It’s almost been a week since Everquest Legends officially released. I have a bad habit of waiting to long to start writing about a game and it feels like I’m about on that cusp for this one. I’ve been playing almost everyday, making slow but steady progress.

I come to EQL without the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia. In 1999, I was in second grade and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even aloud on the internet. The most I used the family computer for at the time was playing with MS paint and pretending to write things in Notepad. So I come to Norrath only with the experience of things that spawned after Everquest’s success. It also means that I have absolutely no game knowledge.

Now, I love a good MMO launch. Everyone’s excited even though they know their going to be spending some time in a queue. The servers are screaming, there’s all sort of technical issues, but there are people absolutley everywhere. It was good to see that this launch was no different. Doubly so on my server, Rivervale, because personal instances were down the whole first day. I have a feeling playing those first few hours last Tuesday night are probably the most people I’m going to see out in the world from here on out.

I started as a Gnome Enchanter/Wizard because my daughter thinks Gnomes are the funniest race, and it was different from my beta character, a Halfling Paladin/Beserker. Enchanter sounded like it would have buffs and debuffs and provide some utility so it seemed like a strong pick for a primary class. I picked Wizard for my secondary because I’ve been leaning more towards the caster class fantasy lately and it looked like the magic DPS.

I had planned to start in the tutorial, just to make sure I hadn’t missed any of it from my time with the beta and to get the boots that provide a movement speed boost. The server had other plans for me. I tried connecting about 10 times and each time, after a brief loading period, I was thrown back to character select with an error that my personal instance wasn’t ready. Eventually, the loading screen went through. I found myself not in the tutorial, but spat out into the Steamfront Mountains. Not even near my class Guildmaster in my starting city, just in the middle of a zone. Luckily there’s a zone map, which I understand was not a thing in the original EQ and found my way to Ak’Anon.

I wandered around in there for a bit, trying to figure out how to get around and where everything was. I tried to hail a few NPCs along the way but none of them seemed very interested in talking to me. Except for a bard who wanted me to deliver some mail for her. I took her letter but I have no clue where it’s suppose to go. I found the weapon and armor merchants and my class guildmasters and spell shops. All nestled away fairly close to each other.

I went back out to the Steamfront Mountains to find creatures to kill. It was slow going. I started with level 1 pet who seemed kind of useless if I’m honest, he would go attack something a level or two higher than him and die. I didn’t rely on him too much. The first few levels I found something around my level or slightly higher and casted spells at them until I was out of mana. Then I’d wait around for mana to refill and go do it again. I got to 5 this way but I ran out of things that would give my a nice chunk of experience.

I went wandering around the zone looking for something to fight and either finding things that were too low or much too high. I was about to call it a night when I went to check out the last place I hadn’t looked (of course) and stumbled upon the kobold camp. This is where I found a whole bunch of other people too who had a similar idea. The kobolds were plentiful and gave a nice chunk of experience. I do wish I had some screenshots of all the people, I swear they were over there but I failed to take any with them in it!

My first impressions of Everquest Legends are:

• It’s ugly, but not nearly as ugly as I thought it would be.
• The UI isn’t that bad, but does take some time to get used to and fine tune.
• It plays like it says on the tin. It feels very doable as a solo player but also has enough of a challenge where it feels like an adventure.
• The world zones are bigger than I expected, but also emptier than I expected. Some places in Steamfront Mountains you can walk for quite a while without seeing much of anything.
• I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing but so far I’m entertained.
• It’s a bit like walking around a museum.