Oh, thats just far too many good experiences to choose from.
I have played Vanguard for almost all of its run, except I didnt join immediately, I left when they announced it would be terminated, and I took one pause (of two months) in between.
Obviously that was only because I was happy playing it.
One thing I really loved was when I finally managed to figure out Vanguard tanks. I had tried a lot before. I had made a Lesser Giant in all +Strength gear but even he sucked. But when I actually had set up my maxlevel Dread Knight properly and had huge aggro generation, could keep multiple opponents aggroed at the same time and could snatch aggro from any tank not paying attention, despite the fact that DK wasnt considered to be great at aggro in the first place, that was just a real breakthrough moment for me.
It is hard to separate the good and bad memories in Everquest because some of the more terrible ones had some of the sweetest examples of people working together to help each other so here is one such experience.
As some of here are aware Everquest is in as far as the higher content is concerned largely worked around a calendar which guilds kept and generally guilds do not try to circumvent or ignore it. However this worked out very poorly for those guilds that had not enough members to handle the Planes and had to rely on other guilds for essential classes like clerics and enchanters in sufficient numbers.
Occasionally after a lot of complaints from these guilds they were allowed to take one day a week for these guilds to handle the plane. However if they failed and had corpses there it would be unrecoverable until the Plane is 'broken' meaning the mobs have been cleared and the spawn controlled by another guild. Then they are invited to come and get their corpses.
On one such occasion having waited for another guild to come and clear the Plane the clock was running out on the corpses. So we had to employ other methods to get their corpses back. We are talking of months and even in some cases a year's work of equipment on these corpses that would lead some players to completely leave the game if they lost them.
I went to help by using my guild's well geared paladin who left the character log in in my confidence and after asking him he agreed to me using it. I belonged to a very good guild that did weekly Plane runs and we occasionally invited other guild's members but they never got to roll on the rare stuff (just some of the trash and lower valued drops) which went to our guild first.
What we did was to leave a corpse behind with a few items so it won't disappear and then I would go in with a command to "rez me now" so a cleric would then cast a spell on the corpse and the player in the plane can choose to get rezzed after dragging the corpses of others to a safe spot. Worked on this for hours until we got every one of the corpses. Cannot say it was glorious but it was a job that felt so good afterwards knowing we had saved them and their items from decaying. My friend's character lost some experience from dying in there but my wizard could not have taken even one hit in there and survived. There were 7-8 people helping to kite the mobs away while a few of us dragged the corpses but occasionally we still died. Those deaths were unrecoverable but we all did it regardless of the risk. Other guilds also began to help in later months but the very first time I was so proud to have taken part in this glorious group effort.
There were many such instances in Everquest where the players worked to help others at personal cost of losing experience they would have to work for days recovering. That was the spirit I find truly lacking in games these days that I think are fueled now by selfishness more than any other sentiment.
Mine comes from Legend of Mir 2- When I killed Zoma King- will never forget when judgment mace dropped! was 14 years old and felt like a hero! All this was made possible by a 56k Dialup modem!
The top would have to be the initial launch of Siege Perilous before they wiped it. They had just introduced the Hero and Evil system, and everyone was geeked to try it out, so you had constant fights in all of the hot spots. Being Evil was like being a murderer who turned blue when you went into town, and because most people were Heroes, you could kill them at will without getting murder counts.
A real shame they wiped it.
Runners up would be Red vs Blue in the old Dread Lord days, or color wars on Abyss Test with dozens of people fighting over Daemon temple (the portal nexus) and storming the faction castles.
Mine is a little bit different, I remember playing Guild wars one. I had played as a few different characters classes and while I liked them, I had no idea what was in store for me when I got the Cantha expansion and made a new character from the spiritualist class. For some reason, it really resonated with me. It brought a whole new love to that game for me and I was really engrossed in the game from a single player's perspective. The reason this is important is because I also dug deeper into the game and got involved in PVP. I am not a PVP player by definition and this is the only game I truly did this for any length of time. Being a part of a team and doing battles made this the most complete game experience I had to that point. If I was not in PVP with my team, I was playing single player with the spiritualist. For about four years, I really loved gaming in a different way. I look back at this as the Golden age for me because I really felt connected to this game on multiple levels. I've honestly never been able to recapture that complete experience on any other game. I've been immersed in other games and maybe even more so, but only on the single player PVE experience.
While I started with Everquest, I was quite young and it has been such a long time. So, my best memory (that I can actually recall) was probably with Anarchy Online, which I picked up about a year or so after EQ.
I will literally never forget leaving the Backyard (starter zone) of Rome to experience the top of a high rise building (with your own apartment, no less) looking over the large futuristic city. At the time, I had mostly only played fantasy-styled games (especially fantasy-only MMOs); so, to experience something that wasn't elves, orcs, or wizards was truly memorable. Fast forward to finally getting my Yalmaha -- AO's version of a flying mount -- after winning a few million credits while listening to the Gridstream Productions radio stream. This was the pinnacle of my excitement in AO as a new player; it was really neat to fly over all the areas I had previously only seen on foot.
