Old school player from launch til Legends of Ykesha expansion wanting to return but has questions

Before I can put money down back on this game, I was a original EQer from 1999 to 2003-2004ish and I lost my account after a few months of it being inactive or not paid for and I ost my level 60 Druid Wood Elf named Linkin which I BELIEVE if my memory serves me right was on the Fennin RO server back in the golden age of everquest days. I REALLY wanna get back into this game but I tried the free to play version where you start ot no matter what a as a prisoner.First I need to know which Servers are the MOST ACTIVE for North American Players (I live in Northern California in the Sacramento area) AND I know the population is NOWHERE CLOSE to where it used to be, but I'm hoping the right servers are still populated ENOUGH to be reminiscent on the old everquest. I have afew issues I need help on before I'm gonna be willing to pay 15 a month again for EQ long after its hayday. First, can you play both eq and eq2 for the same price? just wondering cause I never played eq 2 and would prefer eq cause of the nostalgia , but id like to go where theres a heavier population to be honest. If its not big a difference then ill wanna focus on eq1....BUT heres the things I need help on before I will pay to be a full member again - 1. I have a new style LAPTOP that doesn't have a mouse scroll button....so WITHOUT THAT....How do I pan the camera back to see the back of my charcter for the camera positioning? Believe it or not that's a big deal for me because otherwise its really hard to move around if I cant fully see things or where I'm going. 2. I NEED TO JOIN A GUILD IMMEDIATLY. I am a oldschool player who used to make money as a druid doing ports, lol, I know that's been long gone as a option to make money in EQ after the luclin expansion. But my druids long gone so ill be restarting carcter wise anyways. But WHICH SERVER IS THE BEST for NORTH AMERICAN Community interaction IN THE GAME. I loved eq for the interactivity and meeting of friends through meeting people on your exploits through norrath. I heard the connectivity of needing eachother died slowly over the expansions over the years and that you don't need eachother like you did in the oldschool eq, but I like the graphic updates as opposed to the old school 1999 everquest.SO - to ask #2 one more time ...WHICH SERVER OR SERVERS ARE THE BEST For Interacting and communicating/working with other players and please anyone who knows any GOOD guilds please let me know who the head honcho is to contact in hopes of trying to become part of the guild ; AND.... which servers these guilds are on.....my email is mitchellarmour84@gmail.com for any EQ players to email me. I REALLY am trying to find excuses to make me get back on eq as a paying player, but I wanna make sure I'm not walking into a ghost town scenario if I put down money to rejoin norrath. Thank you.

-Mitch Armour (OLD SCHOOL EQ PLAYER looing for any good reasons to come back )

To answer what server that is going to be difficult as most people only play on one server and at most some people play on 2 or maybe 3 servers. Playing past that number just seems crazy to me unless someone is playing on one live server until max level and then jumping over to various TLP servers until they max out on each of those. If you are looking for more grouping opportunities at the lower levels one of the TLP servers would probably be your best route. On the live servers it can be rather difficult to find a group for levels 1-100 as most of the player population that has stayed with the game is not actively playing low level characters.

If a TLP does not interest you look in the guild recruitment section here on the forums. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...st-cst-pst-xegony.219910/page-16#post-3651447 for example states to accept players of all levels and the leader is rather active here on the forums.

As far as playing on EQ1 and EQ2 you can do both as a paying customer. In fact there are more games than just these two available to you if you are "all access". You can see a complete lineup on the official site of all the games that comes with your monthly subscription.

Have you attempted to recover your old account? Short of an account ban your account and characters should still be sitting there waiting for your return. If you cant recall your info there is a process you can go through to try and recover it. The email and CC number used are what required I believe but don't hold me to that.

Lastly look through some of the other threads posted here in the newbie area. We get new and returning players asking many of the questions you are asking on a regular basis. It would be nice if there was a way to get all of you filtered in together since you are all wanting a lot of the same things yet you don't know the other person is even in game wanting to group with someone just like yourself.

Good luck and welcome back should you decide to give it a try.

Welcome back to The Greatest Game Ever Made

The game has grown, and with that I want to draw to your attention that there is a lot of things to get reaquinted with. I myself came back about 3 years ago, and I am actually still learning new stuff about the game.

At the same time, the staff has shrunken, to acomodate the much smaller playerbase. So support is based on community and on some online resources, that people then study.

It is a game of singular commitment for many, more a hobby than something that is spun up ocassionally.

