The progression of my RP gaming and why I am playing EQ again

[Ralph Belmont]

The first RPG that I ever played was Dragon Warrior. Many of you probably did the same thing I did when you saw the advertisement on TV for Nintendo Power -- which promised to send you this game along with a strategy guide for it as a gift for new subscribers. The game was published by Enix before they merged with Square, and has had many good sequels over the years. This game captured my imagination, and the strategy guide for it included detailed concept illustrations and lore to richen the experience.

I was hooked on the genre. Unfortunately, I never played any of the Final Fantasy games for NES during my childhood. Once SNES had been out for a couple of years, a new game from Ape INC (which would eventually become Creatures, Inc. with its highly successful Pokemon games) collaborating with Hal Laboratories (remember Air Fortress!?!?) called Earthbound got my attention again because it came in a huge box. I had no idea what I was in for, it just looked cool in the box. When I talked my parents into getting it for me I was treated to another delicious RPG adventure -- one whose lack of conventionality I thoroughly enjoyed. Some of you who never played Earthbound for SNES have been able to enjoy its main character, Ness, in some of the Smash Bros. titles.

The next big RPG that I got my hands on was Final Fantasy 7. We all know what a big deal that one was. 3-D gameplay in an RPG? It had rich backgrounds, a well crafted score and a storyline that was both serious and comical at times. I'm sure it wasn't for everybody, but I was one of the ones who was forever changed (I named my main EQ character, a magician, after the master of the elements summon known as Kujata - although I removed the 'u').

As awesome as the 3-D gameplay was, not only did the next RPG I spent much time on lack any 3-D elements -- it was a MUD whose only visual elements were your health, mana, and endurance bars in your UI. It was a MORPG but it wasn't massively anything. At its peak, it probably had less than 600 players online. It was called Darkness Falls: The Crusade (which was a sequel to Darkness Falls). There were three realms -- Good, Evil, and Chaos -- and had many common fantasy and horror genre races that could be chosen as characters. If this sounds familiar, it should, because the intellectual successor to it was Dark Age of Camelot, another game produced by Mythic. My days on Darkness Falls: The Crusade were the first time I had ever experienced RPG gameplay that was multiplayer, and the people I was teaming up with and playing against were all over the world. I was hooked on this one for a couple of years. It had its problems though, while the writing and gameplay were great the customer service was lousy.

I'll never forget the first time I heard of EQ. One of my fellow evil realm teammates, a zombie named Rigormortis, said that he and some of the others were going to go play this new game. EverQuest, they said, was one I should look into.

In December of 1999 I obtained EverQuest and made a halfling rogue on Rodcet Nife right away. His name was Meddle, which I chose because I was really enjoying Pink Floyd at the time AND that word appeared in the description of halflings. Let's just say I was blown away.

This new game EverQuest again captured my imagination. The nature of its content and the massiveness of the world and the comraderie I experienced in my first few days playing in Misty Thicket had me, as you can now see, hooked for life. Groups were not that easy to come by for a rogue in those days, and I felt that I wanted more self-sufficiency, which was promised to those who created magicians. The class would also provide significant challenge to go along with its power.

Being a magician gave me license to do what I came to enjoy most with these games -- goofing around. Sure, I loved the thrill of battle - teaming up and eventually raiding casually was a lot of fun. I had never been a power player, though, and I never will be. Sure, you can play these sort of games that way if you want to, but you also have the option of wandering across the world and truly feeling like you are an adventurer. Collaborating with other players, asking for and offering advice always had great rewards -- and there was always something new to learn about the game. At the time, I really didn't know what Dungeons and Dragons was, but when I began to read high fantasy including D&D novels I had a rich frame of reference that made them that much more enjoyable because of my time on EQ. No surprise that D&D tabletop gaming was the biggest inspiration for those who made the game happen. It was a true labor of love for them, and they deserve a lot of credit for not only their creativity but their ability to negotiate the logistics of bringing a world like Norrath to us.

We're all here because of them. World of Warcraft came not long after, created by a bunch of EverQuest junkies who had also played Warcraft ( I gave the original warcraft a try at one point, but strategy games don't do much for me ). I leveled a couple of characters up and definitely enjoyed it a lot, but I always felt that the more cartoony style and the simplification of options were things I didn't care for as much. Eventually I got bored with it, but the whole time I was still bouncing back and forth and playing EverQuest.

