GemStone III on GE's GEnie network. I also played a little Battle Tech and Fed there but GSIII was my first MMO addiction. Yes it was $6/hr to play initially.
I recently returned to EQ a couple of months ago. The low level areas are already deserted. I have a level 30 bard today that I made 2 days ago so by moving to this 51/50 server you're really not cutting out that much play time because their low level advancement with XP bonuses and "Hot Zones" that provide XP bonuses and XP potions (all of which stack) is already highly accelerated. I'd guess that to make a 51/50 character from scratch without being power leveled by someone else would maybe take a week playing a few hours a night. All this will really do is push up the level where you can play and still group with people who don't know how to play their class at all up by 5 levels or so. Back in the day by the time someone got past their hell level of 30 you could pretty much know that they knew how to play their class or that they had bought the character. These days, that level is closer to 65ish.
Being a race that cannot see in the dark and having to navigate a pitch black twisting tunnel (with agro mobs that spawned in it) to get back to your corpse in Blackburrow.
Not being a spell caster meant that you could not bind yourself anywhere unless you could find another player to bind you and then it still was only possible in a city.
Money had weight and you could dump 100,000 copper on a beggar outside of the bank and watch them fall to their death after they fell 6" off of a step outside of the bank.
Travel was stupidly dangerous and long, dodging giants and griffins to get across the continent.
No spell descriptions were published and there were none in game. Druids had a spell that no one knew what it did for over 2 years after the game was released (I'm looking at you "Harmony").
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Mar 4th 2009 11:18AM (Massively)Being a race that cannot see in the dark and having to navigate a pitch black twisting tunnel (with agro mobs that spawned in it) to get back to your corpse in Blackburrow.
Not being a spell caster meant that you could not bind yourself anywhere unless you could find another player to bind you and then it still was only possible in a city.
Money had weight and you could dump 100,000 copper on a beggar outside of the bank and watch them fall to their death after they fell 6" off of a step outside of the bank.
Travel was stupidly dangerous and long, dodging giants and griffins to get across the continent.
No spell descriptions were published and there were none in game. Druids had a spell that no one knew what it did for over 2 years after the game was released (I'm looking at you "Harmony").