Video Game / EverQuest

"TRAIN TO ZONE!!"

— Any unlucky player

EverQuest (1999) is a highly popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game inspired by DikuMUD, a Dungeons & Dragons textual multiplayer game. It is famed for being highly addictive and having an excellent social environment. It's also one of two games that really put MMOs on the map, sharing the title with Ultima Online, and the model it used for high-end play has been the model used in almost every other game since, even World of Warcraft. The game has received at least one Expansion Pack every year since 2000, all the way up to the present day. It has also spawned a sequel game in EverQuest II, a novel series, and a film is in the works.

EverQuest has been around for so long that balance between new players and long term players is becoming a real problem. Most newbie characters (in the EQ lingo, "toons" or "chars") actually belong to veteran players who give them castoff gear from their max level mains, i.e. "twink". If you're below level 60 and actually new to the game, you're nothing besides useless to a group full of twinks... but that's okay because nobody groups in the lower levels anymore anyhow, and mercenaries were added to the game to help players play solo.

Set in the fantasy land of Norrath, you start as a race^note Human, Barbarian, Dark Elf, Drakkin, Dwarf, Erudite, Half Elf, Halfling, High Elf, Gnome, Iksar, Ogre, Troll, Vah Shir, Wood Elf and pick a character class ^note Berserker, Cleric, Druid, Enchanter, Mage, Necromancer, Paladin, Ranger, Shadowknight, Shaman, Warrior, Wizard (which classes are available are restricted by race). Technically you have a hometown, but you start in a tutorial dungeon and then head straight to Crescent City (assuming you didn't just make Crescent City your hometown, which the game strongly encourages you to do). After perhaps hundreds of hours of Level Grinding and quests, you can reach a level where the wildlife, highly aggressive to your innocent adventurer, won't kill you in seconds. This can be sped up much by having a team member or five.

The game has, naturally, undergone massive changes since its 1999 release. To the point where it's hardly still the same game. Luckily, there exists a popular mod called Project 1999 that restores Everquest to its 1999-2001 form, much like how World Of Warcraft Classic restores WOW to its original 2004-2007 form. In October, 2023; another mod called Project Quarm was released. This functions similarly to Project 1999 but also includes the "Shadow Of Lucia" and "Planes Of Power" expansions in its TLP server.

EverQuest has a sequel, EverQuest II. 2004 saw the release of a (mostly forgotten) RTS adaption, known as "Lords of Everquest". There's also a tabletop version of EverQuest and a couple of tie-in novels. Champions of Norrath is an action-RPG spinoff.

Many comics poke fun at the MMORPG scene but http://www.gucomics.com/ got their start from it. And although The Noob pokes fun at other MMORPGs, you better believe that EverQuest is its primo target.

Not to be confused within the series of author-to-player interactive RPGs from Questden.

Character page is a W.I.P.

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This game provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: Possibly. At the very end of the Seeds Of Destruction expansion Zebuxoruk hints at an even greater threat (something he simply refers to as "the Thing's Eye" as well as talk of more time travel and some epic battle taking place at "The Alabaster Tower". Unfortunately, it's been ten years and we never heard any more about it. And considering the game is now owned by a new company, it's entirely possibly they just abandoned/forgot about it altogether.
• Abusive Precursors: The Shissar are probably the biggest example. A race of evil Snake People native to Kunark, they enslaved the entire continent (including the Iksar, who they may have even created) and stole power from the gods. This would eventually be their downfall, as the gods eventually created the Greenmist to wipe out the entire Shissar race, although we later learn that some of them managed to escape to Luclin.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Typical for a video game involving magic, elves, and divine entities, but of a more mundane note, food and drink are generally accepted as a necessity. Failing to keep food and drink in your inventory eventually results in stamina drain. This can prevent you from jumping, which is only a minor concern. Of greater impact is the fact that being hungry and thirsty prevents health and mana from regenerating naturally, which can be a bigger problem. However, you cannot die of starvation or dehydration.
• Aliens Speaking English: Despite never having had contact with Norrath prior to the expansion opening, the inhabitants of Kuua (Omens of War) speak and understand the Norrathian Common Tongue.
• All-Loving Hero:
  • Subverted with Erollisi Marr. Despite being a Love Goddess she and her followers don't love everyone, as they know full well some people are irredeemably evil and are willing to die for someone or something they love.
  • Played straight with Quellious, the goddess of peace. Not only is fighting physically impossible in her Plane Of Tranquility, she allows all the other gods (even those who hate her) to maintain portals in her plane (in game, her plane serves as a Hub Level for the Planes Of Power Expansion Pack, along with providing access to other planes that were added later on.)
• All There in the Manual: A lot of the storyline that goes along with the expansions isn't readily available to players, or at best has to be pieced together bit by bit as you learn the lore.
• An Adventurer Is You
  • The Tank: Warriors are standard tanks, Paladins are healing tanks, Shadowknights are damage tanks, and Monks are supposedly avoidance tanks.
  • The Healer: Clerics, Shamans and Druids all have healing spells, although the Cleric is the most purely healing oriented. They're all Classic Healers too.
  • Melee DPS: Rogues dual-wield and backstab. Monks and Shadowknights to a lesser extent can perform melee DPS as well.
  • Ranged DPS: Rangers utilize bows and arrows. Then there are the various caster classes. Wizards are pure elemental DPS, Mages use elemental pets, and Necromancers use DoTs. Druids have some elemental DPS potential as well.
  • The Petmaster: Beastlords have one single pet and their abilities are all linked to said pet.
  • Crowd Control: Everquest pioneered this adventurer role^note many monsters are 'social' meaning if you agro a monster, any other monsters within said monster's agro radius will also agro, and any monsters in their agro radius will also agro... long story short, "train to zone!" ensues., and Enchanters are the class that excels at it^note "Mesmerize" is an Enchanter spell that sets a monster's agro level to neutral, which will keep them from being picked up in the agro chain., although Bards can do it a bit. Necromancers can do it well but only on undead monsters.
  • Buffer: The main role of Bards nowadays, although Clerics Shamans and Druids also have buffs. Necromancers have one single and surprisingly useful buff called Dead Man Floating.
  • Debuffer: Although most classes have some debuffs, the Shaman is the best 'slower' in the game and can cast the widest variety of debuffs.
  • Jack of all Trades: Historically this was what Bards were supposed to be. However, years of mudflation have hobbled their ability to perform most of their roles, leaving them as pullers and buffers.
• Anchored Teleportation:
  • The Combine Empire established a teleportation network across Norrath by erecting four curved spires pointing inward to act as a portal stabilizer while tapping into the energies of the Nexus located up on Luclin. Despite the empire having fallen many ages ago, wizards and other mages still use them to teleport around Norrath.
  • The Plane of Knowledge cannot be physically accessed from Norrath, instead requiring players to interact with mystical books on marble pedestals located outside of each major city around Norrath. This teleports them to the Plane of Knowledge, where they can step through other portals deeper into the Celestial Planes or travel to various cities on Norrath.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Subverted. Technically yes, you get rewarded for most things with clothes, but since your gear directly affects your stats, it's entirely functional.
• Another Dimension: Any of the various planes.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: The game has a minimum range (usually 10 meters, just outside of melee combat for most monsters) required before anyone can use a ranged weapon such as a bow or throwing knives and shurikens.
