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EverQuest in detail.

anvi

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https://www.pcgamer.com/breaking-th...of-everquest-the-mmo-that-changed-everything/

25 years old, it's still the best game! Hard to describe. TLDR is imagine Skyrim but far better, far deeper, far more advanced, multiplayer, and they did it 25 years ago.

First person view, very immersive RPG, amazing locations, loot, progression, mobs, and magic. Lots of not so great ideas too, and very grindy and time consuming. But the intent was to force people to play together. Group size is 6 people and if you have the right classes, there is very little downtime. Getting a group of 6 good people was not bad when the game was new. It got harder as time went on though.

The game was designed for 6 people working together well, so when you explore the world by yourself, it is super dangerous. Enemies can kill you in seconds because they are tuned for 6. Sometimes you can find weaker enemies that can be killed solo but only some classes could solo.

My first time playing, I mostly saw people running around dying. There was even a Yell button on the hotkeys which made your character yell for help from anyone nearby. People would be running around clicking that. Even in the areas where players first start, there would be high level enemies that wander through and can kill you in 1 hit. Again things like this are questionable choices, so later MMOs did away with anything dangerous and starting areas became, "newbie grounds". But EQ was not like that, it taught you to watch where you are going and watch your back. Also most enemies follow routes and routines so if you can watch an area for a while, you learn all the comings and goings. EQ rewarded people who played smart and if you died it punished you really hard.. It was more harsh than I ever would imagine making a game, but I learned so much from it. It's incredibly addictive too, because the game wipes the floor with you sometimes but there were lessons to learn from it. Eventually you rarely die because you know what's what, but it can take a long time to get good at the game because it is so complex and deep.

If you teamed up with people, the game became far easier. Warriors, Paladins, Shadowknights, they can tank enemies easily but can't do much damage. So combine someone like that with a healer and a damage dealer and you start slaughtering enemies. Bards, Mages, Enchanters, all had ways to help the group regenerate mana. So getting a full group of 6 people made you exponentially stronger than goofing around by yourself. It was also a lot of fun being with 5 other real people, talking shit.

At this point you go on adventures. There are so many amazing dungeons and places to hunt and unique enemies, loots, etc. The guy they hired todo magic they assumed would make 100 spells or so and that would be fine. But he got really into it, and spells having many different effects and different targets. And spells that reflect damage etc. In the end he had about 1000 spells in the database, and spells that put enemies to sleep in an area became the speciality of a new class called the Enchanter. The end result is the game and classes were really interesting to play and people figured out new ways to play the game that the designers never expected. The game grew to accommodate most of these things, emergent gameplay.

I think EQ would have been great anyway, but the spells and magic was really what hooked me the most. It's not like Skyrim or something where you have about 10 spells to choose from and only really use 2 most of the time. In EQ you had 100+ spells in a book, some were higher level versions of the same thing, but many unique spells and a lot of variety. And there were some other classes that had other unique spells.

The melee classes in the game were not that interesting in terms of combat, but building the class and learning how to play was a lot of fun. But for me the attraction was all about these spell caster classes, they were amazing to play. They are so physically weak that you can die in literally 2 seconds if an enemy hits you, and the game is made so that you are REALLY supposed to avoid dying at any cost. But you have a spell that can snare them so you can just run ahead of them and cast spells before they reach you. You can also cast Root which holds them in place, but it would cancel the snare. So once the Root ended the enemy would charge at you at full speed. Also Root had a random duration... could hold that enemy still for a whole minute, or it could last 1 second, and anything in between. It also had a chance to break if you cast a spell that did direct damage. Also the enemies have a chance to resist the spell in the first place. And if an enemy is hitting you, then they can interrupt your casting. Everyone dies like that, trying to Root the mob that is eating your face. But you also have that snare, and a teleport back to town, and invis, charm enemies to fight for you, put them to sleep, make them run away in fear, etc.etc. Lots of spells, but you have to make it land before the thing hits you and beats you up. Which is easier said than done. The enemies were very sneaky and plentiful. And it's not like action RPGs where you run around grabbing enemies to gank. Even 1 could kill you, and they roamed in large numbers and some a lot higher level that were impossible. You had to watch where you were going and watch your back! But as you learned the game you could master it, but it was so tough and deep it was a long fascinating road to master it. And the rewards were amazing long term, the sense of progression was off the charts compared to other RPGs.

The game really allowed you to shine too if you were better than most. The game was accommodating though, the game would suggest easy classes vs hard etc. There were older people playing the game, business owners, stay at home moms and stuff. They tended to like say a Monk or Cleric and stick with their friends/guild. Most people seemed like late teens or 20 somethings, and they could get more hardcore.

Some examples. Necromancer was known for being good at soloing, and some people could go to some big outdoor area with big enemies roaming around. The Necro casts a big damage over time (like a poison or disease) on an enemy, then casts a snare to make it move slowly, then casts Fear to make it run away in fear. But with the snare it runs away in fear slowly, and the Necro follows it casting more spells to kill it and the Necro pet kicks its ass literally as the enemy slowly runs away dying. You could make progress doing this but it was boring and repetitive and not great progress compared to going to better places. But better means harder in this game, and usually you need more people for that. But a good Necro (only maybe 10% of all Necros could do stuff like this), go to a dungeon alone and find some enemies that were strong and gave good experience / gear / money if you killed them. Usually they would be killed by groups but a Necro could if good enough. One option is using the Charm spell to make an enemy fight for you, but Necro could only do it on undead, and it was a random duration... So one second you have a pet that is 10x better than your real pet and can kick another enemy's ass for you. But a second later the spell could break and it turns on you and kills you in seconds. So you had to Charm something, then make it fight something else quickly. If charm broke fast you now had 2 enemies to kill you super fast. In that case you could cast a spell called Feign Death that made it look like you died and enemies leave you alone. But this is risky and doesn't always work and can take ages for the enemies to stop sniffing your corpse and leave. But if your charm holds, you have it fight another enemy, then you can get some distance for when the charm breaks. You can also snare or Root the enemy so if/when charms breaks you only have to deal with your former pet. If all goes well, your pet kills the other one for you and then you can let the charm end and kill your former pet who is now injured. 2 for 1. But very hard and dangerous. But that was what EQ was all about, they called it Risk vs Reward. The rewards were huge for doing the risky hard stuff, or you could take it easy and still progress through the game, but slowly and not as well. There were other ways to fight solo, other tactics, but you had to do whatever worked best.

