I landed in Norrath the way a lot of girls did- because my boyfriend needed something for his group. In my case, it was an enchanter. Shortly after I happily turned into my boyfriend's buffbot (oh god, what was I thinking?! Young and dumb, that's all I can say.) the guild we ran with imploded and we switched to EQ2. Just before I got my goddamn epic.
Fucking still want that thing.
Anyway, I fell into EQ2 just after Kingdom of Sky launched, and spent the bulk of the expansion leveling and learning to play the game. I'd heard horror stories about it over in Everquest, and in some of the other games we'd tried. It was too complicated, poorly balanced...the tradeskills were a nightmare... By the time I got to the game, a lot of that had been resolved. The interdependence of the tradeskills was gone, the crafting process had been simplified so that it was one combine per item, the leveling curve had been smoothed out a little, and a lot of content that had formerly been targeted at groups was now soloable. The game had, in short, been dumbed down, but in EQ2's case, it desperately needed it. The game very nearly didn't survive because when it launched it was too clunky and complex- too far removed from the original Everquest for the diehards to really dig in, and not nearly as approachable as its competition to gain a foothold. For my part, by the time I got to EQ2 I'd already sampled from World of Warcraft and a small host of other games. I was refreshed by the difficulty, and fell in love with the quasi-anime styled graphics Sony had introduced with the Japanese launch of the game. I rolled up one of the worst classes in the game at the time, a monk, and set about learning to tank.
I had a lot of good times in EQ2, and a lot of bad times. I lost my hardcore cherry in Echoes of Faydwer, when the ex and I got into one of the top guilds in North America. (And then we got booted when I neglected to pay our phone bill and we lost Internet access for three weeks. -.-) I was in one of the best guilds I've ever known, and developed the playstyle that has since become Tactical Dysfunction. We took advantage of EQ2's post-Faydwer class flexibility and abused it to its fullest, with healer tanks and dps, tank healers, and all sorts of bonkers group and raid comps that should never have worked, but did. Hell. We did full raids with nothing but priests, just because we could- while the content was still of-level.
In short, my time in Everquest 2 made me the player I am today. I learned how to examine even the most seemingly useless skills in a class's arsenal and find a use for them. I learned the value of farming and patience, and how to optimize my time spent ingame for the best rewards. EQ2 required me to spend time out in the world actually doing things at a time when World of Warcraft was becoming a mindless daily and faction grind. I can't remember a time when the game turned into a log on, do the same stuff I did yesterday, log off grind.
That may be because I haven't played EQ2 in two years, but the fact that even after so long away from the game I've got the feels for it says something.
Probably the darkest moment in EQ2 history, for outsiders at least, was when the game went free to play. Facing dwindling subs and income, Sony just about had to decide between shutting the doors or opening the floodgates, and for better or worse they decided on the latter. While their F2P model isn't the greatest, the influx of players and its impact on the game itself is a case any student of MMORPGs should study. In one fell swoop, they solved the problem of vacant cities (caused by the advent of guild halls), lack of low-level presence (your standard game aging), and unused content. They made one of the biggest franchises in the industry accessible to everyone, though the free players faced some steep penalties. To this day, Sony's freemium model makes me cringe when I add up the actual cost of trying to play the full game for free. But then, their goal was to get people in the doors and then make them sub; not to let people freeload. In that respect I guess, they were successful.
It was a good six years for me in EQ2, and judging by what my friends who still play the game have to say, it's been an even better ten. One of these days I'll revisit the game and see what's changed. If nothing else, it'll feed the nostalgia beast.