So, after all this yadda yadda, let me try to help with some of your issues:

Account retrieval: this is a really good idea to invest the time in. It has become easier than it was 10 years ago, and it has a very important benefit: your old account has Veteran status, with _all_ the Veteran benefits available for a limited number of toons. One of these is a daily XP bonus, that will really help alot. Also, In my opinion, playing with your original character brings a sense of continuity that I myself really apreciate.

“The jailed part” - this you have experienced is actually the tutorial, it is optional, but you should really really do it. It plays to level 10, and if you do all the quests, it will take you through a lot of game mechanics you will need later on. So I would suggest that you do the account retrieval, and why you wait (it will take days), you play a few toons through the tutorial. As you do this, I would suggest that you take a break from time to time, and read up on the Newbie forum, there is a lot of good info.

Going for a guild before you select server is a really good idea! You have a decision to make with regards to how to adress the level gap. On “Live” servers, people have been playing since the beginning, and 99% are above level 100. Getting above level 100 is somewhat easy for a player that has been playing for a couple of years, but for retuning players it can take quite a while. Good solutions to this are the Heroic option, where you pay to get a Heroic character, that starts at level 85. XP rates on live are much faster than they used to be.

A possible alternative is to start on a “TLP” server. These are newer servers that emulate a more classic experience, where the expansions are unlocked progressively over time. The XP rate is slower than on Live. Players here also race to max level, so it is also a question of being able to keep up with the population. If you like this option, you are in luck: a few weeks ago a new TLP server was launched, Coinaerv or something like that, so if you start here, you have a chance of “riding a wave” of people in grouping relevant level range. I think you would have to act fast, and also choose a character that is both good for grouping and can solo, so that you can catch up with the population. This is speculative for me, I have not played on TLP. TLP has their own sub-forum.

Sorry if the explanations are a bit off, I am not a native english speaker.

You will be sorely disappointed if you expect today's Everquest to even slightly resemble 1999 Everquest.

In all honesty I think it depends on what your experience was like during the early years of EQ. Some people have this warm and fuzzy feeling of awesome groups and people. For me I found early EQ to be rather frustrating. Sitting and waiting for a spot to open up in groups. Ninja looting and always being broke. A lot of the community at the time was rather young and with youth comes a lack of patience and overall not a very helpful atmosphere for those who were struggling to grasp how the mechanics of the game worked. Its for this very reason why I started boxing early on in EQ even though I did not even know boxing was a thing. It was only once I started doing this that my EQ experience in the early years was really enjoyable as I was able to actually explore and get experience and make some plat to get gear that would allow me to hold up against things past the starting cities. I find modern EQ to be far superior to early EQ based on the fact that my understanding of the game has expanded and overall as a gamer I am a million times better. Also the community has matured a lot and I find most encounters in game and on the boards here to be constructive even when I might not agree with someone I can still respect their perspective on things. I did not find much of this in the early years. Combine all of this with the pure amount of content and a desire to actually not just play this game but understand the game and it is really a rather enjoyable form of entertainment. I will say there is still a sense of nostalgia even for me but it has more to do with certain zones or npc's and not so much the players. EQ was unlike anything I had ever seen or experienced before. It took all of the aspects of every game I had ever loved and some things I could not have even imagined possible for gaming and put them into this awesome world I am happy to be apart of.

The only way to claim the title Boxer is to have done it before the onset of easy mode (mercs). Physician heal thyself!

Qft
Original EQ was groundbreakingly innovative, but compared to modern EQ it would be deemed terrible.

and:

I don't think these statements are necessarily in conflict. EQ-1999 and EQ-2018 are two very different games. If an EQ-1999 player simply wants to relive the experiences that he had in 1999, coming back to EQ-2018 may not give him what he wants. Then again, he may find that the current state of the game suits his tastes and preferences better than what he remembers. Personally, I much prefer EQ-2018 to EQ-1999, but to each his own.

In a way, the TLP servers are a compromise, an attempt to recreate the things that appealed to the 1999 player base without the things that frustrated us back then. I haven't played any of them, so I can't tell how successful the experiment has been.

First off thank you all for responding as fast as you all have. I AM WELL AWARE the population has dwindled bigtime from when I last played EQ in 2004, But I prefer meeting quality players over quanity so that's cool by me! Coirnaiv seems like where I wanna go for TLP server, and if I can find a guild ill join that for another server so ill only be playing 2 servers at most. I literallu have my CC info ready to put in but I'm waiting to have all my ducts in a row before I put down money again,lol.

