Return to Norrath Day 2

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…