I spent some time fiddling with settings for this post because I wanted to see if there was a way I could get the fog, the middle-distance mist that was used to hide the fact that back in 1999 the 3dfx Voodoo2 card 3D rendering card I was running in parallel to my actual video card had a draw distance that was comically small even relative to soon to be dominant nVidia TNT2 based cards.

This probably seems like trivia… something like draw distance and the atmospheric technique that SOE used to try and hide the fact that hardware wasn’t up to the task of drawing a lot of polygons out to much distance.  But I cannot emphasize enough both how effective this technique was and the moody, menacing effect it could have on play.

Rather than being like, say, MODERN DAY WOW CLASSIC, where it just doesn’t draw stuff like bosses who can murder you to death if it doesn’t feel like it, causing them to pop into existance against a background of terrain you could already see from a miles away, early EQ managed to make that limitation feel like a part of the game.  I’ve been over that before if you want more about that.

I did manage to get the fog to return to Surefall Glade by reigning in the LOD slider.  The trees now don’t obviously end in a ceiling.

Wait, those aren’t trees! They are just giant pillars!

Now they look a bit more organic.

Okay, I can pretend they are trees again

However, out in the wider world I could not get that similar fog effect to show up.  A bit of a bummer, that.

Why am I on about the fog thing yet again?  Because it explains some of my behavior back in 1999.  I mentioned previously that when I arrive at the road that led south from Qeynos Hills, that I was given pause and avoided going that way in part because the road led across an open plain that disappeared into the mist.  It seemed ominous.

Without that atmospheric fog however, it just seems to lead into… well… nothing?  Infinity?  Some undefined state?  You tell me.

The south end of Qeynos Hills

The other reason I did head south was… nothing indicated that I should.  When you get to that last crossroad there is a large stone marker giving directions.

Coming up on the marker

When you look at one side it has an arrow pointing back north to Surefall Glade, from whence I had come.  That was easy.

Been there and done that

On another side was an arrow pointing eastward declaring “To the Karanas.”

The Karanas this way

But nowhere on the stone was any indication of what lay to the south.  So not only did the plain to the south seem somewhat dubious, with higher level mobs wandering about, but as a destination from Qeynos Hills it did not even seem worth mention.

Later it would become clear that the stone was to guide people coming from the south, which was an important location in Norrath.  It was just that half elves weren’t allowed to be from Qeynos, but had to start off in Surefall Glade.

Qeynos Hills with the crossroad to the south

Eventually though, as I ranged further and further south in search of mobs to fight as the game became more and more busy each evening, I managed to stumble across the zone line.

There were two types of zone lines in old EverQuest.  There were the ones with a narrow path that often zig-zagged to keep you from expecting to see through to the other side, like the line to Surefall Glade or West Karana on the map above, along with the connections between different parts of a city.

And then there were the unmarked, invisible lines across a wide swathes of terrain that you could only discover by running into them.  That was how I managed to step through into North Qeynos, I hit that invisible line and everything froze.  I cannot recall if it put up a message about loading the next zone, the way it does now, or if it just left you hanging there with a static screen.  Either way, I landed on the other side and there was stuff to see.

From the zone line in North Qeynos

I suspect back in the day the mist kept you from seeing Qeynos from this distance, but the road led south and to the front gates of the city.

The Gates of Qeynos

I had discovered my first actual major city.  Granted, in this era half elves were not the only ones to start in their own little small town and then have to travel to Qeynos or Freeport.  Surefall Glade was just one of the more meager starting points.  Halflings and dwarves and elves, both high and wood, had much more substantial starting towns.  And I suspect I will get to them at some point here as I follow my initial path through Norrath.

But not yet.  First I have to explore Qeynos before moving further afield.

Having arrived at the gates of Qeynos, I went AFK for a few minutes standing there, the logout counter running, only to come back and find myself in one of those very Qeynos situations.

It was night, I had been standing there, and Fippy Darkpaw ran down the road, past the guard, through the front gate, and started beating on me.

Wait, how do you think this ends?

Being level 90, he couldn’t touch me, but I had to laugh at the absurdity of this.  I turned on auto-attack and one-shotted him, my reputation with many of the locals improve by the effort.

+1 all over for slaying Fippy… except Blackburrow

I had forgotten the faction standings aspect of the early game.  I cannot remember if it had any effect at all on what happened to me as a player in those days.