I really loved soloing, but I think grouping was the most fun.

Actual TV trailer


History of the game (don't be put off by his hair)
 
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oldmanpaco

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I played the beta for EQ back in 98 or 99. I remember having to track down components to even make the scrolls to get spells into your spellbook. And the mana regen. So much camping at guard towers.

Never really got into it after launch though. Think i only played a month or two.
 

Severian Silk

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I played for a week in 1999. It was fun, but my buddy wanted his computer back, as mine wasn't powerful enough.
 

anvi

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I played the beta for EQ back in 98 or 99. I remember having to track down components to even make the scrolls to get spells into your spellbook. And the mana regen. So much camping at guard towers.

Never really got into it after launch though. Think i only played a month or two.
Yeah most spells you can buy from merchant NPCs, but some are research only, and they required you to find bits of paper all over the world from various enemies. I think it was too much hassle for players so they kinda phased it out very early on, but it is still there for some spells. And yeah mana regen was really slow and serious. It is faster in modern EQ, and also later you get spells to speed it up and Bards get songs to speed it up too. But it is always quite serious, it makes being in a dungeon so scary because if people don't play efficiently and go out of mana at a dangerous time, it can easily wipe the entire group.

I played for a week in 1999. It was fun, but my buddy wanted his computer back, as mine wasn't powerful enough.
It was really high end at the time. It required a 3d graphics card which not everyone had back then. I was really into games at the time so before EQ I had been playing other stuff like Tribes, and some stuff in EQ looked quite goofy and cartoony compared to other games, the ground in particular was like big triangular polygons. But some things like the armor on characters blew my mind. I could see the individual links in a piece of chainmail armor.

But yeah, it needed a really decent PC. That was one of the reasons World of Warcraft ended up being so much bigger, it came at a later time when the net was bigger, there were more gamers, it was more accessible, but it could also be played on any old PC. Kids could get on their Mom's netbook and it would work.
 
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anvi

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UO was awesome as well, and also has at least one good emulator server so can still be played! I have a buddy that plays it sometimes. But EQ is more my thing. It is so sad that this style of game died out though because they were due to grow into the most amazing genre, and the whole thing got ruined and sidetracked by WoW.
 
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Higher Animal

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Go into more detail about some of the gameplay tactics that EQ required you to use. Do you have any memorable encounters?
 

Siobhan

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It is an amazing MMORPG, the one that started the whole genre more or less
Doesn't that honor belong to Meridian 59? I remember the first time I read about it in a gaming magazine in the mid 90s and having a hard time wrapping my head around it. And that's actually still the case, I don't understand the appeal of MMOs. Even after your detailed write-up, I still find myself wondering why this can't be a single-player RPG.
 

luj1

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Some questions anvi,


  • is EQ grindy?
  • is it P2W?
  • crafting any good?
  • is it a trading simulator?
  • do you need a guild to be efficient/have fun?
 

anvi

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Go into more detail about some of the gameplay tactics that EQ required you to use. Do you have any memorable encounters?
Would love to.

I started as a Bard which was so different to how all the classes work. But eventually I restarted as a Necromancer which is probably the best class in the game, not just in terms of power but how it plays.

The most fun I had was when grouping. One time when I was about level 55 we went to this enormous dungeon called Sebilis, and at level 55 there were no newbies, everyone was a decent player, and this group was especially good. I knew one guy and he invited me to the group, but I'd never met the others. We travel to the bottom of this dungeon, fighting our way down lower and lower, and it took maybe an hour to get to the bottom, so if we died at this point, we would respawn back at town and have a 30 minute run just to reach the dungeon again, and then at least an hour of pain to somehow fight our way back down again to recover our corpses, while we were all naked... So basically dying was not an option, and that makes everyone kinda terrified.

The group was Paladin, Magician, Enchanter, Cleric, Necromancer (me), and Rogue. We set up camp in a room that had no enemies spawning in there, near a room the players called 'Disco' because it had enemies that appeared on what looked like a stage. The Pally would run around to nearby rooms and grab the enemies in groups of 2 or 3 and bring them back to our room for us to gank. The Enchanter would mez 2 of them and we would beat the third one down, and then wake the others up. We had been there for a few hours and made lots of cash and gear and stuff, but after a while we were getting a bit tired, and we lost track of respawn timing, and the Pally ended up pulling 2 or 3 mobs just as a bunch of enemies had started respawning, so on his way back he ended up with 5 mobs chasing him and says, "OMG get ready!" Then right outside our room one more spawns, so we end up fighting 6. Any average group would easily die from this, but this group was really good. The problem was that one of the mobs was a Wizard and as soon as it runs in the room, it does an area nuke that blasts us all half to death. The Cleric starts healing people, and the healing makes all the mobs pissed off at him so they all pile on him and start ripping him up. If he dies, we are all fucked. But he is clever, and luckily he had a spell ready called Divine Aura which makes him invincible for about 10 seconds. This was just enough time for all of us to start grabbing these enemies off him. The Pally taunts one and smacks another one, so starts tanking 2 by himself. The rogue does all he can do which is start chipping away at the ones on the pally. But that leaves 4 more. The Enchanter does an area stun which gives him about 5 seconds to do something, and in that time he puts one of the mobs to sleep, leaving 3. He is getting torn up now and can die in a few seconds but we all think fast enough to save it. The Magician sends his fire pet at one of them which manages to gets its attention, leaving 2. I don't have any way to taunt and don't have my sleep spell memorised (the Enchanter was doing that), but I know my shit, so I cast my biggest deadliest poison on this mob which makes it super annoyed at me. You should never usually do this, but I had to. So it chases me and I run to the other side of the room, and then cast Root which locks it down on that spot. I can now run back to the other guys and that mob is now out of the way, but standing there glaring at me. The Cleric starts healing the Enchanter and saves him just in time, and the Enchanter manages to sleep the last mob beating on him.

