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"You must unlearn what you have learned"
It's been years since I've played Everquest 1 and I mean really played it. I tried a free week retrial or something a few years ago but never really put much thought into it. I recently purchased the updated version (latest expansion) and while I only just created my character and got lost in Qeynos (Damn city revamp. All my points of reference have been spread further apart it seems.) I learned something interesting. For the past several years I've played World of Warcraft and Everquest 2. I found myself trying to figure out how to get a quest as soon as I started. Where the quest npcs were. lol
I started character on one of the new progression servers. So I was just dropped right in Qeynos with my human paladin. I was reading the npc text and took me a few minutes before I remembered I had to repeat what was in the brackets. Then I realized I'm not about to be sent on a quest to kill something and then to return for a reward. I have to simply go out and kill things and do whatever I want for the most part.
So essentially I have to unlearn everything (or really just a lot) I've learned from other more recent mmos. In my mind I knew this would be the case but I don't I ever really wrapped my mind around it. I was still trying to adapt my knowledge from WoW for example to this game. I was looking for all these things even though I knew they weren't there. I had to face palm at myself as I logged out as I had things to do.
I think I'm in a better mindset tonight. Should be interesting to see how things go.
Has anyone who started playing this game again recently or in the past experience this?
Comments
While not new to EQ, the progression servers have made me remember a few things that I had forgotten. And I did learn them the hard way of course, death & laughing after dying due to my own stupidity. I was already on the regular servers playing prior to progression servers, got a few lvl 90's and such. But I couldn't resist going back in time and re-experience EQ the old classic ways. Here are a few of my hard earned lessons:
1. Mobs have proximity agro in this game. If you want to stand next to the mob, you just might tick it off enough for it to take some swipes at you. Sometimes if a mob is ticked off at you, all you gotta do is to let someone take a few hits, then slowly step back and let the mob turn towards someone else.
2. Overagro as a caster can hurt. This isn't an issue on live regular servers really. But on progression servers, you can pull agro if you don't let your tank get some hits in first.
3. A city can contain different faction NPC's. I took my dark elf into Freeport, conned most mobs and saw they were dubious or indifferent. So I walked in and felt safe. Then out of nowhere 5 roaming guards pwned me and scared the crap out of me. Yeah so while Freeport was ok for dark elves for the most part, there are roaming guards on a different faction than the actual Freeport guards.
4. When you are heavy, you run slower. I know, such a no brainer. On regular servers I was used to having 100% weight reduction bags, plus mounts are never slowed by weight. So I got used to not being weighted down. On TLP servers, a few times I needed to run but found out I couldn't because I was too heavy. ROFL. It was one of those moments where I just yelled "do whatever you want with me, I'm helpless!!"
5. Mobs love to help each other of their own kind. So yeah, con that snake, it's indifferent. Shouldn't agro right? So I begin killing one, then another comes to its aid, then another pathed through while I was still killing and piled on me, then yet another agro from out of nowhere. Before you know it, one innocent snake turned into 5.
6. Dots persist through zoning. You may have played certain games where coming out of an instance or BG would wipe your dots for you. In EQ, yeah you can zone as many times as you want, but that poison dot is still going to kill you if you don't cure it lol. I actually didn't zone thinking I would be cured, I simply forgot the dots on me thanks to the snakes I was fighting.
7. Binding! On regular servers you automatically bind all your chars to PoK. It's a given, all the ports are there, bank, bazaar, lobby, etc.. But on progression servers, you have to remember to bind and rebind as you go to different zones/continents. Too many times I've traveled long ways, to a different continent or several zones over. Got so excited to start playing and forgot to rebind. So after dying, it was a rude awakening to see myself back where I bound last! Ugh, stupid me.
There are more but yeah, you do have to sorta re-learn how to play EQ on the progression servers....even if you are a current EQ player on the regular servers.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
After spending some time on the progression server I learned something else. Remembered to be exact. I really struggled when I first started playing EQ1. I quit a number of times due to how long it took to level and dying, that and being in my early teens I could only convince my parents to let me play at times since it was their credit card. It wasn't really until Shadows of Luclin and the Planes of Power expansions that I really started to enjoy the game and started playing it a lot (within reason and as long as my grades were still high). I came in originally right before Velious dropped. Due to getting frustrated I never even experience Kunark until Luclin. That was when I was finally able play long enoug to level high enough to travel to some of those areas and even then it was on a limited basis since I enjoyed the Luclin areas so much more. Shadowhaven became my favorite city as well as some of the NPC cities there. I remember taking all my characters up to the moon as soon as the Plane of Knowledge went live.
