Rose tinted goggles time - What do you miss from your first mmorpg?

My first MMORPG was Everquest 1 pre Kunark expansion. If you wanted to travel from the “good continent” to the “neutral” one you had to take a boat. The boat only came around every so often and then it went through an ocean zone with some islands (one of those islands had giants and another had sirens; both could attack you on the boat if you were stupid enough to aggro them!) before arriving at the human city. The human city did not like “evil” races so for those they had to run through the sewers to get out rather than go through the city.

Pretty much everything also had a faction (with one or more counter factions) which meant if you killed enough of a certain type you became KOS to them (and NPC guards were way OP in general!). They also had a tendency to put nasty high level creatures in zones; for example one zone with camps of mobs around level 5 to 10 would have an elite gryphon flying around that was 20 levels higher or Oasis had mid-teens level with a low 30s giants roaming the sand dunes. You also had zones which changed depending on the day/night cycle; one such zone changed from being low 10s to an undead infested forest for mid 30s or higher!

Some zones had drops that would not only kill you but leave your corpse (all gear left on corpses; if you did not retrieve your corpse you lost your gear, all of it!) three or more levels down in an dungeon! This meant if you walked into one of the newbie traps you had to ask for a group to help you clear down there or a high level person to help you.

As for coins; we of course had beggers back then as well but what you’d is give them a platinum coin in coppers. Because coins had weight and you had weight restrictions (and easily hit them) that meant the begger could not move or get to the bank to exchange it for higher value coins. Another thing with coins was to see how much you got because rogues could pick pocket mobs and take the coin before the group got it (but they always left 1 of each type so if you started to see only 1 coin of each type you know your rogue were stealing from you!). Oh and no loot rolls or anything; if something dropped anyone (yes, that includes people outside the group) could loot it.

Raiding consisted of going to Plane of Hate (PoH), Plane of Fear (PoF) and Plane of Air (PoA). The first and last required you to get a wizard, buy a certain gem and have the wizard teleport you up to the plane from one defined spot in the whole world. Once there you could kill elite mobs (normal trash) in the hope they might drop some class specific armor. This created a whole new level of drama with the raidleader paying to get people up, dealing who got what and having to ensure no one ninja looted corpses they should not and is one of the founding reasons for DKP (Dragon Kill Points) and similar looting systems. The problem was however that the class armor was split between the two zones for the classes (with one mob in each zone dropping from both tables as “encouragement” for the “wrong” class to go to the “wrong” zone); this lead to raid leaders having to try to build raid coalitions to get Priests to go to PoF and druids/rangers to go to PoH.

Going into PoF was easier as you could simply run in but the whole area was guarded by high level mobs. Once in there you risked chain aggro (one mob aggro which triggers another which triggers another etc.) which could mean half the zone was charging down on you! This meant you had to send in kiters to get things away from the entrance area before you could send in your main raid force and they had to make a beeline for a corner which was relatively safe (still had random mobs walking there). In the zone there were also 3 mobs with instant death on 30s cooldown so if the aggro got back to them they simply called out your name and zapped you directly! Close to the zone boss was a temple in his name filled with 20 Dread Knights (they could cast a reversed lay on hand causing damage meaning two or three hits would kill you). To clear the temple out (as the zone boss called every single mob to his side when attacked) you sent in priests using Divine Armor (invulnerability for 10s but can’t cast spells) to aggro them and have them burn their death touches on them (72 min cool down) first.

Dying in the zone could mean you’d risk losing all your armor forcing you to ask another guild to help bail you out (and dying meant you lose two to three hours’ worth of grinding in experience; it was not a walk in the park and you could lose levels!). Oh and the zones were level capped (46+) so if you died enough you’d not be high enough level to get back in to get your gear (yes that happened to some)! And of course to run back to your corpse you did not go into wisp mode but you were naked without any armor, spawned at a city (could only bind in cities as melee characters) a few zones away and forced to run back to your corpse if a priest/paladin did not resurrect you (you could also grant permission to someone to pull your corpse to a safer location but they could also pull it somewhere completely differently if they decided to).

Plane of Air was probably the greatest idea that never got properly implemented along with the dragon dungeon in Kunark and Alice in Wonderland. PoA consisted of a set of islands you had to teleport between with insanely hard fights and random drops of items you combined (common + rare + boss drop) to get the best gear in the game. Because of the frustration of random drops (and no one knowing what was needed to create what) it was hard to get people to go up to PoA (as it cost a lot of money and effort for very little, if any, return).

For the “scrubs” you had the dragon raids; it consisted of sending in waves (yes waves, not kidding) of people on the dragons to minimize the damage of their AoE on people. The worst once I heard of went into the hundreds charging in said waves (“elite” guilds could do them with as few as 30 people!). Oh and they were not instanced; nothing was! So once a Dragon died it took 7 days for it to respawn again (planes were on 24h respawn cycles) which also lead to some nasty habits to train mobs on the other raid if you did not get there in time to stop them and then swoop in for the killing blow and take all the loot.

The Dragon Dungeon in Kunark was an end zone with a ton of dragons in them with trash dragons on 3 min spawn (a full raid could barely progress forward in general by clearing trash due to the constant respawn). What made it great was that they had an idea for a puzzle which was sadly never completed (everything in the zone was level 60 except 1 raptor (trash mob) which was 61 deep in one side wing, killing it spawned an invisible mob which presumably was supposed to do something but was broken)

The Alice in Wonderland was just that; you found deep in an end zone dungeon a small house in a corner. Click the house took you to the Alice in Wonderland world which was an utterly whacky set up of a world mimicking a lot of Alice in Wonderland with its own quests and what not.

You also had zones which forced you to go underwater to fight or get to other areas in the world; teleport points which dropped you on a dragon (yes the raid type of dragon) or once entered could only be left by completing the zone (and if you all died someone had to come in and rescue you to get your gear back!).

Of course the best part was a 10 step quest for a ring (every step upgraded the ring one more level with ever more difficult goals to be completed as you worked out who was the spy in the dwarf stronghold) which ended with a huge invasion of giants on the Dwarf lines (we’re talking over 100 giants charging the dwarf strong hold in waves that needs to be defeated); failure to win the event meant the dwarf stronghold got sacked and all NPCs died for 12h making you unable to quest, shop etc.



Anyway; enough of my rose tinted glasses; what was the memories of your first MMO that you simply don't see done in today's games?