So I'm an old schooler from 1999. I was a heavy raider through GoD and OoW. I retired somewhere in TSS. Cause you know...life. Well, my kids aren't little anymore. WoW is getting stupid and Clash of Clans only takes 10 minutes a day. The TLP got me thinking about EQ again and just poking around gets the nostalgia poring back. I'm thinking about coming "home". They say you can never go home again. I'm wondering if that's true. My cleric main from all those years ago is 73 on Luclin-Stromm. I stopped heavy raiding in OOW. My gear and AAs obviously show that. While I know I could jump start with an 85, I think I want to be me. How hard is it to come back and pick up where I left off? What about starting from scratch? Am I just forever left behind or is it possible to catch up and get back to running and raiding current content? And in case there's any of you here, shout outs to those formerly known as Haven's Edge. You are still in my heart! Drina Stonemitesnack Purple Club Admissions Officer RampTank to the Gods
Probably take you a month or two to get that cleric to 105 and enough AA's to app to a raiding guild. If you're looking for hard core raiding I'd go with Township Rebellion or Inverse Logic, TR isn't the power house it was in OoW days, but still good. With auto grant AA's catching up is MUCH easier then you would think. I'd say the biggest thing is make sure you get all the new information on Clerics so you don't suck when you hit 105.
There's a lot to help players get up towards the current level range and AA counts. A huge AA exp bonus that scales from 0 to 4,000 AAs. (Autogrant AAs count against this.) Gold members can turn on AA autogranting that will give you almost every AA you meet the requirements for, up to L90 AAs. Easier leveling thanks to mercs, exp bonuses, and better gear. Also, you can upgrade your existing character to a heroic one instead of starting a new HC if spending the $35 to skip to 85 with full AAs, spells, and some quest AAs done was appealing to you.
IMO stay FTP. Dont waste your money on TDS right now. wait and see if the new campaign will include it. Make a few accounts and box to level up to 100. Buy some krono and get the auto grant AA. Continue to grind AA out while your 30day sub is active. If you make it this far evaluate if you want to continue.
These statements are accurate. It is easy to come back, but it's not very fulfilling to do so. There are many opinions on both sides of this fence, but the population levels tend to speak for themselves. Some servers have a stable population. Others do not. At the end of the day, however, I only ever see requests for servers merges to boost the populations. I never see posts stating a server must be split because it has too many players.
You must have missed the memo about ragefire, for some reason a week later LockJaw was brought online.....
Contrary to DarkLord, every person I've seen that has came back has loved coming back. The only exceptions are those who insist on only playing on the TLP servers, and think that is the only thing good in EQ. There are also those who refuse to try to make new friends, find old friends, or make groups on their own; who blame their LFG issues on other things. EQ still has a huge social part, while the 70 and under levels are fairly barren, the 71+ zones start having a good bit more people in them, and making friends and making a good name for yourself is needed to guarantee that you have regular groups, and being in a guild doesn't hurt either. The number of people saying it is not worth coming back is no larger than those who are saying it is worth it to come back. The rest are in between the two, and say that there are good things and there are bad things. You can play the game for free to 100 and have access to a huge amount of content. There are limitations to that but they are only if you plan to go hardcore into EQ at which point you likely will have no problem with having a subscription to EQ.
Haha, oh yes, and the TLP forums appear to be full of people espousing "fulfillment." Like I accurately stated (and you accurately quoted), there are many opinions on both sides of the fence. *shrug*
I just wanted to point out that yes, there have had to be server splits at times. You should know by now that the people that are on the forums are a very small subset of eq players. Go into the trenches and you will find more are actually happy on TLP to have something to do than not. Least thats what I found when playing around over there. As for coming back or staying away, I have no opinion either way, its a personal choice for everyone. Play for free for a bit and find out if its for you or not.
Lot of Haven's Edge people are still around Drina. Through guild mergers etc most of them ended up in Infinite Elysium on Luclin. Haven't been there myself since December, but there was a core of 10 - 20 people still active at that time. Seychelle Raynorel Zunnoab Leguvane several others.
In my opinion and from what I have seen and experienced as a returning player ... EQ has moved toward the ease of WoW, without success. It is more than ever a business model rather than a game, and the least effort / most income mentality reigns supreme, though implemented poorly. Whether TLP or Live, I found it fun for about a month each, until I discovered what changed between then and now. Would not recommend, would not do again.
Unfortunately, unless you like copy/pasted wow clones, there is nothing better out there in the mmo genre. We complain about lack of content, but these other games spend 5-7 years in development and have less content than even tds on its own. I was away from EQ for a long time, it's easier than ever to come back.