• Artistic License – Military: Among the orcs, a "legionnaire" is treated as a higher rank than "centurion". In Real Life Ancient Rome, a centurion was a fairly high rank, in command of 100 soldiers (hence the name), while a legionary (not a legionnaire, that's something else entirely) was akin to a private.
• The Artifact: This is very prominent in EverQuest. As the expansion packs mount up, old world content is increasingly useless — it's now possible to get armor dropped from random monsters better than the stuff you had to go through extensive questing to get back in the old days. Many zones, especially dungeons, lie abandoned for various reasons. Sometimes Sony reworks a dungeon to increase the level (this was notably done to Splitpaw and Cazic-Thule). However, since EverQuest isn't designed well for solo play, people all hunt in the same few zones since all the other players are there, rendering most of the game an artifact.
  • "Hail" itself is something of an artifact — it was made the standard greeting back when the game encouraged roleplaying and players to use medieval terminology.
  • Back in the days near launch, it got dark at night, and in caves as well. For races without inherent infravision or ultravision, you needed buffs of the same name to see. At some point, SOE decided that night blindness didn't add anything to the game and brightened everything up. Infravision and Ultravision spells still exist, but are novelties at best instead of borderline-necessary buffs.
• Ascended Extra: Fippy Darkpaw was just one of many of the named Darkpaws who'd shout about humans ruining their lands and stupidly charge the Qeynos gate guards to die. Djerr Darkpaw, Grarrax Darkpaw, Holinix Darkpaw, Kraxz Darkpaw, and Nixx Darkpaw all behave exactly like Fippy. Fippy isn't even the strongest of the Darkpaws, depending on the level he spawns at he's either third behind Holinix and Grarrax, or tied for weakest with Djerr. Yet Fippy became a meme, got a Fabled version of himself, and eventually became a raid boss, whereas the others all remained obscure newbie trash mobs.
• Artistic License – Linguistics: Subverted by SOE themselves. A lot of fans criticized the content of the Gates of Discord and Omens of War for "nonsense names". Actually, SOE had put quite a lot of work into giving the worlds a Sumerian feel and even partially based the names off what little is known of the Sumerian language.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Most of the strongest raid bosses are in power because they're strong enough to force their will on others. The gods are a prime example of this.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: On the other hand, in any NPC faction, it's virtually guaranteed that a mook's military or social rank will directly correlate to higher level and thus more ass-kicking potential. The strongest enemies in the game are often generals, kings, nobles, and lords.
• BackStab: The class-defining ability of the Rogue class.
• Badass in Distress: In the Planes Of Power Expansion Pack, the Plane Of Storms has been usurped by Agnarr The Storm Lord, a malevolent entity who Karana (the god of rain/storms and the rightful ruler of the plane) accidentally summoned while meditating. The goal of the plane is to kill Agnarr and his giants to free Karana and allow him to regain control of his plane.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Necromancers and Shadowknights in the original game had to worship an evil God, which meant some very severe faction hits if you were of a neutral (Human, Gnome, Erudite race.^note Eventually bad Erudites got their own hometown) Of course, as mentioned above, old-world factions mean jack-squat now.
• "Basic Instinct" Legs-Crossing Parody: Luclin's posture sitting on her throne. Just look at it
• Big Bad: Most every pack came with its own. The original game had Vox and Nagafen. Kunark added Trakanon. Velious had Kerafyrm. Gates had Tunat` Muram Cuu Vauax. Omens had Mata Muram. And it just keeps on going.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Multple expansions have this, due to their being many rival factions. To name one: in "Shadows of Luclin" Aten Ha Ra is this official Final Boss, but Emperor Ssraeshza and Lord Inquistor Seru are almost as powerful.
• Big Boo's Haunt: LOTS of them. In just the initial EverQuest, there was Befallen, Lower Guk, the Estate of Unrest, and Mistmoore Castle. Those are entire zones — many zones had smaller Haunts (for example, the spectre tower in the Oasis of Marr). Ruins of Kunark added Kurn's Tower, Kaesora, and the City of Mist. Scars of Velious added more still... and it just keeps on going.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: It's an ongoing joke how most of the natural wildlife (wolves, panthers, snakes, etc...) are normally sized, but the bugs are all monstrous.
• Body Bridge: The Grait Spaign that connects Iceclad Ocean to the Eastern Wastes is made from the bones of a giant ancient dragon.
• Body Horror: Many of the so called "creatures" of the Legion of Mata Muram were intentionally subjected to horrifying mutilations in order to heighten their own hunting skills and malevolent influences.
• Boss Rush: Tacvi, the Very Definitely Final Dungeon of the Gates Of Discord expansion, is basically all bosses with a few Elite Mastruqs in between.
• Blood-Stained Letter: There is one that drops from mobs in the Dead Hills which urges you to leave the country and never come back.
• Breast Plate: Played straight with leather and chain armor which, for most females, has a considerable Cleavage Window, and in the case of dark elves, their chain armor is little more than chainmail lingerie. However, the game completely averts this trope with plate armor on its female models, which is depicted providing full, practical coverage.
• Canon Discontinuity: In terms of the lore and history behind the world of Norrath, things are split up into two categories. First is that anything actually found inside EverQuest, EverQuest II (up to a certain point in time for its own storyline with EverQuest), and EverQuest Online Adventures is official canon to the games. There's also the tabletop Pen & Paper versions of the games, which have much more detailed stories and lore, but aren't considered canon unless it's also covered in the game.
• Cast from Hit Points: Indirectly. Both Necromancers and Shamans have a line of spells that convert health into mana, which can then be used to cast spells.
• Cats Are Mean: Averted with the Vah Shir, who are basically humanoid jungle cats and are probably the nicest and most friendly of all the player races. They also count as Dark Is Not Evil as their city of Shar Vahl is on the dark side of Luclin.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The Priest(s) of Discord. Around from the earliest days as a method of opting into Player Vs. Player on non PvP servers, they suddenly became very important shortly before the Omens of War expansion was released.
  • Meldrath the Malignant was a gnome necromancer rangers had to kill for a mid level armor quest when the game launched. 8 years later, it was revealed that that Meldrath was a decoy, and the real Meldrath became a high end raid target.
  • Fippy Darkpaw is a gnoll whose only reason for existence is to howl at the entire zone that he was coming to Qeynos, which he did and was promptly killed by the NPC guards there if an adventurer didn't get him first. It is a canon running joke that he is spawning again for the 5 billionth time to quickly die. Many years later, he reappears elsewhere as a powerful boss, determined to get revenge on Qeynos and become a demi-god. Funnily enough, the wimpy version of him still appears, threatens everyone and quickly dies.
• Choke Point Geography: You have to pass through Blackburrow to get from Qeynos to Halas. Back in the really old days this was a pretty big hassle. Although the path only went through the upper level of Blackburrow, there was a chance that either a grizzly bear or a named gnoll with a level in the high teens^note the upper level of Blackburrow is designed for player no higher than level 10, and even the toughest sections of Blackburrow are scaled for players level 15 and below would spawn and wander around killing people until a benevolent high level player killed it. For that matter, the tunnel leading to Blackburrow on the Everfrost side was an absolute bear back then too — without some form of infravision, it was easy to get lost in the dark and torn apart by lower level gnolls while you couldn't see well enough to run away from them.
• Critical Hit: At lower levels, warriors gain the innate ability to critical hit. Other melee-oriented classes can gain the ability much later on. Offensively-aligned spell casters can also critically hit with their spells.
