So good to be back...

[runeshaman]

and yet so sad!

After a 3ish year break and brainwashing myself into thinking WoW was a better game I finally came back to my senses. I was leading my guild in WoW along with a few of my officers from back in EQ and people kept talking how great the raids were getting in WoW. I kept repeatedly saying "You think 10 and 32 ICC is great... you will never know how great it really is to raid until you take 72 people into PoTime B for the first time or when you have to encourage your guild to get drunk together as often as possible so they don't get sodomized by the twins due to not having high enough alc tolerance!" Most of us would laugh about it and go on and keep playing a mediocre easymode game for the masses. Then real life happened and I had to stop playing for a few months during football season because I have two boys playing little league and a daughter cheering both for football and competitively and well, they are so much more important.

To be fair to my WoW guild (Azeroth Secret Society or A.S.S. for short) I passed leadership on to my second in command and told them to replace me (main tank) and my wife (best dps) while we were gone. Within a few weeks after we left 3 or 4 other members left and were replaced with new people. When their football season ended I realized that I could go back to WoW and play with a guild that was half friends and half strangers at this point, or I could fire up EQ and dink around a month or two just to see how much things had changed. EQ won!

I got back in the game and was going through the bank bags of all my old alts and the guild bank (because my guild had actually survived and I was still one of the 3 leaders) and kept having all these memories flood my head of the good times we had in EQ. About 2 days later I went ahead and bought HoT. I was gonna spring for the collectors but my wife slapped my hand and made me settle for regular. *grumble grumble* The best part of my come back story... when my former EQ officers who were also WoW officers found out I came back so did they. So we have 4 of my original 7 officers back together playing once more and so far we are having a blast!

We heard rumors of a time locked progression server opening after the first of the year sometime, then actually confirmed it by dev posts on live the last few days and we were thrilled. In our time off we missed a lot of content, and never finished some we were working on before we left. Now we can start from scratch and re-live all of it and hopefully make new friends along the way. They were all discussing what races and classes they would be rolling up on day 1... it got to my turn and I didn't have to think twice. Barbarian Shaman. Like there would be another choice? (Even though before I quit I had temporarily shelved my shaman to play my warrior due to a lack of tanks in the guild)

Now the sad part to my tale. What has happened to all the communities?!?! Spirit Realm was the very first forum I looked back up upon my return. I have been coming here daily (well 3 or 4 times a day) for the past week or so. I have also been visiting Alla's, Steel Warrior, and SoE live. I was very happy to see some of the familiar cornerstones of the shaman community still holding this place up. WoW never had the quality of "veterans" like EQ has. People like Brog, Tordail, and the one and only ShammyKnight still being here validates my decision to return, but it is almost like being in a graveyard looking at the living legends and wondering what killed off the rest of the masses. I have actually been running into people regularly in the game and actually went to a mid level zone last knight where we had to check 3 different camps before we found one open, so I know there are people still out there. Sure, the population isn't what it once was but all the great forum communities are more barren than the game! This is truly sad for me.

At any rate, I am back and glad to see some familiar faces and looking forward to meeting some new ones. This has always been the best community out there. I am determined to start a personal crusade in the game and start directing every shaman, pally, or generally good person I meet to the forums once again. I will also be posting more frequently again myself begging advice soon. I had been playing a lowbie to knock the rust off but fired up the shaman again for the first time last night. Some of it came back swiftly to me, and root rotting was still second nature soloing... but there is a lot of stuff I am missing now or that has changed since I left. I have been reading posts as I can, but it seems a lot os outdated other than just gear and spell lists. Hopefully I won't pester you all too much.

[dohrian]

Welcome back !
As Brogh said, post on the forum are not in quantity, but rather in quality

Doh

[Tordail]

[Tordail]

Oh, forgot - if you're looking for the up-to-date stuff, go to top of the forum and click the "Wiki" tab. All sorts of stuff there thanks to community collaboration, and Kanamori has been going through and updating a great deal of it. There's also some good information still on the Reference Desk, though some of it is rather old.

[Kanamori Hitatomi]

Hells ya! Welcome Back!!

[Lestumpette]

Most of us started playing EQ when we were young and relatively free of responsibility. But as we aged over the last 10 years, loads of things came along and took us away from our beloved game. Worldly things like wives, kids, careers and mortgages inevitably intervened. For a lot of us these things didn't stop us playing entirely, but they did prevent us from 'living' EQ like we once did. No more guild building, no more week long camps sleeping at your keyboard to catch rare spawns.