The story so far:

• EverQuest Starting Points – Surefall Glade
• EverQuest Starting Points – Qeynos Hills

I spent some time fiddling with settings for this post because I wanted to see if there was a way I could get the fog, the middle-distance mist that was used to hide the fact that back in 1999 the 3dfx Voodoo2 card 3D rendering card I was running in parallel to my actual video card had a draw distance that was comically small even relative to soon to be dominant nVidia TNT2 based cards.

This probably seems like trivia… something like draw distance and the atmospheric technique that SOE used to try and hide the fact that hardware wasn’t up to the task of drawing a lot of polygons out to much distance.  But I cannot emphasize enough both how effective this technique was and the moody, menacing effect it could have on play.

Rather than being like, say, MODERN DAY WOW CLASSIC, where it just doesn’t draw stuff like bosses who can murder you to death if it doesn’t feel like it, causing them to pop into existance against a background of terrain you could already see from a miles away, early EQ managed to make that limitation feel like a part of the game.  I’ve been over that before if you want more about that.

I did manage to get the fog to return to Surefall Glade by reigning in the LOD slider.  The trees now don’t obviously end in a ceiling.

Wait, those aren’t trees! They are just giant pillars!

Now they look a bit more organic.

Okay, I can pretend they are trees again

However, out in the wider world I could not get that similar fog effect to show up.  A bit of a bummer, that.

Why am I on about the fog thing yet again?  Because it explains some of my behavior back in 1999.  I mentioned previously that when I arrive at the road that led south from Qeynos Hills, that I was given pause and avoided going that way in part because the road led across an open plain that disappeared into the mist.  It seemed ominous.

Without that atmospheric fog however, it just seems to lead into… well… nothing?  Infinity?  Some undefined state?  You tell me.

The south end of Qeynos Hills

The other reason I did head south was… nothing indicated that I should.  When you get to that last crossroad there is a large stone marker giving directions.

Coming up on the marker

When you look at one side it has an arrow pointing back north to Surefall Glade, from whence I had come.  That was easy.

Been there and done that

On another side was an arrow pointing eastward declaring “To the Karanas.”

The Karanas this way

But nowhere on the stone was any indication of what lay to the south.  So not only did the plain to the south seem somewhat dubious, with higher level mobs wandering about, but as a destination from Qeynos Hills it did not even seem worth mention.

Later it would become clear that the stone was to guide people coming from the south, which was an important location in Norrath.  It was just that half elves weren’t allowed to be from Qeynos, but had to start off in Surefall Glade.

Qeynos Hills with the crossroad to the south

Eventually though, as I ranged further and further south in search of mobs to fight as the game became more and more busy each evening, I managed to stumble across the zone line.

There were two types of zone lines in old EverQuest.  There were the ones with a narrow path that often zig-zagged to keep you from expecting to see through to the other side, like the line to Surefall Glade or West Karana on the map above, along with the connections between different parts of a city.

And then there were the unmarked, invisible lines across a wide swathes of terrain that you could only discover by running into them.  That was how I managed to step through into North Qeynos, I hit that invisible line and everything froze.  I cannot recall if it put up a message about loading the next zone, the way it does now, or if it just left you hanging there with a static screen.  Either way, I landed on the other side and there was stuff to see.

From the zone line in North Qeynos

I suspect back in the day the mist kept you from seeing Qeynos from this distance, but the road led south and to the front gates of the city.

The Gates of Qeynos

I had discovered my first actual major city.  Granted, in this era half elves were not the only ones to start in their own little small town and then have to travel to Qeynos or Freeport.  Surefall Glade was just one of the more meager starting points.  Halflings and dwarves and elves, both high and wood, had much more substantial starting towns.  And I suspect I will get to them at some point here as I follow my initial path through Norrath.

But not yet.  First I have to explore Qeynos before moving further afield.

Having arrived at the gates of Qeynos, I went AFK for a few minutes standing there, the logout counter running, only to come back and find myself in one of those very Qeynos situations.

It was night, I had been standing there, and Fippy Darkpaw ran down the road, past the guard, through the front gate, and started beating on me.

Wait, how do you think this ends?

Being level 90, he couldn’t touch me, but I had to laugh at the absurdity of this.  I turned on auto-attack and one-shotted him, my reputation with many of the locals improve by the effort.

+1 all over for slaying Fippy… except Blackburrow

I had forgotten the faction standings aspect of the early game.  I cannot remember if it had any effect at all on what happened to me as a player in those days.

The story so far:

• EverQuest Starting Points – Surefall Glade
• EverQuest Starting Points – Qeynos Hills

On that first day in March of 1999 I ventured from Surefall Glade into Qeynos hills.  It was the first “real” zone I saw in EverQuest, the first place I slayed a mob, the first place there was danger, the first place I died.

A wolf passing by the Surefall Glade entrance

Danger and death were not hard to find.  They were literally in line of sight from the entrance cave to Surefall Glade, right over there at the haunted ruins.

The place is lousy with skeletons

You can see the cave there in the background.  And, should you emerge from the cave at night, you would absolutely see the unearthly glow of the ruins… and maybe even be drawn to it, thinking it friendly.  And, my low level friend, you would be in trouble should you venture too close.  The skeletons… sometimes roaming about, sometimes a seeming harmless pile of bones… would go straight for you if you got too close.  And mixed in with the low level skeletons that you might manage were a number of high level variants… high level for a newbie zone in a spot line of sight from their starting point into the world… that would kill you dead before you could make it back to the guards hoping they could be roused to defend you.

And that laugh they had.  That has to be one of the most distinctive sounds from the early game, one so well known that they carried it over to EverQuest II.

How crazy aggro were they?  Here I am trying to take a screen shot of Holly Windstalker, a notable NPC in the zone and where Holly Longdale got her “Windstalker” nickname, with a level 90 cleric and a freaking skeleton is coming for me.

Restless doesn’t even begin to describe it

Also, for some reason I turned on “shadows” in the settings and… frankly… they look awful and I promised to turn that off again for all future screen shots.

That is Holly’s updated NPC model.  She was a lot more stiff with far fewer polygons back in the day.  But so were we all.

She wasn’t even that special.  She didn’t have a quest or anything.  She would just beat the crap out of you if she caught you abusing the wildlife, which was kind of tough to deal with because the early useful quests in the zone let you trade in bear or wolf pelts for armor.  So you would be going after a wolf, struggling to come out on top, and then she would show and and pound you into mush.

Aside from Holly and the Millers, who had the hide quests, there was also the first of a number of like buildings in what I think of as the West Karana style.

Just out at the crossroads

There were vendors in there you could sell things to and buy crafting supplies from if you had the coin.  You probably couldn’t use any of it early on, but you could buy them.

As a zone Qeynos Hills doesn’t seem very big or complicated or surprising in retrospect.  Here is the map, once again swiped from the Project 1999 wiki.

Just a big rectangle really

But I have to admit that, while it feels small today wandering it with a level 90 character, its polygon hills and depressions, not pictured on the map, made it seem like a much bigger place at the time.  Back, exploring it as my first REAL zone, it seemed like there was a lot going on.  There was the big Gnoll head entrance to Blackburrow.

I’m glad they never revamped this, it should remain as ugly as it was on day one forever

There was a tower guarding a path that I would later learn headed to West Karana.  But the tower seemed a warning, and having died and struggled to recover my corpse from the freaking haunted ruins already I was heeding all warnings until I got my footing.

Meanwhile at the southern end of the zone, past the house and its crossroad, south of the tower, there was an open plain with a few trees.  The mobs there seemed to get higher in level. That was where the wisps were, a seeming high level mob for a mere newbie, but a mob that would drop a greater lightstone on occasion, a coveted light source in a game where the nights were menacingly dark… at least until I discovered the gamma slider in the settings… such that groups would get together to try and take them down.

And that plain of higher level mobs faded into the now missing mists such that I feared to tread very far down the road that led through it.  I mean, after the haunted ruins what else could be waiting for me.

So I lingered in the Qeynos Hills for a while.  With the distrotion of time it feels like I waited days, maybe even a week, before striking out down that southern road.  But it was probably more like a couple of hours.  But in that couple of hours I ran around exploring Qeynos Hills, trying to find its mysteries and hidden places.

One fond memory for me is always the small lake behind a ridge in the northwest of the zone.  On the shore there were a couple of boats.  And, on jumping into them the game told you how to control them and you could sail them around on the water.

Back on the lake, the boats are still there

This was kind of amazing for me.  That here, in this early zone, you could control a boat.  What else waited for us out in the world?  Surely this was just the start of amazing things!

Well, the boat, in the end, was something of an unfufilled promise, and idea never really expanded upon.  They were out in Ocean of Tears and Lake Rathetear, but were never much use and would not lead to other, more majestic options.

Out on Lake Rathtear during the Fippy Darkpaw Era

They were kind of thrown in there, an interesting little idea that was never expanded upon, so was left to itself.

Anyway, I eventually steeled myself up to head south to see what lay beyond the mists at the far end of that southern road.

I spent some time fiddling with settings for this post because I wanted to see if there was a way I could get the fog, the middle-distance mist that was used to hide the fact that back in 1999 the 3dfx Voodoo2 card 3D rendering card I was running in parallel to my actual video card had a draw distance that was comically small even relative to soon to be dominant nVidia TNT2 based cards.

This probably seems like trivia… something like draw distance and the atmospheric technique that SOE used to try and hide the fact that hardware wasn’t up to the task of drawing a lot of polygons out to much distance.  But I cannot emphasize enough both how effective this technique was and the moody, menacing effect it could have on play.

Rather than being like, say, MODERN DAY WOW CLASSIC, where it just doesn’t draw stuff like bosses who can murder you to death if it doesn’t feel like it, causing them to pop into existance against a background of terrain you could already see from a miles away, early EQ managed to make that limitation feel like a part of the game.  I’ve been over that before if you want more about that.

I did manage to get the fog to return to Surefall Glade by reigning in the LOD slider.  The trees now don’t obviously end in a ceiling.

Wait, those aren’t trees! They are just giant pillars!

Now they look a bit more organic.

Okay, I can pretend they are trees again

However, out in the wider world I could not get that similar fog effect to show up.  A bit of a bummer, that.

Why am I on about the fog thing yet again?  Because it explains some of my behavior back in 1999.  I mentioned previously that when I arrive at the road that led south from Qeynos Hills, that I was given pause and avoided going that way in part because the road led across an open plain that disappeared into the mist.  It seemed ominous.

Without that atmospheric fog however, it just seems to lead into… well… nothing?  Infinity?  Some undefined state?  You tell me.

The south end of Qeynos Hills

The other reason I did head south was… nothing indicated that I should.  When you get to that last crossroad there is a large stone marker giving directions.

Coming up on the marker

When you look at one side it has an arrow pointing back north to Surefall Glade, from whence I had come.  That was easy.

Been there and done that

On another side was an arrow pointing eastward declaring “To the Karanas.”

The Karanas this way

But nowhere on the stone was any indication of what lay to the south.  So not only did the plain to the south seem somewhat dubious, with higher level mobs wandering about, but as a destination from Qeynos Hills it did not even seem worth mention.

Later it would become clear that the stone was to guide people coming from the south, which was an important location in Norrath.  It was just that half elves weren’t allowed to be from Qeynos, but had to start off in Surefall Glade.

Qeynos Hills with the crossroad to the south

Eventually though, as I ranged further and further south in search of mobs to fight as the game became more and more busy each evening, I managed to stumble across the zone line.

There were two types of zone lines in old EverQuest.  There were the ones with a narrow path that often zig-zagged to keep you from expecting to see through to the other side, like the line to Surefall Glade or West Karana on the map above, along with the connections between different parts of a city.

And then there were the unmarked, invisible lines across a wide swathes of terrain that you could only discover by running into them.  That was how I managed to step through into North Qeynos, I hit that invisible line and everything froze.  I cannot recall if it put up a message about loading the next zone, the way it does now, or if it just left you hanging there with a static screen.  Either way, I landed on the other side and there was stuff to see.

From the zone line in North Qeynos

I suspect back in the day the mist kept you from seeing Qeynos from this distance, but the road led south and to the front gates of the city.

The Gates of Qeynos

I had discovered my first actual major city.  Granted, in this era half elves were not the only ones to start in their own little small town and then have to travel to Qeynos or Freeport.  Surefall Glade was just one of the more meager starting points.  Halflings and dwarves and elves, both high and wood, had much more substantial starting towns.  And I suspect I will get to them at some point here as I follow my initial path through Norrath.

But not yet.  First I have to explore Qeynos before moving further afield.

Having arrived at the gates of Qeynos, I went AFK for a few minutes standing there, the logout counter running, only to come back and find myself in one of those very Qeynos situations.

It was night, I had been standing there, and Fippy Darkpaw ran down the road, past the guard, through the front gate, and started beating on me.

Wait, how do you think this ends?

Being level 90, he couldn’t touch me, but I had to laugh at the absurdity of this.  I turned on auto-attack and one-shotted him, my reputation with many of the locals improve by the effort.

+1 all over for slaying Fippy… except Blackburrow

I had forgotten the faction standings aspect of the early game.  I cannot remember if it had any effect at all on what happened to me as a player in those days.

The story so far:

• EverQuest Starting Points – Surefall Glade
• EverQuest Starting Points – Qeynos Hills

On that first day in March of 1999 I ventured from Surefall Glade into Qeynos hills.  It was the first “real” zone I saw in EverQuest, the first place I slayed a mob, the first place there was danger, the first place I died.

