Back in the days...

... everything was better. Cellphones were large enough not to be lost in your pockets, McDonald's had a limited meny to chose from and there wasn't any stupid blogs where idiots could write about silly stuff like MMORPG-games.

Well maybe everything wasn't better back in the days, it's only worse now ^^.

I remember the first MMORPG i played; Everquest. It's still the best MMO-game i have ever played, mostly because it really could consume every single minute of your life if you would only let it. There was so much to do in that game, hence you had all incentive in the world of playing it.

I remember how excited i was every time i got into the Frenzy-camp in Lower Guk, sitting there waiting for this rare Ghoul to spawn who could drop the rare Flowing Black Silk Sash. Even though i couldn't use it for my Shaman, i could sell it for an obscene amount of gold (the system without BoA actually didn't disrupt the EQ economy).

The raids were also very challenging. Any MMO-veteran has to remember the crawls through Temple of Veeshan and all the loot from that place.

Ah yes, the loot. The loot in the early MMO's were bloody awsome, what i liked most about if were the actual effects of the loot. A staff with an inbuilt shrink spell, a cloak with haste on it which really made a world of difference in both PvP and PvE (Yes, EQ1 had PvP, remember the Arena in Nexus?^^). Also, much of the loot had nice graphical effects to it; a burning sword, a staff with a blue-ish shimmer and so on.

In my opinion, AoC lacks some of the magic that EQ had (and probably WoW too, even though i didn't play it much).

Oh yeah, here's some american guy really embodying what Everquest was about: