Fav zone in EQ?

So with all the stuff on EQN coming out after LIVE I have gone back to reading up on all things EQ as it was my first MMO. And through reading up on EQ I stumbled across this gem and it brought back some great memories from my fav zone of all time Unrest. (http://www.eqhammer.com/column/train-zone-estate-unrest). I Loved UNREST for its undead and scary atmosphere and for the accomplishment I felt after finally getting a group to move through the different rare spawn camps and finally into the basement where the Ghost spawned. Man I think I deleveled the most between there, Oasis, and the zone which the mini avatar of fear spawned.  Unrest was made awesome by trains and especially those hags man could they nuke the crap out of you!

Anyway what zones were your favorite and why?

 hmmm hard to pin it down to just 1 zone i loved several of them , if i had to choose just 1 of the org games zones pre kunark etc  it would be  castle mistmoore .

 Kedge keep and lower guk  are top contenders,  and lets not forget the planes  ,  

   FRIGHT  Shouts   Tasarian !!   pain and suffering strike you ,  you take 20k damage loading please wait  !!  heh  

 now  kunark had a ton of great dung ,  karnors castle, old seblis, emerald city, chardok and howling stones

    stay off the rugs !!  .

not to mention that  sunken city in field of bones   Kaseroa .

  Speaking of trains i remember once we were deep in old seblis at disco  2 , and group evaced out as we were done , well i got left behind as i went link dead at the port out .

mobs respawned and as i zoned in i shouted  freaking huge train to zone !   noobs camping the upper exit shouted sweet    exp  come on with it .

well  i was a pally so i had lay on hands, and divine invul bubble , so poped a sow potion ie run speed pot . and took off running  was  freaking funny as there were 42 mobs  between  where i was and upper exit , and mobs didn`t   leash.

  I zoned out with 20 hp left  , one of the noobs at entrence that wanted me to bring the train , zoned out and died as he   finished loading , and the other 5 members in his group was steam rolled  .

  And after i rezed him he goes omg that was a freaking  HUGE   TRain  haha  . ahhh  good times .

 ahhhh so many good times i miss the  GMS actualy teleporting  to you in all their   armor and helping you  instead of a csr message like todays games .

, and the gm playing npcs to run  live events etc ,  mmos have gone down hill  since then to  generic games we have now .

Yeah I didnt play much of ROK but i think that was due to my guild disbanding and not really finding another till Velious. I was reading other train to zone articles and in the comments someone mentioned Kithikore at night. Man that was always a run filled will tears of loss exp and yelling at the undead to leave me alone! I just want to go from zone to Zone. There was a pretty cool Halloween event leading up to it with the Planes of Hate opening in random zones.

  Yes  kithcor was awsome  you would see people shouting is it safe to cross yet etc , that was the only zone that lvl 1 - 46 were afraid to cross after dark haha .

 Nothing like a lvl 3 - 15 zone by day turning into a lvl 30-45 undead zone at night  lame ghouls always rooted me and i was swarmed by dread bones that saw thru  undead invs spell haha .

That is a really hard call! So many zones with so many expansions....  

Favorite raids to remember were the ones from Gates of Discord surprisingly enough when my guild was trying to take out new content no one had yet for Server Firsts. ..   Having to answer riddles to beat the boss, having to make the cleric get the last hit on a boss or it respawned, and the variety of crazzy mechanics they tossed at us was frustrating and fun.

Favorite PvP Area, (PvP Server) Ocean of Tears, as a Bard I could sing songs on the people on the boat, but spellcasters couldnt cast on me, lots of fun there.

Favorite Normal Area... I think would have to be Lower Guk, I remember getting lost there so many times and training things around on my bard and getting stuck on the ladders where they couldnt hit me, but i was stuck.

Best moment.... taking out the Ancient Cyclops solo on my Necro to get my Journyman Boots, as a warrior and cleric tried to Kill Steal it from me.. after 4 days of constant camping.

Castle Mistmoore and SolB were the two best dungeons. The Karanas and High Hold Pass were the best overland zones.

Worst zone: Kithicor Forest - screw those undead.

You'll hate me, but I collected well over 20 rings from the AC. I would four box North Ro for days on end strategically placing my toons to ensure I got every spawn. Worst camp ever was Stormfeather. I literally camped him for 96 hours straight without a break. When I slept, I turned the speakers on my PC up to like 100 dB so the wings flapping would wake me like an alarm clock. I musta killed Lodizal 10 times during that camp.

Geese....camping the FBSS and the Yserka were some great late night times...and the many screams of "TRAIN" in sebillis was an incredible feat. I remember starting EQ april 24, 1999 and being level 8 with a buddy of mine exploring into Befallen...wow it was 4am before I got my corpse back...finally a lev 16 orge saved the day as I had fallen into the well from uptop.... so many great memories in that game. yeah, the spawn camping in EQ was at the time tedious and uber boring but it seemed worth it when you got the item.  One of my most favorite memories was when my guild was first to kill the sleeper on our server and many other server firsts along with a few world firsts...good times.

My favorite EQ Raid fight is easy to name.  The Rathe Council fight in the Plane of Earth.

For favorite zone, I guess would be the Plane of Fire.  Used to spend 4 to 5 hours there every Saturday morning in the back Castle with my set group grinding AA's.

LoL Aalwein,  

I do hate you, it got so bad with the AC that I was dreaming about him spawning on day 4 or 5, I slept next to the computer and had the speakers turned up as well... I think I found a program to play an alarm if he got within targeting range! 

4 boxing is impressive, one guy in our guild for a while.... he 12 boxxed, he ran his own raids in zones solo. I think he had an extensive Macro System setup and his tank acted as the main controller. 

Yeah the most I ever boxed was six, but even then I was really only playing two or three of them. I used to raid two boxing a ranger and enchanter. It even got to the point where I would be in leveling groups two boxing... with each character in a different group in entirely different zones lol.

Wow! No way I could handle that, sounds stressful! But then again, I soloed as a Necro a LOT.... I solo kited in Plane of Fire, Plane of Valor etc for my AA's where most people had to group... on the downside no ability to two box when that nasty Plane of Fire mob will occasionally summon you back to him and you have to get away.. FAST hah. 

EQ1- My favorite zone was Kurn's tower.  As a necro I would just farm bones in there and it was fun/super easy. 

Eq2- Everfrost at launch and I do still love it, but now I love Halas.  Probably why I love the Norns in GW2.  Anyway, the reason why is both zones are beautiful in their own way.  Halas, I love the architecture in Halas and the woodwork. 

Wow tough question!  Man did I love the original EQ. 

My favorite leveling up would have to be high hold.  Killing the goblins in the dungeon was my first experience grouping, which quickly became an absolute necessity in that game (which on a side note is what IMO made EQ so great; you HAD to be social and have a network of friends or you couldn't level).  Karnor's Castle was also a lot of fun leveling up too.  My leveling from 0-60 pretty much took place in those 2 zones (with Timourous Deep, Dreadlands, Oasis of Marr thrown in too).

Really though the best part about that game was the raiding.  It wasn't too difficult so it just seemed way more social of an experience than modern day MMOs.  I loved how it was non-instanced, and it just felt so epic having 80+ people at many raids.  Favorites would be: Temple of Veeshan, Avatar of War Fight (pulling him was amazing training like 20+ mobs to the guild), Ssrazara Temple, and all of the Planes of Power (Rallos Zek fight with 150 people - good times).  The progression through PoP was probably the funnest I have ever had in a game, and what was really cool about EQ was that Expansion B didn't preempt expansion A.  My guild would go kill the fire dragon, then do a kunark boss, then go hit a dragon from velious, and then go kill a god in Planes of Power all in the same night and get comparable gear from each of the mobs. 

My absolute favorite encounter though was Lord Inquisitor Seru.  First of all, you had to do potentially the longest quest ever made to get the key to enter his temple.  You only needed one key to get in and port in the whole raid (you could port in one group at a time and then zone out and repeat 10+ times)., but the key was nearly impossible to get.  I spent months acquiring that key, and it was such a great feeling to finally get in there and eventually down him.  Having challenging content that is time consuming and not well documented through google created a mystic around the game and that quest in particular.  Now-a-days there is a crafting guide to get a legendary but in the end if you follow the guide you'll get the item.  The lack of a definitive guide is what made this so great.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents on EQ; it was a great game that I really miss. 

Oh man Gimba... some of the raid content was crazy hard! I was on the top guild on the server, raided mandatory 5-6 nights a week etc.      Kiting the deathtouch mobs, the zone where you had to split your raid into two groups to go down parallel paths with the zone wide AOE going... I mean even Quarm wasnt a walk in the park until much later IMO.

  The challenging content was great..... NOW flagging the entire guild, and then the flow of new recruits for Tipt and Vext was really really annoying. There were some bad things too :) 

I do agree with all the things that made it great! Most people probably dont realize what is even missing once MMOs made the social aspect optional.... 

I do agree completely that as a whole on the group level the game was really hard. In any given fight you had to coordinate multiple monks to pull mobs, enchanters to mez certain mobs, a long list of tanks to tank, and generally multiple complete heal rotations of healers for both the MT and OT on any given fight.  If anyone messed up there would generally be a wipe, but what I mean by "easy" is that each player could play his class decently well without a ton of skill, there were no 15 ability long ability combinations that you had to 100% focus on to maximize DPS. 

What was required though was coordination between people whether cycling through a tank list, heal rotation, pull rotation, chain tanking, or whatever other strategy that was required.  The fact that I as a monk could just hit "attack" and do a kick every once in a while allowed me to coordinate the masses during any fight rather than focusing solely on myself.  The same could be said for a wizard, rogue, cleric, warrior or many other classes (I had the login information for probably 25 people in the guild and would play their characters regularly whenever the raid needed a healer / tank  / enchanter / rogue to scout / person needed an unlock from a boss / etc).

The ease of proficiency in any given class allowed there to be much more focus on the group as a whole and working as a team which (1) made the game a tremendous challenge, (2) made the game far more social, (3) made for far more vivid memories (I can remember the names of far more EQ players than any other game I've ever played), and (4) made it more enjoyable. 

Crushbone.  I had a level 14 dark elf rogue I had camped in there on Tallon Zek with a dragoon dirk.  Sneak around, backstabbing elves and being friendly to the dark orcs there.  So, so, so much fun.

Planes of  Power was the last MMOG to truly be a memorable experience. Everything since has felt like a job in comparison.

Still, Scars of Velious was the best expansion and MMOG time-period ever. EVAR! Dwarves vs giants vs dragons... it doesn't get any better.

Yeah velious was the best for me also. The coldain ring event that spawns the war that takes over the zone  at the end of the long quest chain was something to remember. I wish more games would have things like that but the dumbed down trend of all MMO will prevent that from ever happening again unfortunately :(

Indeed Gimba, I agree once again! .. Dont forget the Necros for all our mana bank powers for the clerics. Twitch twitch twitch, cleric keeps chain healing. At the time coordinating people was a lot harder then coordinating your own skills i guess! And when raids were so large, there was such a larger margin for error.

The classes were not too complex, the gear was never godlike, but it still was all about the social... I can remember a giant list of characters in EQ... where I can only remember a select few from WoW.

I still have so many memories, there hasnt been a MMO to make those kinds of memories since....  First run overland? First time a giant chases you? First bad corpse retrieval? ..... First bad train you make... the guilt, oh man!

First time run from Freeport to Qeynos as a level 1...

Discovering what this mystical thing called "clipping plane" is...

   ahhhh  yes I remember  i had been playing like a week and was finaly in oasis of marr .

  we were killing the deepwater camin ie crocs ,  and we had a ranger pulling , and he shots in party chat wooot  i found a big one !!       As he comes over the hill we see LOCKJAW  in tow amd we all yell  noooooo  don`t pull lockjaw .  

    Pain and suffering strike you ,  you have died  loading please wait !    hahaha .

 i can barely remember any event from wow ,or rift, but i have too many to count from EQ .

Dirkdaring - you are so right...  I have great memories of EQ but games after that seem to fade... except the PvP events I've done with the family.... sure wish I had this family back then.

Oasis was probably my favorite zone... It had a lot to offer for lower levels, but you could always go back at higher levels for the giants and that gator and a few other things along there was the devs spawning the occasional pirate raids - slaughtering everything in the zone regardless of your level.

Not to mention EQ had my favorite class of any game I have ever played - an actual Shaman which to me was the greatest utility class EVER in any game but I might be prejudice.  I never even thought about an alt until I maxed leveled her and then she still got 75% of my playtime.

Ak'anon for sure, I always loved tinkering and the Gnome area was just really interesting with the Gears. I loved exploring through all the underground passages.

My favorite was the city qeynos because of the housing. Something I love in any game. however my favorite pve zone is not just one zone but a while group of zones. It is hard to chose between the areas on Lucklin, Frankly I don't want to chose but the city is still where I would stay.

EDIT: Qeynos and Lucklin where a long ways apart so don't judge me for wanting to go to the moon.

EDIT 2: Sorry I got confused since it was a long time ago (several years). But I am still sure Qeynos has houses, may not have I may be thinking of EQ2

All the zones between Qeynos and Freeport that I would run through but especially the Karanas as I ran along the riverbank, listening to the music and occasionally stopping to fish. Hoping to get through the gorge of King Xorbb and make the quick dash through upper Runnyeye, the blindingly fearful zone-wall run around Kithicor at night, dodging bears and giants in West Commons and the Griffins of east commons. Not being nostalgic, still doing it.

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2651

I'd have to say Sol A and Lower Guk were my favorite zones.  Spent lots of memorable times in there.  There were some cool zones after expansions started rolling out as well.  I loved Crystal Caverns because it was like a beautiful maze of ice with a small dwarf village in the center of it.  While I enjoyed other expansions that came out later, those zones had to be my all time favorite.

Fav = Castle Mistmoor or Netherbian LairHope it dies = The Overthere

Not my fav zone but the one I remember the most is the High Hold Keep. I used to play necro but I figured I could still lvl faster in a group at that lvl range so I got my self on " the list" and literally for like a month id spend 2-3 hours to get into the goblin group at the base of the stairs. Sometimes I would get passed over for warriors, clerics, enchanters.... okay by everyone so I would sit there sometimes all night just waiting to play the actual game lol.

Eventually I rolled as a DE Wizard and got my grouping invites. I'll never forget when I first got Ice Comet either. Id sit there stare at my book until the mobs health  was almost at half then boom drop a nuclear missile for over 1000 dmg and send the mob into oblivion. You really felt like a god in that game as a wizard after watching the warrior plink away with chippy small numbers for a full minute lol.

Favorite ' Zone ', Greater Feydark, specifically Kelethin. My first character was from there and forever after, no matter the character, going back was like going home.