March 13th, 2009. Day 2.
After 3 days they (Sony) finally restored my character because the previous server I was on (Stormhammer) no longer existed. I called them and at first they were wanting to charge me $50.00 a character to transfer. I argued that there was no way I was going to pay 200 bucks (I had 4 characters I wanted back) to play a game that I left several years ago. I further went on to argue that it was not my fault their business was so poorly run that they had to shut down the server I was on, and furthermore that if they did charge me, I’d simply cancel the account and move on again.
I told the guy, Eric was who I spoke with, that I was excited to return, but after shelling out $40.00 to play, there was no way in hell I was going to spend another dime.
He forwarded everything to a GM and 2 hours later all of my characters were restored. To that end I must applaude Sony for doing the right thing.
Okay, so here I am in the world again. Seems I’ve got some items to claim. Among them is a book that can teleport me to the Plane of Knowledge. Evidently tjis area is new, I can teleport here then teleport anywhere else. That’s pretty cool.
Okay, so I start off running after a pig-wark or bulwark, or something like that. Looked like an anteater on really tall legs.. I cannot kill it so I run. Of course I create a train behind me because I cannot find a town. I inadvertantly press the ‘M’ key and bring up a map. Ah! Nice! I see the town!
I decide to head towards it, I can remember from long ago that the guards would kill whatever was after you.
They failed to move from their posts so I had to keep running until I zoned. Ahh Zones. Yes, this game makes you wait as you cross from one zone to another.
Okay, so now I’m in a town. I’ve got 143 Platinum on me, and no clue what I need to buy. I keep finding merchants that want to sell me plans to blacksmith or sew. I don’t give a crap about any of that, I want weapons! I want armor!
I find none.
I then find a swimming pool. Jump in, I soon find that I cannot get out!
Holy crap, I remember this bug now. So many areas in the game that if you were too small, you were stuck.
I tried my book, “you cannot cast while swimming!”
Crap.
I tried the looking up and jumping technique. No luck.
Looks like I’d have to drown just so I could rez. I went online to see what other solutions there may be.
I found nothing.
20 minutes goes by, I’m just wasting time at this point, trying everything I can to get out of this stupid water.
Then I remember about the book. I teleport to the Planes of Knowledge, find a portal to Freeport, head over to the commonlands, head north into a valley (going through 2 more zones), and come fact to face with a zombie! (This is an edit several years after I wrote this – how the hell did I use my book if it didn’t work while swimming 20 minutes prior???)
I swing! He casts a spell (zombies can cast spells???) and does 201 damage to me. Hold up, what?? Zombies can cast some badass spells??? Next thing I know the zombie has 5 skeleton pets and some kind of dinosaur on me.
I die.
I resurrect, but lose some experience while doing so.
All in all, I’m not happy with my first official day of returning to Everquest and playing.
I’ll give it a little more time tho.
March 13th, 2009. Day 2, Part 2.
After some rest I decided to give it another go. Most of the locations I used to haunt are returning to memory. The Nexus, Queynos, Freeport, yeah, I remember most of em now. I decided to find the bank, I could not remember what all I had in there.
Lo and behold! I have over 2,000 Platinum! Is that good? I don’t recall what stuff really costs here anymore. I left all of it in the bank and went to the Planes of Knowledge again. This time I had a necklace with a tooth on it. I found a gargoyle and gave it to him, he asked me to join his cause.
What the hell. I did.
I was then transformed into a winged Gargoyle! This was new to me, and was certainly not in the game way back when! I traveled the land, killing little gray critters and scooping up the trash they had. I then went back to my original form and took off to Queynos. I found some skeletons waaay west of the city (at least I think it was west). I killed them and traveled though a cave. Found myself getting very bored, for even attacking gray monsters seemed to take over 2 minutes (and I was hitting them with two weapons at the same time for about 30 to 70 damage each swing!).
I then found that I was looking at how crap-tacular the graphics were. Yeah, I know the game is super old, but seriously? You’d think they would have vamped up the graphics a little. Hell there were parts where I could see forever and there were no trees, no monsters, no buildings, just the sky and flat land.
No wonder I went to World of Warcraft way back then.
And that’s the thought process I had when I sat down to log out for the evening.
30 seconds.
What did I accomplish? Nothing really, just went from one place to another.
25 seconds.
Did you do anything fun? Well, I turned into a gargoyle for a bit, that was kindav neat. But not neat enough to hold my attention for too long.
20 seconds.
And you didn’t like the graphics? No, but I kindav knew that going back into it, besides, not all games are great solely because of their graphics, I also like the storylines.
15 seconds.
Do you like the storyline in EverQuest? Beats me, I honestly didn’t read half the dialogue, I just smacked the keywords when hailing an NPC. I guess I would have to say no then.
10 seconds.
You gonna keep on playin? Yeah, for a little longer, not tonight, but later.
5 seconds.
At least you are giving it a try. Well, at least in this second part of today I did not die…