• Collection Sidequest: Quite common.
• Concentration-Bound Magic: The psychotic prismatic dragon Kerafyrm was held for countless millennia inside the Sleeper's Tomb by four dragons who swore to their Goddess Veeshan to keep him in stasis for all eternity. As long as the four Warders concentrated, Kerafyrm would never wake. Ultimately, it was mortal adventurers whose meddling and greed would kill all four warders and wake Kerafyrm from his slumber.
• Conlang: The "Fleshless Tongue" spoken by the Akhevans on Luclin. The Tabletop Game even had an Fleshless Tongue dictionary in its ''Monsters Of Luclin" book. Also counts as a Starfish Language, as it's implied to be mostly telepathic (hence the "Fleshless" part), and the spellings of NPCs with names in Fleshless are implied to just be the closest phonetic equivalent.
• Continuing is Painful: EQ used to have one of the nastiest, if not the single nastiest, continue penalties in all of gaming^note Dying meant the character returning to its "bind point" completely naked. No weapons, no armor, no food, no water, no money. You could not get any of those items back unless you returned to your corpse (sometimes having to run, without equipment, across an entire continent filled with things trying to kill you again) to loot it before it—and all your stuff—rotted away. Each death was accompanied by a reduction in total experience earned, with the specific penalty being tied to the amount of experience required to complete the character's previous level — so if you had just advanced from one of the now-extinct "Hell Levels" that had XP requirements exponentially larger than levels before or after them, then your XP penalty could entail losing over half a level, constituting potentially a loss of days worth of gameplay. Loss of experience meant that a character could also lose levels—woe unto the caster who had just leveled-up and scribed a new spell, but now can't cast it to help themselves recover. Some of this penalty could be mitigated by a resurrection spell being cast on your corpse (you ported directly to your corpse for looting, and some exp restored), but nothing replaced the lost experience entirely. Also, if you happened to die en route to your original corpse, you lost more exp, and were re-transported back to your bind point and had to restart the process. Players sometimes being stuck for hours or days trying to retrieve a corpse and all their stuff were everyday occurrences.. However, ever since SOE took over from Verant, the penalty has gotten steadily less painful, with the exp loss reduced and corpse runs fully done away with. See Death Is a Slap on the Wrist below.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Lava hurts. Quite a lot in some zones. However players can float or jump right over it without any problems.
• Cruel Elephant: While most of the elephants in South Karana are harmless unless provoked, there is a rare spawn named Cracktusk who is super aggressive because the pain of his tusk has driven him insane.
• Damage Discrimination: Applies to players on non-PvP servers, where players are completely incapable of damaging one another even with area-effect spells. Similarly for NPCs, Unless an encounter is scripted so that an NPC is meant to take damage from another NPC, they will all be immune to one another's area attacks. This also extends to NPCs that use area-effect spells in melee. Players will be injured by their own targeted area-effect spells if they use them at close range, but an NPC has no such risk, and it's common for many spell-casting NPCs to use such spells in dungeons when surrounded by players.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: One of the first games to introduce this dynamic, EverQuest actually expanded upon it considerably by having some classes dedicated almost entirely to other roles. Enchanters, for example, inflict rather poor damage (unless using a charmed pet, which carries its own risks), and cannot heal or tank, however they are considered extremely valuable and even required by some players because of their exceptional crowd control capabilities.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Death results in actually losing XP. Not much anymore, though. And corpse runs have been done away with.
• Deity of Human Origin: Zebuxoruk, the "Ungod" of Knowledge. It is said that he was born a Human, and he found the secret to obtaining godhood, but for some reason or another, sooner or later, will revert back into a mortal Human. He's reverted back and forth so many times that he's lost count. He was even imprisoned in the Plane of Time for the express purpose of making sure that his knowledge of how to obtain godhood would never be shared with mortals. The consequence would have catastrophic effects on the universe if everyone suddenly became a god themselves. When Mayong Mistmoore managed to become a god later on, he quickly proved to everyone exactly what they were all fearing.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Averted. While it's possible for the players to battle and even defeat the gods on their own home planes, doing so requires an army of players all equipped in powerful artifacts and wielding advanced magic. In fact, most deities have the ability to simply snuff out the life force of any mortal on their plane, commonly called a "Death Touch," though they can only perform this attack once every minute or so. This trope is also further averted by the fact that, as we later learn during Planes of Power and subsequent expansions, the "gods" you defeat during raids are just avatars of the gods themselves, and the actual gods are far, far too powerful to be threatened by mortals.
• Divine Punishment: A large part of Norrath's backstory was the first Rallosian War. Rallos Zek, the God of War, rallied his armies and stormed across both Norrath and the elemental planes. Conquering most of Tunaria wasn't heinous enough, but they then invaded the Plane of Earth, captured all twelve members of the Rathe Council (the Gods of Earth), and executed them in Norrath. This resulted in the entire Rathe Mountains springing up under each of their execution sites in the southern part of Tunaria. The other deities decided this was a step too far, and enacted their punishment upon Rallos Zek's own creations.
  • The Ogres — Rallos Zek's most prized creation — were stricken with a curse that resulted in future generations seeing a massive drop in intelligence and cognitive abilities, as well as their physical appearance degrading despite a notable gain in muscle mass and girth. They quickly changed from a highly intelligent war-mongering race of Lightning Bruisers into hideously ugly Dumb Muscle.
  • The Orcs were cursed to never record their own history. Very little exists of what they ever accomplished in history. The curse also makes it difficult for the various tribes to band together into something much larger, but the tribes still pose threats to the local populaces.
  • Not much is known about what the Ankhexfen used to be, mostly as a result of the complete extinction of the race as their punishment. It would be Brell Serilis' ne're-do-well brother Bolgin that would later create the deranged Goblin races from the general concept of what the Ankhexfen used to be.
  • The Giants were scattered across Norrath as they tried to flee from natural disasters. Tunare and E'Ci turned their homelands in the northern region of Tunaria into the snowy tundra now known as Everfrost. The Giants that remained there while it happened were cursed to be transformed into the Ice Giants, who soon found themselves unable to live outside of the cold environment. The Giants tried to exodus to Kunark, but were met with a savage storm created by Xegony and Prexus that sank the good majority of their fleet (and their population with it). The surviving giants scattered to the forests and mountains of Kunark, but are unable to organize into a new civilization due to their numbers. The last remaining giants are mostly nomadic, found throughout the Desert of Ro, the Plains of Karana, and the Rathe Mountains.
• Down the Drain: Kedge Keep is entirely underwater. Siren's Grotto in Velious also has large sections under water. Some zones, such as the Qeynos Sewers have significant underwater areas.
• Dreams vs. Nightmares: Cazic Thule, the evil God of Fear, has two children who are each gods themselves. Terris Thule is the evil Goddess of Nightmares, who takes after her father. Morrel Thule is the God of Dreams, and is considered the Black Sheep of the family for inherently being a good-aligned god.
• Dual Wielding: Warriors, Rangers, Rogues, Monks, Bards and Beastlords can all do this
• Easter Egg: In the Qeynos Sewers, some graffiti say "Aradune is Stinky". Aradune was the character of the original game's creator Brad McQuaid.
• Elemental Dragon: The First Brood of dragons all have one of four elemental affinities: Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Earth. Fire and Ice, and Lightning and Earth dragons are forbidden from mating with each other because the resulting Prismatic offspring ends up becoming psychotically insane.
