A Peek into the House of Thule #EQ
stargrace 
People laugh at me for wanting to go back and play EverQuest instead of the newest shiny out there – and I can understand where they’re coming from. But take a look at that giant treant pictured above, doesn’t that look amazingly awesome?! I think it does. Yesterday marked everything I LOVE about EverQuest and reinforced my opinion that I’m playing the right game for me. To start it off, I found a guild. Or rather, a guild found me. I posted in the guild lobby on the bulletin boards that I was looking for a guild. In case you’re not familiar, EQ has a section to either side of the lobby that allows people to advertise for guilds, and a place for guilds to advertise looking for players. I made my post there late last week and had heard back from a few people but was undecided about where to go. Eventually I spoke with leadership from Order of War, who happen to be raiding older content on weekends right now and have a very casual laid back attitude. They seemed friendly enough, so we’ll see how it goes. I also spoke with leadership from a guild called Eternal Knights of Norrath – who were incredibly rude and did nothing but bad mouth the guild I had chosen. Even if what they said about my guild is true, I found it incredibly rude of them to just go on and on about how much they suck. Even if it doesn’t work out with the new guild, I won’t be joining that one either.
I do have to say a very big thank you to Sweed, who is a warrior friend of a friend (with a lot of alts). Last night he took Ninga and I under his wing and showed us around some really awesome House of Thule tasks as well as spent some time gaining experience in The Grounds. Having found no one else I know actually playing EQ right now (aside from the progression servers) it was really what I needed to convince me to stay. The group was fantastic. The experience was amazing and I managed to ding 83 on the necromancer although I haven’t picked up my spells quite yet. The struggle to 85 (and then beyond to 90) is not quite as much of a struggle since I’m finally beginning to play EverQuest as it’s meant to be played – in a group.
One of the neat zones I saw is the new Feerrott – it’s been completely revamped into a dream-like state, and you can get tasks for different versions of it that are a part of the progression. The first task we completed was Fall of the Tae Ew, where we had to kill groups of Tae Ew and then eventually a named at each of the different pyramids. At 82 this entire zone was red to me and the experience was amazing. I used my lesson of the devoted, and found myself at 70% by the time we had finished. The second task we did was called Welcome to My Nightmare, and involves the lower floors of the house of thule. The inside of the house reminded me a LOT of Unrest in EQ2, and there were even some paintings on the walls that I swear I’ve seen as EQ2 LoN rewards.
I mentioned it on twitter and I’ll mention it here as well – if you look at my Raptr hours, you’ll see they’re VERY high for EverQuest each week. The explanation for that is quite simple. It’s not that I’m playing 23 hours of EQ a day but remember how the EQ bazaar system works? You character still must be logged into the game in order to go into a broker mode for players to purchase from you. So I leave the game up pretty much 24/7 (aside from pc restarts) so that I can try to make a little cash for purchasing my spells and what have you. So far I’ve only made a handful of plat here and there, but it’s better then nothing.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
