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Eq experience all over again, Welcome back.
Guys what have we been missing? Everquest! I totally got in the mood one night back early December last month and decided to play Eq again. After prolonged emails from SOE newsletters and reading the changes I got interested again and wanted to see my old stomping grounds.
Boy have things changed! Firstly I didn't have my old account back so I bought Seeds of Destruction expansion after installing the free trial. Just clicked buy SOD expansion on the server select. Once you buy you will get all 15 expansions in one and all previous expansion in game claimables. Unique mounts and fun fluff items as well as faction modifier items.
Anyway after purchasing and downloading 4hrs worth of data I loged in. Now I was familar again with EQ and the controls and all that from playing the trial. The trial was lacking big time but it enabled me to get use to it again.
Starting all over again.
What I found starting out new again. That feeling of adventure like the good old days. The game has changed for the better over the last several years since I last played. I was a raider before, and in the old EQ world pre 2003 took lots of people and effort just to get gear with minor stats on them. Lets just say back then a 22 ac 10str 10agi 10stam 50hp chest piece was an awesome piece of armor to have. Sure it took a raid of 40 or more peeps to obtain but it felt good getting it. But now, hahaha NOW, a piece of gear at level 10 or 15 has triple those stats. That gear is called defiant gear, world drop off any mob randomly. We will get into that a bit later.
Great graphics updates. Added Guild Halls and Central Hub.
The graphics rock now with everything maxed the game looks gorgeous. They really improved the visuals of the game and I am loving the new water and details. Armors can be dyed, people look great in the fancy gear.
The world is not laggy at all. There is one central hub that everyone meets at and for performing all your needed activities such as crafting. They turned Plane of Knowledge into a great central area to port around to anywhere. And the guild hall gives you more options for ports using stones off a vendor. You must be in a guild to use the guild hall. The guild lobby however is where anyone can go. Most people get buffs here and chill till raids or LFG.
So I started at level 1 and am now level 64 in only a months time! I have over 60 thousand plat saved up now and all my newest gear and spells. There is soooo much to do and doing it is even easier. Explained below.
Mercenaries.............SOE DID SOMETHING RIGHT!
Ok so they decided to place in mercenaries last expansion. You are able to hire one these bad boys or girls to be a healer or a damage tank class. You can purchase any race you want and as you level the merc will level with you gaining all abilities and spells. The mercs themselves are always geared and act like a raiding geared player per level range. So if you hit 60 your merc will be at 60 have effective raid gear and all spells. You can't see what they have but SOE says they are geared that way to be in line with players.
You can hire only one type, a healer or a tank (damage). When you hire you can suspend the merc if your not using it at the time because they have a upkeep cost which increases in price as you level. The cost is every 15min. Healer mercs will heal you and buff you are 100% efficient at what they do. There is 2 types of mercs, you can learn more of this when you play.
All you need is a merc and you will level quickly using hot zones for added experience and loot drops for the defiant armor.
Defiant Armor
This armor drops anywhere off anything. There is different tiers that correspond to the level and will gain in power as you get closer to the received level of the gear. The stats are phenomenal compared to old EQ gear. Yes I think this is the sole reason why EQ is so enjoyable now because the gear alone helps you level and have more fun. The mercs help to, probably a lot more then I give credit for.
Thats just some of the stuff I think is worth coming back for. EQ is so enjoyable now and you can solo or find a guild easily. People are always helping others. I can make a start to finish guide for anyone interested in starting new or coming back. Let me know.
PS: The server I play on is called Bristlebane, I looked for one the higher pop servers. Just because its 3rd on the server list from the top I think is why so many pick it. *shrug*
Who let you in the VIP section?
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No thanks. the day they made took out corpse retrieval was the last straw for me.
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MMORPG = Mostly Men Online Roleplaying Girls
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Wow I don't know what to say other then your nuts. I never found corpse retrieval fun. Why would anyone want that in an MMORPG today? That took lots of time and help from others just so you could play again and get your gear back. The system was fine back in the early stages of this MMORPG classic and things have changed.
I for one am glad there is no more corpse retrievals and now when you die you simply go to a summoner give them the proper summon reagent you buy and they will summon your corpse. You just got to get a res from someone then or your heal merc if you got one.
Also you don't lose any gear anymore from death! All your gear stays with you. When I first came back and died around level 30 something and had all my gear I thought it was a bug till I learned they took that out of the game.
Your nuts for wanting corpse retrieval in EQ, especially with how players are not hardcore like old classic EQ.
