In today's fourth installment of his continuing Return to EverQuest series, MMORPG.com writer Phil James confesses to being a blatant rule breaker. This time, Phil heads to a "regular" server with his Druid to 'take on the big boys'. Read more about Phil's adventures and talk about it in the comments!

When I last played EQ a few years ago I was a bit disappointed. Not because the game is bobbins (it isn’t), but because levelling up was a lonely experience. This is to be expected; with so many players having been in the game for a decade, their characters are more than likely at the level cap. Hell, most players probably have all the alts they are ever going to roll at the level cap too. This makes life tough for a newbie. I don’t mind soloing, but if I wanted desolation I could quite easily google which game has the fewest subs and play that.

Read more of Phil James' Return to Everquest Part IV.

Revisiting EQ as well, I did not know about the crafting part. After I got finished with what quests I could find I left for CR. Looks like I missed out on a good bit of crafting, wonder if there is away to get back into the zone without re-rolling (maybe that tutorial button at character select) I'll have to find out when I get home.

Nice article and seeing I'm only level 9 at the moment it also acts as a bit of a guide for my character. :p 

Edit: Almost forgot, I wanted to ask what do you have your graphic settings at and hows the performance (I'm having the screen freeze issue that's talked about on the boards)?

I noticed Atathus the Red Lord's wings don't seem to be translucent in the screen shot posted, yet when I visited Soiren's Parent Dragon, Draton`ra  Master of the Void his wings were translucent. I also noticed that there was no light effects in the shots. Just wondering if I should turn down the settings to fix some of the problems I'm having. 

Here is a shot of Draton`ra  in comparison (in the same tree a the Red Lord).

Originally posted by Unshra

Revisiting EQ as well, I did not know about the crafting part. After I got finished with what quests I could find I left for CR. Looks like I missed out on a good bit of crafting, wonder if there is away to get back into the zone without re-rolling (maybe that tutorial button at character select) I'll have to find out when I get home.

Nice article and seeing I'm only level 9 at the moment it also acts as a bit of a guide for my character. :p 

Edit: Almost forgot, I wanted to ask what do you have your graphic settings at and hows the performance (I'm having the screen freeze issue that's talked about on the boards)?

I noticed Atathus the Red Lord's wings don't seem to be translucent in the screen shot posted, yet when I visited Soiren's Parent Dragon, Draton`ra  Master of the Void his wings were translucent. I also noticed that there was no light effects in the shots. Just wondering if I should turn down the settings to fix some of the problems I'm having. 

Here is a shot of Draton`ra  in comparison (in the same tree a the Red Lord).

 

If you arent lvl 11 yet then you can indeed log into the game using the tutorial button at the login)

That's good news, thank you I will do that tonight and look for the other quest givers.

Originally posted by Unshra

Revisiting EQ as well, I did not know about the crafting part. After I got finished with what quests I could find I left for CR. Looks like I missed out on a good bit of crafting, wonder if there is away to get back into the zone without re-rolling (maybe that tutorial button at character select) I'll have to find out when I get home.

Nice article and seeing I'm only level 9 at the moment it also acts as a bit of a guide for my character. :p 

Edit: Almost forgot, I wanted to ask what do you have your graphic settings at and hows the performance (I'm having the screen freeze issue that's talked about on the boards)?

I noticed Atathus the Red Lord's wings don't seem to be translucent in the screen shot posted, yet when I visited Soiren's Parent Dragon, Draton`ra  Master of the Void his wings were translucent. I also noticed that there was no light effects in the shots. Just wondering if I should turn down the settings to fix some of the problems I'm having. 

Here is a shot of Draton`ra  in comparison (in the same tree a the Red Lord).

 The crafting that Mr James was referring to is just a cooking tradeskill. If you are more interrested in tradeskilling, there are tradeskills to be learned for free right there in Cresent Reach, and they include tailoring, cooking, smithing, jewelcrafting etc with no cost ingredients to get you familiar with the way crafting works. These vendors are mostly on the 2nd floor of the main building. I highly recomend doing them all since it costs you nothing for the reagents and if memory serves me they will get you to a skill of 20. Race/class specific trades are there as well .. such as alchemy for shamans.

I play progression now almost 100% so i havent visited CR in a few years .. but that is how it was anyways :)

Thanks for the good article ! i am very curious now and i think i will good old EQ a try again after so many years....

