The Glade 4.0

Fyi, in case anyone's interested, a new Progression Server is scheduled to launch tomorrow. Starts with just classic EQ and then each expansion opens a few months after the designated raid targets in the prior expansion have been defeated (subject to a vote by the server population each time). Kunark, Velious, Luclin, PoP, and Gates each open 6 months after raid targets are defeated, all later expansions take 3 months each to open after raid targets are defeated.

For more info, here's the FAQ.

Requires gold subscription for anyone curious.

And it was a total Charlie Fox.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

Yep, pretty much. The amount of nerd rage on the EQ forums was amazing.

Based on the last two progression server launches, though, I figured the first couple of days would be a mess. Rolling back 16 years worth of spaghetti code without a proper Q&A department ain't easy. Anyway, fyi for anyone wondering, they're going to wipe and try to re-launch today.

There's a part of me that wants to do it all over again but..

I was 23 when EQ came out, single, and with basically nothing else to do besides work. It had no worthwhile competition for several years. I'm going to be 40 in a few months, I'm married and I have 4 kids between pre-school and almost graduated college.

I'm pretty sure Diamondeye has been retired for the last time - or at least, she's having adventures without me and no other character will ever replace her. In fact, none of the other MMO characters I've had have ever quite been as fun as she was for some reason, even if they had better technology or mechanics. Some are close - My TESO main and my EQ2 main when I was playing that, and my DK in WoW.

I've only found one other game that approached - actually beat - EQ in terms of community. That's EVE. Early EQ, where everything mattered because the game was sooo hard and resources so limited really fostered a sense of community. Not always the good kind, but a community with no conflict is not much of a community either.

EVE beats that. It's truly an MMO; you are playing against the other players not the computer. The game is only there to provide resources for the worldwide drama. There is just nothing like being at the controls of your battleship, following fire commands from your fleet commander, managing your capacitor, and knowing some dude in London or Moscow is at the controls of the ship your fleet is focusing down hoping desperately to catch remote repair in time to say in the fight.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A wipe? Wow.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

how legit are we talking here.. like crappy UI, old textures, and staring at your spell book to med, or have they kept some of the general enhancements.

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Hah, yeah, I started playing right after the ability to make the "transparent." I think I still have a couple of screenshots of that.

I think they keep the new UI and textures, etc.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

It's not truly a classic experience. The modern UI and graphics are in place, and the various changes (read: power increases) to spells, pet dmg, AC mitigation, etc. are all hard-wired now, so no roll back on those. To give an idea of the power increase - two days after launch, a "raid" of 18 characters in their mid-40s, 8 of whom were mages, took down Nagafen. For folks who are looking for the difficulty and grinding of true classic, this won't satisy. That said, for the more casual players who just want a nostalgia hit and an EQ experience where old world zones are still heavily populated, PUGs are still common, and getting your Ivy Etched armor is still a big deal, this should be fun.