Who let you in the VIP section?
EQ is nerfed beyond belief, dying used to mean something!!!!!!
CR's was a good thing, learn to play smarter!!
60+ in a months playing you say? they handing out levels now?? ffs lol
Old players from pre POP had a challenge, eq today is shit in comparison.
and f u crybabies, todays shit mmorpgs are down to you
To the OP, i am glad you have had a nice return to EQ.
I have been missing that feeling of EQ again and have really been thinking of giving it another go.
But the game you just described sounds alot like WoW, and that is very disappointing.
I may have to rethink my return.
And i agree with the second poster. No CRs means not EQ anymore. I know why they made all these changes, i just hate that they have.
You should do a start to finish guide because there is little to no documentation in the game.
Here's my questions:
-How do you know which merc to hire for your level?
-Which classes can still solo with defiant gear and a merc? Are there any melee classes that can solo efficiently at level 50+?
-Where can you go to solo+merc after level 50? Finding new hunting spots(and I would prefer not to hunt in the same old zones when there's 14+ expacs) can be very difficult.
-I have a score to settle with some of the old bosses and dragons. Has all the old content been buffed to stay with mudflation or are the old targets now killable without a small army?
My youtube MMO gaming channel
What's the point in leveling if you can have a NPC bot tank or healer and high quality gear that is easy to obtain? Next SOE wil just start you off at lvl 60.
The fun is supposed to be in the journey. It's depressing reading about how they have dummied down EQ.
No thank you, they have removed everything that made EQ stand out from other MMOs while trying to clone other game's features. For me, if I wanted to play one of those other games I would not choose a game that changed to try to mimic them. I would rather EQ have stuck to their original design ideas from the original and continued to expand gradually from there. I would have rather them added alternate advancement points or other means of progression other than ever increasing the level cap. Also I wish they would have tried to be conservative with the lore instead of letting players travel to the moon where cat people live and have us kill aliens.
But since they didn't ....
I would rather play EQ classic or trilogy. That is what I want to play for some years to come! I don't play games because how easy I can do everything or how fast I can finish them. I play them for challenge and the journey. I play games to have fun .. not convenience.
I don't know what the rush is, you pay monthly for these games? You should want them to take you a long while to accomplish things. First thing people ask about when looking at a new MMORPG that you pay monthly for his how fast can I finish it.
Also it isn't nice to call someone nuts because they enjoy challenge and the game itself over how convenient it is. You shared your opinion and he shared his opinion. Neither are wrong. You started the topic and I assume you wanted feedback correct?
If I could go back to 1999 before people knew the game inside-out, back when there was a surprise around every corner, the people playing weren't ultra-elitist hardcore nuts and you weren't defined by your raid attendance percentage THEN it would be the EQ experience all over again.
What we have now is not even a shadow of that.
SOE pretty much gave up on EQ1 some point during EQ2's development, you could feel the life-blood being sucked out. Being that attached to a game you notice when the development teams are shrunk or redeployed, or replaced by monkeys who just hammer out content in the mould of previous expansions.
Everquest isn't dead, it's undead - barely recognizable and devoid of any life or inspiration, the only humane thing to do is put it out of it's misery and hope that EQ3 is in the works.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
I don't believe they actually took out CR's, they just gave you a choice if you wanted to or not, and obviously you didn't want to, or you would still do it.
WoW is still an easier game to get into. There is so much junk they've tacked onto EQ and so many new zones added but like alot of people, I'm going to the same old zones with the same old gear. Most classes are still poor soloers out of the gate and newer players won't be able to afford the mercs. If they can even find them.
Right now I don't think EQ is vastly inferior to WoW. It has its strengths and no matter what the old school nerds say, alot of the newer features/changes are a major improvement over the original gameplay. The learning curve and disjointed content is what holds EQ back.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
hehe....MERCENARIES?! LOL...
Even if I was to start out new again in this game...I would rather 2 box...hell I'll even go 6 boxxing...Thats so much better than depending on some stupid computer played mercenary.
I have played EQ since Kunark launched, and up untill the Yakesha expansion. The game was perfect, once they started releasing expansions after Velious the game went downhill, especially after they added those book/portals that basically cost Druids/Wizards their income methods lol. EQ was a great game, however modernizing EQ was probably one of the worst things to do, the game was fine by itself untill they kept adding new stuff that didnt go well with the original concept. This is the same thing Blizz is doing with WoW, they keep adding higher level content while doing nothing with the lower levels, and Azeroth is a ghost town now, the only places that have any population is Outlands and Northrend...and even then Outlands is becomming a ghost town as well.
