I started playing with some friends during the beta test. We were all gnomes so we would have the same starting city. I played a rogue. If I recall correctly, the others were magician and cleric.
I played EQ when it went live, and played until Gates of Discord. Since then I seem to have a cycle of playing for 1-2 years before taking 1-2 years off. EverQuest is the game I always end up returning to, though.
Summer of 2000. My cousin got me into to the game he was already playing and got me all hyped up about it.
I started as a half elf druid in surefall glade cause kelethin was way too laggy.
We kept playing up to gates of discord , but eventually left for all the other mmos that were coming out around then. Coh, ffonline, eq2, and eventually wow, where I got seriously hooked until I finally burned out during MoP.
The. I spent a long time with no MMOs, and eventually went back to EQ during EOK, as a f2p and dinked around there till that first velious expansion, but never did much other than solo, which gave me a craving for classic EQ, where I tried various classic servers. P99 was “too” classic for me, but I found one that was locked to pop at the time and ended finally raiding and clearing PoTime, in era. Which was extremely satisfying to me, and a lot of fun. But keeping up with raising was too tie consuming so I once again quit.
Now I’m back to messing around on live 1 to 3 boxing just for fun. With no goals in mind , don’t even care about hitting max level just want to go see some of the places I haven’t been through all the expansions I’ve missed.
When I have been away from EQ for a while, it usually starts with feeling nostalgic for a certain raid or quest that used to be too hard for me to do. Then I get on an overleveled character and go destroy it. Then I realize I don’t really know how to play very well anymore, so I start a level one and start working my way up through the levels to remember how to play. Then when I get high enough level to start grouping with other people, I get hooked.