• Elemental Plane: The game has a bunch of these. Indeed, an entire expansion is called "The Planes of Power", and contains something like 15 different planes. And there are more planes from other expansions.
• Enough to Go Around: It's not uncommon for the target of a quest to drop 3 or 6 copies of the needed quest item, even if that item is a hand or a head.
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: Many zones are like this, but the most extreme example is probably the Plane Of Fear. Everything is hostile and has a huge agro radius, with the scarelings probably being the worst (their radius is about 650 units, and a unit is about a foot, meaning they attack if you get within two football fields of them.) Zoning in without invisibility is a surefire way to get mobbed, and the only relatively safe place is the southwest corner, and even that is dangerous due to a patrol that walks by, though once they are dead it's safe to rest there.
• Expansion Pack: Many many of these. They churn them out so often. As of January 2018, there are 24 total.
• The Farmer and the Viper: During the druid epic quest the skeleton of the Iskar Emperor Venril Sathir asks for a scroll of resurrection to bring him back to life. If you give him one, he comes back to life and immediately tries to kill you (you have to kill him to get the next Plot Coupon), and even says he's helping you with your goal of preserving nature as your corpse will help fertilize the soil.
• Fetch Quest: By the bushel. A majority of quests involve killing something to take its stuff and then bringing the stuff back to the NPC that asked for it.
• Floating Continent: Several, usually as high end raiding zones. First there was the Plane of Sky, a set of eight connected islands floating above East Freeport, with progressively harder monsters to fight as the raid force advances through each one. In the Planes of Power expansion, one could eventually enter the elemental Plane of Air, {called Eryslai: the Kingdom of Wind,) home to Xegony, Queen of Air, late in the expansion's storyline. The Buried Sea featured Solteris, the Throne of Ro, a plane which functions as Norrath's sun, and the setting of the final showdown against vampire deity Mayong Mistmoore. Finally, Secrets of Faydwer introduced Fortress Mechanotus, a massive floating continent constructed by Meldrath the Malignant, which is comprised of six zones and plays host to the majority of the expansion's quests and raid encounters.
• Forced Level-Grinding: There is a reason the game is sometimes called "NeverRest".
• Forced Tutorial: OK, it's not really forced — only forced if you want decent armor and weapons. If you're not an Iksar or Vah Shir, then you can do the newbie armor quests. They offer better armor anyway, and you can usually get the complete set by level 15, with most pieces available by level 10.
• Frigid Water Is Harmless: The snow-filled Barbarian city of Halas is separated from Everfrost Peaks by a lake. The only way to get into or out of the city is to cross the lake. There is a raft that automatically sends players back and forth, but most players just choose to jump in and start swimming in the glacial water instead of waiting for the delay in the raft. Barbarian characters in particular start off almost completely naked save for a kilt (and matching top for women), yet suffer no ill effects from diving right in.
• Game Within a Game: "Gems" — a Bejeweled ripoff to pass the time while meditating/healing/looking for group. Came about during the era when Continuing is Painful was the norm.
• Godzilla Threshold: This happens at the end of the Planes Of Power Expansion pack. Basically, the players have made their way into the Plane of Time where Zebuxork is imprisoned. If they free him, he can teach them the Divine Language, which would allow them to become gods themselves. By the end of the zone, they have killed entire armies of the gods' minions, as well as killing multiple gods and demigods, although said gods eventually come back. The elemental gods decide their only hope at this point is to deploy Quarm, a huge four-headed dragon/hydra thing. They even call him the "beast we swore would never be needed."
• Good Powers, Bad People: Clerics (the strongest pure healing class in the game) can worship three of the four nastiest gods. Overlaps with Pragmatic Villainy, as a Shadowknight who dies because he isn't receiving any heals isn't a very effective shadowknight.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Velious, specifically the feud between the dwarves of Thurgadin, the giants of Kael Drakkel, and the drakes of Skyshrine. Deciding which of these three factions your guild would ally with was a major part of the end-game raiding dynamic. ^note Each of the three factions gave rewards in the form of class-specific armor. This was the strongest armor available when the expansion was current, however each suit of armor followed a different statistical theme. One faction's armors might emphasize resistances, while another might emphasize hit points and mana, and so on. Choosing which faction to follow was largely determined by a particular guild's playstyle and member makeup, though it was just as often determined simply by which set of armor the leadership wanted for themselves.
  • At first glance it's easy to assume that the warlike giants are the bad guys and the friendly dwarves are the good guys. (All players are welcome in the dwarf city upon arrival, but only worshippers of Rallos Zek are welcome in the city of the giants.) However, a closer look reveals that things are more complicated. Many citizens of both cities are weary of the perennial war and would rather have peace, but are forced to fight by power hungry rulers. The dwarf monarch even goes so far as to send assassins (in the form of players doing a certain quest line) to kill "traitors" who are mostly political enemies, dissidents, or those who advocate making peace with the giants.
  • The pantheon has a bit of gray morality as well. The gods of positive attributes like growth and love are often seen as good, both in the game world and by players, while gods of negative attributes like fear and disease are seen as evil. However, during an anniversary event where players had a chance to perform tasks for each god some of the evil gods gave their version of the story. The god of disease may be a literal plague on the world, but without him beast populations would be out of control. The god of war is often seen as a god of violence and slaughter, but he's just as much a god of strength and honor. The god of fear may be a source of terror and dread, but without fear to give them pause people end up putting themselves in unnecessary danger.
• Half-Breed Angst: The entire race of half-elves feel like they're stuck in between human and elven culture. In I, the half-elves mostly live among humans and wood elves, but are often nomadic. In EverQuest II, they have taken to wild hairstyles, hair dye and facial piercings to emphasize how they don't quite fit in, basically becoming a race of disaffected teenagers.
• Hand of Glory: Parts of a Hand of Glory are spread amongst the building wings of Charasis. Once assembled it acts as the master key of Charasis, bypassing the need to pick the locks every time you visit.
• Hates Everyone Equally: Innoruuk the god of hate appropriately enough. He will even try to kill his own worshipers if they enter his plane (The Planes of Power storyline later justified all of the Gods' anger at the constant home invasions regardless of who was what). Not too long after her introduction, he even killed his own daughter, Lanys T'Vyl, because she thought she could do his job better and royally screwed up.
• Helping Would Be Killstealing: MMORPGs such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft are the Trope Namer. In these games, killing monsters is a main source of personal growth for your character. If a monster attacks you and hurts you, you normally do NOT want someone to save you. If an NPC is being attacked by multiple people or parties, whichever group construct ends up removing 51% of the monster's health actually takes the kill and its loot.
  • This is even worse in EverQuest. While in World of Warcraft, you typically get XP based on the damage you did, in EverQuest, whichever group did the most damage to the enemy got all of the experience. Furthermore, in World of Warcraft, the first player to attack an enemy "tagged" it and was allowed to get the loot even if someone else killed it, while in EverQuest, the person that gets the XP also gets to loot.
