New Everquest Progression Servers: Party in Neriak like it was 1999 (sort of)

So true. Hell, dodging sand giants while leveling on crocs in South Ro is like a newbie right of passage.
Sometimes finding a safe spot to break and pee was better than any loot drop :)

The other game that was great for this was Asherons Call, because you were always fighting multiple mobs. It was always of question of ‘just one more…’ until you went too far.

Oh yeah, AC. My first MMO. On AOL dial up. Heavy nostalgia.

56k modem for the win!

I’ve decided on playing a bard again. Even though they crash and burn at 45, they are amazing up until that point. I’ll probably switch to lizard monk once Kunark drops. If anyone else is going to play, let me know maybe we can get some kind of party together, as difficult as that will probably be early on with the inevitable server nightmares for the first couple weeks.

Hmm, maybe I will play a class I never or rarely play. I will have to think about it. I am still working on getting my wife to play, but I believe she will. I have been playing Enchanters with true boxing a cleric at times, but maybe I will switch it up!

Yeah, I have no idea how this rare spawn thing will work, but it will change things up enough along with the free trade, which I have never tried before, to make it worth checking out for me. I have really enjoyed every progression server I have played, despite their flaws and problems.

I haven’t really given it too much thought yet, but I have always been one to pick remote spots and typically more patient than the average person, or the farmers, so this change should really benefit me. Most may go to Sol B or Lower Guk, for example, but more difficult to farm places like Kedge Keep will still give me a chance at loot only found in those other places, perhaps. It will at least help a little on the most camped items in the game, and the random excitement on not knowing what you get will bring back UO memories. I have always enjoyed the surprise with random loot. It will sort of suck when you want that specific item, camp that mob, and never get it. Perhaps they will make the original mob drop its loot table at a higher percentage, like morlac mentioned. Then with Kunark, the hunter/forager rare spawn cycle will be like a pinata of crazy loot! That was always one of my favorite things to do, going back to when Kunark was first released and few people knew about it.

I am definitely interested in grouping up with people I know here. As always, it really depends on if I can keep up, and we can keep levels close, but it sounds fun.

I spent a ton of time there trying to get the bard mask to drop. I think this loot thing is going to make things very interesting. I really have to stop and think about all of the crazy, fast, or multiple named respawns I know about that are off the beaten path. I think CoM when it opens is going to be a goldmine as well.

Back in 2000, I probably made most of my level 50-60 progression there doing that, heh. I am pretty sure I had seen all of the nameds and drops many times over. Just watch out for Doom! Would take half the zone to take it down when it showed up, lol. It at least had chances to drop high level spells. I was a ranger so doing the tracking/pulling was my thing. The only ones that would challenge me were the dang bards! Most people were pretty respectful once you pulled something, though, and didn’t try to steal them. If I recall correctly, as soon as one died, another spawned so there were plenty to go around for a few groups.

Yah there is a crazy cycle of what you have to spawn in order to get the mask to drop, but that will be a hell of a place with the loot rules on Mischief…There’s also ton of stuff to do out there to get keyed for Seb as well isn’t there? Or do they not do that on TLPs…

Yeah, you just have to kill one hunter and one forager to get pieces to make a Seb key. I honestly don’t know if you need that on TLPs.

I really really do miss that in modern MMOs. I get the convenience and I certainly don’t want to go back to how sadistic early EQ could be. I also don’t want to spend 5 mins staring at a spellbook for every 30s of gameplay. But long-term progression and challenging PVE content OUTSIDE of endgame musical chair raids? Where teamwork really matters? That I definitely miss.

MMOs these days are infinitely more accessible and I completely understand why they went that way, but they lost a lot along the way.

The last couple of days I have been making various starting characters, and trying to figure out where I want to go etc. One of the characters I made was a hafling druid. Hafling is easily the best druid starting stat wise, but that starting area, and especially Kithcore forest right outside is just horrible. I figured hey, I can start there, and just run to freeport, level till 5, get origin and gate, and voila. So I made the run to Freeport from Kithcore, and even though nothing happened, made it fine, the entire way was ‘exciting’ for lack of a better word. There was a very tangible chance I was going to get ganked along the way, and there is no outrunning anything in EQ at level 1. I realized, that even doing something so mundane, I was having “fun”. The tension created in that little stupid run to Freeport, is more fear than any end game raid WoW has ever generated lol.

Modern MMOs have removed consequences for your actions, which also removes any tension, and for me, any reward for anything. I’m really looking forward to the new TLP, I love the first 3 expansions, and having some new loot and trade rules to mix it up, is just enough to make it all awesome again.

I am going to think about trying this.

It sounds like this server is getting a lot of interest. They already have an overflow server planned. I have a feeling it will be very difficult the first weeks, but I don’t mind being behind a little. Fortunately, I get home at 3pm in the east from work and tend to get up at 5am on weekends, so I can normally find places to fight and camps periodically.

I activated my accounts I plan to play yesterday, and was able to talk my wife into playing also. I don’t really plan to box this time, but plan to bring two characters up on different accounts so I can log them in just for main buffs at least. I plan to play a cleric when my wife plays her wizard, and an enchanter when she plays her magician. I have four accounts, so will probably just keep them all on their own account so that the wiz can port all of our other characters, and they all can get cleric/enchanter buffs. Of course that is assuming I have enough time to level them all up, heh. I am hoping to make a longer run of it this time, though. I have had some good 6-9 month TLP runs before and I am hoping the random loot and free trade keep this one fresh enough to go longer this time, or at least through PoP.

I installed last night to fool around. Graphics are fine and charming in that retro way imo. The UI was horrifying. I spent 30 mins fiddling with it before giving up. I know there are mods and I think you can share layouts between characters if I use the vanilla one? Any tips or suggestions here.

I love the UI lol. You can do pretty much anything you want with it via moving stuff around. You can copy your ui and settings between characters, i.e. once you have it set up, every time you start a new character you can just copy the old one.

I have never been big on testing and finding the optimum UI layout in any games really, so I am not the best to ask UI questions.

I know it probably hurts my performance sometimes, heh, but I normally find a serviceable enough layout with the built in tools that works for me. I do take quite a bit of time to make sure I size and position enough windows to give me what I need, including adding some that may not be on by default. Adding multiple chat windows with various filters are a big deal for me also.

Announced on the forums sometime during the day yesterday:

Hey everyone, really quick I wanted to thank you all for your passion and input and while I’ll be putting this in news and announcements as well. The dev team has decided to launch Mischief and Thornblade simultaneously on May 26.

Originally Thornblade was going to just be an overflow server. Both will be available now at release.
So, we need to pick a server if we want to play together now!

I might actually do this. I haven’t played EQ since Kunark originally released, so it’s been a while!

I’ve been jonesing for some of the old school MMO stuff for a long time, modern MMOs just don’t do it for me. Maybe I should just play an actual ancient MMO again. :)

Yes! The first 3 EQ expansions are magic.

P.S. You can change to the original character models (which I highly recommend), on the launcher via the gear (settings). The luclin charcter models are one of the major reasons I quit the game way back when, they are hands down awful.