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| Everquest at 10 Old Game, New Player |
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Everquest turned ten years a short while ago and I had never even played it. I guess I¡¯m relatively new to the MMO scene. I only started playing online in 2003 when The Sims Online came out and in some minds, that doesn¡¯t even count. Shortly after that, a friend that I had made in TSO started playing Everquest and he was raving so much about his experiences there ¨C about helping out a dwarf in combat and getting a bunch of fireworks as a thank you gift, of sitting outside and gazing at the stars ¨C that it made me want to play the game! But, eq2 plat he informed me, it was going to cost me a small fortune to get all the expansions so I might as well wait for EQ 2 to come out.
So I waited¡ and in the meantime I got sidetracked into playing another game (*cough* WoW *cough*) , I lost touch with the old online friend, and Everquest never came up again. Until now.
Since it¡¯s part of Station Pass access, I thought why not give it a try? I wanted to see what it was about this game that has kept thousands of players still in thrall after all these years, and in this age of higher quality graphics, failed MMOs, and WoW.
It took me the better part of a day to download, install and patch the client but I love how SOE makes it really easy for you to start playing any of their Station Pass games (ie. they have free trials for practically all of them!). At login, there were a total of 24 servers on the list. I picked one that said ¡°Ropleplaying Preferred¡±, not because I¡¯m big on roleplaying but because I think that would be a major factor in playing and sticking to a game whose graphics and gameplay mechanics have long been surpassed.
At the character creation screen, I was confronted with an overwhelming number of choices ¨C 16 races with 5 to 8 class choices per race. Stumped, I resorted to my boring but safe default. Yes, I chose to be a Human.. again. Oh great, it seems that humans are more flexible so I now have thirteen classes to choose from! I finally settled on the Shadow Knight because I wanted something that was both powerful and resilient, eq2 plat the better to solo with in this strange new old world.
And so my Everquest adventure begins. I am at the beginner¡¯s tutorial, learning the basics ¨C how to hail NPCs, how to find quest givers and quest NPCs and monsters. Surprisingly, the dated graphics don¡¯t bother me. I am more concerned about the learning curve and the grind. The fact that it¡¯s a mature game probably means that I won¡¯t be able to easily find parties at my level. But I am excited by the fact that there¡¯s a whole ¡°new¡± world for me to explore out there¡
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