• Holy Ground: For a certain value of "Holy" (as neither religion is considered good aligned) the Giants in Velious have a temple to Rallos Zek in Kael Drakkel that no non-giants are allowed in. The dragons have they're own version in the north wing of the Temple of Veeshan (only dragons and dragon related creatures are allowed). Evidently the guards of both places are rather extreme in their beliefs, as no matter how much you are liked by the faction in general, said guards still try to kill any outsiders on sight. The Coldain don't have their own version of this, probably because they are meant as the "nice" faction.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Kerafyrm in the Scars of Velious expansion. He had insane HP and attack power for the time and was not intended to be defeated, instead utterly destroying your raid party and the inhabitants of Skyshrine, then disappearing from the game until he resurfaced as the killable Big Bad in Secrets of Faydwer.
  • Each server could only wake up the Velious version of Kerafyrm once, and that was it. The guardians keeping him asleep dropped very powerful weapons and armor that everyone desired. The first servers who woke him up soon found that he permanently killed those guardians and the loot they dropped. Despite its hostile environment full of griefers, the Rallos Zek PVP server was among the very last to wake him up. The top 3 strongest and largest guilds actually banded together to kill Kerafyrm. It came down to little more than a zerg rush. You die, you get rezzed, you grab your weapon off your corpse, and you go back in to die again. In the end, he was killed. He had no loot table.
• Humans Are White: Yes, all Humans are white — there's one human male model that looks like it could have some Asian features, though it's hard to tell (faces are low resolution). Instead of having black humans, they made the entire race of Erudites black skinned. This was a technical limitation at the time, since the game was pushing the limits of personal computers available during the late 90s, and there was no memory budget for every PC to have multiple skin color textures for every race. This is averted in the sequel, which added more skin colors and a higher amount of facial customization.
• Human Subspecies: There are 4 playable human races: The base line human, the burly barbarians, The erudites (basically black people with Insufferable Genius as thier hat), and the dragon touched drakkin. The drakkin are further divided into 6 sub-races based on their dragon heritage, which affects both their appearance and what type of damage is inflicted by their breath weapon.
• Incredibly Durable Enemies: The Shadows of Luclin expansion was notorious for featuring enemies with ridiculous pools of HP — especially in its endgame raid zone, Vex Thal, where raids were known to take upwards of eight hours to complete!
• Interface Screw: The blind spell and alcohol. Certain bosses try to pull these off now and then.
  • Taken up to 11 when the game was first released. The UI was rendered alongside the rest of the graphics in the game, so being blinded also hid your health, inventory, and even your chat window! This meant that being blinded effectively rendered you deaf as well.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Every playable race drops meat that can be used in baking to make food that gives stat bonuses applicable to the race. Dark Elves and High Elves give bonuses to casting attributes (Int, Wis, Cha), Trolls and Ogres give bonuses to physical stats, etc.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The original Fippy Darkpaw is level 7 at most and, as soon as he spawns, will run and attack the city guards of North Qeynos, who are around level 30, meaning if the players don't kill him, the guards will. in the Underfoot expansion, he's taken several levels in badass and is a level 89-90 raid boss.
• Invulnerable Civilians: Both averted and played straight. There are plenty of unkillable NPCs, mostly to prevent players from being unable to start or complete a quest involving that NPC. However, there are also plenty of civilian NPCs that are very killable, even inhabitants of player character cities. Also, an entire city full of snow dwarves will be massacred if the players fail an event to protect the city from attacking giants.
  • Of course, the aversion in the original wound up with many players suffering their first death by accidentally attacking their guildmaster. Since the keystroke for attacking was 'a', and if you forgot to hit enter before you started typing your dialogue...
• Intoxication Mechanic: Alcohol starts off by giving a minor strength buff at the cost of very slight visual impairment, nothing more than a slight screen blur. Continued consumption then sees your character swaying back and forth as you move, a significant drop in Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, and Agility stats, and your vision becomes extremely distorted as if looking through a telescope. It usually takes more than half an hour for the effects to wear off.
• Item Crafting: The crafting system in the original version was not very player-friendly. Especially in the old days. There was a blacksmithing guide entitled Click Your Way to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
• Jenny's Number: Jenniy's Two-Toned Cuirass is given as a raid drop during the Shadows of Luclin expansion. It grants the wearer the stats of +8 Strength, +6 Charisma, +7 HP, +5 Intelligence, +30 Stamina, +9 Wisdom.
• Kill Enemies to Open: A variation. The insanely powerful but mostly insane prismatic dragon known as Kerafyrm was put to sleep by Veeshan, the God of Dragons for his crimes against dragonkind. The catch was that four dragons had to spend the rest of eternity as warders to ensure that the spell keeping him asleep was never broken. Players had to kill all four warders in order to wake him up... but the first few guilds in the game to do so quickly found out that waking him up was a bad thing. Kerafyrm would rampage out of the tomb, go over to the city of Skyshrine and go on a rampage there, and then go on a rampage in the Temple of Veeshan before finally leaving for good. This happened once and ONLY once per server. The Warders, who contained exceptionally powerful loot, were dead for good.
• Law of Cartographical Elegance: Averted with the map of the original three continents, which had several areas labelled on them which didn't actually exist in game. While future Expansion Packs would add many of them, there are still some that are Vaporware, such as the Unkempt Forest and Hatchlands. Maps for future expansion areas mostly avoided this.
• The Legions of Hell: The Muramites.
• Level Grinding: Leveling up takes time. This was especially true in the old days, when quests were few and far between and leveling up meant finding a group, a good camping spot, and killing the same few monsters for hours at a time. You had to grind your skills up as well — casting spells over and over again so that your higher level versions of them wouldn't fizzle. And clicking the Sense Heading button over and over again while waiting for a boat, or waiting for it to become daytime so you could cross Kithicor Forest and not die.
• Loads and Loads of Sidequests: The game is ALL ABOUT THIS. It has Quest in its name! The majority of the thousands upon thousands of quests found in the game are sidequests compared to the few quests actually relating to each expansion's storylines.
• Mad Scientist: Meldrath the Malignant and Velketor the Sorcerer
• Mêlée à Trois: The Ring Of Scale Mayong Mistmoore and League Of Antonican Bards are all mutual enemies. The reason for this is never explained.
  • The three major cities of Velious qualify somewhat. While the dwarf and dragon factions are not directly connected, some quest text hints that they like each other no better than they like the giants; it's just that the giants are a greater evil and represent a larger threat to both other factions.
  • Another example is found in the Omens of War expansion. While a handful of native dragorn are eventually willing to accept Norrathians as allies, far more of them see them as just more invaders and react to their arrival with hostility, leading to a three way war between Norrathians, Muramites, and loyalist dragorn.
• Massive Race Selection: Sixteen in total. Barbarians, Dark Elves, Drakkin, Dwarves, Erudites, Frogloks, Gnomes, Half Elves, Halflings, High Elves, Humans, Iksar, Ogres, Trolls, Vah Shir, Wood Elves. Have fun making those characters.
  
  Mind you, that's only the playable races. Just for fun, here's a list of some of the non-playable races: Aviak, Bixie, Brownie, Burynai, Centaur, Cyclops, Djinn, Gnoll, Goblin, Giant, Kobold, Lizardman, Muramite, Orc, Shadowed Man, Vampire.
• Master of None:
  • Bards have abilities and skills that make them a mix of almost every other class in the game. They can wear plate and dual wield like warriors, have a run speed buff like druids and shaman, can heal, can restore mana, charm, and mesmerize NPCs like enchanters, do damage over time like necromancers, direct damage like wizards, have lockpicking skills like rogues, etc. However, none of these abilities is really effective enough that a bard can function as a primary role in a group. Their healing song heals too slowly for them to be a healer, their mesmerize songs are somewhat unreliable and difficult to juggle between multiple targets, making them less effective at crowd control, they lack sufficient agro-generation and defense to act as a tank, and their raw damage output is too low for them to qualify as a dedicated damage dealer. Despite this, the overall utility they bring to a group makes them highly valued by most players.