So now we have 2 mobs asleep, 2 being tanked by the Pally, 1 mob on the Magicians pet, and one parked in the corner glaring at me. We all focus on the 2 with the pally and start blasting them down as best we can, and we kill one fast, the second one takes a bit longer. Then the root breaks and that one from the corner comes charging at me and starts ripping me a new butthole. All I can do is pretend to be dead (necro trick), and it gives the Pally time to taunt it onto himself. I now jump up and start lifetapping the mob to recover some of my health so the Cleric doesn't have to waste mana healing me. At this point the Magician's pet dies because it was handling one by itself. We got 2 down, but still have 4 to go, and most of us are getting really low on mana at this point. The pro Enchanter manages to get 3 of them asleep and holds them there, but he says the dreaded, "LOM" meaning he is running low on mana and wont be able to hold them for long. But then the Cleric says LOM too and things are looking dire. So it is time for me to show what a Necro can really do. I sit down in the corner of the room and open my spellbook and start memorising a few spells that nobody else ever uses... They drain my health and transfer it to other people, so a heal basically, but it is really weak and pretty dangerous. But you could use the low level one with the higher level one, so I spam it on people and they are like woah who is healing us?! Cleric is resting, waiting at low mana to cast his one last heal on someone who needs it the most. Between us we manage to kill a few more mobs and we end up with just 2 left, but everyone is completely out of mana. We did well to make it this far, but were running out of steam and many groups would die now because even a decent group can only fight so long. But I have one trick left which is my charm spell. People rarely use this because it breaks randomly, you can't use it when you have a pet (which is the more reliable option), and it only works on undead. But of these last 2 enemies left, one of them is an undead... So when everyone thought we were finally done for, I charm this mob and they see in chat the mob says, "Guarding you with my life, Master." Now it starts beating hell out of its buddy and we all give whatever we have left to kill that mob. And suddenly, silence :P They are all dead apart from the one I have charmed. The group all sit down to rest and recover any tiny bits of mana they can in the moments before my charm spell wears off. It is just long enough for us to recover enough to kill this last mob, and finally he drops. We are completely spent, so we all huddle together in the back corner of this room, so hopefully no other passing enemies will drop in on us, we sit for a good 15 minutes to recover our our health and mana, and get ready to leave the dungeon. It was a good day and we made lots of cash, experience, and loot, and we all know that we got to leave in one piece when most other groups wouldn't have!

So this happened 17 years ago when I was a kid, yet still today I can remember it vividly. I play lots of other games, but none of them come close to the depth and intensity of this. I hope one day another game will come along that can provide the same kind of hardcore excitement.

There were a few other uber fights I can remember as well, I made a fortune doing something solo that nobody could believe I could do, but I figured it out and it made me rich. The real 'tactics' came from the raid scene, the mobs in that game do amazing things that puts games like WoW to shame. There were these massive giants that were twins and you couldn't split them up, so you had to fight both. Raids usually had one "main tank" that would tank one of them, but raiders had to improvize to kill his twin brother. That fight was crazy. And there was one where you engage this huge dragon, and an army of statues lining all the walls would awaken... They would slowly walk towards the raid and if you didn't kill the dragon fast enough, the statues would start slaughtering people. But most raids couldn't kill the dragon fast enough so they had to come up with crazy tricks to deal with these statues. I think the real tactics was from all these hundreds of raids. But personally the most intense fighting was from grouping in dungeons like I described.
 
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anvi

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Thanks for writing this up. Reading this reminds me of all the "reincarnated into an MMORPG world" isekai novels.
Welcome. I think MMORPGs have kind of turned to crap but I still think someday there will be an MMO revolution that brings the scope back to them and makes a whole new type of game. It is going to be hard to achieve though but I think it will happen eventually. Star Citizen is the closest I've seen to a huge MMO that throws out the rulebook and makes a genuine virtual world (or universe), but I don't know much about that game or whether it will succeed. One of the main guys behind EverQuest is currently working on a new game called Pantheon which looks very similar, but a modern version. It is too early to know if he can pull it off yet but it looks promising.

It is an amazing MMORPG, the one that started the whole genre more or less
Doesn't that honor belong to Meridian 59? I remember the first time I read about it in a gaming magazine in the mid 90s and having a hard time wrapping my head around it. And that's actually still the case, I don't understand the appeal of MMOs. Even after your detailed write-up, I still find myself wondering why this can't be a single-player RPG.
Yeah Meridian 59 was the first. And Ultima Online was 2D but kind of the most interesting because it didn't have much in the way of rules, so people could kill each other and could kill the devs of the game... and do all kinds of mad stuff. But EQ was kind of the one that made a real game in a virtual world, with great gameplay, huge numbers of players playing together, and it looked beautiful at the time and it was a huge persistent world. People would know who you are, idiot players became well known and people would want to avoid them, and great players became like real legends, and people would want to meet them or be in their guild. And when you logged off and went to sleep, people were still playing the game and doing stuff, so if you didn't play for a week, you started falling behind. People got seriously hooked. The solo gameplay could easily be done by a single player RPG, but grouping with other people would be hard to replicate. The way raids worked are the most unique because you had around 60 people from all over the world, all together heading off to kill a legendary dragon or something. It was a very social experience for some people, they enjoyed the banter between people and they enjoyed the drama when people would argue or become enemies or whatever. Personally I never really cared about the social side of it, I just liked adventuring and fighting stuff and collecting great gear :) But it felt like living in another world, a second life. There is nothing else really like that, everything else is just a game, this felt like a secret world inside your monitor. It was crazy.

But the whole genre got McDonalds-ified and it just isn't the same anymore. But it could come back eventually.

