First Impressions of EQ

[Osacian]

So, I downloaded and paid for the 3 month sub for EQ last night. I decided to jump in and see what it was all about. I had played EQ a few times at my cousins house back when I was in college in 99 or 2000...I don't remember a damn thing lol.

I decided to pick a Dwarf Pali since I couldn't choose a Dwarf Berserker (I might try a Hunter tonight). Took me about 15 minutes to get use to the in game map and get out of the city. On my way out of town I didn't see any quests so I decided to work my way out of the city and start killing stuff. Before I did that I had to turn my mouse sensitivity waaaaaaay up so I could actually use my mouse to turn. I then learned the keyboard controls for movement which didn't take that long. Now time to kill stuff, or so I thought.

I just walked out the front gate and killed 'a snake', it was easy enough. Then I attacked a skunk, that didn't go so well. I was down to 7% health after a stink blast so I ran back to the city where a guard helped me out and owned the skunk. After that I was clicking away and saw in a text box that I could right click on a mob and it would tell me if I could kill it or if it would own me. I like "what would you like on your tombstone" response.

After several near death experiences I ran into Quint and he helped me out a bit. We made the run to gfay, still don't know exactly where it is. I learned that you can't run mobs off, they follow you forever...or until you kill them or zone out. Quint stopped running to look at his map or something and I had some little goblin thing chasing me. I was running around in circles until we started moving again. Zoning saved my life. We finally made it to gfay to turn in a quest. I don't think the payout was worth it, but at least I got to experience a couple new things.

So we turned in the quest and Quint had to go. He told me to die to get back to my starting city, as that is what he was going to do. Just don't die to get back to your city after lvl 5 as then you must return to your body to rez. I attacked something that asked what I would like on my tombstone and returned to my starting city.

I then set out to kill things, lots of things. For about an hour and 15 minutes I killed stuff and made it to about 15% into lvl 3. I almost died a couple times and got help and buffs from a couple people. This one person gave me a nice fire buff that allowed me to own damn near everything I attacked in the area. The attacking was weird getting used to. Left click target, hit 'Q' or '1', move close enough to hit target, hope you hit target, hope you kill it before it kills you. At times there seemed like major lag between swings, I sometimes had to chase mobs through trees in order to attack them. I got three upgrades killing stuff; chest, scarf looking thing and an axe. I had to make some runs into town to sell as i was constantly running out of bag space. I finally stopped selling stuff as I realized that I wasn't going to be playing this toon much and that this was to learn a bit about the game.

The graphics were about what I was expecting, things in the distance actually looked pretty nice (for 1999 technology) until you got up close to them, then they were close to Nintendo 8 bit graphics. The attacking interface wasn't too bad once I got used to it, I was clicking on myself a lot though as 'Tab' targeting doesn't work. I liked the message that popped up saying I need to choose something else to attack besides myself...something like that. I was stuck on the whole quest thing until Quint explained it to me...going to be a lot of typing. Hail, interested, yes...I realized that I could click on the words in the text and accomplish some of this. No quests are marked!?!?!? So now I have to talk to everyone or find a site that lists who has quests. I guess I could get a little more immersed in the game if I did it the old school way. Which I may do at first, but not for long unless I have to.

The whole time I am playing my girlfriend kept looking over asking me what the hell I was doing. She was laughing at me playing a game that will be 17 years old in a few months. She was like why the hell are you playing that when you could be playing that new PS4 game you have. She was like, it looks like Minecraft, maybe you should just play Minecraft. We had a few good laughs. I did a 3 month sub and I plan to play out at least the 3 months or longer if nothing else jumps out at me.

I had fun for the most part even though I spent most of the two hours I played by myself. I will be on again tonight for a couple hours and then join the new server Wednesday. My son has soccer Wednesday evening so I probably won't be on until around 8PM PST, but I will be on for a couple hours. Same for Thursday, except I might be on later because I don't have to work Friday-Sunday.

[Zrikz]

There is definitely a learning curve, I played for near 4 years I think and I don't remember any of it really ;p

There are options to turn on tab targeting though, and you can also turn off "click through self" so you stop targeting yourself. I had to figure that real fast.. kept being in the middle of a fight and I'd target myself trying to change the camera / get a better look around.

Not having the ! quest markers over the heads of the guys is kinda a pain, but it's kinda nice, I like that not everything is given to you and there are quests hidden. Sometimes the NPCs won't even talk to you, but if you figure out the correct words to say they'll give you a quest.

The benefit of this being an older game, absolutely every quest we could possibly do for the next few months / years are all mapped out in detail.

[Emeradii]

The tab targeting is one of the things that irked me too when I jumped back on. However it is fixable!

On the icon bar at the top of the screen (it should be there by default) there is a picture of a gear. Click it and you'll get the huge settings window to pop up.

Select the 'Keys' tab in the window. There should be a 'Select category:' pulldown menu where you can pick 'Target'. This will let you reassign the million+ targeting options to a key.

You should see 'TAB' listed on one of the 'Toggle last two targets' options. Left click it and hit the 'ESC' key. This will unbind the 'TAB' key.

Now look for the option 'Cycle through nearest NPCs'. Left click one of the '----' choices next to it then hit your 'TAB' key. You should now have the bind done successfully.

You can close the window and use the tab key like you would normally expect it to work. Congrats!

[Osacian]

Sounds good, thx for the tips on changing stuff a bit. I will have to set that tonight. One thing I didn't do much with was the options. I need to cycle through them and see what works best for me.

[Sarcoth]

Osacian, great write up. Made me laugh! My wife, on the other hand, remembers playing EQ and says she wants to play. We'll see!

I won't have time to play tonight, but I'll be on tomorrow night, all evening. Pending server up time and lag. I will, at the very least, be in Teamspeak.

[Chaos]

Don't forget your maps, and to update the UI http://www.eqinterface.com/

[Quintorak]

EQ Interface!!! Thanks!!!! You rock Chaos!

And hi again. It was cool running into you. Hope I was helpful