Hello all - I started playing April 1999 and played until 2003. I have really missed the game and have been thinking of returning, however, the one thing I am afraid of is returning to a deserted game. What is the player population like these days like? Will there be many to group with or... ? Thank you for your time and I look forward to your replies. Maelstrum
There are lots of players. There a jump after f2p went into effect. You could always start a free account, and go to the zones and times you expect to play and see if there are players there or not. And Test gives gold account and al vet rewards for free.
I'm a returned player and I think there is still plenty of people to group with. The only downside is you will probably have to put your own group of people together. Seems like hardly anyone uses the LFG tool anymore, and its back to catching people in general or ooc chat to get your groups formed up. I haven't regretted coming back, and am getting ready to bump my main account to gold.
Download the game (See http://launch.soe.com/everquest/ ). Install the game. Run the game EverQuest.exe. On the patcher top left, click on Version: Live, and in the option window, switch it to Test and hit Apply. You may want to run Live version first and /testcopy a toon over to test server, if you have you want to do that with (They get copied, not moved). Yther Ore.
I came back ftp a few months ago after a long absence and I'm glad that I did. You'll probably find the old school zones pretty empty at the lower levels but once you get through the mid forties things start to pick up. Once in the 60's it's not too hard to find a grp. The good news is that leveling is faster than ever at least to 64 which is where I am and aa's seem to be easier too, I've ground over 400 already and I don't play as often as most seem to. The gear is so improved that you'll have to see it to believe it and rank three buffs jack your stats higher than you can imagine. I laughed out loud one morning when I woke up and found that I had left my shammy up all night long in the guild lobby. He had almost 20K hps!!! It's crazy! If someone had told me around the time I left the game that their 64 shaman had 20k hps I'd have laughed at them. Not any more. The point of all that is that it makes you over geared for old school zones and if you work it right you can really blow through the first 60 levels because the xp is still the same or better if it's a hot zone. And all of that is important because with the number of levels there are today getting caught up would be impossible otherwise. Only thing that I would suggest is to reopen your old acct rather than start over from scratch. Even if you don't have any ftp race/classes available from your old chars, youll still have your veterans and loyalty benefits and those can come in pretty handy. Mack
Make sure you know what you're getting into if you decide to play on Test. It would suck if you ended up not liking it. Starting over on a regular server might feel like a lot of work. I believe experience gain is doubled on Test. Low level zones might be empty due to the ability to type a command that levels you to like 50 or something.
i also played from 99 until about 2005, left and came back many times, but i have to say, im having more fun now than i have had since before i quit the first time...
Hello Maelstrum and all other returning players in this thread! Indeed test is a good place to play but your find every one is max level or flying through content. If your looking at experience EQ at as near release version as possible and enjoy casual raiding check out Progression X. We are a raiding guild on Trakanon working on each expansion in the order, lvl and gear it was meant to be tackled at. For more information visit our site, pm me here, or /tell Draconic, Burp, Raynard or Nemo in game! Welcome back to EQ!
