Everquest going f2p

[Salamok]

The thing I remember most fondly (and not knowing any better liked the least) about EQ was the pains inflicted upon me while playing were mostly caused by rules of the game (corpse runs, collision detection, faction grinding, locked content).  Now I realize that it was all hazing and misery loves company, this added an unhealthy level of depth and commitment to EQ.

In UO ALL of my pain came from other players.  

In WoW, which was mostly painless, the most pain I felt was inflicted upon me by the devs changing shit.  Having my entire gear set made irrelevant by a change in mechanics and stats was infuriating.  Then later having my warrior take a back seat to druid and paladin tanks pretty much made me lose interest in the game completely.  

Not that the other games don't have nerfs but both of these seemed particularly pointless (ie your class set didn't properly fit the theme so we did a stat switch with all your hand picked gear and after 3 years we feel that warriors shouldn't be the best all around tanks after all).

[Kitsune]

Few things in any other MMOG compare to one's first Freeport to Qeynos cross-continent run.  The lack of in-game maps, item loss on death, and the presence of some truly terrifying (to a level 12) stuff on the way led to a very memorable experience.  But I definitely felt like I'd accomplished something!

[Kageru]

Yep.. I remember studying maps, reading guides and setting aside a whole evening to running. It was cool when a bard in highpass-hold ran me part of the way, some other veteran gave me a sword, and I chatted with some people while waiting for Kithikor to change to daylight.

Very memorable.... but at the same time if you break down the gameplay it makes no sense at all.

But it did mean that when I eventually got to Halas so I could level up with my friends Barb the zone had a sense of community because it was really isolated.

[HaemishM]

Having to do ALL that traveling meant you would have to "base" yourself for weeks at a time at one place, especially if you were a melee character who couldn't change their bind point. As a barb warrior, I'd have to spend at least an hour or more running to the place I expected to be the next night unless I was lucky enough to get some druid or wizard teleport. If I was running raids the next night, I'd have to run from wherever I'd been leveling the previous night to some place within about a 15-minute jog of the next night's raid. It did serve to give me the sense of "an adventurer based out of X" instead of just running through tailored linear tracks of mobs to bash for xp, gold and items.

On the other hand, it was a goddamn pain in my fucking ass that meant I'd lose an hour of sleep doing nothing but waiting on boats, shouting for teleports over zone-wide chats and avoiding mobs I couldn't kill in zones I wouldn't be hunting in for another 10 levels. I lost the sense that there was a WORLD going on out there, but fuck, I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THAT SHIT ANYMORE. I didn't have time for it then, but at least I could handle the lost sleep better. Fuck a bunch of that now. I firmly believe there's a way to maintain that worldliness without also making it a complete goddamn pain in the ass to get around. Allowing all characters to bind in certain quest hubs regardless of class, allowing all groups to teleport to each other's location regardless of class, providing fast travel options to places you've already been, these are all things that could have helped EQ tremendously.

[shiznitz]

Or just include a "summon buddy" ability on a 1 hour timer.  My god the time that would have been saved...

[Tale]

I did the Freeport to Qeynos run as a noob, but nothing compares to the experience I had running Grobb to Qeynos as a level 6 troll to join my guild on a new server.

That's innothule - feerott - rathe mtns - lake rathe - south karana - north karana - west karana - Qeynos hills - as a KOS race with everything fully spawned and nobody killing it. I managed to get a bind at The Arena from some level 20 power gamers doing aviaks, but hell I was even KOS to aviaks from the start. And KOS to the Qeynos guards when I got there and found a level 12 person to bind me at the sewers.

[Hawkbit]

My boss from about 5 jobs ago got me into EQ in 2002.  Both of us played very casually and when I shifted into WoW at launch, he just stopped playing online games completely.

He recently posted on FB about trying P1999.  When I mentioned EQ going F2P he said he had tried it, but it was full of idiots and had too much content to try to learn.  So then he found P1999 and pretty much fell in love.  I wonder how many other people would pay to play EQ as it was?  I always see posts about wanting an EQ classic server, but there are legitimately people out there who want it. 

For all SOE's statements that they can't get the old code back and can't make a classic server work, then P1999 comes along and kinda does it for them. 

[Azazel]

I got a new email from them today - promising all kinds of cool stuff if only I will please come back and subscribe to a recurring gold membership!

Look at the exciting things we can all get!


Upgrade to a 3, 6 or 12-month recurring Gold Membership and get:

Animated Armor Mercenary Contract
24 Slot Bag
Bottle of Adventure III (5)
Stack of Food (20)
Perfected Augmentation Distiller (5)
Bottle of Speed (5)
Consigned Complete Armor Bundle
Stack of Drink (20)


Upgrade to a 1-month recurring Gold Membership and get:
Stack of Food (20)
18-Slot Bag
Stack of Drink (20)



I know for people like myself who were on the fence about resubbing to EQ will find this is what just pushes us over the edge. I mean, look at that! A stack of food and a stack of drink! 

[Hawkbit]

My magician farts in that general direction. 

I got that email, too.  It's bonkers.  It's like going to buy a cell phone and they try to upsell you a rock, too.

[Simond]

Triple station cash, today only. (28/04)

[luckton]

Sony cries "Uncle!", relaxes F2P restrictions to compete with other F2P titles, and start boosting EQ Next hype.

[Merusk]

 

Too bad they can't even lie well anymore over there.