AND to answer the above quote....in 2004 when I stopped playing , my account just was disccountinued 4-6 months of me not having a eq account or something like that, I remember also before this happened I had a crap computer that lagged my druid in the middle of group battles in heated zones so my druid died somewhere I couldn't get a rez....back in the day when your corpse had all its loot and equipment on it and you had to recover your corpse. I know that's one of the old school dynamics that are long gone.....BUT OFCOURSE I want to get my Wood Elf DRUID Linkan back!!! BUT that was in 2004, back then my deceased grandfather payed for me so I DO NOT HAVE any of that old CC info what so ever....and I'm sure I can guess my old user name but ive switched email accounts 3 times from 1999-2008 but I'm pretty sure its one of 2 AOL email addresses from old. BUT Do I contact SONY to get them to help me recover my old account? and if so...my charcter was on Fennin RO which is either dead or very inactive now and I would wanna switch him to one of the more active servers IF I was able to retrieve my old account somehow and the 14 years ive been away, I shuld have a lot of stuff waiting on me in terms of being able to level up quickly from where I left off....BUT I don't know how to go about it, so do I contact Daybreak games or what? because I'm gonna need help , I might only be able to remember the old email address my account was on, this was 14 years ago ya know.


AND I don't believe a very important question was answered that I need answered...having to do with the camera scrolling to see the entire back body of my charcter and then some for the best view...PROBLEM IS I don't have a mouse with a scroll mechanism on it that it says is the way to bring the camera back for my preferred camera angle I always used. Is there any other way to scroll back the camera to where its not right on your back when you switch to that view, but to where you can bring the camera back to where you can see a wider shot of what your charcter is doing/where its going. I have a ASUS laptop , so I need help in knowing how to scroll back the camera since I don't have a mouse scroller which it says is the way to do that. And my mouse is a Touch Motion mouse pad that come with new school laptops like mine.

My FACEBOOK is www.facebook.com/mitchellTarmour , Mitch Armour on FB Messanger, and my email is MitchellArmour84@gmail.com , id appreciate emails if there are people from guilds from particular servers or whatever that would like to have me join them or WHATEVER, please contact me. I'm still waiting to get all these answers and now I wanna retrieve my old wood elf Druid if its possible LOL , so as I hold my CC wanting to put money down, I am waiting to get all the answers I need , but I AM COMING BACK I just wanna make sure the camera angle situation is customizable to where I can scroll back for my preferred camera angle even though my laptop has a motion mouse pad built in, and NO Mouse scroll button which it says was the only way to scroll back the camera angle. So please let me know if theres an alternative way to do that otherwise itll be hard for me to play so that is kind of a big deal to me....AND further detail on exactly how to go about retrieving my old Account from early 2004 (last time I used it). Thank you all and as soon as these questions are answered and dealt with I WILL be back in Norrath!! (IF theres a way for me to scroll back my camera angle ,since I don't have a mouse scroller that used to be the way to do it and still is I checked, that could be a deal breaker as weird as it sounds so please get back to me on that asap cause I literally wanna join back into EQ today if I possibly can but I gotta get that answer to that main question, and details as to how to go about retrieving my old account even if I forget allot of the info from it in past, being it was 14+ years ago.


-Mitch

F9 (I believe) will give you different camera angles. As far as your particular computer and mouse I don't have specific knowledge of them so I cant give you an educated response on those. If the mouse is the last thing keeping you from coming back you might consider getting a new mouse. I don't think I have ever owned a mouse without a scroll feature and that seems rather odd to me but with new technology there comes new changes. You could probably pick something up for 10 bucks or less that would let you scroll in and out or search online to see if there is a tool that will work with your computer to allow you to do this. Maybe this feature is built into your mouse or computer but you have to do a specific combination of key presses for it to work?

I have an Asus G75 ROG laptop and I do not use a the track pad. Buy a USB wireless mouse. That is what I use. I think i got it from target a few years ago.

Really if you want a somewhat.. "view" of the current state of EQ. Log in on the Test server for a few days and get a feel for it. It is a FTP server with "All Access". Bop around for a few days, take in the overwhelming changes, then see if it would be something you really want to get back into.