From my point of view there is still no other mmorpg that even comes close to comparing the sheer amount of content and experiences that can be had in everquest. The best part about the game right now is you can restart from scratch get to know your toon by about level 60 then use the heroic toon option up to 85 and start trying to build a social network. The people that return that don't last usually are not successful with this or they try to box their way to the top or pay to win on the FV server buying kronos to sell for platinum. While you can get geared up fast this way gear is a small part of being good at everquest. It is still a game for the dedicated and devoted to helping others type of person. If you get with a group of people at level 85 and try to push yourself to start the reign of fear progression and to work up like that this game has a ton of fun to offer. If you try to skip all that progression from Reign of Fear , Call of the Forsaken ,and The Darkened Sea you are just going to hurt yourself in the end. Being maxed out you must complete everything but the conquest in reign of fear and everything from cotf and tds including the conquest acheivements. People that spend 90% of their time in Dead hills cycling gribble heroic adventures are usually the ones complaining about lack of content because they don't go anywhere else or even try to complete the needed progression. These people also don't seem to know that the heroic adventures in TDS offer way more net experience than the ones in cotf.
You have to give yourself a sort of side game that no one knows about. For instance, try to say only things you could imagine that Nicholas Cage would say in whatever situation you get into, I call that game National Pleasure.
Go to the TLPs. It's your best shot at that old-school fun. Don't worry about all the forum drama and raid-guild drama. It's not as bad as the forums make it seem.
Don't mind forums. EQ has an amazingly low forum participation rate, I'd say less than 3% of all the games non-TLP population actually posts on forums. Darklord is a semi-troll who hasn't played for probably quite a while but still surfs forums looking for dissenting threads to bash the game in. Why you surf forums for a game you don't play is beyond me, but to each their own I enjoy playing, and even at late night hours (1am MST) I always see people lev 100-105 LFG. If I need to group I can usually find on in 15minutes about half the time. I'm kind of an impatient person w/ limited playtime so if i can't find a group in 15min I usually just 2 or 3box whatever I wanted to do, which is also fun for me. Anyway that's my .02
And as for the forum population we tend to have a strong negative vibe... people just seem more likely to come to the forums to complain then when they are happy with things. I run a large casual guild on xegony and I can say that quite a few people who have come back to the game and joined my guild seem very happy. As for the progression servers there does seem to be a lot of negative behavior on them. The regular servers have an established community that keeps mostly to all the old play nice rules that Daybreak no longer enforces or in some cases every enforced even back in the SOE days.
I'm not lying, I post what I feel from PLAYING THE GAME, not reading forums, that the game has a population appropriate for a 15 (16?) yr old game, much bigger now with the new TLP servers. All I am relating is my personal experience, I enjoy it and I don't even raid. I don't play 8hrs/ day so I will probably never get through all the cotf and TDS stuff, but I won't even bother trying stuff that I don't think I'd enjoy. But I do admit obviously the expansions are reduced in size in the last couple years. But I wouldn't pay for 3 accounts if I wasn't enjoying it, money has never flowed for me No u just smack talk a game u don't even play (haven't played for years?) whenever u see an opportunity. I don't play wow anymore but I don't go to wow forums still and say "WoW sucks!" whenever I can. But whatever, no biggie
It's pretty easy to come back . Don't let the few emo folks keep you away. As in any game there are folks that are just always unhappy and want to spread that carp on others. Give it a try even if you only play once in awhile it is rewarding.
So instead of posting vagueries like don't come back "due to the games state and the overall direction that its (sic) going" or guessing you won't have time to play EQ "the current generation doesn't want to sacrifice the time needed in a game like EverQuest to progress their character" I'll try and be a bit more specific: Populations definitely aren't what they were back in the OoW days, but there's still plenty of people roaming around and I can't remember the last time I logged in with nothing to do or anyone to play with. You're not alone either, I see people in general chat all the time that introduce themselves and say they haven't played for x number of years. As far as getting your toon up to scratch, it won't be that big of a deal ... for your first levels, 73 - 85, it might be tough to find a group, or anyone to group with ... but that's a symptom of it being so easy to level up these days. AA's are auto-granted (if you want) to the tune of 4000 free AA's up to level 90, and after that AA's just fall into your lap .... seriously, no-one announces "ping" any more The amount of content at your disposal is staggering. Even older content still gets a look in with one-off items people want to farm, or as pre-requisites for new quests (e.g. you still need to do your Coldain Shawl 1.0 if you want your Shawl 2.0 ... and 3.0 ). Honestly, dig in and have a go ... it's free to play (with restrictions), or drop $15 or whatever it is for a month of play, make some friends, and see how you go. Worst case scenario, you're down a few happy meals at maccas.