  • Druids are the spell-caster version of this. They receive the widest variety of spell types including heals, run speed boosts, stat buffs, damage-over-time, direct damage, damage shields, snares, teleportation, and regeneration spells. However, with exception to their snare spells, there are other classes that have superior versions of these spells. Druids cannot heal as effectively as clerics, can't buff stats or do damage-over-time as well as shamans, can't direct damage or teleport as well as wizards, can't damage shield as well as magicians, and so on.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: At one point in the Plane Of Sky, you have to tell Sirran The Lunatic (your "guide", for lack of a better word) a certain phrase backwards in order to progress. While most people just look it up this page explains how people likely figured it out for the first time, as well as explaining how the phrase makes sense in-context, even though it seems like a total Non Sequitur at first.
• Munchkin: Munchkinism fairly quickly became the standard way to play the game. It's hard to remember back in the days when roleplaying was actively encouraged in the instruction manuals and in the game itself, and "twinking" (higher level characters giving lower level ones gear and weapons better than anything they could get for themselves) was extremely discouraged.
  • Lampshaded: One NPC has the following response when you ask him about his quest: "Well I haven't figured out that part yet. I guess I'll slay a dragon, maybe save a princess or two. You know the normal stuff. I don't want to get too crazy heheh, you know like calculate which weapon is the most efficient and debate over it in public forums to no end."
• Myth Arc: Starting with The Scars of Velious expansion, every expansion has had one.
• Nature Equals Plants: Solusek Ro, Veeshan, Brell Serilis, Bertoxxulous, and Prexus are all gods of material influences of nature (Sun, Sky, Underground, Disease, and Sea, respectively), but Tunare is the dedicated Goddess of Growth and Nature. The physical entrance to the Plane of Growth is found deep inside the Wakening Lands, a massive subtropical forest found deep inside the frozen continent of Velious, completely thriving in spite of the cold environment.
• Neglectful Precursors: The Combine Empire was seen as this for a long time. The truth was a little more complicated
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In the Dragons of Norrath expansion, killing Yar'Lir unleashes a curse upon The Nest, making things a whole lot more unpleasant.
  • Played a second time in the very next expansion, Depths of Darkhollow. Killing Mayong Mistmoore, the expansion's Big Bad, propelled him to godhood, whereafter he proceeded to wreak havoc upon Norrath's pantheon of deities until being put down for good in The Buried Sea.
• Ninja Looting: This was a big problem in EQ's early days, back when it was run by Verant Interactive. It can still be a problem sometimes. For group mobs for about two minutes after you kill something, only those in the group can loot it, after that it is open to anyone. Raids tend to mostly be in zones restricted to just those in the raid, which is normally your guildmates, so that tends to be pretty safe.
• Nintendo Hard: Ahh, the old days. The next time someone in your WoW party complains when you wipe and have to run all the way back to the dungeon, try telling them that in original EQ, you did the same thing, but not as a ghost — nope, you were alive. And naked, because all your equipment stayed on your corpse until you retrieved it. From in the middle of all the nasty things that killed you the first time. No arrows or minimaps, so you'd better remember exactly where you were. If you were unlucky enough to forget to get somebody to cast a bind spell at the nearest city, you might be facing a run across a continent, too. It was not unusual to die several times trying to retrieve your corpse. Oh, by the way, every time you die, you lose experience points. Including de-leveling. At higher levels, the ratio of amount lost to how long it would take to get it back got more and more dire. At the high levels, things became insanely stressful. People had breakdowns.
  • The most difficult was the Plane of Fear. Zoning in, you would very soon be attacked by a large group of enemies. Without a large strong force, you would die. So, if you died inside Plane of Fear, you would run back, enter the zone and die again. Guilds would die inside, attempt to retrieve their corpses (which had their gear on them, and without the gear you are far weaker than normal) and die repeatedly again. The most powerful guilds would often wind up assisting weaker guilds by "breaking" the zone for them (that is, kill off most of the NPCs near the zone in area so others could enter without quickly dying). And Plane of Fear was not the only zone with this.
• Nobody Poops:
  • Averted. Kaladim has a giant statue of a dwarf above the entrance, and an NPC sends you off to kill kragploom aviaks because they keep perching on the statue and then pooping on it.
  • Up until Freeport was completely overhauled and revamped with a new design, there was always a mysterious pile of poop found in one of the alleyways leading to the eastern part of the city.
• No Fair Cheating: In response to the rising power of players and the possibility of single groups or even solo players gaining enough power to tackle raid-scale content, the developers instituted a mechanic wherein anyone over level 51 that attacks (or even heals an attacker of) Lord Nagafen or Lady Vox, two of the raid-tier dragons from the original game, will immediately be teleported out of the dungeon.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Asylum Of Anguish in the Omens Of War expansion doesn't look like an insane asylum at all, but rather a really scary castle. Oddly, the original name was Citadel Of Anguish. Why they changed it (considering "citadel" is a much more accurate description), is a mystery.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Similarly to the Breast Plate trope, Everquest does a relatively good job averting this. EQ has three major non-mammal races — Iksar, Froglok, and Sarnak. The female Iksar have a slightly hourglass shaped figure ^note the original female Iksar models were identical to the male ones with the exception of brightly colored markings on their faces, but no actual breasts. Female Frogloks just have slimmer heads and color schemes ranging more towards pastels. Sarnaks aren't a playable race and don't have separate gender models.
  • And yet there is "Bladder of Lizard Milk" for sale at various Kunark vendors...
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Venril Sathir is basically Genghis Khan if he were an Evil Sorcerer lizard person.
• Noob Cave: The Mines of Gloomingdeep, a tutorial dungeon with simple armor quests and a powerful buffbot. Ever since the expansion that included Crescent Reach, the Mines have been rather obsolete as the Crescent Reach newbie quest lines are designed to be tutorial-like.
• Nostalgia Filter: A lot of people have this for early EQ. Sometimes, it's genuine "it was better when it sucked" sentiment. Sometimes, it's a desire to return to a time when their class was part of the Holy Trinity and groups could not twitch without them.
  • Interestingly enough, this has led to the rise of privately-run EverQuest servers that seek to scale back some of the more recent expansions, including a very popular one that intends to limit content to the first three expansions, the last of which was released in 2001.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Guess who one of the major end bosses of the Underfoot expansion is? Fippy Darkpaw.
  • You know how Nillipus (that brownie who wanders around Rivervale) says, if you kill him, "I put a curse on your soul and a pox on this land"? He. Wasn't. Kidding. By the time EverQuest II takes place, Rivervale is overrun by Nightbloods and Shadowed Men (essentially The Legions of Hell).
• One-Steve Limit: An aversion: There are no fewer than four completely unrelated (=NPCS=) named "Bonecracker", although one at least has a space in his name (i.e "Bone Cracker")
• Only Six Faces: Literally. Each race and gender had exactly 6 faces to choose from for character customization. It wasn't all that big an issue though, as at release it was still better than most.
• Order Versus Chaos: Discord slaver legions invading our worlds.
