Yes on the 1.5 and 2.0. 2.5 is kind of unofficial, and 3.0 has been repeatedly shot down by the developers, at least for now.
EQ will never again be fun like it used to be. What made the early years so supremely fun was the great unknown. Now, with knowledge disseminated to the point of saturation near immediately, the unknown only exists for mere moments (if at all) each time new content is released. We cannot go back to being a population of clueless adventurers, astonished by what we discover around every turn. There is no more mystery.
There is mystery if you don't use web sites. In the beginning it was said, by them (you know, them) we were cheating by posting our found information on a common web site and using that repository as a reference rather than learning as we go, and from each other in the game. Now they make some quests so tough you must go to the internet, since most do. So now, even if you wanted to do it without that help, some quests just are not doable. Like any other ability they give us, or we find, they design the next step to require it.
Having to print out maps. Being a blind Barbarian. Sitting to med. Consenting people to loot your stuff off a corpse . Having to buy a port anywhere or run. Fun to look back on but most of it was just tedious and annoying.
It was a good idea on your part to look for a guild to join. While I understand there are a lot of casual players that participate as they can and being self-reliant is a must, it's really necessary to build a social network too. Fun is in the eye of the beholder. Some people don't have fun unless they make 99% of their game playing experience miserable. Woo woo, 50 attempts and we finally did it. Some don't have fun unless they have everything others have and just a little bit more. And others are delighted whenever someone they group with can use an item that drops. Fun comes in all sizes.
I have had a lot of fun running with guilds on Fippy, didn't know the game before Dec 2009 so I can't compare. Isn't fun all relative?
Part of the excitment of EQ was the unknown, that is true. I think in addition to that was the fact that you really had to work to achieve things. Accomplishments made you feel good because they were not easy to get. I started playing right when Kunark came out. It was fun because everyone was exploring the new area and people had to rely on each other to some extent. People didn't know how to play and were trying to break the langauge barriers as they attempted to cooperate. People would die deep in Kunark who forgot to bind in The Overthere would have to make the long journey back naked (and likely die again). It was a real journey into a difficult unknown.
EQ is waaay more convenient now than it was in 2001 (for better or worse). There isnt as much stuff that gets in the way of doing what you want to do (either TS or go kill). It used to be that gettting to and through zones was downright dangerous. Finding stuff you needed used to be hard, tedious work. With the online resources, you have everything you need at your fingertips (you can choose not to use them) and you can get down to doing the fun parts. Also, EQ is a heavily boxed game now. With 15 or 20 people in a zone, you may only have 2-3 actual players present. EQ is much less social than before. Finding a good support system for new players is huge, so getting into that guild will really help you. I like the EQ now way more than the EQ of 2001 - having guid portals, PoK, and no more corpse runs (and needing that 2nd set of gear for corpse runs) is infinately better.
It's not hard to get back into the game despite the age of your character. You level up rather quickly now, gain AAs much faster, have mercs to assist you, and it's much easier to get gear now.
I came back to Everquest tonight after 12 years of being away. It was awesome seeing all of the updated graphics, but I felt very lonely. Since I was a Dark Elf, I journeyed back to Neriak to find the place was absolutely deserted. It used to be teaming with activity. I was thinking that maybe they have too many servers running and have the players spread too thin? I world is so much bigger than I remember it.
No, it is because people have had enough time to level up - partly because of the number of years, and partly because SOE made levelling much faster. There are fewer new people coming in to EQ, and the levelling path has been streamlined to cater for fewer/faster - so go to Gloomingdeep (the tutorial) to start.
Tearstone, as Borek says they've streamlined the leveling path and consolidated folks all into one starting place, and that expansion's zones. Crescent Reach is where you come out from the tutorial (if you don't say the magic words which take you to Plane of Knowledge) and so in those early TSS zones (Crescent Reach, Blightmoor, etc.) is where you'll see the newer players.
I was just looking for players in general. While roaming around Freeport, The Commons and Nektulos forest, there was no players that I could see or at least respond back to me in /ooc. Even the areas you speak of which should ideally have a higher concentration such as at the tutorial area/Crescent Reach was nothing like it used to be. Perhaps I am on a server with less traffic, which is Cazic Thule. Back in the day, there used to be a way to see how many people were currently on a server, but I do not see that in the list anymore. What are the more popular servers that are used?
Use the chat channels (/general), and look in the Guild Lobby and Plane of Knowledge. As we said, there have been changes; the level distribution of players is very different from what you remember, and new players are funnelled through Gloomingdeep, Crescent Reach and Blightfire Moors. www.soe.com/status shows an indication of server populations; is is roughly even across most normal servers (apart from Trakanon). Vox is a relatively new server, and should still have a more even spread across levels.
Hehe, Everquest was seldom if ever fun! It's just not the term I would use to describe game play. Not that you couldn't have fun, just that what would be described as fun by a normal human being was pretty scarce. I started when the game first came out and from my posts to forums, looks like I quit about 2002 Logged in last night and spent 2 hours trying to figure out the interface again and find the bank in Freeport. Now it is true I have forgotten most everything I knew about the game, didn't even know I had a level 38 druid on Firiona Vie for example. I managed to not attack any NPCs but other then that, that is how I remember the game. This brings me back to the other nags of why I even had a character on FV, my guild on my main server melted down and I was just looking for a quiet place w/o drama. EQ is challenging. Everything from the interface to the monsters to the strategies you have to use fights you. It's like building a ship in a bottle or learning how to walk a tightrope. Tedious long hours of obsessive compulsive behavior grouped with other obsessive compulsive types followed by a brief sense of accomplishment before you move on to your next zone and challenge.
Fun is what you make it. For many people, having a challenge is required to have fun. For many others, the opposite is true. No one is righter.
Unfortunately, with the number of new players who join the game every week these days, and over the last many years, there were not enough new bodies being added to the old starting zones to make it possible to find groups if we were spread out all over. I am pretty darn sure the sparse population at the low end came long before leveling through those levels was sped up. That's how I remember it. I think it was smart to try to push all the remaining new players into this new tutorial, and speed up the leveling, given as few new characters as were being made per day when they finally did make those changes. I'm sure, also, they do mine the data and do know how many new characters were being made each day, by race, and class, and how many levels each got over what time frame. Once the density of players fell below some decided threshold in the old towns, it was time to change things. It would have been nice had the change been to somehow magically get more genuine new players to join every day, like in the old days. Oh well.
We should have started an MMO draft! Every year, choose people via some lottery who then must join EQ and play 30 hours per week, or off to the prison cells of Najena with them.
The game still has it's flare if you are playing for fun. If you're one of those people who wants to rush to the end game than you will be disappointed, frustrated, and burn yourself out.