A wolf passing by the Surefall Glade entrance

Danger and death were not hard to find.  They were literally in line of sight from the entrance cave to Surefall Glade, right over there at the haunted ruins.

The place is lousy with skeletons

You can see the cave there in the background.  And, should you emerge from the cave at night, you would absolutely see the unearthly glow of the ruins… and maybe even be drawn to it, thinking it friendly.  And, my low level friend, you would be in trouble should you venture too close.  The skeletons… sometimes roaming about, sometimes a seeming harmless pile of bones… would go straight for you if you got too close.  And mixed in with the low level skeletons that you might manage were a number of high level variants… high level for a newbie zone in a spot line of sight from their starting point into the world… that would kill you dead before you could make it back to the guards hoping they could be roused to defend you.

And that laugh they had.  That has to be one of the most distinctive sounds from the early game, one so well known that they carried it over to EverQuest II.

How crazy aggro were they?  Here I am trying to take a screen shot of Holly Windstalker, a notable NPC in the zone and where Holly Longdale got her “Windstalker” nickname, with a level 90 cleric and a freaking skeleton is coming for me.

Restless doesn’t even begin to describe it

Also, for some reason I turned on “shadows” in the settings and… frankly… they look awful and I promised to turn that off again for all future screen shots.

That is Holly’s updated NPC model.  She was a lot more stiff with far fewer polygons back in the day.  But so were we all.

She wasn’t even that special.  She didn’t have a quest or anything.  She would just beat the crap out of you if she caught you abusing the wildlife, which was kind of tough to deal with because the early useful quests in the zone let you trade in bear or wolf pelts for armor.  So you would be going after a wolf, struggling to come out on top, and then she would show and and pound you into mush.

Aside from Holly and the Millers, who had the hide quests, there was also the first of a number of like buildings in what I think of as the West Karana style.

Just out at the crossroads

There were vendors in there you could sell things to and buy crafting supplies from if you had the coin.  You probably couldn’t use any of it early on, but you could buy them.

As a zone Qeynos Hills doesn’t seem very big or complicated or surprising in retrospect.  Here is the map, once again swiped from the Project 1999 wiki.

Just a big rectangle really

But I have to admit that, while it feels small today wandering it with a level 90 character, its polygon hills and depressions, not pictured on the map, made it seem like a much bigger place at the time.  Back, exploring it as my first REAL zone, it seemed like there was a lot going on.  There was the big Gnoll head entrance to Blackburrow.

I’m glad they never revamped this, it should remain as ugly as it was on day one forever

There was a tower guarding a path that I would later learn headed to West Karana.  But the tower seemed a warning, and having died and struggled to recover my corpse from the freaking haunted ruins already I was heeding all warnings until I got my footing.

Meanwhile at the southern end of the zone, past the house and its crossroad, south of the tower, there was an open plain with a few trees.  The mobs there seemed to get higher in level. That was where the wisps were, a seeming high level mob for a mere newbie, but a mob that would drop a greater lightstone on occasion, a coveted light source in a game where the nights were menacingly dark… at least until I discovered the gamma slider in the settings… such that groups would get together to try and take them down.

And that plain of higher level mobs faded into the now missing mists such that I feared to tread very far down the road that led through it.  I mean, after the haunted ruins what else could be waiting for me.

So I lingered in the Qeynos Hills for a while.  With the distrotion of time it feels like I waited days, maybe even a week, before striking out down that southern road.  But it was probably more like a couple of hours.  But in that couple of hours I ran around exploring Qeynos Hills, trying to find its mysteries and hidden places.

One fond memory for me is always the small lake behind a ridge in the northwest of the zone.  On the shore there were a couple of boats.  And, on jumping into them the game told you how to control them and you could sail them around on the water.

Back on the lake, the boats are still there

This was kind of amazing for me.  That here, in this early zone, you could control a boat.  What else waited for us out in the world?  Surely this was just the start of amazing things!

Well, the boat, in the end, was something of an unfufilled promise, and idea never really expanded upon.  They were out in Ocean of Tears and Lake Rathetear, but were never much use and would not lead to other, more majestic options.

Out on Lake Rathtear during the Fippy Darkpaw Era

They were kind of thrown in there, an interesting little idea that was never expanded upon, so was left to itself.

Anyway, I eventually steeled myself up to head south to see what lay beyond the mists at the far end of that southern road.