Pick the highest population server you can find, which will probably be the latest progression. For non progression, Bristlebane has a sizeable population, but finding groups is still a demoralizing chore even in a large guild, so you have to be incredibly patient. Also, you might consider playing a tank. I think they might have an easier time getting groups.
i play on bristle, and will be on tonight, and you can group with me if you like, add me to your friends list.
What times do you play Gotabigtoe? Still on Aradune? I've just recently started up again and would be happy to group if we can match times. I'm usually on a bit later, 10pm est or so.
I feel your frustration . I tried a ton of classes in the tutorial dungeon before I found a Toon that suited me like you I played in 99-00 era and loved it. I popped out and found the world I was used to deserted I like grouping about 40% solo 60% so I can make it easier than you. In the early days my brother and my wife played and grouping with them was great and we all got invited to the same guild. I have been playing silver limited access making up my mind these past few weeks about going all access. Doing a try before I buy. Yes things are not the same. I have seen all the advice they have given you. A Guild seems to be a common thread. I think the idea of building a guild of your own that reflects your values and approach to gameplay just might be the best of both worlds. Create a toon in the tutorial dungeon and just use it to advertise to returning players and new players that don't like fast track approaches. then you can give them the name of your guildsman in the "real" world. Just a thought. Happy Hunting Sir!
its a progression server on Kunark, there are no AAs and there are not 115 levels. level 12 was 3 hours in the tutorial. crescent reach was overwhelming ,which is why I went to Aradune. But thanks for helping me see how accurate my concerns were. I do think, as the other person referenced, it's an age thing. I'm latter 50s and have no desire to learn 115 levels worth of this and that while trying to juggle the various AAs progression paths, keys, and all of "that". With a progression server, Aradune ( i mention it again as my tone seemed to confuse you where I was playing or what I was playing), I can learn as the server progresses to each release, avoiding BOOM HERE IS ALL THIS DATA...enjoy type of gaming which would be a detriment to playing. Thank you though, for the condescending reply, while understanding that, to you, it was just how people not 50+ see things and was a normal reply, further enforcing the poster above observation Family friendly for old people, will start looking tonight. Thanks
My times are a bit erratic due to the alcs and the series. I am trying a side approach and leveling different classes to see which 'suits" me for the 1st toon to level up. Druid was always my fav, but, don't laugh, he is so slow....Cleric was the LEAST appealing, but he has leveled faster, but is a bit dull. I went ahead and blew my last 4k on mana/hp gear and am playing a necro. If I can go 10 levels and NOT want to log out, Ill have found my 1st toon. I know, sounds a bit odd. I am going to not worry about grouping till 20+ so I can get a feel for various classes. I am going to grab another 2 coins and buy interchangeable tank oriented items to try Sk,warrior and pally, albeit I do not think I will like a pally...then again I expected to love my druid from lvl 1, so i am not adhering to any more preconceived class preferences. That said, I do not think we will be in the same level range Bit if you are up for random questions from time to time, drop me your IG name and I will preface any message with this is gotabigtoe from the forums Per the other persons suggestion, making a guild as a clueless goof, seems like the wrong direction. I am going to just holler, once I find a toon I can enjoy, that I am after a family guild and go from there. Thanks for all of the advice fellow players. have a good week and..go Dodgers
FWIW it's easier to keep track of all the spells, abilities, AAs and whatnot if you learn them one at a time as opposed to starting with a Heroic and being overwhelmed on day one. Easier isn't always easier. I personally refuse to play a heroic unless I've played the class from level 1-85+ first for that reason. I'm also not the first person to play a character level 1-85, then heroic if for the gear, bags, coin, mount, full spellbook and character flags. and autogrant is a thing, just level and the AAs pop for free, but in a metered by level fashion so you can keep track of new / upgraded abilities instead of never knowing the differences between companion's suspension ranks 1-9 for instance. and I'm older than you. Lots of us are. ;-) It's mostly about who you fill your chats with. Good people will always help you and a surprising number of tenured raiders quest low level characters and enjoy Everquest play regardless of content level. I also heard a rumor that "Alt-o-holicism" is a thing. Even on the oldest servers with the highest average player level, the tutorial has people in it. As mentioned, Timelock Progression servers are simpler, but also more frustrating in ways- Botters, perma camped epic mobs, etc can color the play experience. On "live" servers, some things are less contested because people can make better platinum in modern zones. Personally I like low level characters with buffs from high level characters. Starting level 1 with the options of Temperance, Harnessing of Spirit, Chloroplast, Even damage shields make exploring safer and kill 200 of something for cash easier for sure. If you prefer to level lock awhile, Necromancers will buy player sacrifices to generate Esssence Emeralds.This results in unrezzable death and loss of XP associated with it. I have several characters I limit permanently that way.
Also, regardless of what character class I intend to main, I roll a druid first and level it enough to have ports, tracking. being able to port to 6 zones in 30 minutes to see if nameds are up and gearing up makes any character after, easier. Likewise finding quest mobs that wander around huge zones. Even a druid on the same account can.. as an example, port to commons, kill some Shadowed men, loot a rapier, port to Butcherblock, kill Seafuries for a bit, Gornit included (drops mad PP), loot a Ring of the Ancients, then go to Rathe Mts and kill PHs for hasten Bootstrutter, Track him, Hail him turn in Ring and Rapier, Hail him again fo freeze him in place, conveniently long anough to camp out and log in the level 1 and hand in 325 PP and get Jboots. Druid can do it in an hour. by level 50 on a Shadowknight main, that's a LOT of hours saved chasing loots.