Anarchy Online had a lot of firsts in terms of MMOs that I think a lot of people forget about -- likely because they never played it. This made the game highly memorable for me. I'm actually playing through AO again, and I still find the game to offer a lot for old-school folks like myself. Highly looking forward to the progression server this year (hopefully).
While I started with Everquest, I was quite young and it has been such a long time. So, my best memory (that I can actually recall) was probably with Anarchy Online, which I picked up about a year or so after EQ.
I will literally never forget leaving the Backyard (starter zone) of Rome to experience the top of a high rise building (with your own apartment, no less) looking over the large futuristic city. At the time, I had mostly only played fantasy-styled games (especially fantasy-only MMOs); so, to experience something that wasn't elves, orcs, or wizards was truly memorable. Fast forward to finally getting my Yalmaha -- AO's version of a flying mount -- after winning a few million credits while listening to the Gridstream Productions radio stream. This was the pinnacle of my excitement in AO as a new player; it was really neat to fly over all the areas I had previously only seen on foot.
Anarchy Online had a lot of firsts in terms of MMOs that I think a lot of people forget about -- likely because they never played it. This made the game highly memorable for me. I'm actually playing through AO again, and I still find the game to offer a lot for old-school folks like myself. Highly looking forward to the progression server this year (hopefully).
It's going to be good times.
I kind of wish we could do a call to action and flood the new AO server, just to send a message to the "AAA" studios that we want more than their sub-par games.
My most magical MMORPG memory is playing EQ at release, staring out from the Halas docks and knowing there was a whole world out there to explore, afraid and excited at the same time.
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As some of here are aware Everquest is in as far as the higher content is concerned largely worked around a calendar which guilds kept and generally guilds do not try to circumvent or ignore it. However this worked out very poorly for those guilds that had not enough members to handle the Planes and had to rely on other guilds for essential classes like clerics and enchanters in sufficient numbers.
Occasionally after a lot of complaints from these guilds they were allowed to take one day a week for these guilds to handle the plane. However if they failed and had corpses there it would be unrecoverable until the Plane is 'broken' meaning the mobs have been cleared and the spawn controlled by another guild. Then they are invited to come and get their corpses.
On one such occasion having waited for another guild to come and clear the Plane the clock was running out on the corpses. So we had to employ other methods to get their corpses back. We are talking of months and even in some cases a year's work of equipment on these corpses that would lead some players to completely leave the game if they lost them.
I went to help by using my guild's well geared paladin who left the character log in in my confidence and after asking him he agreed to me using it. I belonged to a very good guild that did weekly Plane runs and we occasionally invited other guild's members but they never got to roll on the rare stuff (just some of the trash and lower valued drops) which went to our guild first.
What we did was to leave a corpse behind with a few items so it won't disappear and then I would go in with a command to "rez me now" so a cleric would then cast a spell on the corpse and the player in the plane can choose to get rezzed after dragging the corpses of others to a safe spot. Worked on this for hours until we got every one of the corpses. Cannot say it was glorious but it was a job that felt so good afterwards knowing we had saved them and their items from decaying. My friend's character lost some experience from dying in there but my wizard could not have taken even one hit in there and survived. There were 7-8 people helping to kite the mobs away while a few of us dragged the corpses but occasionally we still died. Those deaths were unrecoverable but we all did it regardless of the risk. Other guilds also began to help in later months but the very first time I was so proud to have taken part in this glorious group effort.
There were many such instances in Everquest where the players worked to help others at personal cost of losing experience they would have to work for days recovering. That was the spirit I find truly lacking in games these days that I think are fueled now by selfishness more than any other sentiment.
mmorpg junkie since 1999
I will literally never forget leaving the Backyard (starter zone) of Rome to experience the top of a high rise building (with your own apartment, no less) looking over the large futuristic city. At the time, I had mostly only played fantasy-styled games (especially fantasy-only MMOs); so, to experience something that wasn't elves, orcs, or wizards was truly memorable. Fast forward to finally getting my Yalmaha -- AO's version of a flying mount -- after winning a few million credits while listening to the Gridstream Productions radio stream. This was the pinnacle of my excitement in AO as a new player; it was really neat to fly over all the areas I had previously only seen on foot.
Anarchy Online had a lot of firsts in terms of MMOs that I think a lot of people forget about -- likely because they never played it. This made the game highly memorable for me. I'm actually playing through AO again, and I still find the game to offer a lot for old-school folks like myself. Highly looking forward to the progression server this year (hopefully).
I kind of wish we could do a call to action and flood the new AO server, just to send a message to the "AAA" studios that we want more than their sub-par games.