Some questions anvi,
is EQ grindy?
Yeah the grind was huge in EQ and it was the main complaint people had. It was the main reason World of Warcraft was created, because they loved EQ but they wanted to make it without the grind and without a few other bad things. So instead of killing enemies over and over, WoW wrote thousands of quests to give context to what you are doing. At first it seems better, but after playing both games, I actually preferred the EQ way.. But it is a slow paced game. They speeded it up a lot over the years, but it still takes a month of regular playing to reach level 40 ish for the average player. And then 40-60 will take a lot longer because it slows down. And then 60+ takes even longer. It is a game you play for years and if you need stuff to happen faster, it just wont be fun. But people got hooked on it when there weren't any other options and now they love the grind because achieving anything in the game takes ages and lots of effort, and it makes your achievements feel amazing. And new players look at you and go :O OMG. I remember travelling waiting for the boat with my real life friend, and we were on the phone at the time, and he goes WOW turn around! So I turn around and there is a guy standing behind me with this huge flaming sword and he is floating off the ground and wearing this shiny steel plate armor. I had been playing for months and I still there in my torn cloth pants and rusty mace :P

is it P2W?
Sort of. In the early days it wasn't at all because there was nothing to buy at all, and they funded the game with subscriptions. But now it is free to play and you buy boosts and stuff with real cash. The thing is, there isn't really any PVP in the game unless you play on a specific PVP server, or if you do a PVP tournament for fun or something. So it is mostly a game about people playing with each other. So paying real cash for uber stuff doesn't really affect other people. Most people wouldn't even see how it could be pay to win because if someone buys a whole set of uber gear with his dad's credit card, it wont affect you. But for people who are competitive by nature (like me), it is technically pay to win because part of the fun of the game was motivating yourself to get better gear than everyone else and 'be the badass'. You can't really do that anymore unless you at least spend a bit of money, because there is some stuff you need to buy to have an uber respected character. Although you could play for 6 months for free before you would even need to worry about that.
crafting any good?
Not really. There is loads of different types of crafting and it makes amazing gear and people become well known as being the guy who makes brilliant jewlery, or the blacksmith who makes great armor or whatever. But the actual process of crafting is little more than hunting for items in the world, putting them in a box and clicking combine. It takes a lot of time and effort and money to be a good crafter, but then you put it all in a box and click combine.

The devs of this game actually made a spiritual sequel called Vanguard which had the best crafting ever. There was a work bench and you put the items on the bench and had to pour a liquid on, and random mishaps would happen and you had to react. You could make all the stuff EverQuest had but it was all made with a proper mini game that was surprisingly good. Unfortunately that game had other big issues and got shut down a few years back. There is a team of fans making an emulator but it is about a year away from being worth playing.

is it a trading simulator?
Yeah kind of. Trade is a huge part of the game. There is just so much stuff to get, you could go and kill all the enemies that have all the stuff you need but it would take years, so people fight for what they can, and make money to buy the remaining bits they need. And to make money you really need to sell stuff and learn the prices to sell things at and how much to pay for things. And some people go out and kill lots of lower level things to hoard lots of easier to get gear, and then sell bags full of it on their NPC trader. Each item wont be worth much but if they sell 50 of those items over a few weeks, they can make a lot of money.

Also you can technically get a subscription for free now if you make enough money in game, you can buy an item called a Krono which gives your account a month of subscription. But you would have to be a hardcore player to make enough money in the game to afford to buy that. But some people play that way.

do you need a guild to be efficient/have fun?
Not essential but at the high end of the game it is mostly about raids, and it is just much better to be in a good guild for that. But the big guilds now will recruit almost anyone because the population isn't as big as it used to be, so they can't be as snooty and picky as they once were. But the game is just so big, you don't even have to raid at all, and it would take at least a year of regular playing to even reach the 'high end'. So some people play it casually, like me. I play it a few times a week and I never raid, I just explore the enormous world, do dungeons and stuff by myself, so I don't need a guild for that. I have been in many guilds over the years but I don't play hardcore anymore so I like to just chill and do my own thing.
 
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Lacrymas

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I'd just start playing an instrument instead of grinding in EQ tbh. That also takes years, but at the end of the day it's more fulfilling and it lasts a lifetime. Yes, EQ is wonderful and has pretty much the best world in an MMO in terms of exploration and reactivity, but the grind simply ruins it, it becomes a mind-numbing trudge through the motions, the only difference comes from the environments and mobs you have to grind on a specific level. And then come the hell levels... If you can somehow stomach the utterly ridiculous grind then EQ is truly amazing, the official progression server that is coming out soon (Agnarr) seems like a great place to start. I'm waiting for the day someone creates an MMO as deep as early EQ, but not as stupidly grindy.
 

anvi

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Yeah it is such a long term thing. A game you play over years rather than days or weeks. If you want to do raiding and play in big guilds and stuff like that, a new player would have play for at least a year to figure out how to play and grind through all those levels. It wouldn't really be worth it.

Although you can just do what I do and play it casually and just travel around adventuring. You will find a dungeon and explore it and get some great loots that really improve your character and can make your day. If you enjoy that, this may be the best game that there is. But nobody will care about your achievement because you are just level 10 and getting an item some people got 17 years ago. If that matters to you, it wouldn't really be worth playing I think. But I just like how the combat and classes work, so I go adventuring and do stuff in my casual way and don't really care that I am not even close to being a top player.

Another option is finding an emulator server with easier rules and stuff. There are some where you can reach max level in a few weeks instead of a few years! I'm not sure how many people would like that though. For an easier faster more action based online game, it would be better to just play one of the hundred other modern MMORPGs.
 

Lacrymas

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I am all for slow leveling (even in single player RPGs), interesting and challenging content for all levels, focus on exploration and the world and punishing deaths, but only if those things are captivating and you don't feel like you are wasting your life when doing them. Leveling in EQ is too much grind (if you want to get into raids and such), there are some quests, but they are repeatable turn-ins. The best quests are mainly your class quests and the epic quests for your weapon, waiting 1 week for bosses to respawn for a non-100% drop notwithstanding, although it depends, I don't remember if it's a shared drop many people can pick up or only one person can.
 

anvi

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Some parts can be looted by someone else and then they help you finish the quest, but usually it isn't. Although even the Epic quests people tend to not bother with anymore. The Epic 1.0 was for level 60 ish and the 2.0 was for level 70 ish, and now the game goes up to level 105 so there is much better gear now. I think just a few of the Epic weapons are worth having now, just for the clicky.