Looking forward to Aion, Playing wow out of boredom.
1. Because not everyone likes WoW. Especially those who really liked old EQ.
2. Not every game has to be like WoW.
3. EQ didnt steal players from WoW by making it more WoW like so what was the purpose in the change anyway. Yes, i know they did it to try to get those players, they just didnt.
this is one of the reasons I quit, way back in kunark. One night after spending hours trying to find my corpse I decided the game was turning into something much more as it cut into my nights sleep for work the next day. I realized I had better things to do with my $12 then paying SOE to frustrate the heck out of me.
Wow I don't know what to say other then your nuts. I never found corpse retrieval fun. Why would anyone want that in an MMORPG today? That took lots of time and help from others just so you could play again and get your gear back. The system was fine back in the early stages of this MMORPG classic and things have changed.
I for one am glad there is no more corpse retrievals and now when you die you simply go to a summoner give them the proper summon reagent you buy and they will summon your corpse. You just got to get a res from someone then or your heal merc if you got one.
Also you don't lose any gear anymore from death! All your gear stays with you. When I first came back and died around level 30 something and had all my gear I thought it was a bug till I learned they took that out of the game.
Your nuts for wanting corpse retrieval in EQ, especially with how players are not hardcore like old classic EQ.
Nobody "liked" corpse retrievals, but they were a necessary evil, they added challenge and risk to the game. Anyone who played EQ pre SoL will tell you that todays MMO's are a walk in the park compared to some of the challenges EQ presented.
Now, i'm not saying I agree with either of you, i have mixed feelings about CRs, i'm just saying i understand where both of u r coming from.
As for your post, i am liking what i hear, i have considered coming back to EQ for some time now, it has always been my favorite game, i just dont have the time to grp with people, so mercenaries sound cool. I am still waiting for them to change the bazaar though.
Wow I don't know what to say other then your nuts. I never found corpse retrieval fun. Why would anyone want that in an MMORPG today? That took lots of time and help from others just so you could play again and get your gear back. The system was fine back in the early stages of this MMORPG classic and things have changed.
I for one am glad there is no more corpse retrievals and now when you die you simply go to a summoner give them the proper summon reagent you buy and they will summon your corpse. You just got to get a res from someone then or your heal merc if you got one.
Also you don't lose any gear anymore from death! All your gear stays with you. When I first came back and died around level 30 something and had all my gear I thought it was a bug till I learned they took that out of the game.
Your nuts for wanting corpse retrieval in EQ, especially with how players are not hardcore like old classic EQ.
Nobody "liked" corpse retrievals, but they were a necessary evil, they added challenge and risk to the game. Anyone who played EQ pre SoL will tell you that todays MMO's are a walk in the park compared to some of the challenges EQ presented.
Now, i'm not saying I agree with either of you, i have mixed feelings about CRs, i'm just saying i understand where both of u r coming from.
As for your post, i am liking what i hear, i have considered coming back to EQ for some time now, it has always been my favorite game, i just dont have the time to grp with people, so mercenaries sound cool. I am still waiting for them to change the bazaar though.
Me too. Back to the EC Tunnel where the player base made it in the first place.
Recently resubbed with my old group from EQ. It lasted less than a week. What we wanted is gone. That game doesn't exist anymore.
What made EQ alive for many of us was the fact that it was a dangerous world with consequences, and through those trials many of us ended up forming strong bonds with other players. No, I'm sure most people don't enjoy corpse runs (although I defy anyone to say they don't have any stories / memories of an epic CR adventure), but many of us *DID* have fun playing in a world where the danger of a CR lent weight to most actions. It also helped form a very strong community, people would often go out of their way to help strangers on CRs, I met so many people through helping or being helped.
It's important that you people failing to grasp why others would want CRs understand this - it's not the act of the CR itself that people enjoy, it's the weight that risk adds to the entire game world and experience that people enjoyed.
I for one enjoyed the broad spectrum of situations EQ brought about, it was a roller coaster in that respect . Seriously, saying CRs aren't fun in and of themselves so they can't be in a game is like saying no one should see any films except for feel good comedies because you can't possibly enjoy a film that stimulates any other emotions. That sounds exceedingly boring to me. No thanks, I'd prefer as broad a spectrum as possible for an online virtual world.
