I haven’t played EQ2 for five years. Prior to my son being born I had also taken a few years break here and there, and I haven’t properly played in.. well, a long time.
That being said, even 15 years later, MOST of the posts on this blog are about that game. That game where I met my husband. Where I made amazing connections and some of my very best friends. Even all these years later it’s hard to give up. It’s hard to move on, and to remember that I am not that person any more, and that game has changed too.
I’ve been having an absolute blast playing EverQuest and for some reason today I thought to myself ‘well, wouldn’t it be nice to check out my old houses in EQ2’ and I should have known better. I should have known better because I spent countless hours on those houses setting them up exactly the way I wanted – and I love them so much. My favourite place in all of Norrath is my library where I have over 700 unique player written books. I spent hours buying any new book I found on the broker. Some are silly, some are sad. Written by players who have long since left the game, and some who have left this world.
It feels silly to have such an attachment to this game. It hasn’t been ground breaking for some time. It’s not talked about in any of my circles. Yet here I am. Logged in, watching chat, reminiscing. I’m vaguely contemplating buying the most recent expansion and leveling my characters up – why? I am not even sure. Could be fun! I don’t have the faintest idea about anything any more. I see they’ve added Vah Shir, and that’s pretty neat. Overseer is a thing too, which I’ve been playing in EverQuest.
Anyone else out there still playing? Thoughts?
I had no idea there were player written books in the game!
I keep meaning to go back and see the rest of the game at some point. I got one character up into the 50s a few years ago and then stalled out because I didn’t enjoy the zone I ended up in and wasn’t sure where else I could go. I like everything about EQ II save the inconsistency of the aesthetics. Some zones are quite pretty, others probably didn’t look all that great when the game came out and are just terrible now.
However, no-one plays a game that old for the graphics. The absurd depth, the wonderful crafting, even the way inventory management works are way way above par. The fact that you can earn more powerful versions of all of your abilities by crafting them is just really neat and very addictive. Very few games can equal it. I really need to get it back in my gaming rotation as some point.
I’ve tried going back a few times, but so many things had changed, stats and AA’s especially, that I just felt lost and overwhelmed each time and would usually log back out after just a few minutes. Once I really gave it the old college try and started a new character to try to ease myself back in, but it didn’t take and I stopped playing again when only about level 20 or so.
I had a co-worker who continued to play it far past whenever I stopped trying and he tried to get me back in a few times, but his descriptions of the stat inflation and systems IU had no idea about and whatnot actually served to turn me off the game more than if he hadn’t tried, I think.
I have a very warm place in my heart for EQ2 — especially for the Fury and the Coercer classes, plus the Warlock I made bears the name that I still tend to use for my main in any new game I move to, so despite that I played SWG 1st, I really feel that EQ2 was my 1st online home…. but as the saying goes “You can’t go home again” and… I’ve tried, but just haven’t been able to anymore.
EQII is one of the deepest, most absorbing of all mmorpgs. It’s better now than it’s ever been and I’ve been playing since beta. I still play every day. No other game has ever matched its housing and most of its other systems equal or exceed those offered elsewhere. It’s main problems these days are the graphics, which although they are a lot better than they used to be, haven’t aged as well as other games of its age and its extreme complexity, which makes it very, very hard for new players to join in, or even for old ones to return.