Thread about how the game has changed

Hello all, I played EQ back at day 1 until DAOC and EQ2 released. My highest toon was a level 35ish dark elf warrior on Talon Zek.

I have been gone so long that I have no idea what has changed since the early oughts. Is there a thread somewhere for returning players that discusses some of the more significant changes since the first 3 or 4 years?

Thanks

I'm not sure if there is a singular thread, but as someone myself who was around in 1999, and has returned in recent years and comes back every year or so for some time, here are some of the major things that I've noticed:

-Player cities are absolutely dead and empty. You just will not find anybody in Qeynos, Freeport, Erudin, Kelethin, Neriak, etc. The main hubs now seem to be Plane of Knowledge, and the Guild Lobby.

-Related, unless you are a subbed player, you won't even be starting in those cities anymore, as Crescent Reach is the new starter zone. That's where you'll spend the first 15ish or so levels, before moving on to Blightfire Moors where you could probably push 40.

-Leveling is waaaaaaay faster. You mentioned getting to level 35ish back in the day, and I topped out at 20. Nowadays, I can crank out 40's, 50's, 60's in just a couple weeks of play at a couple hours a day. There's a few reasons for this:

• Faster XP gain in general
• Hot Zones that boost that XP gain even further (along with quests from the PoK that send you to level appropriate Hot Zones for simple tasks that you can carry out for extra XP, gear, and finding a spot to level)
• Mercenaries that give you a group member to help you fight higher level mobs
• Defiant gear which is pretty powerful, outclasses any of the standard EQ drops from back in the day making characters more powerful across the board.

-So much quality of life; i.e. less XP loss on death, no more needing to do corpse runs to get gear back (but can still get XP back from rezzes), additional bank and inventory space, way more plat gain, tons of pots that give you access to any buff you'd ever need, The Bazaar for trading, PoK and Nexus fast travel hubs
-Overall feel of the game. Back in '99-2001, the game felt huge. Fast travel was a commodity, and otherwise you were forced to actually navigate through the world. This made the world feel large and vast, and gave it a sense of immersion and adventure. The world now feels smaller with a smaller population in general, the players that are there hermiting in the guild lobby with their boxes, and fast travel hubs that instantly teleport you just about anywhere you need to go, within probably 2-3 zones away tops. The sense of adventure and immersion is lost, and EverQuest is now largely just a looter RPG or guild raider. Some people prefer the original experience from 1999, while others prefer the more user friendly version of EverQuest. I think there are strengths and weaknesses to both, but ultimately, find validity in both of them and enjoy both. I do prefer the original experience, but that experience was also something new to me. I get yearly TLP launches to go back and have something resembling that experience again, and I have live to continue on the rest of the time.

Tradeskills much easier now

This was very helpful and accurate. I created a couple of characters on Oakmyst to try out the UI and try to remember how to play again. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I could make enough coin for spells just from selling trash loot to vendors. I had over 2 plat and I am only level 5 and haven't left the glooming mines yet.

I am enjoying the nostalgia feels and getting used to the UI which is much better IMO than it was several years back when I tried to return.

Your doing the right path - thru the tutorial.

Something you might or might not remember are Veteran's Rewards. They used to give the to players who kept subscriptions going year after year. Each year was a new one.

Now all players get them at level 1. You do not need a sub or anything. The reason I mention these is because there are 2 you will want to use. To find these look on your character screen towards the bottom and you will see ALT ADV. This is your "alternative advancement" key. Once you click that go to the top tab that says "special" then scroll down to the bottom and you will see "Throne Of Hero's" and "Lesson of the Devoted" Click them and you can see where it now says "hot key" so you can put them in your button bar to click when ever you need.

So Throne will port you to the guild lobby which is the main hang out on most servers every hour and half I think it is. Free ports are always good.

Lesson will double your experience while killing mobs for 30 minutes. You can use it once every 24 hours. Pretty handy to click on when your going to spend some time fighting mobs.

Gday Ealdred
You might like one of the new TLP servers - I'm on Teek, it's at the Kunark stage, so it's much like the early days but with all the new QoL improvements. Having huge fun

Sounds like Ealdred is happy on Oakmyst - I've heard great things about it and rolled there myself back when it started up but then life ate me. The posts in this thread have been really interesting and useful to me as well as someone who wasn't sure about all the changes since the old days - so thanks!

If anyone wants a brand spanking new TLP so they can start a little farther in the wayback machine there are actually two new ones, literally just days old, Teek and Tormax. Teek is the higher population server with better loot, Tormax the more laid back and old school vibe.

The game is still huge, but you need higher levels to safely experience half of it. I’ve been back for two years after being gone 12, and I still have tons of zones I haven’t even traveled to, entire expansions I know nothing of. I am constantly learning about quality of life improvements I didn’t yet know about. Even with fast travel, the world is massive. The only way the game can feel small is if you’re only considering the content you saw back in the day as “the world”.