I don't want to start from the very beginning. I thought I did but I had rose colored glasses on I believe now. Unlike some others the very beginning of EQ wasn't pleasant for me. I'm more of a fan of the Shadows of Luclin to Lost Dungeons of Norrath era. I stopped playing when Gates of Discord came out due other things in life becoming more important. What helped me through those early times before those expansions were two friends from high school that were playing the game before I was. They helped ease me into the game, where as now the Gloomingdeep tutorial does a decent enough job of getting a players feet wet. The new server doesn't have that. It should at least have the very original offline tutorial EQ1 used to have.
So while I still have to relearn parts of the game, the progression server isn't for me in the end. So I started a character on the Luclin - Strom server.
"Unlearn" I dont know, you just dont have so many tools.
What I somewhat forgot are all the details other games don't have.
The freedom, the game is not restricting every little aspect of my adventure.
The group and combat mechanics, the way classes are truely different.
This game was designed by roleplayers not suits, and that just shows in every aspect of the world.
Over and out.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
I didn't have any problem with the gameplay aspects-- that was all as I remembered because it hasn't been THAT long since I played. What got to me were all the interface details.
First I clicked on the ground, and nothing happened. Oh, yeah. Not a click-to-move game. So I pressed 'W' and nothing happened. Oh, yeah. Not a WASD game. /facepalm.
About half the other games I play use 'B' for inventory, and that's usually what I try first, but no, it's like the other half of the games I play. It's 'I'... And how the heck do I open the potion belt again? Between figuring that out and reconfiguring chat, my first 20 minutes weren't all that productive.
So, yeah, for the first little bit, I was all
.
I have another newbie story about people with quest expectations from other games:
I started an evil Erudite cleric. I was running around Paineel, trying to kill enough diseased rats to get the livers to turn in for my Symbol necklace. At the same time, there was a necro of similar level running around. I gave him some bone chips and struck up a conversation. Then I noticed him killing the rats too. I sent him a tell, explaining that I was looking for the rat livers for a cleric quest, so if he didn't need them, I'd like very much to have them. (I thought maybe they were for a necro quest too.) He said he was doing that same quest.
I said, "It's a cleric quest for a no-trade item. You can't even use it."
He replied, "I do every quest I can find for the exp and gold."
I tried very briefly to explain EQ doesn't work that way, but he thought I was trying to scam him out of his quest items. OOOOOK. I went out to Toxx, since I'd just about outleveled the newbie yard, and came back in a few hours later. The necro was still there, so I asked if he was done collecting rat livers, and he launched into a rant about having spent so much time killing the damned rats and he got crap experience and an item he couldn't even sell!
Welcome to EQ!
Effect, Qeynos is one of the original cities that as of yet has not been revamped. Freeport has been revamped however. One of the adjustments that was curious to me was the agro as well. Also, I don't recall undead running when they had low health (A Skeleton still fights to the death). As far as questing, its the genuine EQ style we all enjoyed. For new people getting adjusted to the [text] in brackets can be a little confusing and some quest you simply had to experiment with.
Its been great revisiting some these often over-looked if not completely ignored quest. Its also neat to see people do the various class armor quest, the original ones such as Lambent, Totemic and Crafted, as examples. Faction is another unique element to EQ. One of the things I enjoyed in the original game was raising my faction in various cities so that I could do certain quest. That's something I'll be doing this time too. Merchant Farming is another unique element to EQ. I've not found any other game where you can find discarded goodies that other players had no clue for their use.
I would encourage you guys to stop by Zam's (Old Allakhazam's). http://everquest.allakhazam.com/
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
I'm noticing that Qeynos isn't as revamped as I thought. I recognize the land marks but it is slightly altered due to the change in graphics I think. Certain parts of it look like they were changed though to line up more with Everquest 2's Qeynos Harbor I feel. The closer you get to the dock the more I feel is the case. It's not a massive change though I think. Or I'm completely wrong and my mind is playing tricks on me.