SOE believes it has not been out of touch when it comes to the free-to-play models in the EverQuest games. Georgeson told me that the team simply couldn't revisit the F2P matrices for EQ and EQII before now because it's been so busy with expansions and updates.

Really?  REALLY?!  You were just too busy? 

[Hawkbit]

Depends on their development method and cycles.  I get the impression there aren't a ton of people left in dev on these projects. 

Regardless, I've had that spring-time itch to play EQ again, I'm trying my best to remember the good without reliving the reality. 

I need a new EQ Classic-esque world.  Not p1999, please.

[Strazos]

I did the Freeport to Qeynos run as a noob, but nothing compares to the experience I had running Grobb to Qeynos as a level 6 troll to join my guild on a new server.

That's innothule - feerott - rathe mtns - lake rathe - south karana - north karana - west karana - Qeynos hills - as a KOS race with everything fully spawned and nobody killing it. I managed to get a bind at The Arena from some level 20 power gamers doing aviaks, but hell I was even KOS to aviaks from the start. And KOS to the Qeynos guards when I got there and found a level 12 person to bind me at the sewers.

Heh, I totally remember this nonsense now. I hid in a cabin as a newb in Kithicor, before a skeleton walked through a wall and wrecked my shit. For a while I hunted at that temple complex near Innothule. I just kept myself bound in Freeport, but I would inevitably need to sell junk every now and then...so as I rogue I would just go to the Ogre town and sell from hiding. This made things very convenient for my groups as they didn't have to run all the way back...though I guess they never noticed I was taking an extra cut for myself...

Loved that game for a while but holy crap did the solo experience for a rogue suck - no group, no xp.

[Hoax]

A friend went back to EQ1 recently and was talking to me about it while I was playing Tera which highlighted the very worst parts of Tera and the very best parts of EQ in my mind. And all I ended up wanting to do was play FF11. Really wish they had not ruined that game with the epic only possible while grouped grind.

[Lt.Dan]

I played for a couple of weeks recently.  With the addition of mercs you can solo very effectively - I even ran some dungeons solo for shits and giggles.  In the end though my crappy shaman at level 30 something was hitting for 15-20 while the merc was basically doing 90-95% of the killing.  Kind of takes all the fun out of it if your pet kills everything and the player alt+tabs to read teh internet.

[Tale]

This made things very convenient for my groups as they didn't have to run all the way back...though I guess they never noticed I was taking an extra cut for myself...

That's awesome. Proper rogue.

[Strazos]

Did the same thing in LDoN too:

"Hey, let me do master loot - I have 2 Steins of Moggok, with CHA gems on them!"

*Pickpocket reasonably throughout entire dungeon run*
*Sell all loots, keep a minor extra cut for myself*

Though to be fair, I was mostly doing this because I was broke and could never earn money worth a damn in that game - the best I was ever able to do was solo-farm Velium in Crystal Caverns in Velius...had to do a lot of risky pulling.

[Numtini]

Logged into EQ2 and remembered why I didn't play despite it probably being my favorite game of all time. I'm stark naked, all my equipment is both out of date with two new expansions, but is still locked. Looked at the boards, those locks aren't going away. Uninstalled. Looks to me like they still want to keep it a glorified trial. It's a slightly better glorified trial, but they still don't "get it."

[Merusk]

So was your equip locked because it was "too good" for a free account?  I forget how EQ2 locks work..

[Rendakor]

Correct, you're unable to equip gear above a certain quality level; I can't remember where they set the bar but raid-geared toons are always screwed.

[Raguel]

I haven't logged into EQ1 since around 2003ish. Any chance my chars are still around? 

[Phred]

I haven't logged into EQ1 since around 2003ish. Any chance my chars are still around? 

Quite probably but you'll have to find them if you weren't on one of the legacy servers that they dumped everyone on. And it's not as simple as it would seem as my server was Tarew Marr a beta server which got folded into Drinal which was a second or third wave server iirc.

[palmer_eldritch]

Edit: wrong Everquest 

[Merusk]

Wouldn't even be worth trying to go back to EQ1 for me.  I destroyed or gave-away all the gear on all my characters and gave away the platinum to make sure I wouldn't go back.  Naked characters have no chance in that game.

[Raguel]

I haven't logged into EQ1 since around 2003ish. Any chance my chars are still around? 

Quite probably but you'll have to find them if you weren't on one of the legacy servers that they dumped everyone on. And it's not as simple as it would seem as my server was Tarew Marr a beta server which got folded into Drinal which was a second or third wave server iirc.

the bigger problem is remembering my user/pass lol.

[Bzalthek]

I played for a couple months last year.  I ended up 3 boxing and plopping some money on SC when it was triple points.  It was fun for while it lasted, but the social aspect was really the biggest draw of the game for me, and I'm an antisocial bastard.

[koro]

So when are those race/class restriction removals supposed to go into effect? 'Cause as of right now, they're still in.

[Trippy]

Brad McQuaid back working on EverQuest

[Hawkbit]

It's like having two pics of Picard double facepalming.

[Merusk]

He had to go. His people needed him.   

Better there than elsewhere, IMO.

[Trippy]

I was hoping for a Kickstarter MMORPG from him, personally

[Bzalthek]

Hell I'd plop 10 bucks on that if the reward was getting to kick him in the balls.

[Phred]

I installed it and am having trouble getting a widescreen 16x10 resolution out of it. For some reason the config program only recognizes old crt style resolutions. Anyone know a fix?

 

[HaemishM]

Play a game made THIS century?