Everquest was my first major video game experience and it made a big impression on me. I remember the wonder and largeness of the world of Norrath, specifically Kelethin and Greater Faydark. The humility and respect with which I encountered high-level players. The satisfaction of getting a new piece of equipment.

All the time spent learning to navigate the zones really enriched the gaming experience, because I had practically nothing to rely on but my memory of the area. No maps (accurate ones at least, and were often impractical or clumsy). Like Tipa and Joey both said, if there are significant consequences in the gaming experience, then there is meaning. Much like life, I suppose.

So I joined a caravan of experienced explorers who had made the trip and understood the dangers — they had SoW and everything! Well, griffins got us in North Karana.

I tried it again the in a couple of days and managed to make it all the way to East Karana, a very beautiful and dangerous place. Someone in the zone offered to take me to Misty Thicket, through the Maze and Runnyeye and into the safe haven beyond the wall.

So I stayed in Rivervale for a few days, root/nuking beyond the wall and joining the occasional group before I found some people heading to Freeport and joined them. Seeing the warmly lit Freeport gates awaiting me after the scary run through Kithicor and the Commonlands was indescribably wonderful.

Then I made a halfling to explore Misty Thicket some more without having to run all the way back and only played halflings from then on. Though I would play my wizard more later, she never again left the safety of the Freeport area.

Most of my early memories of EQ1 dealt with traveling somewhere far, and finding new friends and new places. When you went somewhere in early EQ1, you stayed there. I was in my 30s before I started seriously considering groups outside the continent I was already in.

I had the EQ1/EQ2 discussion with a group of my mates the other nite over ventrilo..the end conclusion..great memories…but the memory would be spoilt if we went back there.

I don’t think we’ll ever recapture that early era of MMOs. I still remember the fear of running from Qeynos to Freeport (How ingrained are those names? It’s hard to think that it was almost 8 years ago that I started playing, and I can probably still recite zone routes between most of the cities). I remember, having made the run once before, convincing someone else to join me for the return trip.

And discovering that Kithicor at night is not much fun at all.

I remember begging for a bind in Freeport.

And the point of all this ‘remembering’ – is remembering how BIG the world was. And it was big not just in land mass (what is it, 4 times larger now?), but in *possibilities*.

Because 1) Not everything was online; 2) Not everything was in-game.

I remember when I printed my first maps: they were generic printouts with rough (very rough) locations – more a “feel” than an actual location (eqatlas, anyone?). And you couldn’t just go online to find an answer to every question.

But that was OK, because the game had *real community*. Shard farming, anyone? Spending 8 or 9 hours in a camp with guildies that constantly rotate through means you get to know people. And new people show up, you rotate through, because you have to: you can’t get along without them.

Or say you’re a monk trying to do your quest in Nagafen’s Lair: bring a friend or 3, and that camp (god, camps are GOOD, not BAD!) turns into a community event.

I suppose tools like thottbot will always and ever be present in today’s world. Heck, even as I was ending my time in EQ1 (towards the end of Serpent’s Spine*), there was a lot of valuable information that wasn’t to be found on Allakhazam. The problem is that games are almost designed *knowing* information will get out. So what’s a developer to do? Any puzzle will be posted, and the resources to keep the puzzle ‘changing’ doesn’t seem possible.

And, because each experience can’t be new (since people will ‘cheat’ their way through), designers are almost *forced* to shrink the size of the world. But that just makes decisions more pointless: Why worry about dying when you can just summon all your corpses? You don’t even have to wait for a graveyard, much less keep a set of ‘corpse run’ gear!

I miss big worlds. I understand why insta-travel is useful…but can’t we design worlds that are big and don’t need travel to trivialize them? I always thought the idea of a transportation ‘class’ was useful, not bad. And I miss games in which actions have -consequence- and -community-. And this is a great example of community in action. I miss rooting for the BOTB competitions

-_- Cabiz

* Interestingly enough, my time with EQ ended when my high-end guild went by the wayside: not because of any intrinsic dislike of the game. I stayed in it far longer than I would have without a guild, and I quit WoW inside 2 years, because there are no similar community-building requirements.