Bear with me on this, it's going to be a fairly large one...

I’m quite sad to be sitting here writing this, as I’ve been an avid MMO player for the last 8ish years. They have been a big part of my life as I have spent MANY hours playing them, which is very easy to do.

The list of MMO's I’ve played is fairly decent sized and I shall list them all out and say a little something about each one, it seems like a fitting way to say farewell.
They are lsited in chronological order from the initial date i started playing them.

Xenimus
Curse you EJ Thayer! Curse you! For you have created the game that single handedly sparked my interest in MMO's! sure the game was rough and full of PVP jerks, but it was something NEW and FUN. I spent many hours playing this game only to stop when he started charging to play.

Ultima Online
Once Xenimus went to Pay to Play I started looking around for other games like it, not knowing fully what an MMO was yet. UO stepped up as a few of my friends were playing it and they had an extra copy. So I started up an account and made a character.. played for about 2 weeks before I just couldn't stand it any longer. That game was just not for me.

Everquest
So enters Everquest... as my next game to fill the gap left by Xenimus. The gap was filled indeed! I played Everquest quite intensely (and more so than Xenimus) for several years. This is the game that I base my comparison for all other MMO's Sadly my friends started to fade out from the game, and I started to lose interest, as the graphics were becoming dated, and the UI was just too uncomfortable.

Anarchy Online
Anarchy Online popped up while I was still playing EQ. Some of my friends were playing it, and I decided to join them. It was a decent game, but wasn't ready to be released at that point IMO. Too many problems and instance based combat made me lose interest quickly with this game.

Star Wars Galaxies
After I had finally quit playing EQ, I started to have cravings for an MMO again.. and it just happened to be time for SWG to be released. I jumped on this game and enjoyed it very much for several months.. but then my friends started to fade out, and the game started to become more of a job than a game. So I decided to part ways. Luckily I was already gone by the time the NGE popped up.

Runescape
Runescape was basically a filler MMO that helped sustain me till EQ2 came out. It wasn't fun, it wasn't pretty and it really sucked. But it helped me in a dark time (a time with no MMO to play).

Everquest 2
Ah, the big brother to EQ, the game had a little bit of Nostalgia in it, and a lot of new. I LOVED the game but had no friends that played, so I phased in and out for several years. Until I was able to create a guild and build a whole new set of friends to play. Then life happened and I got too busy to play, and many of those people moved on.

World of Warcraft
I played WOW a little bit during my EQ2 times, as well as DDO, LOTRO and EVE. All of these games were played because I had friends that played them, and I didn't have friends that played EQ2. WOW for me was not much fun at all. I played for a few months and could not figure out what it was that the rest of the world enjoyed.

Dungeons and Dragons Online
DDO has to be the worst MMO I’ve ever played. I despised the way it worked, and hated the fact that it was set in Ebberon instead of Forgotten Realms. This saddened me because I’m a huge fan of Dungeons & Dragons.

Lord of the Rings Online
LOTRO was interesting, but not really for me, some say I didn't give it enough of a chance, but I can normally tell fairly early if I’m going to like a game or not. And it just didn't work for me.

EvE Online
EVE was fun for a bit, I LOVED the hugeness of it, and all the different things you could do. I ended up just mining small amounts of stuff and selling it, never really getting into the guts of the game. It started to be a job too early, and I didn't want to keep playing because of it.

And so here I am, about 8 years later, and having several MMO's under my belt. EQ2 is the most recently played of my list, and I just canceled the subscription for it yesterday. I've finally come to the point in my life where what used to be the allure of MMO's is now the thing I dread in them.

I don't want to have to set aside 4-10 hours at a time to play and have fun. I don't want to have to make sure I stay near the same level of my friends that have more time to put into the game. I don't want to grind levels, or skills or whatever they happen to be called. I just want to sit down and have FUN. Something that is not really possible in an MMO. At least in any of the ones I’ve tried.

Thank you for joining me on this sad journey to say farewell to one of my favorite genre’s of games... Maybe sometime down the road there will be a new MMO that will bring me out of "Retirement" but until then, I’ll be playing games that don't require nearly as much of a consistent time investment to enjoy.

Darren brought this to my attention.

Needless to say, if you don't have a server home already, or are looking for a new server come join me on Najena. Send a tell/email to Drist or Kaedal.

As I mentioned before, I'm playing my Ranger currently in EQ2 to get him up in levels to play with some friends when they start in July.