He wants to play with real people. That's not being a child or being "too awesome" or having a pity party. It's what every returning player runs into -- an invisible wall of emptiness from 1-90 -- which is far from what we remember.
In old world EQ it oook a LOT longer to level. Now, Soloing to 50+ in a day is relatively easy and can be done in 1 cast of Temp / HoS. It doesn't make for stable low level poulations to group with. If one player plays a couple hours longer than the other, they blow by them in levels. Using hotzones helps to find groups if you don't have guild groups, but then, you level even faster. It's almost as if they want you to level up and maybe buy the next expansion or something. ;-)
Eh, it starts to slow down really, really bad in the 60s if you're truly solo and not boxing. If less people would pay for 15 accounts to box, we'd probably see more groups. This isn't anti-boxer rhetoric, mind you. Boxing is a completely valid option. It's just facts lol.
Hey there, returning old player here. Reading your post, I wanted to give you my thoughts. 1. Realize you will never get the old feeling of 20 years ago back. Once you come to that realization it isn't so bad. I started EQ in 2001 when I was in my 20s. 2. Start on a live server and not a TLP server. The reason is, more than likely the people on the TLP servers are those who want to hit end game to raid. This can make early game difficult and frustrating if you don't know the right spots to hit. Playing on live not only gets you the tutorial to go through, but mercs to help you play. 3. Know what you want to do and get from EQ. Is it nostalgia? Is it to get your Epic weapon you never got before? Having a goal can really help. For me, I never played a Necro before, nor a gnome. So I made a gnome Necro on Aradune and am having a hard, but fun time learning. There are many sources out there to look up things so you know what to do as well. 4. You could always try P99 if the real EQ doesn't do it for you. (If the filter eats what I say, Google the letter after O in the alphabet and put 99 right after).
If you want to solo lots, would suggest trying a pet class. Do be aware that few classes are at their best at the lowest levels - many don't have the attributes of what we think defines them later on Guild: Agreed: Making your own when you don't know many people is pretty pointless - the point of joining a guild in your situation is to get to know people Pretty much all the people I play with these days are over 40. Most are over 50. Many are over 60. A handful are 70+ You're not too old for EQ
Never too old. I'm almost 50! Also games with upward objectives, MMO or single player, tend to not incentivize stagnation. As long as people want to do new things, become more powerful, etc, people don't want to be left behind. It's not necessarily wrong. It's a matter of their wants. That's just something you have to navigate the reality of. How many people do you know who still have flip phones? Even cricket/boost phones are better than flip phones, so people will gravitate towards the collective upward trajectory.
I found the Gloomingdeep Tutorial most helpful when coming back. It had many aspects of the game gone over, and the Journal an added plus! The same with Crescent Reach. But each their own. It has nothing to do with age. My dad is 73 and he can play EQ fine. I am in my 40s and understand my limitations in regards to games. I know I won't raid, and I want to just have fun. So I pick when I play and look at classes and races that interest me in regards to my limits and goals. This is why I suggested making goals. And progression servers will still be moving fast so you know. Not the year or so the expansions currently took to release. Just be aware of that moving forward.
In 1999, EQ was a chatroom. Chat rooms and AOL IM were popular. The performance of games was low at the time, so the game itself often wasn't the main focus. You medded with you book open and you chatted with people. EQ brought a purpose to a chat room. A shared idea. It let people be something other than what they were without being dishonest about it, because their Avatar was a truthful reflection of who they were in this RPG world. That doesn't exist anymore. Discord, team speak, etc, it carried a lot of this out of EQ. There are night I play with people I know and it's "we're in team speak". The social aspect is present, but it happens faster. People can comprehend 400 words per minute, speak at 200 WPM and type, generously, 80 WPM. Many are much slower. Since people can communicate much more efficiently, and they can communicate while controlling their character, they had more time to do the playing. And the CPU performance grew exponentially as well. We were pushed to med for extended periods to keep server loads low. Horses were added, medding happened more efficiently and pulls were more continuous. You could type a lot during a CH cast. Less downtime meant less chatting. The CPU also allowed more abilities. AA's grew. Toons became more powerful. It increased the actions per minute dramatically. Before I could stand in one spot with a rune and mez, now I can dopple ganger, rune, PBAE mez, leap, AE mez, stun, charm, the amount of actions I can perform in seconds is huge compared to before. Not to mention computer costs came down, boxing became more prevalent to fill the gaps in the player base, and people have less time to type than ever. So the demand for text chat decreased and the demand for faster paced gameplay with less downtime increased. The gameplay itself has change dramatically. Add to this that the population of the game has decreased while the level spread has increased. This has created a cyclical decline that occurs in all games. Level gap increases which causes population density decreases which causes population decreases, and that's without outside factors such as the WoW launch. The affect is that it pushes people towards the end of the spectrum, and it makes it hard to enjoy alts. As a result, the objectives, or perhaps better called what they are, time sinks, for high level players, increase. People just have too many things on their to-do. This means more people to play with at the end, but the complete decimation of the population in the middle. And society has changed too. Apply your own perspective to that note. I will never get back Infantry, the game that died that brought me to EQ. I will never get back the feeling I got the first time I logged into EQ, into Qeynos, to die to a rat as a L1 wizard, to respawn nearby lost, and watch Fippy merc himself to the guards. But I do enjoy playing EQ more than I aver have. I enjoy my guild more than I ever have. You can be uncle Rico. Always thinking about what was or what could have been. But there's plenty in the here and now to enjoy. Level to the caps, molo, make a few friends in the game, box for free on live, many many options to enjoy EQ. But you can't expect a game, or a community, to be what you think it should be. It is what it is. PS. Infantry does still exist at FreeInfantry.
