I have a Gold account and purchased the collector's edition of the game last fall, The game was installed on my laptop and I just had to replace the hard drive. Now I cannot find where to download the game. Surely I do not have to purchase the game again? Can someone please provide the link to where I download the game? I have searched all of the menus and can only find options for Free-to-play or to purchase what I have already paid for.
Head over to https://www.everquest2.com/ and click on the big Play Free link. A new window will open asking you to make an account. Since you already have account click the download the game link at the top. This will download the client and you can sign in to patch the entire game.
Do yourself a favour and buy a cheap usb harddrive. Then backup your EQ2 directory to harddrive - and keep it up to date with a weekly backup. That way any future hardrive failures, pc upgrades, new pc's, OS reinstalls and new OS installs won't adversly impact your game time. You can simply reinstate the game files from your backup, run the patcher and you'll be good to go.