Over the last couple weeks I’ve been playing off and on questing Drist up through the levels. I’ve spent my time in Zek, Enchanted Lands, Steamfont Mountains and Feerrott, doing random quests in each of the zones, as well as plowing through as many mobs as possible between quest objectives. By switching up the zone usage, I’ve manage to keep it fresh and exciting, without it becoming a grind. I suppose I could actually group sometime... but that just takes so much more work...

After hitting 42, I realized that I hadn't upgraded Drist's equipment since the early 30's so I decided to hit up the broker. While browsing around, I found that the new changes to crafting are freaking awesome! I was able to buy a full set of master craft armor for level 42, and this stuff is NICE. All of the pieces I bought have either +20 STR +20 AGI, or +15 STR +15 STA +15 AGI. Not to mention it actually looks pretty cool too! I must say the "new" crafting dev (I guess she has been around for a year+ now) Domino is making crafting so much better than it used to be! I might actually have to blow the dust off my crafters and give them a try.

So basically, I have about 5ish weeks to make it 8-10 more levels, I think it’s totally possible, but I'm going to have to utilize my vitality bonus (which I entirely devoured tonight) wisely to make it more efficient. This means I might actually play my level 71 from time to time as well...

I made this video quite a while ago, but I decided to share it with you all. A little something to brighten your Saturday morning.

 

 

 

So over the last few months, life had become quite busy: having major deadlines at work, as well as having two active students each in a different sport. I spent a lot of time out and about at functions, and much less time at home playing games on the computer. So I had decided to cancel my EQ2 subscription until things had calmed down a bit. Well guess what, school is out, sports are done and work has chilled out quite a bit, that means its EQ2 time once again!

The last time I played, Ruins of Kunark had just come out, I picked up the box and leveled my main (71 Wizard) a couple times to get up into the new final tier of content. Right about then is when I had to cancel and withdraw for a few months. This time around I decided to start a new character, and since the hubbub of the new expansion had died down, I decided to create a Sarnak in Timorous Deep.

I wanted to experience the newbie zone content and see some new sights, as I've got a bad case of altisim and have experienced the 1-20 content for every other starting zone. I also decided to try out PVP again, last time I played PVP was on Vox - which you may or may not know is a server set up to allow players to purchase in game items and characters with real money, which kind of off-set the balance being as I wasn't going to spend money on stuff like that. So I decided to give Nagafen a try.

Before Ruins of Kunark my favorite 1-20 area was the Greater Faydark, it was a huge zone with all sorts of fun stuff and quests to do, even had a sub 20 heritage quest you could do! Not to mention you could quest, hunt and sell without ever having to zone. It was quite the handy-dandy experience for a new character. Coming from the old zones in Qeynos where you would have to zone at least once, between selling/banking and hunting/questing, this was quite refreshing.

In Timorous Deep it’s a very similar experience to the Greater Faydark, the zone is huge, you can sell/bank and hunt/quest in the same zone. There are tons of quests to do, the story is entertaining. I had absolutely no problem getting my Sarnak Shadowknight to level 20 in the matter of a couple days, having a blast the whole time. Even grouping a few times to rid the deep of those pesky Qeynos invaders trying to prevent us from leveling.

After hitting 20, I decided to venture out into the Butcherblock Mountains and start the quests out there to continue my leveling glee. Unfortunately, Butcherblock Mountains has a 8 level separation for PVP, as opposed to the 4 level separation of Timorous Deep. Meaning that at my lowly level 20 I was easy pickings to the plethora of 25-28 players that had a distinct taste for disrupting my questing. I managed to take out a couple of those attackers over the next few days, while leveling up to 22. Then I decided that it wasn't worth the effort without having a play group, so I'll be camping him there until I find a group to play with, or decide to go and PVP in some of the lower end zones where I have a better chance of surviving.

So I decided to journey back to my home server of Najena. Not wanting to get into the high end content yet on my 71 Wizard (Kaedal), I decided to blow the dust off of an old character I've had since the beginning of EQ2. A level 35 Dark Elf Ranger. I created him back when you had to pick your archetype, then a class after that, and then your final class after that. And I also betrayed him back then, that's right, I had to run around Antonica killing hundreds of Gnolls, as well as a hand full of named Gnolls. He still proudly displays his "hunter of gnolls" title.

That's where I am now, the beginnings of leveling up my Ranger in hopes to have him in the 50's before the middle of July, which is when some of my friends will be coming back to EQ2 and we can get a group running around terrorizing Norrath together once again.

If any of you out there are interested in grouping up on either Nagafen or Najena just hit me up at Gartok (Nagafen) or Drist (Najena).

-ciao