After I transferred Tsuki the Mage to Stromm, I made Tsuki the Necromancer on Erollisi Marr to save her name if I ever needed to bring her back. Groups were a lot of fun, when I could get them — at this time, there were still plenty of low level groups, and I was getting groups in the Overthere and Echo Caverns regularly. I usually played alts wen I couldn’t find a group with my main, but after long enough without groups for my mains, I tend to wander off to other games. I was leveling Tsuki the Necro fairly regularly when groups became nearly impossible to find on my cleric, and so I went to World of Warcraft, and all my EQ1 alts have been in limbo since.
I’ve been peeking into EQ1 more and more lately, trying to find a character — any character — that I remember how to play.
Necros are fairly easy to play — snare-fear-dotdotdot, or the other way around, so I thought maybe I could hack it while I remembered the controls. Well, no. I am so used to knowing how things con by looking at their names that I made a little mistake and attacked one of the guards in West Karana (isn’t it great how that zone keeps popping up?), and he brought friends, they took down my pet and I failed my feign. Now I could get up and try it again — if I could have remembered the keystroke to stand up again. I didn’t, so I died, rezzed in the guild lobby, and used a veteran reward to summon and autorez my corpse. That’s on a one-week cooldown.
I have never been through the Serpent’s Spine expansion, so I thought I would go there — it’s meant for all levels, after all. From the stone in PoK, I appeared in an area full of green-con wolves. I immediately set to fear kiting, everything is going fine until this WITCH comes up and turns me into a NEWT.
No, really.
I got better, though.
Luckily, Feign Death worked this time. There’s the witch there in the screenshot. Ugly biddy.
No groups for a 39 necro that I could see, though I did notice while I was up in PoK that Reviction is looking for a cleric. Well, an 80 cleric. I don’t know if I want to learn how to play a cleric again, level to 80 somehow, just to play a game I have left at least three times. Also I believe I would need about 150 more AAs. And I *hate* grinding, I just won’t do it. When the grindy part of the game comes, I quit. I refuse to support that kind of stupid game mechanic — and if everyone protested the grind by quitting the game, then devs would see the light. It’s a game. It’s SUPPOSED to be fun. I only spent a very little time grinding in EQ. I lacked in AAs and gear but I always had fun. When it stopped being fun — ta ta. I quit WoW when grinding became required to raid or to make my tier 0.5 armor. I almost quit EQ2 when they required me to pretty much solo ten levels in a grindy fashion (and I should have quit, since by continuing to play, SOE might get the idea that this grinding thing is something they should include more of, more often).
Anyway. Since I’ve stopped being able to find groups in EQ2, my time in that game may be drawing to an end. Playing by myself is no fun at all… so I may try EQ for a little while until something new comes along.
Recent changes to EQ1 have made things much easier so I hear. Or at least they will when they go live ( they may have already I am not sure). One of the big changes is a multiplier for the AAxp. People are thinking its about 5-10x. With the ability to already before the change get about 6 or so AA an hour in a good group or even soloing some places it would not take long to catch up. Another one of the big changes they made is that they got rid of all the flags for raid zones from Kunark to Ro expansions. This means that pickup raids in these zones are much more possible and less hardcore raid guilds can hit them up. Between those changes and hot zones for xp leveling should be cake.
This was the whole reason I quit EQ1. The grinding was nuts and a few months later another expansion would come out and I need to grind out another 100 aa’s and 5 or 10 more levels. I’d rather stick a screwdriver into my eye.
Ahhh the old days of my Dark Elf Necromancer grinding for 5 hours a day. Dot, snare, dot, fear, dot dot dot. I hated the mind numbing solo grind but I loved that character. My pet Jabartik and I had some good times. Good times indeed.
The EQ1 grind will always be there to some degree I suspect.
We anticipate the patch changing the AA gaining curve to go live very shortly, it’s on test now. I’m looking forward to that!
Additionally, they are removing zone key/flagging requirements for PoR and earlier expansions and making them level based, which should also make things easier for new or returning players.
Tipa’s getting tired of EQ2…the terrorist win
I’m not tired of EQ2 🙂 Just my preferred playstyle is grouping with friends. EQ2 is still a great game. On that note, it’s not like I can ever find even one group in EQ1, so that’s unlikely to grab much of my time. Being unable to find groups in EQ1 was the reason I left. Even a grind is fine, if it’s with friends. That’s why I don’t consider my time leveling three characters in EQ1 a grind — they were done with friends.
I really miss EQ1 a little too often for my own comfort. I never really raided anything, that is to say I never did enough to be considered a “raider”. My guild was smallish, and the best thing we could do was probably Grieg’s End. It didn’t matter though, because my guild was all about friendship, and helping each other out. So even though we didn’t do much, we had a lot of fun anyway.
I used to love when we’d raid Plane of Hate. Every Wednesday we’d go in there and basically kill trash for the named. We couldn’t do any of the “bosses”, and by bosses I mean starting with Maestro (which just added to my intrigue about him). The best part was the conversations we’d have, and the fact that a rogue tanked for us who wasn’t even in our guild. His gear was all Time stuff, so his AC and hate-gain was just universes away from our MT. We picked him up ONE TIME in there because he was bored, and he loved the cheeriness of our guild so much that he and asked us to let him know any time we did it and he’d come tank it again. He couldn’t stop saying how much fun he had with us.
Mostly I just miss the “unknown” feeling that Tipa mentioned once before. EQ1 was huge, and the quests were never obvious. Someone was either trying to urge you on a secret mission or just chewing the fat, and you’d never be able to tell because “maybe I typed it wrong, maybe I need to say it another way, did I spell it right?”. The game was rife with mystery, and no matter where I was I always felt lost and immersed in the world.
God I miss that.
Groups are still not easy to find even for a lvl 80 wizard. Ill group witth you Tipa,N ina or whoever you want to bring along. Secrets of Fatderk is a fun expansion btw.
Check your email, O Pasty One.
oh ya if you buy sof you get all of the previous expansions too
Wow Tipa your back and did not even send a hello tell?
Been a while and I got a good laugh on your blog.
I guess I will just have to take the time and hunt you down. 🙂
I never left, and am still here chugging along.
At least shoot me a tell sometime.
Granamir ,
Hey Gran!
Well, I mostly moved to Luclin server so it’s hard to see which of the old EQ1 people are still playing so I can say hello 🙂 But HI!!!!