That said I'm actually doing some of the epic quests now because I like doing them. I think that's the thing with this game, if you enjoy just 'doing stuff', then it would still be worth playing today because there is so much stuff to do, and it is fun. But if it feels like a grind then it would become boring. I don't have anything to rush towards so I don't really feel the grind. I got to 60 quite fast but then it has been a slow grind, but I've done it in probably 10 different zones, many of which I'd never been to before, so I still enjoy it and it doesn't really feel grindy to me. But if your goal isn't to just do stuff but to reach the end game and do raiding and stuff, I think the grind would be too slow, even in modern EQ. (Unless you paid a bunch of money to skip it).

The exception is those emulator servers though. The most popular one p99, that only goes up to level 60 so I can do that fast these days. There are even some servers now that have boosted exp but also boosted characters and weakened mobs. So the idea is that one person can solo anything that used to take groups, and now a single group can do any raid content. It is a fun idea.
 

Higher Animal

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It's too bad this got moved over into the step-child MMORPG subforum. It seems like EQ's mechanics are worthy of being discussed in the more popular RPG area, but oh well.

My experience with EQ is somewhat limited. I remember being 12-13 years old and playing EQ nonstop, so much so that it affected my grades and brought the wrath of my parents. There are so many things about this game that I didn't understand for a long time, like that dying wasn't permanent and I didn't have to reload a character after every death. I didn't get too deep into the game, but I was able to reach about level 19 as a Barbie Shaman. Eventually soloing yellow level mobs by blinding and poisoning them before quitting the game for good.

Funny part about my EQ addiction was how much I got into the genre of mmorpgs because of it. I got into Dark Age of Camelot, which had amazing PVP. I also remember being so excited for games like Shadowbane, The Sims Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest 2, and World of Warcraft. I thought that MMOs were literally going to take over the world, and everybody and their mother would be connected to an engaging online experience. There was so much controversy and dystopia around the concept of MMOs and it seemed like the endless march of progress would never stop.

But History and Progress are a funny thing. It's been Twenty years since the release of EQ, and it remains the most engaging online experience ever constructed. MMOs did not live up to their potential as real life replacements and have slowly been phased out of popular consciousness. In fact, I can't recall hearing anything about MMOs from popular culture after that famous South Park WoW episode. It's like the entire genre lived in the spotlight and then spent itself out, replaced by the current trend of Esports and Minecraft.
 

anvi

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Exactly. It is a shame really because WoW kind of killed the genre (imo), yet it isn't WoW's fault, and WoW itself is actually a really good game in its own way. And it did some great new things. I had a lot of fun doing the battlegrounds and the arena PVP matches, it was like playing an action Capture The Flag match but with fantasy characters which was cool. And some of the classes played in a fun way, the WoW Druid is brilliant with its shape shifting. But WoW was so huge and made so much money, almost every MMO since then has followed its formula of being accessible and not too brutal etc. It is fine for casual gaming, but it isn't what the MMORPG was originally about.

When I first read about EQ in 1998 ish, the hype was all about the concept of a "persistent world", that had real people all over the world playing together, and when you went to bed, the world still carried on going and would never stop. And you could be anything you wanted, you could be a villain that people hated, or a hero that people loved, and you excel at what you do and people would know your name. I pictured someday a game where someone could rise up to become king of a nation, maybe be murdered by an evil player, and entire cities could be burned to the ground, new ones founded, and people could play completely as traders and crafters and never lift a weapon if they didn't want to. Some of that happened but a lot of it didn't and the whole thing just ended up being about getting a quest to collect 20 wolf pelts and zapping stuff with lightning bolts.

I think EVE Online is the only modern MMO that went anywhere near what I thought the genre was going to be. But someday I think this will go full circle and some huge games will bring back the potential. The concern to me is that originally these games were inspired by MUDs, so 40+ year olds grew up playing those incredible virtual world games but it was all very text based. So early MMOs were trying to recreate that experience but in 3d with real graphics. Now it seems MMO devs are only inspired by previous MMOs. I hope that MUD influence could come back, because those seem to be the games that are most interesting. I never even played a MUD but my buddy did and tells me about stuff like items that are completely unique, an amazing legendary sword that nobody else in the world has, and everyone knows the name of the guy who has it. And some day if someone kills that guy and takes his sword, that guy will become infamous. Stuff like that still needs to come to modern MMORPGs.

And even besides MMORPGs, I would like to see single player RPGs that have combat as good as EQ. Nowadays it seems RPGs are either deep and turn based, or actiony and shallow. There are no real time yet deep games. One of the weird things about EQ is that the classes actually had difficulty recommendations when the game first came out. So the Monk might say easy difficulty because you don't have that much to click and it is standard melee with some martial arts. But the Enchanter is high difficulty because you have to be really fast at locking down a room full of enemies to save your group. Games today are so terrified of being too hard because people might not buy it, but if they had proper difficulty levels instead of just ramping the enemy stats up and down, one game could appeal to far more people.
 
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Lacrymas

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I thought that MMOs were literally going to take over the world, and everybody and their mother would be connected to an engaging online experience. There was so much controversy and dystopia around the concept of MMOs and it seemed like the endless march of progress would never stop.

Well, they have, just not in that way. E-sports are kind of like MMOs, just ...faster. MOBAs are literally a microcosm of an MMO"RPG", but instead of your character being a constant in a world, it's your username that is a constant in the world. MMOs were never really controversial, not in the sense Night Trap and Mortal Kombat were, which effectively created the ESRB (with a handful of ignorance mixed in). MMOs were the scapegoat de jour, replacing comic books, heavy metal, Harry Potter and all the myriad of absurdities corrupting the children. The media also gobbled it up pretty fast, because it's a juicy story. The truth is that only people who were prone to dangerously addictive habits were ruining their lives over them, they would've been addicted to something else if MMOs were not around.

