I wanted a way to relax last night, in preparation for a huge winter storm that’s hitting us today and so I decided to play EQ for a while. You know that feeling you get, where you’re restless with the characters you have and want to play someone new? Well that’s what I had. I decided to start over with a new beastlord, and was working my way through the tutorial. The early access to Underfoot began yesterday, and channels were active with everyone LFG and searching for people to gather with. It was nice to see.
I started thinking about all those posts people make about how you can never go back to your first MMO and capture the same feeling you had the first time around. I think that’s incorrect. I think it really depends on the person, and their play style.
I think perhaps we as writers and bloggers are more jaded then your average player who is just gaming and not telling the world about it. I know a good number of people who don’t write what so ever, game hop moderately, and still return to their first love (in this case, a game) without issue, and happily continue playing it, pondering all the while why they left to begin with. I love to see this.
With so much competition out there between video games, we expect more and more from what we’re playing. Understandable I suppose, but I like to think that I still can just simply enjoy a game for it’s very basic offerings. I don’t need to pick a game apart and find each of its flaws before deciding if I enjoy it or not.
Anyhow, the little beastlord made her way through the tutorial without too much issue. It wasn’t that long ago that I was doing them, so it was still fresh in my mind. I also had the pleasure of running through Plane of Mischief looking for Brisbane earlier in the evening with two friends of mine. He wasn’t up, nor was Innoruuk (disappointing!) and so we decided to go check in on Grieg in Griegs End. He wasn’t up either, sadly. I did take a LOT of video of the adventures though, which I’ll put together later on today and post. Such great memories of that zone.
I play on the Drinal server, so if you happen to be making your way to EQ for any reason be sure to say hello! I did also check out Brell’s Rest in Underfoot, but I was starting to fall asleep, so I called it an early night.
Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself! I’ll see you in Norrath.
I’ll echo what We Fly Spitfires said. Last month I resubbed to EQ1 out of boredom – I hadn’t played since 2001, and while the nostalgia was overwhelming in a positive way, and I enjoyed what I saw and was able to do, I was severely disappointed by how archaic the actual 3-D engine and interface felt. I could not get comfortable “driving” my char with mouse and keyboard in a manner consistent with nearly every single other 3-D 1st or 3rd person game released in the past 8 years. Something about it is just way off – at least part of it is the very slow horizontal view rotation speed (even with max mouse sensitivity both in game and on my mouse). Part of it is also the lack of basic, taken-for-granted usability mechanisms for interacting with the world and your stuff. I kept trying to drag and drop stuff around in my inventory, and forgot you have to click to get a hold of an item, then place where you want, and click again. Just feels… odd and clunky.
I’m back to EQ2 now, mostly because I want something EQ/Norrath related, but need the feel of a modern engine/interface. I would prefer to spend my time in EQ1, but I just can’t. It’s a shame.
I quite often feel the urge to return to old games like EQ but the thing that puts me off tends to be the poor interfaces. I tried to go back to AO this year and I couldn’t get past the terrible UI and lack of mouse controls. I feel like if some of the older games updated stuff like that a bit more, the games may still feel more playable.
For me going back to a game is a bit different I suppose… I don’t feel the need to play so hardcore and just relax while I play. For some reason when I start up a new MMO I tend to try to race to the highest level and start messing around with the “end game” content. I think that is actually starting to ruin some MMOs for me because when they are released end game isn’t always in place. Going back to EQ was one of my better ideas I think, I have enjoyed myself quite a bit just leveling new toons. The community is really what makes me love the game though… its almost perfect for me :)