Originally posted by Unshra

Revisiting EQ as well, I did not know about the crafting part. After I got finished with what quests I could find I left for CR. Looks like I missed out on a good bit of crafting, wonder if there is away to get back into the zone without re-rolling (maybe that tutorial button at character select) I'll have to find out when I get home.

Nice article and seeing I'm only level 9 at the moment it also acts as a bit of a guide for my character. :p 

Edit: Almost forgot, I wanted to ask what do you have your graphic settings at and hows the performance (I'm having the screen freeze issue that's talked about on the boards)?

I noticed Atathus the Red Lord's wings don't seem to be translucent in the screen shot posted, yet when I visited Soiren's Parent Dragon, Draton`ra  Master of the Void his wings were translucent. I also noticed that there was no light effects in the shots. Just wondering if I should turn down the settings to fix some of the problems I'm having. 

Here is a shot of Draton`ra  in comparison (in the same tree a the Red Lord).

That's an EQ1 screenshot?

Huh... that's pretty darn impressive. I like the look of the character.

it's tempting, my 2nd mmo was eq1, started off with uo in 98.   While eq was my first real mmo love i find it hard to go back to soe at this point 

Especially since 2 weeks after i stopped playing dcuo my accnt that had all my soe stuff linked to it got hacked and after tryin to work with their customer support, they basically said it was my fault and i was tryin to sell the accnt online , tho that was entirely not the case, why would i have an accnt since eq1 days with all my games linked and now suddenly sell it, meh w/e  soe is terrible, worst customer service ever, won't even help me get accnt back

I actually felt like playing EQ1 again after reading this article. However I havent played since 2004, and Im not sure I would even recognise the game haha :)

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by Unshra

Revisiting EQ as well, I did not know about the crafting part. After I got finished with what quests I could find I left for CR. Looks like I missed out on a good bit of crafting, wonder if there is away to get back into the zone without re-rolling (maybe that tutorial button at character select) I'll have to find out when I get home.

Nice article and seeing I'm only level 9 at the moment it also acts as a bit of a guide for my character. :p 

Edit: Almost forgot, I wanted to ask what do you have your graphic settings at and hows the performance (I'm having the screen freeze issue that's talked about on the boards)?

I noticed Atathus the Red Lord's wings don't seem to be translucent in the screen shot posted, yet when I visited Soiren's Parent Dragon, Draton`ra  Master of the Void his wings were translucent. I also noticed that there was no light effects in the shots. Just wondering if I should turn down the settings to fix some of the problems I'm having. 

Here is a shot of Draton`ra  in comparison (in the same tree a the Red Lord).

That's an EQ1 screenshot?

Huh... that's pretty darn impressive. I like the look of the character.

 

Yeah I noticed that image in the general images section and was quite taken aback that it was a EQ ss has tempted me to pick the game up,  I never experienced EQ as I kind of jumped from UO to SWG with a gap of a year or 2 but any SS I had seen made the game look dated to the point that it would be unplayable for me (graphics whore sorry) but these recent shots posted by Unshra have made me reconsider.

So... by low 20s, you had no "snare" or "root" ability or proc? I haven't played in awhile, so I can accept that. Did you have feign death yet? Again, I've been away awhile, but your primary beef is the escaping mobs with social aggro, maybe you should write less and learn to play the game more.

Just sayin...

Hopefully with the servers down due to hacking, Sony will reopen with new cheaper pricings on EQ1.

Originally posted by Kaelano1

So... by low 20s, you had no "snare" or "root" ability or proc? I haven't played in awhile, so I can accept that. Did you have feign death yet? Again, I've been away awhile, but your primary beef is the escaping mobs with social aggro, maybe you should write less and learn to play the game more.

 

Just sayin...

 

No, I didn't have a "snare" or "root" ability or proc.  I had been skilling up feign death but mobs weren't always fooled by my slumping to the floor.  I assume you read the articles, or at least part of them, so you may have noticed that I was learning the game and writing about my experiences at the same time.

Thanks for sayin...

I just wanted to thank you for writing this article.  I played EQ1 for almost 5 years as well as spent a few years on EQ2 and just haven't been able to find anything that can compete with the feeling those games gave me.  Reading about you learning the game (especially injured fleeing mobs) gave me a sense of the excitement I once felt for MMORPGs.  Unfortunately it's a feeling I fear I will never experience with an RPG again.  All these new games have no sense of 'freshness'.  They seem to be beating a dead horse, so to speak.  Please show me a game that will grab my attention for YEARS again....