Any current EQ or EQ2 ppl? Q's on going back...

JediNight

I quit my L65 Rogue probably like 4-5 years ago now in EQ1 (during Gates of Discord). My WoW guild has Illidan on farm now, so I'm kinda bored waiting for Sunwell and looking for something "part time" to kill some time with. My Rogue is/was on Povar, but I dunno if thats one of the servers that merged into another one or what.

Am I insane to be considering going back to my Rogue? Would it even still be there or possibly deleted?
Would it maybe be a better idea to try EQ2 instead?
If I re-activated my Rogue in EQ1, would I have trouble finding a group to level up and re-gear a little?

Is Vanguard improved since release that maybe even that would be fun to kill time in for a few months?

GPIA7R

Ah, the question we are all faced with... "Should I go back?"

I did a lot of research every tim eI considered "going back" to an old MMO... but it really all came down to the same conclusion... "What the hell was I thinking?"

Whether you prefer to be reamed by Squeenix by going back to FFXI, or prefer to walk around in a desolate land in EQ... You'll end up cancelling after a couple days.

It's not uncommon to want to go back, that little twinge always enters my mind from month to month... even after I swear to myself I won't do it again (I've done it twice with EQ and three times with FFXI... I've since hid my CD's and uninstalled to keep myself from doing it again)

IT's just.... they can't measure up to today's MMOs anymore. They will never be as active as they were, and they're all on a slow decline. There may be concentrated areas of activity... but that's about it.

I would suggest not. Find a newer, more active MMO and stick with it =/

EWom

I tried going back to EQ1 when I got bored with WoW. yes my characters were still there, but there was nothing to do.

Everyone multiboxes, and just plays with themselves. There are no pick up groups, at least not on my server. I had a 65 shaman and couldn't get a group for anything. Also no matter how good your gear when you left, is absolute shit now for your lvl I found out old raid stuff, is just crap, you can get better off the bazaar (If you happen to have 100,000's of pp on hand)

I say try EQ2, or CoH, or something else. Going back to EQ1 was a big waste of time and money for me.

JediNight

That is the question though -- what current MMOs? I'd be willing to try something new I guess, but nothing I've seen/heard about is that great. It's either really low budget so it doesn't have enough content, or I hear they go overboard on the eye-candy so the FPS makes it close to unplayable.

The only good one I've seen past WoW was LOTRO, but while the ambience and storyline questing is great, the mechanics of combat seemed kinda uninspired. Not bad but ... just wasn't that fun to group IMHO. (L35 Champion when I quit)

What do you recommend for an MMO then? My 2 favorite classes in EQ were Enchanter and Rogue, but I haven't seen another class to date that captures the same level of CC abilities.

HalberdBlue

I still play EQ. Your character won't be gone, and this is probably a better time than any other time in the past 4 or so years to start playing EQ again because of how the new expansion works. If you did start playing again, I don't think Povar has much of a low level population (with 80 at the cap, 65 is low level again :P). Stromm has the reputation for lots of lower level people, and I can vouch for this since I was on Stromm a little less than a year ago. So you might want to consider transfering to Stromm if you can't find anybody to group with. I haven't gone LFG in probably two years, but from what I hear the LFG game is mostly non-existant. However, if you join a good family guild you will almost certainly find a good number of people to play with. On Stromm there is a large organization of probably 20ish guilds called the Norrath Council of Guilds, or NCG. Joining any one of those guilds would probably be your best bet. I used to be a member of it a couple of years ago and left to join a raiding guild, but since then they've started doing a good bit of raiding (it was just 1 day a week at the time I left, now you could probably find a raid any day of the week (its a BIG organization)), though raiding certainly isn't the focus and many people in NCG don't raid at all. Its a great bunch of people though, and even now on a different server I keep in contact with people in my old guild through a chat channel and their forum. My reason for leaving Stromm was because my current guild collapsed and none of the other raiding guilds on the server fit my group's schedule, not because of a bunch of assholes on Stromm or whatever.

Now that I think of it, now is a better time to restart EQ than it has been in the past 3-4 years only if you want to start raiding again. Thats just because the group content gear in the new expansion took a huge leap over the previous gear. Of course, if you aren't interested in starting at the top end (which I personally think is dumb because then you miss out on a lot of awesome content) the earliest content I know anyone of raiding on any server is a group (part of NCG, I believe) that raids Planes of Power. Guilds raiding GoD are getting fewer and fewer (because for the most part you can get better gear easily in group content), so new raiding guilds are starting in Omens of War (the expansion that came out after GoD).

