Three years ago today EQII launched to a huge amount of fanfaire and anticipation by a legion of veteran EQ players.  At the time, a friend of mine and I had formed our own guild and were gunning to get into the guild status race quickly.  We ramped up our guild on the Guk server and were swept away by the experience for the first few weeks.  But then the performance problems and bugs started to wear us down.  And the constant grind to slowly level.  And the sameness of the armor.  And the xp debt when you died.  Etc. etc.  In short, we only lasted three months in the original incarnation of the game because it had become something completely not fun for us.

However, today EQII is a completely different game, as pointed out by Kendricke today over at Clockwork Gamer.  It is actually quite a good MMO.  It was great when I played again last year for a few months, and I would say it’s even better today.  It’s hard to believe it’s been three years since the game launched, and WoW will be hitting that milestone soon as well.  How time flies!

I’ve been really enjoying my time back in EQII.  I’ve mostly been focused on the Faydwer expansion zones as I had done the old world zones a few times (especially Qeynos/Antonica/Thundering Steppes).  It’s been great to see things completely new, but so reminiscent of the original EQ zones.  My friends and I that are playing are anxiously awaiting the RoK expansion next week, and I’m really glad to see the NDA finally lift today.  I hope to read some nice beta reviews before the game hits. 

I really do hope that someday there will be an EQIII, but with EQII going so strong that day may be years and years away.  I really think right now that EQII has at least 5 more years of life in it, especially if they continue to release the quality of expansions they have.  There is a TON of content out there, and it can be a bit overwhelming, but it also means there’s always someplace to go and explore that you’ve never been.

So Happy Birthday EQII - may you live to see another three and many more!

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 11:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.