A Newbie in Norrath

I learned last week that Everquest 2 is launching their 2nd Time Locked Expansion Server Fallen Gate next week and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve never played EQ2 or Everquest for that matter so why would I be excited to play an 13 year old game? Well it’s mostly because I’m just so curious.

I just don’t know all that much about Everquest 2. Every once in a while I’ll read something about it but if it wasn’t for me randomly finding it on steam a few years ago I probably would have never known it existed. I’ve had this fascination with the concept of progression servers since Everquest announced their’s a few years ago. I like the idea of taking an old game with so much content and rolling it back to the beginning and slowly working it back up. So I’m both curious to see what EQ2 has to offer and starting fresh on a progression server.

Fallen Gate will be a different TLE Server than the previous Stormhold and Deathtoll servers. The first wave of progression servers had the player base vote on whether or not the next expansion should be unlocked and Fallen gate will unlock each expansion every 12 weeks.

The past week or so I’ve been playing around on a free to play account on the current live servers trying to decide if I like the game enough to pay a sub for it. From what I’ve experienced so far I can see myself playing this. I like how many different races and classes there are and I can be a frog, I don’t know if I’ve ever played a game where I can play as a frog. Even better I can play as a magic frog and have my own little frog clone to follow me around.

I’ve been fooling around with a handful of classes that look interesting. With the free to play account I only get 2 character slots so I’ve had to say goodbye to a lot of characters. I’ve tried playing some of the more familiar classes like ranger, beserker, and wizard but the less cookie cutter classes look like fun too. So far I’m really digging the Dirge with it’s buffs as well as it’s debuffs and melee skills. The illusionist has also been fun to play around for a few levels with and they get their own clone pet as well. The more frogloks the better. I still want to try out the Coercer for a few levels before I make my decision on what class to play I just love the name of the class.

Something that took me by surprise was that there was voice acting in the beginning area. Not all of the NPC’ have voiced dialogue but a good amount of them do. It’s just not something I was expecting to see. I don’t know how much more of the game is voice acted outside of the beginning area but it’s a nice touch. Also the graphics aren’t terrible. They don’t look as dated as I thought they would and don’t detract from the game.

I know I’ll be in the extreme minority on this new progression server as someone whose never played the game before but I’m looking forward to learning and playing a new to me game. I’m hoping that with this server I’ll be playing the old content in a meaningful way instead of rushing through it on the live server. I think this is what excites me most about it getting a fuller experience of what EQ2 was and is. Plus, the nice thing about the All Access Day Break subscription is that I can try their other games as a member if EQ2 doesn’t end up being my cup of tea.