It's also important to keep in mind that for a lot of us, this was a hobby, I certainly didn't want what we see today - MMOs that play like bad arcade games but with infinite lives - oh, how exciting...
New EQ, with it's safety rails and dumbed down hand-holding is a stale, stagnant whimpering shadow of other dumbed down games.
Ahh EQ, memories linger, yes it was tough, corpse runs did take a while (you often needed help).
Mobs chased to until you zoned , BB train anyone?
What do we have now?
MMORPG's solo games with mute PC's running around.
You once had to learn to play smart, solo was allways viable but just !
It saddens me to see how games are now, but I was lucky to have seen the best, and yes IMHO EQ1 was the best.
To all you old timers who walked the walk, I salute you!
To all you winey crybabies I laugh at you, you aint seen shit!
Games that give reward for basic mind numbingly easy playstyle aint worth shit.
Group play is what MMORPG's are about IMHO.
To be honest if they just had servers with different rulesets we could all be happy, but SOE love to nerf games across the board.
Wee Johnny can play on the green server, get shit for nothing and be uber, while us old timers can shout "SOW needed for CR" all bloody day long on the other servers.
Get with it game designers, let us choose what style we wish to play, why piss anyone off???
Wow I don't know what to say other then your nuts. I never found corpse retrieval fun. Why would anyone want that in an MMORPG today? That took lots of time and help from others just so you could play again and get your gear back.
The red marks is what was great about it.
EQ like EQ2 by updating the games to WoW 2.0, they lost the community feel that kept most people coming back for more.
Whatever EQ and EQ2 offer now, WoW can do it better, what those 2 games had as an advantage over Blizzard game, which was the great community interaction, has been lost completely.
I admit that their community is still better than WoW, but although players are much nicer, they don' t interact as they use to.
Hope some devs will understand that the next big MMO will be a return to the past, where community interaction was the glue of a MMO.
this is one of the reasons I quit, way back in kunark. One night after spending hours trying to find my corpse I decided the game was turning into something much more as it cut into my nights sleep for work the next day. I realized I had better things to do with my $12 then paying SOE to frustrate the heck out of me.
Without negative consequences for dying, dying becomes a joke and players lose respect for the environment. In games without corpse retrieval such as WoW and Chronicles of Spellborn and now EQ, I would kill myself on purpose to use the respawn shrines as mini teleports because there is no significant death penalty in those games. That just ruins the whole immersion of the virtual world when a design flaw like that persists.
i have alot more fond memories of hairy, time-consuming corpse runs than of sitting in one corner of a dungeon in an efficient group safely gaining fast xp. i think those times of danger and hyper vigilance while moving thru the world trying to avoid death were far far FAR FAR *FAR* more fun than the boring normal gameplay.
there were SO many times that i just left a fast xp gaining profitable steamrolling group to go out and barely earn any xp (or LOSE it) on my own or in a more dangerous group just because it was way more fun.
traditional mmorpgs are just fundamentally TRASH at the core of their gameplay. i did have more fun in eq1 than any other since then tho. whenever i was fearing for my life that is.
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Corpus Callosum
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Allakhazam has a level chart for recommended zones
everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zlvlchart.html
The Serpents Spine's zones are supposed to be decent for leveling from 1-75
EQ2 fan sites
Wow I don't know what to say other then your nuts. I never found corpse retrieval fun. Why would anyone want that in an MMORPG today? That took lots of time and help from others just so you could play again and get your gear back. The system was fine back in the early stages of this MMORPG classic and things have changed.
I for one am glad there is no more corpse retrievals and now when you die you simply go to a summoner give them the proper summon reagent you buy and they will summon your corpse. You just got to get a res from someone then or your heal merc if you got one.
Also you don't lose any gear anymore from death! All your gear stays with you. When I first came back and died around level 30 something and had all my gear I thought it was a bug till I learned they took that out of the game.
Your nuts for wanting corpse retrieval in EQ, especially with how players are not hardcore like old classic EQ.
Corpse retrieval itself wasn't fun, but the threat of corpse retrieval made dangerous zones and dungeons very exciting and very fun.
When a game takes out the sting of failure, they also take out the adrenalin rush of success.
i liked what this guy said before Pop it was fun even afater Pop i still had some fun , next expan is what killed me
This paragraph is compelling. It sort of describes an appeal of mmorpgs that seems very hard to replicate; that of adventure. Never experienced this in for instance, WoW at all. It's very puzzling why this made a feeling of adventure and why, again WoW, just doesn't.