When I heard a couple of weeks ago that Sony Online Entertainment was going to make EverQuest free to play in March I got excited.  I was acting as if I was going back home after my five-year absence, as if the game were my long-lost family.

Last night I installed the game from my old discs and ran the game so that it could start downloading updates so when March 11th came, I could just go ahead and login to the game without having to wait for a huge download.  It took me about half an hour or longer to install all of the discs.  When I finished installing, I clicked the link on the desktop and got a message saying this:

“Could not establish a connection. Please check your network connection or contact eqtech@soe.sony.com.”

Naturally I was peeved and immediately went to Facebook to find out what was wrong without going to the EverQuest website first.  I couldn’t wait for a response so I decided to go to the website and found that they had a new launchpad.  I downloaded and installed it and because it was a tiny file, it didn’t take more than a minute.  Unfortunately since my EverQuest account wasn’t active I couldn’t download anything.

I was going through the website last night and I clicked where it said it was going to be free to play in March and saw what you get when you don’t pay and I didn’t like what I saw.  You get free access to all of their expansions which was great news since I haven’t bought an expansion pack in more than 5 years.  Unfortunately everything else is restricted.

You only get 4 races and 4 classes, you have to purchase the rest.  Well, I have many races and classes with 8 characters which is the max you can have so I didn’t think I was going to make another one.  That reminds me, I would only be able to play with 2 of my characters.  They only give you 2 character slots.  So what if I had 8 characters?  Would they black them out or delete them?  I’m sure they wouldn’t delete them, they would probably just make it so I can’t play with them.  Well, Xanapus was at the bottom of the list, would I be stuck having to play with the top two on the list?  I wouldn’t like that at all because those two characters are both newbie characters that I never leveled.

You only get 250 alternate abilities, I have over 350 which isn’t a very high amount but would I lose all of those last 100 that I had already earned?

They would take 6 of my bag slots away because they only allow you to use 4.  Well, I have 10 bags and I would hate it if they took those items away from, or blacked them out so I couldn’t use them.

They have a platinum limitation of 100p per level.  My character is level 74, so does that mean I would be allowed to keep 7400p?  Well, I have over 100k in the bank, would I lose all of that?  That would suck big time.

The last ones are minor.  I wouldn’t be able to send in-game email, only receive it which isn’t a problem since I don’t know anyone anymore.  I would be allowed a house but not a guild hall.  Does that mean if I were in a guild I wouldn’t be allowed to go into the hall, or I wouldn’t be allowed to create one?  Houses?  What?  They have houses now?

Ok so today I decided that I couldn’t wait until March 11th to play.  I certainly wasn’t going to do the free account because I did not play all those years so I could lose it all.  I decided I would just go ahead and pay for a subscription of $14.99 next month when I had some more money and go back to the game that I missed so much.  After thinking about it I looked at my bank account and discovered that I have more than enough money for us to get by for the rest of the month.  I could just go ahead and pay for it and start playing again today.

I went to log into the new launchpad and it started the download.  More than 8GB of data had to be downloaded for me to play.  I figured that with my cable internet it wouldn’t take too long, but just in case it did I would probably just log in tomorrow.  It only took 3 hours to download/install all of the files.

It took longer than I thought to load the game, but I figured it was because it had to load all of the textures and whatnot.  When it finally let me in, I was back to the world that I had missed for such a long time.  The graphics were as horrible as I remembered them.  I started thinking that the Lord of the Rings graphics are so much better, but I don’t care, this is where I want to be.  Of course I’m not quitting LOTRO, I will play both.

The guy from Sony Online Entertainment told me on the phone that it is possible that some of my characters names might have a “1” after them since it has been so long since I played.  It is possible that someone over the years created a character with a name that I used.  If my Xanapus had a 1 after it I was going to be one pissed off gnome, but it didn’t WHEW!

When the game loaded I was in the Plane of Knowledge.  Nothing had changed at all.  I clicked the Guild button and was shocked that I was still in my guild “Regnat Populus”,  I thought for sure they had disbanded.  I ran to the guild hall and it was just as I remembered it.  I gated to Greater Faydark and ran to the Steamfont Mountains and then to Ak`anon.  Steamfont was different, but they had upgraded it before I left so it was the same.  Ak`anon on the other hand was the same as it was in 2002 when I first started playing the game.  I was a little disappointed that they had upgraded all of the zones, but they left that one, at the same time I shed a tear for old times.

All of my friends were still in the friends list.  I clicked the button to find out who was online and one of them was.  His name is Mezmar.  There was a time when I was forbidden to talk to him because he betrayed my guild, but that is all in the past, water under the bridge.  It was a guild that I hadn’t been in for a very long time, I believe it was “Blades of Veeshan.”  I sent him a /tell and he didn’t even remember me.  I tried to jog his memory but he just couldn’t remember. 😦

I ran around looking at things but I was alone.  No friends, no guild members online, nobody to talk to so I just signed off.  Tomorrow is a new day so I will get back in the game and start exploring again.  I can’t wait to get back in the game and see what is new.

My main reason for wanting to go back to the game was that I wanted to play the game again because I missed it.  My secondary reason was because I want to do research.  I want to write a fiction novel based on my main character.  It won’t be an EverQuest novel or fan fiction though.  If I make a novel with the EverQuest trademarked name, zones, characters etc. and then try to sell the book they will sue me.  Instead I will have to make up a whole new world of my own.

I don’t know if I will even get to write a book based on him, but wouldn’t it be fun if I did?  My research will be a combination of the EverQuest and Lord of the Rings games, but with my own added imagination and storyline which I will obviously make up as I go along.  I already have many ideas for a storyline, plot, characters etc., I just need to write them down.  I think it will be fun, but we will see if it even happens.  I hope it will.