Everquest 1&2

[Zyco]

Of all the MMOs the Everquest world and lore has always been my favorite, and now because of the Sony Hack SoE has announced that all old EQ1 and 2 accounts are free for a month (think actually 45 days) with exp bonuses and other special things.

I thought I was done with MMOs, but I loaded up my Station Launcher to see if EQ was really free and decided to download good ol EQ1 again - its been YEARS since I have been in that game and 2 nights in I am loving it again.  I made myself a Troll Shadow Knight and my wife made a Wood Elf Ranger and so far we've only been thru the noob zone quests and are level 14.

I always thought EQ1 and 2 were pretty much the same from my memories, but EQ1 is much much more hardcore with its Meditating, Auto-attacking, Fizzles but it has such a charm to it. Even the graphics after a few hours when your eyes adjust to the world really dont look all that out of place and old. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else is in EQ1 or if you plan to check it out again maybe we can see if we could get on the same server for some grouping.

Currently playing Googenstien on the Luclin server.

[Zyco]

So its been what.. 8 days? ive dragged my wife, and 2 friends to the game again with me and after some initial bickering.. everyone is having a blast. and the game is pretty lively and the crowd on our server is very good and helpful.  Its funny to see how many other returning players that have popped up over the week in general chat.

Last night me and a pal decided to hit good ol'Lower Guk.. we were both in our high 40s and ended up at 48 and 51 with bags full of loot and tons of old school and now new memories filled... EQ doesnt hold your hand and can really kick your ass if you arent careful! I fell in a trap and aggrod some mobs my pet ran off and started a train and we had to a 10 minute fight with about 20 barely exp giving Froglocks.  This happened pretty much directly after I stated what a joke this old dungeon was.. haha

[Mass]

Yeah I played EQ1 for a number of years (4-5) and I know how addicting it can become but as much as I loved original EQ its not the same anymore, not with all the new expansions. It always felt impossible to keep up and became a huge grind past lv 51. Most of the older expansions arnt even played on anymore, most skip half of them and go straight for the newer ones which means a lot of the older zones are more of a wasteland with you being the only person there.

Also, all of the standard drops from regular mobs in the newer expansions are so overpowered than anything you can get in the original zones including from raid mobs that its not worth going there. Cant even imagine trying to create a new character and starting from scratch, not unless they have a server specifically offering only the original 3-4 expansions only.

But I did have great fun on that game 'back in the day' ;)

[Zyco]

I actually joined a raiding guild that plays thru all the expansions and raids in order with as close to original gear and items as possible. We are currently on the Depths of Darkhollow which came out in 2005 and we have are level capped at 70. EQ has its own progression servers but we are not on one of those because those servers seem to progress VERY slowly, once we beat a raid a certain numbers of times and we get the gear then the Leader and Officers open up the next expansion for the guild to level up in and begin flagging for the raids.

[Mass]

Well too be honest the option to play through only the classic everquest expansions for free is always open to us through 'Project 1999' one of the more popular eq emulator servers. Unfortunately they only have the first 3 expansions and its even before my time, meaning no POP for teleport stones.. you have to run everywhere and good luck if you die somewhere remote, its an absolute nightmare getting your corpse back which just becomes tedious and annoying.

If I do ever go back to EQ it will be through one of the emulator servers which are almost as populated as some of the official servers.