• Our Dark Elves Are Different: The world of Norrath was originally conceived from a D&D campaign, and as such the Dark Elves are not too conceptually different from the Drow. They have blueberry-colored skin, white hair, and call the underground city of Neriak home. The Dark Elves were actually created from Innoruuk, the God of Hate, who was jealous of the prosperity of the Elves and stole away their first king and queen. He tortured, tormented, and corrupted them for hundreds of years until they were physically reformed into the first Dark Elves. Deception, treachery, and malice runs in their blood, but they are not Always Chaotic Evil, as they can be reasoned with. King Thex doesn't share strong views of outsiders, but has alliances with the ogres, trolls, and certain tribes of orcs. Other races of Norrath know to think twice before traveling through Nektulos Forest where Neriak resides.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: EverQuest's dwarves are indeed the same.
• Our Elves Are Different: EverQuest has the superior High Elves, the woodsy Wood Elves, and the evil Dark Elves. And the Half Elves, who mostly fit in pretty well with the easy going Wood Elves.
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: EverQuest gnomes are based heavily on the Dragonlance tinker gnomes, although they're much more competent (but still blamed for 99% of everything that ever goes wrong.)
• Our Hydras Are Different: When the adventurers are fighting the various gods in the Plane of Time, the four elemental gods form together as a four-headed hydra named Quarm to serve as the last line of defense. Each head is made of a different element — earth, fire, water, and air. A head gets cut off at each 25% of its life taken off.
• Our Kobolds Are Different: Kobolds are a race of quadrupedal anthropomorphic dogs. They were the first of numerous races that Brell Serilis, God of the Underfoot, had created. With each new race he created afterwards, the the kobolds felt more and more despair for being forgotten, and lash out at other races in hostility. Various clans exist in numerous locations in Norrath, including the Warrens zone on Odus, the Mines of Gloomingdeep, and in the Steamfont Mountains.
• Our Ogres Are Hungrier: Ogres are big an' stoopid, thanks to a curse. When Rallos Zek tried to invade all the planes at the same time, the other Gods banded together and cursed all the races he created. The Ogres were his favorites.
• Our Trolls Are Different: Again, EverQuest based their trolls off the Dungeons and Dragons version of them. Tall, green, weak against fire, and the least intelligent of all the playable races.
• Our Wyverns Are Different: Wyverns are bipedal dragonoids whose wings extend from their shoulders to their claws at the end of their arms. They stand about 8 feet tall, and are usually more intelligent than drakes and wurms. Among dragon society, Wyverns usually rank below Dragons themselves. Taking inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons, many of them have a rather nasty poison attack.
• Our Vampires Are Different: EQ's vampires are generally orlokian in design. In the hack and slash Champions of Norrath, the powerful vampires tend to be like Dracula Classic, but most vampires are unintelligent orlokian types with spidery limbs.
• Passion Is Evil: Each god rules over a different physical or emotional domain, and all are clearly defined as Good, Evil, or Neutral. Among the evil gods are Cazic Thule and his daughter Terris Thule, who controls fear and nightmares, and Tholux Paells, the Demi-god of Lust. Among the good gods are Erollisi Marr is the goddess of Love and Quellious the god of Peace and Tranquility. An interesting note is that the extremely evil Rallos Zek, god of War, created Sullon Zek, Demi-goddess of rage and anger. Sullon herself and her domain are considered neutral.
• Power-Up Food: Offered through the baking and brewing tradeskills — smoked Wood Elf, anyone? The stat boosts are usually very minor, however, and the best food tends to be an utter pain in the ass to produce, due to the rarity of the ingredients and the zillion subcombines required to make the final product. Want to make a baker cry? Ask them about the Misty Thicket Picnic^note An item combine that required the player not only to be a Baker with maxed skill, but also to have leveled up to reasonable competency: Tailoring, Smithing, Brewing, and Foraging (not available to all race/class combos, forcing non-Foragers to buy supplies from players at a premium). Components available at vendors were not found in one location, but rather at no fewer than 7 different vendors scattered hither and yon. Players would spend months leveling up their crafting skills just to make a single attempt. or the Halas Ten Pound Meat Pie.
• Press X to Die: If you go to the Plane of Growth (assuming you're not an evil race/class), the inhabitants are friendly to start. One of them, Prince Thirneg, will ask why you're here. If you tell him "I want phat lewts" (i.e "I've come to kill you and take your stuff") or some variation on that includes those words, he will death touch you on the spot.
  • There also used to be an NPC in the Plane Of Mischief who, if asked about phat lewts, recommended you ask Prince Thirneg about it.
• Prime Timeline: EverQuest explicitly takes place in one, whereas the sequel EQ2 takes place in an Alternate Timeline.
• Punny Name: Oh so many of them. There are whole web pages which list them. One example is the zone "Estate of Unrest" (State of unrest).
• Red Shirts: The mercenaries could be considered this. They are basically surrogate players who are just as powerful as a regular PC but are computer controlled and of course require payment. Unlike most Red Shirts they at least get a proper name and can be brought Back from the Dead (probably because they realized having to buy a new merc everytime you turn around would get annoying)
• Resurrection/Death Loop: Dozekar the Cursed in the Temple of Veeshan. Draconic law states that a dragon must never mate with another dragon of a directly opposing element, because the resulting offspring will be both extremely powerful and completely mentally unstable. Dozekar, a fire element dragon, mated with an Ice element dragon, and their resulting offspring was the prismatic dragon Kerafyrm. Kerafyrm would eventually try to wage war against the dragons and needed divine intervention from the dragons' goddess, Veeshan herself just to put him to sleep. Being Kerafyrm's father, Dozekar was cursed to spend the rest of existence being killed and then resurrected by draconic priests over and over again. Adding Insult to Injury, he is cursed to die to lesser mortal beings and adventurers, which Dragons consider to be pretty degrading.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Kerafyrm does this when he's set free in the Scars Of Velious Expansion Pack. Specifically: he first kills any players still in the zone, then goes on to kill all the dragons in Skyshrine and the Temple Of Veeshan for imprisoning him. This is a once-per-server event, after which Sleepers Tomb (where he was imprisoned) permanently changes.
• Scary Black Man: Miragul, An Erudite Evil Sorcerer who founded the heretics (evil erudite faction) and later became a lich. Bonus points for him being a literal follower of the god of fear (Cazic-Thule)
• Scorpion People: The Scorpikis are the half-scorpion half-Iksar creations of the ancient Iksar sorcerer emperor, Venril Sathir. In the centuries after his death, the Skorpikis have made the lands surrounding his tomb their home. While they are largely hostile to everyone in Everquest, players can build up faction with tribes of Skopikis in EverQuest II.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Averted. Initially present, the game introduced armor dye so you could change the color of armor you didn't like.
• Serious Business: Hardcore raiding players and guilds can be... to put in the most positive term possible, "intense".
• Sewer Gator: The Qeynos Aqueduct has some small alligators, which are only level 1 due to the zone being for level 1-10 people.
• Sexy Packaging: Firiona Vie was featured very prominently on the artwork of the original game's box and the first 13 expansions. This then stopped abruptly and utterly — box art since then has generally featured the expac's main antagonist.
• Silly Reason for War: Hoo boy, on Luclin (the moon of Norrath) there is a race of four armed beings known as the Akhevans, who are are all devout followers of the goddess Luclin. They have their own Starfish Language called "The Fleshless tongue", which was originally the only language they spoke. Once races from Norrath came to Luclin some Akhevan learned their languages as well. However, some of the more extreme Akhevans such as Aten Ha Ra considered this blasphemy and a huge civil war started, resulting in the "No other languages" faction summoning a giant storm to destroy the other side's city and leave it in ruins.