Since playing WoW and eventually getting burned out on EverQuest, I put in my share of time and money into EQ2. It is a really cool game and I will probably find myself playing EQ2 again pretty soon. Anyway, SWTOR came out a few years later and once again, I got the collectors edition of the game but I didn't have all that much fun with it despite its advancements. Having played Knights of the Old Republic, I felt I had enjoyed the style of play and felt more like a real Jedi when I was playing that. SWTOR just felt like WoW or EQ2 with Star Wars skins on everything. I haven't completely given up on it, but other things have and will probably keep me busy enough.

Other things soon got my attention, things such as Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn. This is a game that was talked about for years before it got released in its original format, which got scrapped not long after as Square Enix went back to the drawing board. I enjoyed Realm Reborn a lot and got a character up to level 42 before real life distractions took me away. I just found out that the PS3 version which I purchased was discontinued and that I will have to use my product key to unlock the ps4 version and then buy the PC version (or spend 300-400 on a ps4) if I want to continue with my existing characters. Could be worse, I'll probably get around to it, but this brings us back to EverQuest.

Daybreak has not killed our game yet. And they may keep it alive for some time, we will see what pans out. The enhancements that have been made are great IMO, and outweigh the unecessarily revamped zones which, to me, definitely lack the charm of the ones they were supposed to improve on.

Speaking of Daybreak, I was this close to buying a founders pack for Landmark when they announced it would be shut down. I can't imagine how people who had just got done shelling out $100 for nothing must have felt. This is part of the reason I am sort of glad I am usually, no pun intended, late to the game. What a horrible bait and switch the EQ Next phenomenon proved to be, and what amazing potential was lost when Daybreak decided this sort of brand reinvestment could not be afforded. Wasn't fun? What a gigantic cop out. Even if that was true, which I am more than skeptical about, fix the parts that aren't fun and make them fun. Obviously there were other considerations at hand which we don't need to waste too much time hashing out.

The point is, EverQuest must be a pretty high quality experience for me and many others to be returning to it in the face of what Daybreak did to EQ Next. Seriously, we're not playing EQ because we trust Daybreak to take good care of it, are we? Even my optimism can't reach that far. Their two expansions do not even attempt to offer the luster of ones that came before. And yes, they generally went downhill with the quality of the content after Velious and PoP. Regardless of your opinion there, this does bring me to mention Project1999.

Ahhh, Project1999, how I adore thee. Want to spend hours on CR? We got that. Want to feel what it's like to navigate Norrath without all the optimizations that have come in 20 years? No problemo. For me, it is a lot of fun and a heavy dose of healthy nostalgia to play Project1999, and if you want to have a real wild and crazy time you should definitely try one of the other custom servers like The Hidden Forest (yissss). And if there is anything Daybreak has done to redeem themselves, it is to sanction and allow the continuation of this third party FREE TO PLAY venture. They do deserve credit for that.

But I will also be playing EverQuest again, and a lot more. If anything in my life has helped to reinforce the virtues of patience, it is this game. It took me a year of real life time to get my magician's epic 1.0, which will now just be an ornament in my HOUSE. House? Yes we have houses now! And so many other things which, if you truly still love your characters will give you a chance to breathe new life into them. And that Orb of Mastery will have a place of honor above my mantle - because it represents frustration, joy, blood, sweat, and even the tears of Prexus.

In the end, no game will ever come close to what EQ is. May its name remain its hallmark for generations to come.

[Conor McGreGOAT]

The nostalgia is so great but going back, the game is everything I remember. P1999 is really close to that experience. I miss playing a game where you played for hours and hours in a day and didn't really accomplish anything, but YOU HAD FUN DOING IT.

I had quit EQ once and went to DAoC, I really enjoyed the game but I got bored quick at max level as a healer where my options were swing a stick, or heal/mez. Don't get me wrong, the game was great, but EQ called me back. Then, like you, I went to WoW with my brother and some friends and we played WoW for years, some still do(off and on). Other games we tried that couldn't keep our attention for more than a month were LoTR, SWToR, Rift, and a few F2P games.

I recently got into BDO but the game is just void of personallity, you only speak to people in random chats and nothing is meaningful. I enjoyed leveling and playing through the story but there is no point to it all.

I am about to start back onto Agnarr I believe, things have changed but I want to experience it all again, P1999 is great but I came back too late, I think if P1999 were to start a new server I would be there in a heartbeat.