You too discovered what I did ... most of the people you once played with might be gone, but the memories remain

Lest

[Vigdis]

Hay there!

Well, EQ is a better game, but I still enjoy WoW every once in a while. I'm very casual in EQ, and Semi Casual with a 10 man / one night a week raiding guild on WoW.

EQ wins on pure gameplay depth, and a slower, more friendly pace and lots of nostalgia.

Wow wins on being well polished and having good lore and encounters.

[runeshaman]

I think WoW used to win on the lore. Recently they have been butchering the lore they established both on the original games and in the novels they have published. I guess what killed me with that game more than anything though was the standard ability rotations and cookie cutter gearing and character building. Granted some of that exists on EQ, but there are options on AA paths and some gear slots. In WoW to be "the best you can be" you take a cookie cutter talent tree, use a certain rotation, and buy a set list of gear with a set list of gems. Basically every high end player is the same and skill does little to separate the masses except in pvp... and I don't do much pvp.

The way I put it when describing the reason wow failed me to my friends still playing... "If you stick a peeled bananna under your keybord and stick a blind monkey at your desk while wow is loaded... eventually he will have a max level toon. With EQ you have to earn your level and if you are too stupid, you will lose your level."

Don't get me wrong because I am not saying WoW is a bad game. It was fun as hell and I enjoyed playing it. What got me though was in every expansion the added on to the end of the game, but didn't really give you any more options on the low end of things. So if you level 5 toons, you will pretty much see the same zones 5 times. When you get to raid you do the same raid week in and week out. My guild got to ICC and raided it non stop for a few months. Granted we didn't get to Lich King over night, but regardless we raided 4 nights a week. 2 on ICC 10 man and 2 on ICC 25 man. That was the ONLY choice for gear. What time we weren't raiding was spent doing dailies to pay my repair bills and farming mats for flasks. (I was the guild's MT pally)

With EQ if I want to farm content for cash there are dozens of zones and mobs to choose from. With multiple expansions of EQ the game actually expanded, not just get a few zones added on to the end. I am an alt-aholic and with some of my toons I care more about the scenery and the fun while leveling not just the fastest path to hit max. On a non raid night when you are good on cash you can either grind out some aa's or go work on fun quests or farm mobs for an item you may not need. You have missions you can do, faction grinds to work on, and just a lot of content to explore if that's your thing. I guess I am not so much saying EQ is better, just it is better for me. I like to have options and multiple paths to take along my travels and EQ provides that in a way WoW doesn't for me.

Unfortunately it looks more and more every day like my wife likes WoW mor than EQ. If that time lock progression server doesn't come back soon I may lose her to WoW and when the two of us are playing different games... all hell breaks loose in my house lol. How do you determine who should take the quick afk during a raid when neither has a reliable person to autofollow? Seeing as my guild is all friends I think I am going to be the one getting the shaft on this.

Well in 3 years one thing hasn't changed. I am too damn long winded. ^^^ Wall of text for the win.

[Waza]

Welcome back

[Mordoran]

WoW engame is way harder than Everquest was from release to PoP (when I quit raiding). I can't speak to new content, but the way that EQ is designed leads me to believe that current content still does not match WoW's in terms of difficulty. Raid progression was way slower in Everquest because of loot drop rates, not difficulty of encounter.

Hardmode Lich King and Algalon were insane. Arena masters are insane. They would look at EQ and think it's slow and boring. You may think I'm wrong, but I bet it's because you don't know how hard those encounters were.

That said, I love EQ . EQ leveling is harder, unless you do instances in WoW. I'm only talking about end game. For it's time, EQ was better by far.

[Gwirehar]

My main was an ogre shammy on Fennin so long ago I don't even know if Fennin Ro has been absorbed or not. I bailed on Wow when Rift started, now I'm thinking of going back to EQ.
Greetings Vigdis. I had an alt on VZ, a DE SK named Rothhammer of Royal House Thex. I remember seeing you a few times. Good to see your name again.

[Tordail]

Now's a good time to come back to EQ! There are two progression servers if that's your thing (Kunark isn't opened yet, I don't believe) and the regular servers of course, most with a decent population. There are hotzones and mercenaries to help you catch up and getting max level and nice group endgame gear is relatively easy.

[Brohg]

Prog servers are so bad

[Tordail]

I don't care for them either, but they're a draw for people. /shrug.