• The Social Darwinist: Rallos Zek the god of war is a type 6, his followers don't show any respect towards people who die in battle, figuring if they were actually good fighters they would have won.
• Some Call Me "Tim": Lord Doljonijiarnimorinar. Players call him Lord Bob.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The orginal developers outright stated that the game is based heavily on Dungeons & Dragons. Many of the monsters (particularly in the original game and early expansions) are barely disguised expies of copyrighted DND monsters (the drachnids are basically just driders with a different name, for example.)
• Stealth Pun: The game has quite a few. Some notable ones are in the Plane Of Sky, namely, on each island in the zone you have to kill the Mooks to get Plot Coupons, then kill the boss and give said items to Sirran The Lunatic (your "guide", for lack of a better word). Several of the items involve this, such as the first island having you turn in lucky rabbit's feet to get the "Key Of The Misplaced", or turning in broken mirrors to get the "Key Of Misfortune".
• Stripperiffic: Firiona Vie — the character, not the zone. Any female character without armor equipped. And for the first dozen or so expansions, any female character on the box art.
  • Especially silly in the case of barbarians. The typical barbarian male wears nothing but boots and a kilt, while the average female is dressed the same but also wearing a laced together piece of leather over her chest, and they live in the middle of a region of icy, frozen tundra. Handwaved by making it a part of barbarian culture to defy the cold and prove one's mettle by... refusing to wear a shirt? Silly barbarians.
    • Amazingly, Firiona Vie managed to get more Stripperiffic as time went on, moving from a sports bra to two patches of fabric laced together.
• Suppressed History: The history of Norrath is highly detailed and was recorded by numerous races over countless millennia. Shortly after Humans came about, the great Combine Empire had rose up and nearly united all the races across Norrath in peace. An assassination attempt is what caused the Empire to ultimately fall, and the remnants moved up to the invisible moon, Luclin, just to remain safe from would-be attackers. Over the course of one night, all history of the Combine Empire's existence was lost, as was the knowledge of the magical arts known as Geomancy. This time period is appropriately known as the Lost Age.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Where do we start...
  • Many mobs are set immune to certain spells for no reason except to screw over the player. Certain named melee mobs, for example are made immune to being immobilized or slowed down, just so they can run up and beat down caster classes, interrupting all their spells. Certain areas have enemies that are not only immune to changes in their movement speed, but also have extremely high magic resistance, just so they can run away from you and train the entire dungeon on you, and you are nearly powerless to stop them unless you are insanely overleveled for the zone. Named monsters tended to be MUCH more powerful then their level would suggest (no elite mob tag here), defeating solo players even when you were far enough above their level that you would get almost no experience. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
• Thieves' Cant: Rogues have a special class language called "Thieves' Cant." Only Rogues can speak it.
• Time Travel: Plane of Time, The Curse Begins, the entire Seeds of Destruction expansion.
• Too Awesome to Use: Some of the Alternative Advancement (AA) abilities are like this, mainly due to having a really long Cooldown. There is a veteran ability (although everyone on the test server gets it automatically) called "staunch recovery" which completely refills all the user's hp and mana, considering it takes 3 real life days to recharge, most people are understandably very reluctant to use it.
• Touch of Death: Many raid bosses have this as an attack. It happens instantly, and instantly kills the affected player, no save, no possible defense. Many will do this only at the start of the battle, but some can do this every x seconds. Note that death causes loss of hard earned experience.
• Tree Top Town: Fucking Kelethin, with ramps between platforms that have NO markers to indicate where they are and no railings. Ever. At all. Common side effects of running around Kelethin are dying and increased safe fall skill.
• Trope Codifier: One can rest assured that EQ popularized just about every single trope we associate with MMORPGs today.
• The Usual Adversaries: The gnolls. Gnolls aren't much of a serious threat, but they are always, always, always making a nuisance of themselves.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: You can put any item that isn't no-trade into the games various banks. Even if the item is something like a person's severed head or a dragon's claws, the banker will just accept it instead of freaking out and calling the guards.
• Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Every expansion has at least one (some have multiple, due to their being a Big Bad Ensemble.)
• Video Game Demake: Project 1999. A fan-made mod that restores Everquest to its original form, warts and all.
• Violation of Common Sense: The only way to leave the Plane of Sky (aside from logging out and using the go home option, which wasn't added until years later) is to jump off of an island. Unless you're unlucky enough to hit another island, you will fall down into waters off the docks of East Freeport. Due to Soft Water being in full effect, there's no danger unless let your character drown on purpose.
• Virtue Is Weakness: A big part of Innoruuk's dogma is that The Power of Hate is the only real power there is, and things like Love and Kindness are just crutches used by people too stupid or weak to know better.
• Volcano Lair: Veeshan's Peak, the Very Definitely Final Dungeon in Ruins of Kunark expansion, is basically a hollowed out volcano where the Ring Of Scale and their minions live.
• Warp Whistle: The game has several varieties of this. In addition to all characters getting the "origin" ability at level 5 (which teleports them to their hometown) and all casters getting "gate" (which teleports the person back to their respawn point, which can be changed using another spell), several caster classes get a spell which teleports either them or their whole group (depending on the spell) to a relatively safe space in the current zone (if the zone is a dungeon, it's almost invariably to the entrance.)
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
  • The kobold Rolfron was originally a devout shaman of Brell Serillis. After Brell created the gnomes and dwarves, however, he abandoned the kobolds, leaving their shamans and clerics bereft of magic. Unsurprisingly, the kobolds were furious, and hate gnomes and dwarves as a result. Rolfron was perhaps the angriest of all, and called out to the other gods for help. Rallos Zek answered, turning him into Rolfron Zek, the god of despair and the new kobold deity, along with making him a sword made from the remains of his own soul.
  • Possibly the case with Kerafyrm the Prismatic Dragon. While the lore surrounding him is vague and contradictory, one story suggests the other dragons feared his power and sealed him away. As such, when he is awakened, he immediately goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and kills all the dragons in Skyshrine and the Temple Of Veeshan.
• World of Buxom: The females from just about every race has the equivalent of a D cup for that race's size. That gnome may have small breasts, but they're huge for a gnome. The female models were developed by a woman who admittedly wanted them to look both heroic and sexy at the same time.
• You Can't Get Ye Flask: Quests are triggered by certain words. Usually the relevant [words] are enclosed in [brackets] so you know which ones to use, but sometimes the word has to be used in a certain format. It can get quite confusing. Sometimes an NPC gives you a [key word or phrase] as part of a quest reward and if you didn't memorize it right on the first try, you're stuck unless you can find the correct line in a FAQ.
  • In older content, you also had to say the [thing you had to say] in an appropriately meaningful sentence^note for example, if an NPC said something about [orcs] the game would respond to "which orcs?" but not "why orcs?". The game could sometimes be unreasonably fussy about accepting things, and so for most later content all you have to do is repeat the bracketed word.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: Sometimes if you say the [phrase] that is supposed to get an NPC to work with you on a [quest] before you're either high enough level to work on the quest or on the appropriate step, that NPC will ask you if you don't have any gnoll pups (or similar low level trash mobs) to go slay.

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