Planar Progression
stargrace 
Yesterday was such a trip down memory lane, on so many levels. Back in 2003 I was playing an enchanter and I was about to go on my first raid ever. My closest in game friend (A beastlord named Fistinyereyes) was in Keepers of the Elements – and I was going to get to go with them on a raid. I can’t even begin to describe how I felt about it. I was nervous. I was well under geared. I had only been playing a short while, and I was so excited. The raid? Bertoxxulous. As a regular enchanter it would have been my job to keep certain things (I forget what not) mez’d while the raid dealt with other things. Since I was too low they didn’t expect that of me and I basically just got to watch two hours of madness. I am also fairly sure I held my breath the whole time. So yesterday when Ninga and Ultann suggested we head off to see if Bertox was up I was pumped. All the memories I had from these raids came rushing back to me. Now, the zone Bertox is in is considered a hotzone. There were a few people around exping, but not too many. The event for Bertox spawns a LOT of mobs and players use that to obtain a crazy amount of experience – and then leave Bertox up and repeat it in six hours. I felt a little bad doing the full event but it was still so much fun. Bertoxxulous fell without too much of an issue, and I just stood there stunned. I remember having so many people along to take him down when I went and now we’d just trio’d him.
Wow. How things change.
It wasn’t the end of our PoP destruction though. We also defeated Aerin’Dar, Rydda’Dar, a bunch of named inside of Sol Ro minus Sol Ro himself because he was not up – Terris Thule, Tallon Zek, Vallon Zek, Grummus, and probably a few others that I can’t remember off of the top of my head. My little rogue had never done any of these encounters before, I’d always been playing the cleric or the enchanter, so it was a lot of aa for her and a lot of character flags. The flags are not a required thing any more, but it still felt great to get them.
When all of that was over with I relogged to my necromancer and we spent some time working her in Nagafen’s Lair (another hotzone) to level 46 – then we headed to Plane of Innovation which is the level 50 hotzone. When all was said and done she hit level 52. I’m looking to switch from the rogue to the necromancer in time if I can, so I’ve been leveling her up slowly. Well, not that slowly. It’s been four days and she’s level 52 now. I used zam.com a lot to look up encounters and see what we were defeating, and read the comments left by players a LONG time ago. A lot of the comments dated to 2006 or older, and it just made me feel so out of date. It was fantastic.
There were still a lot of people playing yesterday. The community is still very active, and filled with chatter. Helpful and friendly. While the game may have gone over a lot of changes these past few years to keep things updated and to try to make sure people who are new are not being daunted by the previous 10 years of gameplay, it’s still the same game. It always feels like ‘home’ as far as games are concerned.
I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend, no matter your game of choice. See you in Norrath!
I hope everyone had a fantastic Valentines day, even if you loath the day (which a lot do). I spent it doing what I love to do, a nice relaxing weekend at home (though I did go out to get a few cooler sized bottles of mudslide so I could celebrate) gaming. It was exactly what I wanted to do. I started out with a request, an item that had eluded me for a number of years now. My rogue sports her 1.0 epic, but I’ve never bothered to go any further with it because the 1.5 requires a whole lot of crafting, and I never worked up her craft skills. However, there’s one portion of that epic that I wanted very much. 
I’ve been really excited about getting to play EQ1 again. I mean, really excited. I love EQ2, but as anyone out there knows it’s typical for me to bounce from games or to play multiple games at once.