The concept of progress in history has been debunked so hard and thoroughly that we now know there is no such thing in this context. Different stuff happens and that's the most correct viewpoint concerning history, so nobody should be surprised that MMOs got replaced with something else (a variant), even though it seems like a step back. Whether there's room or a market for an MMO like EQ nowadays is a good question. Just like the question of whether single player RPGs are relevant. Those questions are always concerning the mainstream though, which is the wrong crowd. The mainstream is a fickle beast, latching on to The Next Big Thing, soon MOBAs are going to be replaced. It's not like video games are unique in this aspect, every other medium suffers from the exact same thing, certain things decaying in popularity and being muscled out. Johann Fux, whose writings modern polyphonic teaching is based on, has written in 1725 how the perfect old polyphony was replaced by a decline and decadence in the music of his time. He's not the only one to write such things, many people throughout history have.

We do have an advantage over the old ways though - the internet. That's how the RPG "Renaissance" was possible and we are getting new RPGs quite frequently (the quality thereof notwithstanding), so I'm pretty sure there's some market for old-school MMOs like EverQuest, someone just has to find the audience (and design) for it. There's also the fact that modern MMOs just aren't good games, let alone good MMOs, so we don't really know what's happening in that genre.
 
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luj1

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Beastro

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I'll add some stuff being a vet of the game. Started in Dec of 99 and recently came

But say you kill some guards in a Human city, you will lose some faction with those guards, probably most of the merchants in that city too, but also maybe various other groups and factions throughout the world who are friends of this particular city. Yet at the same time, maybe some evil Dark Elves living nearby that hate these humans, they will like you more now. It is hugely deep.

Sadly the taming really screwed with some of race/class balancing, like how Iksars (lizardmen) are pretty much the best Necromancers due to their innate HP regen that really eases the penalty of Necros hp to mana spell line that was countered by them being kill on site everywhere else, something which they sadly didn't fiddle with more in later expansions.

In the original game and the first expansion, Kunark, these sorts of things were massive factors, like how my brother went to level around Lake Rathe as his Gnome Necro, but the nearest non-kos town was Freeport, a human city over half a continent away. Traveling to Lake Rathe was an adventure in itself and complicated by the fact that originally pet class pets needed to be given weapons for them to do things like double attack, so he'd load up in Freeport on fine steel daggers, become massively encumbered and then literal walk to Lake Rather, all while doing this on Rallos Zek, the first of the games PvP servers.

It used to require a monthly sub but now it is free to play. Unlike most F2P games, this one actually lets you have everything you need to enjoy it, and more. So you really don't need to pay anything. But there is a lot of stuff you can buy now, some of it is pay to win stuff that people can't wait to buy, and some of it is just basic stuff that every good character should really have. You can live without buying any of it, but if you get far in the game, you will likely want to buy a few things to pimp yourself out a bit. Although "getting far" in this game is something that takes months if not years, especially now that it has had 23 full expansions.

Well....

The Progression Servers changed that and most people play on them now.

Recently announced though is a new server Agnarr which is going to be the first “locked in time” progression server. This is something I have wanted for about 15 years but never came because SOE are morons, but they recently finally went out of business and got bought by another company and the new company has come up with this server. It is progression like the others, but once it reaches Planes of Power, it will stay at that forever. The downside being you will eventually run out of content and there will be no new expansions (although it could take years to reach that point). But the upside is that it will never end up with mercenaries and lots of the dumbed down stuff the modern game has, so for some people this is a copy of the game back when it was kind of perfect.

As someone who is playing on Phinny I can say this really puts a short life limit on Agnarr. It's a fun ride to POP, then a big drop of boredom during LDON, but without Gates of Discord, Omens of War and others to come the PoP content would get boring fast. The sad fact is there are just some things like the mercs they should have never put in, but they're a good enough price to pay to enjoy progressing through all the other enjoyable content that came after PoP, especially for those like me who quit at release of LDoN.

The subscription is no big deal to people these days, but personally I only like to multibox in EQ so playing progression servers would be costly for me. But they are a good option for most people.

I do too, I sucked it up and bought two year long subscriptions, which at $120 isn't too bad.

What you can do if you're able to if you get into the game of playing the market is to build up a horde of Krono, which if you right click on one adds 30 days to your subscription. It's a common thing with people to pay for one months subscription to be able to play on the Progression Servers, then work to build up a horde so they can keep using them to add more days.

Krono operates on very much the same mechanics as real life currency in that it's value is constantly changing, typically continually appreciating in value, but certain circumstances can result in its price dropping. It is very much an effective tactic to play on a new prog server where their price is almost nothing, buy as much as you can, then resell them at appreciated value to then resell the platinum for real cash.

Also you can technically get a subscription for free now if you make enough money in game, you can buy an item called a Krono which gives your account a month of subscription. But you would have to be a hardcore player to make enough money in the game to afford to buy that. But some people play that way.

I have an RL friend that plays EQ to make money on the side by doing things to buy Krono and then resell like I said above while only consuming Krono to keep subscribed. He's made over $5k that way so far, but it's a chore I don't have the patience for.

IF anyone plays on a prog server and wants to built Krono up, do so now while Agnarr is still new. Not really trying I've built up a tidy collection of them benefiting from the laziness, and imo, stupidity, of players easing the early beginning of their game by just throwing Krono around as I've migrated with my guild from Ragefire to Lockjaw to Phinny.

A good example of that is the first bunch I made, which I got early on in Lockjaw when I won the roll on a Flowing Black Sash, the first and really only item with haste that makes melees attack faster on my Necro since all the melees in the group had gotten one already. After heading back to back I announced selling it and got someone who offered 6 Krono for it, which I snatched up before he could come to his sense. Since then I've gotten more from similar deals, just as my guild leader, who loves tradeskills, worked on blacksmithing early only to have someone offer him a Krono to make him a full suit of Banded Armour, which is pretty basic newbie armour that sells for a pittance, but he couldn't buy starting out because he had no Platinum.

There are ways and means and you need to figure out how to survive, and in fact many of things people figured out in this game, are things that the developers never knew about or intended to be in the game, but they became key parts of the gameplay.

The biggest example of this "Splitting", that is the ability of Monks and SHadowknights, and if they have to, Necromancesr, to use a spell/ability they get that makes them fall down and fools the AI into thinking their dead. Originally it was meant as a survival skill for when things are going bad that they could avoid dying, just as others like Druids and Shamans could use their increased movement spells to outrun dangerous situations.

