So, on a whim on Saturday night I decided I wanted to play EQLive again. I do this now and then, every couple of years. I get nostalgic for what I once had and try to go after it again. Not this time, though! This time is a whole new experience, and I’m not even doing it for nostalgic purposes. I genuinely want to have fun and see the new zones and play around with a new character using the mercenary system.
Luke and I started playing last night. Me – a Dark Elf Enchanter, and him – a Drakkin Ranger. We started in the new Crescent Reach area, which is a whole new newbie experience that was released a couple expansions ago. We logged in, and first thing we thought, is “QUESTS?!”. That’s right, there’s this whole task system that they throw in your face right when you log in. Familiar with that sort of thing in all recent MMOs, I jumped into it with excitement, ready to start collecting crap and delivering parcels in typical fashion. After about a half an hour, Luke and I looked at each other and thought “This feels incredibly wrong. We don’t play EQ to quest!”.
For some reason, it just felt completely wrong to try to quest – especially as an EQ newbie. While in EQ2 I enjoyed questing, I spent 4 years in EQ with the only quest I ever completed being my epic 1.0. That’s simply not why I love that game. In EverQuest, it’s all about the exploration and the grind – and I have no problems admitting that. It felt like EQ was trying to wear a costume.
So, we dropped the ‘tasks’ and went back to grinding with our mercenaries. In a matter of two hours, we were level 10 with all of our spells. Luke started fletching and making his own arrows to shoot. We were actually surprised by how much fun we had. I’m actually excited to go home and play again, thankfully someone bought some Spiderling Silk off of us for around 50 plat, so we have a little bit of cash. I still have my level 70 cleric on The Rathe server as well, and I want to try to group up with her again for old times sake. So far, the only negatives I’ve found are:
If anyone else is playing on Stromm, let me know! I don’t promise we’ll stay playing too long though as there are lots of game choices out there on my plate, and the EQ fun generally wears off for me pretty quick. We’ll see though!