The myth that its impossible to start playing EQ again is completely untrue. I've seen more people start playing again and keep playing in the past year than I have in any given year in the past 5 years.

...That being said, EQ is still a HUGE timesink. I've been able to get by playing about 6-8 hours per week for the past 6 months or so because I had literally done nearly everything there was to do in the game group-wise*, had all the AAs, etc. so only logged in to raid. But if you want to get to level 80 so you can start "doing stuff" you'd probably be looking at at least a couple of months playing 20-30 hours per week. And with THAT being said, the idea that the game starts at max level is ridiculous. IMHO, you will find much more enjoyment taking things as they come and not rushing to max level. EQ has more content than any other MMO out there, but leveling too much will just make it trivial to you and not fun.

*I should note that this does not imply that EQ does not have much content. I've played EQ pretty consistently since about 2000, and this is the first time I've EVER been able to say that. Of course, my definition of "done everything" may be different than others.

HalberdBlue

Oh, and all you'd need to buy to start playing again is Secrets of Faydwer, the new expansion. It includes all the previous expansions. Its $25 on Amazon, and $40 most elsewhere (including digital download from SOE).

EDIT: I just now noticed that the OP says "part-time" >< well hopefully my above post can be useful to anyone else thinking of playing again. IMO, EQ really only works as a "part-time" game if you're to the point that all you do is raid, because you have all the AA's you want and done all the group content you wanted to do. Otherwise friends you're playing with will out-level you. Of course thats not really a problem when you're at the level cap, but if you have 50 AAs and the rest of the group has 800, its extremely noticeable. That being said, I do know some people who only play 5-10 hours per week, aren't at the level cap, don't raid, and are perfectly happy. But these people are rare (though it might just seem that way to me because I've been at the level cap forever, and there isn't much interaction between people at the level cap and people not at the level cap. I don't have any alts).

JediNight

Well I had to call up their support because it turns out it was using an account name I had totally forgotten. The only way I was able to verify as well was using my GoD serial, because I didn't have any of my other CDs at my apartment anymore for that account lol...

Apparently my Rogue was sitting near the exit inside Plane of Disease for 4 years I left with PoT jumping and full of life, and come back and it's totally deserted not that I'm surprised hehe

Sadly I'm totally lost though in remembering a lot of the controls, like how to see the individual stats on items, or even what item is the key to use the Plane of Knowledge teleport book inside the Plane of Tranquility. So atm I'm kinda stuck in PoTranq haha...

HalberdBlue: What's your character/server name if you don't mind me sending you some tells on stuff I'm lost on? =D

Sirson

I would reccomend EQ2 over EQ1 currently. EQ2 has some busy servers, and its pretty solo friendly. The tradeskills are pretty fun, and theres generally a lot of guilds to join and are pretty newbie friendly. I've been playing with the release of RoK and been having a pretty good time. If you make a new guy in eq2 start in the new Kunark area, the rewards and stuff are insane compared to the old stuff.

EWom

Have you tried CoH/V ? I had a blast playing it, but couldn't get any of my friends to come over and play with me, so went back to WoW to play with them. There are controllers and scrappers, which could be a lot like eq rogues and enchanters if you build them right.

JediNight

Sirson wrote: »

I would reccomend EQ2 over EQ1 currently. EQ2 has some busy servers, and its pretty solo friendly. The tradeskills are pretty fun, and theres generally a lot of guilds to join and are pretty newbie friendly. I've been playing with the release of RoK and been having a pretty good time. If you make a new guy in eq2 start in the new Kunark area, the rewards and stuff are insane compared to the old stuff.

Thats generally how things are/were in EQ1 as well. Each new expansion adds "mudflation" where I bet a L50 character in EQ1 now has 2-3x the stats one had in a complete set of the first raid gear out of Fear Plane

And yeah, I dunno -- that $25 sale price on the Faydwer All-in-one pack is over it seems, so its back up to $40... =\ Don't know if I want to spend that kind of money not knowing if I'll go beyond a month or two.

Vanguard also sounds kinda neat with having housing in the world and boats ... I always liked that aspect of Ultima Online, but I've also heard a lot of bad things about Vanguard as well...

JediNight

Yeah I'm kinda leaning away from resubbing to EQ1 at this point I guess. Since I raid in WoW, I don't plan to commit to it fulltime, and it sounds prohibitively confusing for me to try to get back up to speed after 4 years.

With the game being in decline now, it seems theres little/no pickup group action, and if you arent committed to getting like 1000AAs and raiding then probably a waste =\