Games You Should Like (as much as I do): Everquest (Comedy Open Mic Round #23)

In college my friends fell in love with a game that let them all play together. It had crafting, territory, governments and wars. It was insanely complicated and fascinating. It wasn't Everquest, clearly.

Everquest had come out the year before. When I played at least It had limited crafting. Combat less interesting than my friends' top down ascii based game. Essentially zero quests (I heard rumors of quests but never actually found any, though I've heard they were added later).

Everquest was not even the first MMO. That honor goes to...well apparently it's something of a huge ridiculous tie and it depends who you ask.

For some reason this came up when I searched for tie. I have no idea why, but it seemed a bit too on the nose to pass up.

It wasn't even the first MMO I played. That honor goes to the Realm.

Here's a quick screenshot from the Realm.

Wait. Holy crap it still exists... https://realmserver.com/

Anyway, got a bit sidetracked there. Point is Everquest was nothing new, there were graphic MMOs before it that did what it did better.

But Everquest was successful, and it hadn't been out long. Oh and I was desperately lonely as mentioned previously. So I got sucked in despite myself.

And I don't want to give the impression I had no fun at all with Everquest. I have some fun memories.

The gameplay loop was just go out and grind, so I was not a big fan, but I did loved to explore, especially to places I was woefully outclassed in. There were some classes that could teleport but I wasn't one of them and I was always restarting so I wouldn't have had the levels for it anyway. Instead I had to slog across territory meant to be a challenge to people twice my level.

Pictured: My Level 5 Half-elf Ranger Fromann halfway down the road to Freeport

(I was looking for noogie but fine. I'm the noodles)

I remember finding some amazing places. I ran down into Blackburrow after someone trained the entire tribe out of there. Traversed the opalescent cliffs of Highpass (were they supposed to look like that my graphics were turned down). Got lost and repeatedly killed in the caves of Clan Runnyeye. There was not really much to do in these areas by massacre mods by the thousand but then again I couldn't even kill one. What I could see as I frantically fled through them seemed a lot cooler than it actually was.

The best time I ever had in EQ though was on a PvP (Player vs. Player) server. I was playing a halfling rogue named Fromaggi and I was maybe level 3, right outside the gates of the halfling home city of Rivervale.

Pictured: Me trying to find a license free picture of Jughead for a Riverdale joke.

I was fighting the normal mobs: bats and wolves and beetles falling by the thousands to myself and my lowbie brethren, when suddenly and instantly I died as a level ?? insane Elven jackass leapt out from behind a bush and iced me in one blow. Fine, I thought, whatever, I'm right outside the city, no big deal. When I got back though he was still there, mowing through lowbies as they tried to kill boars or, you know, just not die.

This by it self was not unusual but usually it petered off quickly as they got bored and left. Here it just kept going. Halflings would die at his hand then be respawn and walk back just to die again.

I decided I'd had enough. I rallied the other lowbies around me and we went on the offensive, driving him back and killing him over and over again until he finally logged out. It is honestly one of the moments I'm most proud of, which should tell you what a sad sack I truly am...

I have a son and that somehow still makes the list

So I guess in conclusion, Everquest was pretty bad and we had to make our own quests, but we LIKED it by gum!

You should like it as much as I do(tm) which is, honestly, pretty much not at all I mean you have some good memories of it but it was actually just a grindy nightmare and you used to it avoid your loneliness and grief at your lost childhood until you stopped running from the future and embraced a new and better life. 3 out of 10.

I am still calling on @dustinseth to do one of these already. And since my other nominee won a HUGE CASH PRIZE last time this time I'm nominating @veryspider. Comedy, won't you?