Also, like Shaydoe Nyte said.. pick up a usb mouse, they are like 15 bucks.. or a wired mouse for like 2 dollars at your nearest goodwill haha

Well Mitch might have a special reason for not using a regular mouse that we do no know of. A lot of people have health related reasons for not using mice.

I am wondering if in key configuration it is possible to add a key to the zoom-out-by-scroll-wheel-thingie-function...

Just doing a quick google search for how to use mouse scroll using laptop I found several links. It sounds like you have to use two finger and you might need to configure your touchpad settings for it to work. One finger would be on the touchpad and the other would move up or down on the touchpad as if there is an invisible scroll wheel there. Not sure if this helps or will work with your computer but worth doing a quick search and trying out. I have never tried it personally on any of my laptops since I hate touchpads with a passion and have always just connected a mouse whenever I have bought a new laptop.

Don't pay for anything, you don't need to. Just pick any live server and play (and don't play on Test, you don't need to). Do the tutorial if you can't remember anything, or turn it off when creating a character and you can start in the original starter zones with no guides. Forget about your old character because they are so easily replaced now, there is gear 100000 times better that you can get for free or if you spend some plat you can get a lot of it right away. Also if you get pro at the game you can take a new character to level 60 in single evening. You really don't need that old character for anything, but getting access to that account will be a huge help. Try to remember the account name and/or email address and start a ticket to ask them to help you get back into that account. The old account will give you lots of bonuses that are really important, like the ability to chat to people, a big bunch of free plat, a really powerful xp boost, a free 100% rez and corpse summon once a week, and a much stronger character thanks to a higher AA limit and a much better merc.

If you can't get that account back, you can still play on a new free account, but it will be a bit harder to progress unless you pay for a sub. You have to sub sometime if you get to the high levels, but with that old account you can get a lot further without paying anything.

Bear in mind you will have to solo now because the game has no players for 100 levels on the normal "Live" servers. Pick a "progression" server instead if you need to group, but you have to pay a sub for those, also they have a lot more scummy players. Your choice. But either way, soloing is a lot easier now. And on live servers you get a mercenary which will basically power level you. If you can box a second character, even if you only use it for buffs or ports, that character can also have a mercenary which means you now have your own group of 4 characters, one of them will be you, and 2 of them will be mercenaries that fight for you and can do all the healing etc.. Basically life is a lot easier thanks to mercs, but it really helps to have 2 of them. Not essential but a lot better. As for the thread tangent, old EQ was far better, anyone who says otherwise never played it. Sadly old EQ is long dead and there are no equivalents. The nearest would be P99 but that sucks for other reasons.

do a /testcopy and go to the test server. The community is fantastic. there's no screwed up economy. People actually go out of their way to help. If you don't want to have to pay a subscription fee, test server is free, AND has no restrictions to your character, unlike the Live server. If you do pay a sub, you get bonus xp.

There's really no con to playing on the test server.

Are you guaranteed that your toon is kept and not reset?

Yes.

I repeatedly copy over toons (mules) from FV which have crafting materials, rare items, etc. You take everything, including money. I think i've copied about 50 million plat so far. The server honestly has no economy. No one is trying to screw anyone over with item costs, etc.

Just don't overwrite a toon which you are leveling. LOL. then you're screwed.

I see on EQRessource that Test Server has been locked yesterday for awhile. I guess it's patched along the way. Live servers have scheduled patches at least.

Oh and you can have a look at all server population on EQRessource with it's history on 24h, check what server is the most populated. If it works (it should), last TLP isn't as populated as FV.

https://eqresource.com/serverstatus.php

Hey all, once again thanks for the suggestions and everything: 1: as I said in my opening I WANT to play with others, to me playing with others is a lot of the fun of EQ, I don't want to solo, thatll be boring to me. Meeting people through grouping was half the fun to me in oldschool EQ, and the parts I hated in Old School like the screwed up economy...are gone now in the new EQ. I'm convinced I want back in....but IblisTheMage was right....I'm basically broke lol , my PS4 got broken just 2 months after buying it so I am in the middle of sending it into sony for the warranty fix....so I need a game to play definatly....but right now I truly don't have money to get a mouse and transportations a problem right now LONG EXPLINATION trust me. So until I can get access to a usb mouse , all I got is this mouse pad with my laptop, and I have re-entered the free game and I stopped in the tutorial BECAUSE I couldn't pull back my view the way I know it worked for me in past and cant get comfortable with any other viewpoint that comes from just hitting f9 so until I fix that problem I cant get back into the game as much as I want to.