As you read in another posting, I’m an EQ Vetran. I stopped playing due to lack of time, money, and to be honest, a loss of interest. Sony has an excellent game in EQ, but some of the implementation is poor. Experience for example. It would take me DAYS (of a few hours a day) to get a level, ONE level! I’m admittedly a casual gamer at best. I play when i have time and nothing else important to do. When i was in my EQ hayday, i played about 2-4 hours after work before i went to bed (worked second’s, home at 10:30pm, grabbed a snack, logged in about 11 logged out between 1 and 2AM). So you wouldn’t exactly call me a powergamer. I enjoyed the game though. LOTS of geography to explore, and that’s what i love in a game. There were nights i’d just explore, see what i could find.
As I hinted at earlier, I dont exactly agree with how Sony runs the game. I think Experience is too slow, and the whole game is geared toward grouping. Which is great for players with a lot of friends, but i like to play my Rogue like a rogue, Rogues dont really surround themselves with paladin’s, cleric’s, and well,, pretty much anyone else. Theyre a reclusive lot, they do their thing in the shadows, when no one notices them. Taveling around with a group of 5 other players is just not rogue like! I had a few friends, but at most i’d play in groups of 2 or 3. So i was stuck fighing creatures of lower levels than Me, so i the already slow experience, was EVEN SLOWER because i couldnt fight creatures of my level or higher.
So i quit, like i said, lost interest, didnt want to pay for a game that i wasnt playing. Lost my level 20ish rogue (main character) and a years worth of work (i told you i wasnt a power gamer). A little while later i read about this project by HackerQuest, they were developing an EQ emulator. Kinda neat. Spent a day tinkering with it. At the time it was terrible, so i gave it up, but it got me looking for other emulators.
Enter EQEmu.
This looked like a much better project than hackerquest’s from the get-go. It’s built as a stand in for Sony’s server. It is meant to mimic sony’s server, but the whole thing is configurable. You can modify the EXP rate (nudge nudge) party exp rate, all the creatures, spawn points, loot tables, everything!
I first found EQEmu in 2004 or so. I’m more of a do it yourself kinda guy, so i downloaded the source. 0.6.0 IIRC, and built a server. Took me days. It fought me every step of the way! Heh. But i got it working. It was dog slow on the hardware that i had at the time. And so full of bugs that it was unplayable. So i gave up on the whole thing.
A few years later (Now) i decide to check back on the project and see what’s changed. Theyre up to 0.7.0 now, A lot of servers are up and running (probably 30, vs the 8 or so that were live when i first tried it). Most are custom. There’s a whole project dedicated to just item/monster/spawn/quest data collection. Once again, i ran through and setup my own server. Things went much more smoothly this time. I’d learned a lot since my first attempt. I know what i’m doing with C++ compliation, source tree’s, makefile modifications, and MySQL now. I set it up, played around with it, then promptly started playing on someone elses server. My server’s still up and running, but it’s got 1 player… Me. So that gets kinda boring. I’m playing on Project EQ‘s "grand creation" server. Which is where they have their database of quests, monsters, items, whatever live for players. It’s about 95% legit (as compared to live). The experience is turned up a little. (about 1.5 times) which is nice, its not so much that you get that cheater feeling, but it’s faster than on live, which is teriffic!
My wife and I are both playing. She;s new to the game, but she’s enjoying it. There’s something about EQ. It’s just easier to play than a lot of other MMO’s out there. We played DAOC together for a bit, and she got bored with it quick, then we played WoW on WoWSexy for a while, again, bored, but this is working out nicely. I’m playing my Rogue, Gangrif, and she;s playing a Ranger, Arora, both Half Elves. We’ve been playing up in BlackBurrow and kicking some Gnoll behind for about a week now. We just hit Level 12 last night. I’m collecting BB Gnoll Skins for the Burning Rapier quest, which i intend to run through once i;m a high enough level. The problem is, i know nothing about rangers, so it’s all new to me, as to what we need to get her.
-War