Welcome To Norrath!
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm "too old" now at the age of 30 to understand. What happened to putting out ONE game, and supporting it until there was no more interest in it? I admit, I wasn't into MMOs when I first saw my buddies playing EverQuest. "Oh, so you're a dwarf cleric? That's cool, I guess…I'm gonna go play Madden now." More and more we hung out, the more I had to sit there and watch them "raid" with their "guild". I eventually offered to log in and TRY, and I was given access to my friends "alt" account. I was hooked.
Next gen graphics!
There really wasn't any other popular MMO that I was aware of, so everyone one I knew that was into these played EQ. "U NEWB, CAST C-HEAL B L33T!" What the hell is that supposed to mean?! I caught on to the lingo, and learned to play the game. It was incredible how many people actually played this, my friends would ask me to come up with strats to get that next piece of loot. It's literally all they talked about, that and beer of course.
EverQuest II: Our Gnomes Are Better!
My guild is smaller, and noone is logging on anymore. "Where did everyone go?!" I cried out. "Bro, they playin EQ2." I could understand the need to make a different game, but another EverQuest, why? EQ1 had millions of paying subscribers at the time, so it never donned on me as to why they just wouldn't put the new stuff into the current game. Maybe MMOs ARE just like every other game, aimed at suckiing money out of my pocket like a homeless person standing on the freeway. I wasn't leaving though, I was loyal to EQ1 dammit! I'll never play another MMO, forever. I was ignorant.
It's EverQuest 1, but completely different…
I understand games have limitations, and EverQuest was obiviously incapable of producing graphics on the level of EQII, but why? Why is it that the game produced down the hall, that uses the same storylines and even same NPCS, had to have a completely different game.
In Comes Warcraft To Crap In My Cheerios
My guild in EverQuest is now completely dead. Me and my real life buddies are the only ones in it. My server is a ghost town, flooded with the corpses of people who left before resurrecting they dead bodies. EQII can't be THAT good, can it? Apparently, it's isn't.
World of Warcraft (WoW) came out in the same month as EQII, and destroyed everything SoE worked to build with it's MMO franchise. Is it possible that I was part of a select few that would stay loyal to EQI, even though they made it clear they would leave me to make a better, prettier game? Millions of people now play WoW, and it seems less and less play EQI. The development team still put out new expansions, and still made it clear they would accept my money, but did I miss the wagon?
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Moar DPS!
I'm burned out, and I can't put my finger on it as to why. Maybe EverQuest is exactly what it means….EVER QUEST. It's been years, and I have still stayed faithful, but for what? Everything I have asked for in the game has been ignored; it seems EQI is going to tell me what I want from a game now, and I have no choice but to go along or "Go play WoW." Maybe it's time to quit I told myself, but I'd not log in for a few days, than find myself logging in just to sit around and talk to people. I think the only way I will be able to ever quit EverQuest is if I find a new game to play.
Searching for my next new love…
Let's do some time travel, and fast forward to 2012. I spent three months helping my best friend get into the world of MMOs, and he chose WoW (ugh). I played for three months to help him learn the basics, than I quickly uninstalled the game as I had no connection to it at all. Since I had quit EverQuest, I have tried; EQ2, Aion, Vanguard, Rift, Guild Wars, Tera, and about 30 others from numerous Free to Play websites. Why is it that I cannot find a game that has keep me coming back like EverQuest? I know everyone has different tastes, and each game has brought new innovations to the MMO industry. It just seems to me that since the race for cash flow in MMOs has hit it's peak, every company races to put out a game that is just like the last "most recent" MMO. I am currently in beta mode for five new games coming out in the coming months, and I can only pray that one will be the "next love of my life."
Maybe I am just too old to stay up to date with the hip MMO scene, I will continue my search for the "one" that will ruin my social life until it ditches me for something newer…