I stopped playing EverQuest in 2007 because something tragic happened in my life and I just couldn’t justify playing a video game while shit was hitting the fan, so I quit.  I had paid for a whole year and I didn’t want to waste it so I forced myself to play out of principle, but I found that I had lost all of my enthusiasm for the game after playing for 6 years.

It has been 5 years since I’ve played and I’ve wanted to get back into it for so long, but I couldn’t really justify spending $15 a month to play a game when I could play Lord of the Rings Online for free.  I have already started getting bored with LOTRO so I haven’t really been playing that anyway.  I wanted to get back into EQ so I did.

A few days ago I started playing again and I got on my character named Xanapus and walked around for a bit to look at all of the places that I had missed all those years just to see if anything had changed, and it hadn’t.

I decided that I really didn’t know what the heck I was doing anymore.  You would think it’s like riding a bike, you never really forget, but I have.  I’m sure I will get the hang of it again, but it will take time to relearn my class and which spells are appropriate for which region and which mobs etc.

Instead of playing my main character that I missed so dearly, I thought I’d get on one of my newbie characters that I created but never really progressed.  His name was Voldamort, but someone apparently took that name over the last 5 years so it had an X on the end.  I logged into the account and it said I was eligible for a name change.  What better time to add an “Evilxanapus” character lol.  People joke that Xanapus is evil some days because I accidentally killed the mob that I wasn’t supposed to kill during someones EPIC quest.  Oopsie!  This level 12 necromancer is now my evil guy.

I managed to level him to 16 in just a few days of playing, which back in the day wouldn’t have been possible, but I guess it’s easier to do now.  I swear, it took me at least 6 months to get Xanapus to level 16, so it is a bit frustrating that I got this necromancer from 12 to 16 in just days.

My old guild is still active, but nobody is ever online.  There are maybe 2 or 3 active players, but they aren’t on everyday.  I don’t think that I will leave my guild that I have been absent from for 5 years, but at the same time it’s lonely in there all by myself.  I don’t really know if I will be playing the game full time or if this is just a 1 month thing.  I want to play full time again, but I have too many things to do in my real life to focus on a game.  I don’t know, we’ll see what happens.  Being in an active guild with people who want to play with me and talk to me would justify me paying $15 a month that I would normally spend on something more useful, like oh I don’t know, a small bag of groceries.

EverQuest is fun and all, but their graphics don’t even compare to LOTRO’s.  I forgot how much I hated “zoning” in EQ.  There are only a few times in LOTRO when you have to actually “zone” so it was quite annoying having to zone every time I went from Crescent Reach to Blightfire Moors and to the Plane of Knowledge.  Ah memories of time wasted zoning lol.

I am playing this game for two reasons, one because I missed it and wanted to play it again, and two for research for a book I want to write.  I think it would be worth my time playing if I had some people to play with to give me ideas on a story or plot. Playing by myself isn’t going to give me any ideas for content.  Although I already know what the book will be about, I just want to add more interesting stories and conversations that I actually have with people.  Playing the game gives me inspiration, but playing it with people is where my story comes from.  We will see how it goes.