eq.

Your point on bluebie servers is good, and it's y it shocked me how people could play EQ without PvP. Even when i lost fights I'd rather just lose than having to do all the other stuff bluebies did to compete with each other without being able to attack each other.

P99 Raid scene is a joke but damn if I didn't have the time of my life leveling a new cleric there when green launched. I never played EQ until 2019 so I had a blast. Just don't raid and p99 is the best server ever lol. I tried the live servers but the cash shop makes me feel like a whore. Anyways cool video. :)

Funny with how long it took you to get to this level, not surprising why I never got to max level lol. I played the year of Velious to Luclin and I made a Lizardman thing because I loved them in Warhammer. However there was never anyone around and so I had to solo and in that year I never got to the end or did any raids or anything lol. It was a really lonely time grinding :/ Then I learned 20 years later that starting as that race is the worst thing you can do as a new player. I quit and started playing DAOC in Jan 2002, the whole moon thing they released just made me think the game was stupid for some reason.

Keep an eye on Monster's and Memories if youre looking for an EQ like game

I ended up going briefly to WoW from EQ. Managed to complete all the content in the game after a few months and even before that it was utterly boring.

For people that played EQ, WoW was like an inferior knock-off version of an MMO, made specifically to take your money, which is why I was never interested in playing it and still never have. Edit: Also, have you not heard of Monster and Memories? It's a new MMO being made by some of the people that made EQ.

my dude it is absolutely painful that you haven't reordered your UI or aren't using a better one, also tell windows bruh