ahh you have a comma in there. I know this causes problems with perl, and remember it also did with the qst format. I'm not sure if it actually crashed or not though. I see you left a space after $name, this is needed otherwise it will output $name instead of the variable contents.
Kroeg: is the ; required now? Back in 4.4 I am pretty sure it didn't...
Anyhow, delete or move everything in {eqemu base}\quests and save this code as {eqemu base}\quests\default.qst see if that works
Code:
EVENT_SAY{
if($1-=~"Hail"){say("Well met young $name !")}
}