The thing was Monks and SKs quickly found out that if they FDed, then waited for mobs (EQs name for monsters) to walk back to their spawn point some mobs would walk back sooner than others and repeatedly having them do that and FD over and over would break them up allowing another group member to aggro one by itself so your group or raid could then focus on beating on it and only it.

Originally Verant (the original developer of EQ) looked on this as a bug and they expected players to have to deal with every single mob in a group not matter what either using Enchanters or Bards spells to mezmerize mobs, or in the case of raids when often mobs couldn't be mezzed, to originally force players to split up and have one tank class fight each of the mobs while the raids groups would split up to support them.

Splitting meant all of this could be avoided and Verant treated it not simply as a bug, but as an exploit, that players were abusing something unintended in the game to get unfair advantages and originally punished players for it. The problem for them was that they found that they simply couldn't get rid of the bug, and at the same time, the games combat mechanics proved too remorseless for it to be a good thing for them to remove it even if they could. As a result, after a short bit of punishing players for splitting they added it as a permitted rule and it's now become one of the most integral mechanics to both groups exping and for raids raiding where groups need to have a puller almost every time and they are crucial for raids making Monks and SKs some of the highest value classes to have around (Necros are simply too squish to regularly pull, though it can be done by them if need be).

Also mana is a big deal. You can only cast your spells maybe 10 times and then you are out of mana, and the only way to fix this is to sit down and chill for a good minute or so, and this gets longer as you get more mana later in the game. This is not a game for ADHD types because you wont be rushing around zapping monstorz with lightning constantly, you can do that for a while, but then you need to sit and meditate. What this does is makes the game very tense and thoughtful, you have to plan what you are doing, and you have to play very efficiently, or you can end up in deep shit in a dungeon when there are enemies all over the place and respawning on top of you, and you ran out of mana because you were playing like a pleb. Everything is just more serious in this game, and some people might not like it because of that, which is understandable. But a lot of people once they get hooked on it, just don't find anything else fun anymore because nothing is as intense and serious as EQ. I try all MMORPGs but none of them come close to this game.

Even on the progression servers it isnt quite the same as it was in classic. The long wait literally was one where some classes might have to sit around for half an hour or more to get max mana, all the while their buffs are counting down with most lasting between 30min to and hour. It's not even dungeons where you have to be cautious, if you're playing a class known to solo that also lacked a means of really increasing their mana regen, like Druid or Wizard, you had to constantly balance your DPS as well as keeping an eye on the timer on your buffs so rebuffing didn't eat into your mana pool when it was already low as well as them not wearing off in the middle of a fight.

The importance of mana makes the Enchanter class massively important then and now. Besides it being the main of two mezzing classes enchanters also can give others a buff called Clarity that increases their mana regen and they are a constantly in demand class people seek out to ask for the buff while chanters could, if idle and bored, begin to announce that they can buff people with it for donations to make some money on the side.

Most classes that need mana have different ways of making it back, even ones that don't conventionally do like Wizards, which if you play on an old server, if you've able to track down someone selling an old item called a Manastone, something you could right click that could take hps away and give you mana back. The item synergies with Wizards more than anyone else because, even though healers can heal the hp that are taken away, especially Clerics with their Completely Heal spell, they countered the benefit to them by restricting Manastones ability to be cast outside of the original content of the game to prevent healers from abusing it just like this so they could spam away while grouping. Two things made it awesome for Wizards: THey have a line of spells called Runes that give them a buff that is effectively artificial hps, as in you cast it and it puts a 500hp rune on you, then when monsters attack you the first 500 damage is taken by the rune and not your hps. The thing is, Manastones spell is effected by runes as well and Wizards epics effect is a right click rune, so wizards, being one of two port classes, could port back to the original continents, then alternate spamming the epic and Manastone to get full mana, then port back to where they were leveling.

And the items get cooler and cooler.

Not simply that but items become specialized for certain niche things. The thing with Manastones is just one of the more well know ones but there were others and they way Verant, Sony and Daybreak handle/d the changing circumstances with loot makes items even more important.

What I mean is the general rule of thumb that was begun with the Manastone. It was about the first item they realized was overpowered and required being removed, but despite doing that they decided to keep all preexisting Manastones in game, just later adding the nerf that only allowed them to be cast in the original content. The result was suddenly this item was both rare as hell and massively sought after.

Others would follow that weren't as overpowered but still required removal, but again preexisting ones were kept in and quickly became prestige items. One of the biggest ones is the Mask of Deception, which is a mask with right click Dark Elf illusion on it. It was the first of a long of items meant only for Bards and Rogues to allow them to be able to sneak into cities they are nominally kill on sight to, like a goodie goodie Wood Elf Rogue using the mask to sneak into Neriak, the Dark Elf city to mass around in it, something that soon became a reoccurring thing both classes (and Enchanters, the class that comes will a full line of illusion spells) needed to do to do class specific quests.

The problem was a bug was quickly discovered with the mask, you didn't need to be a Rogue or Bard to use it, you couldn't equip the mask, but if you put it in an inventory slot and clicked it, it would still cast. This quickly got around and everybody began to camp it. To keep people from ignoring ever bothering with choosing Dark Elf as a race and instead just pick another race, camp the mask and then run around using it instead, the mask was removed and all preexisting masks were made No Drop (They could not be traded away, something which all important raid and quest items quickly became too). Because of this the mask became yet another prestige item, and since it was No Drop, also became a symbol of veteran status as the mask only dropped for the first few months of the game.

In addition to this the mask wasn't simply a novelty, for some races it was a hugely important item that could drastically change the game, especially in the early stages of the game when they really sought to maintain racial balances by emphasizing racial penalties in the terrain of many zones. Seeking to maintain this balance was the driving reason for the masks removal and is sad to think about since they later began to remove these penalties as the game increasingly became casualized.

The mask was important above all others for Ogres and Trolls, and to a lesser extent, Barbarians. Ogres and Trolls are some of the most powerful racial choices to pick, Ogres getting frontal stun immunity and a ton of HPs while trolls get slightly less hp but better hp regen than other races. The downside to both was their size, which in many dungeons could quickly result in their deaths if they had to run away from a fight. They emphasized a spell Shamans had, a class originally only all three races could be. The spell could shrink you down as small as a gnome of halfing, and in many dungeons you either needed to have a Shaman around to track one down and bum this buff off of them (and rebuffed if you had to zone mobs off, the spell wore off if you zoned). This was mandatory for the two main and most popular original dungeons, Guk and Solusek B which were both mazes of very restricted passages.

The mask allowed these races to have no trouble anywhere and so early large race players who got this mask found themselves in a very unique position of freedom as well as desirability in groups since it allowed them to function if a Shaman wasn't available to get into the group. It was a mixed bag as the game progressed expansions dungeons became less crowded so fatasses became less dependent on Shamans and as a result to counter their strengths they progressively made the differences between classes less and less until now it largely cosmetic. For instance it's a common thing for people to play Gnome Warriors when the only advantages Gnomes have is their high intelligence that makes them good casters. To be a Gnome warrior is purely for the comedic value playing a race unsuited to be one.

Progression Servers:

All I'll add here is to be very careful playing on Emu servers. Corruption on them is practically universal, it's the consequence of having just random people running them and not employees of a company that have to maintain a standard of ethical conduct because they could get in legal trouble if they don't.

The main issue this server has,

P99s main problem is it's just become a massive conduit for RMT (Real Money Transfer) that has infected the Emu servers staff. P99 is the best cast where the server has essentially become a way Rogean (the guy who runs the server) makes money and he doesn't give a fuck how RMT unbalances the server so long as he keeps getting his cut. Original he made rules banning it and kept up the appearance that he was enforcing it, but it was smoke and mirrors since he only would ban people who didn't give him a cut of their earnings. The rest of the staff are corrupt so some extent either in on it as well or there to get a power trip except for the one guy who is the developer, I think his name's Null, he only fiddles with the game as a hobby since he enjoys tinkering with EQ and gets enjoyment from doing so with it resulting in a fully functional server coming from it, the only problem is that's all he cares about and since he can do that no matter what the state the server is in he doesn't give a fuck what damage RMT might be causing.

Shards of Dalaya

Pretty cool server,

If you're used to EQ it's a nice change of pace but it's differences ruin a lot of the games charm, chiefly the weird lore they've built the server around. If you've played lots of EQ and want something different it's good to give it a bit of a go, but leveling in it can be a pain (I mostly played it in 2006), all the most so now that the populations declined.

Some questions anvi,


  • is EQ grindy?
  • is it P2W?
  • crafting any good?
  • is it a trading simulator?
  • do you need a guild to be efficient/have fun?

- The Grind is oddly a big part of its appeal.
- You can buy Krono with real money then sell the Krono for in game money or items, that is where the "sorta" comes from. It is not required though and I get by without it.
-It's not super good like many other games, but it still is useful if you know what to work on. The best example of that is Jewelcrafting which is mostly an Enchanter trade skill (They have the spells to enchant the metal that are needed to make magical items) that produces a lot of jewelry with stats on it that is especially useful early on when such jewelry is rather rare outside of that made by Jewelcrafting.
-Not unless you want it to become one. The game is fun for both those who love tradeskills and those who hate them, like I do.
- Not really but that is very class dependent. Warriors benefit from one and really need one to do their best while a Necromancer is tailor-made to be a loner with a lot of their self-only spells allowing them to do things that others classes require buddies for. The other big solo class is Druid, but it's a mixed bag that I played back in the day and wouldn't recommend while others can work on being them in specific circumstances like Wizards and Bards if you work on them enough.

If you ever do try it, pick a Necromancer.

I'll get around to adding a class and race list later unless someone else gets to it first.
 
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anvi

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The sad fact is there are just some things like the mercs they should have never put in
WOW I never knew they did that, that is so stupid. :/

Thank you for being honest. I'll move on
No probs. I love the game but imo it has as many weaknesses as it has strengths. But it is still my favorite :) I did have fun in various other MMORPGs though, Rift was awesome in the early days, The Secret World was promising and is coming back as a remake in about a month. Elder Scrolls Online is pretty good, WoW was great for a while, I haven't played it for 10 years though. Some others I forgot.
 

anvi

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Here's another bit of gameplay for you Animal, one I've never seen in another game. It was called AOE groups.

So there are Area of Effect (AOE) spells in the game that just a few of the classes have, they do less damage than the usual direct damage spells, and cost a lot more mana, but they hit everything in the area. Usually people don't use them because mobs are too dangerous to pull in large numbers so groups only ever fight 2 or 3 at a time anyway, and even then, someone will likely mesmerize the extra ones while the first one is killed, and an AOE spell would wake them all up and cause mayhem.

But players came up with yet another trick. The Enchanter class had an AOE stun spell which stuns all the mobs nearby, but only lasts for about 2 seconds. But as they levelled up they got upgrades to this, and each older version could also be cast, so if the Enchanter was willing to do no other damage or anything else, they could just stand still and cast their 5 AOE stuns in a row, and by the time the last one was done, the first one would be off cooldown and ready to go again. As long as they didn't get too many resists, they could stun anything nearby. So you get a strong tank, preferably a Paladin that can use Divine Aura, and instead of getting 2 or 3 mobs, he goes and pulls 50-100 mobs... He would run all over the zone making sure they don't catch him, and then run back to the group and pop his Aura. A moment later 100 mobs would show up and the Enchanter (preferably 2 of them) would start spamming their area stun. And while everything is locked down in stuns, a Wizard (preferably 2 of them) would cast their biggest AOE spells over and over and blast them all down to death. It was really dangerous and most people either didn't know the trick, or were too scared to try it, but when a group was doing it, it was amazing! You got enormous experience, like 10 levels in half an hour kind of experience, and it was an amazing sight. Even on high end PCs it would slow to a crawl with all those stuns and all those AOE nukes spamming and 100 mobs wincing in pain and then dying.

It was tense and could easily kill everyone in the group with one mistake, but once you get the hang of it, the exp flies. Last time I did with a group I got level 50-60 in 2 evenings, when usually that would take at least a month.
 

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