That 6-month to 2-year respawn timer is a really interesting mechanic, especially for such an old title. The first game I ever played that had loot farming and respawn timers was Everquest 2 back in 2004, that was the year I first had a PC with a decent graphics card. Before that the only RPGs I had played were the final fantasy series and the Baulders Gate Dark alliance titles on PlayStation 2.
You might enjoy checking out the Vanguard emulation server, so far I am enjoying roaming around the world of Telon more than I have enjoyed any online game. I never played it when it was live so the whole world is totally new to me. Back in 2007 my PC wouldn't have been able to handle the massive open world,I would have been lucky to get 5-10fps. The server is in an open alpha state with about 80% of the content implemented. All of the starting towns apart from the Dark Elf and Gnome have their quest lines fully scripted. The starting Isle of Dawn gives a very well-polished new player experience and rewards you with a pegasus flying mount at the end of the quest line.
Because it's still in open alpha you can use .rift command to teleport to any chunk of the game that has a rift stone,its useful for exploring the incredibly well-designed world. There are 15 players max on at peak times so if you actually meet and group with someone it feels special. Yesterday I was questing in the Silverlake area when a level 50 disciple wandered by and gave me a 1 handed mace which was a huge upgrade to what I was using.He told me some stories about areas he had been exploring which inspired me to visit those locations asap. I was surprised to find out the disciple could throw high-level buffs on my character without needing to be grouped with him, these buffs more than doubled my hitpoints and dramatically increased my damage output for 45 minutes. I was more than a little hyped about this situation and chance meeting.
We decided to check out a nearby dungeon known as the ruins of Cairnworth Hall, a haunted ruin that seems inspired by EverQuests Befallen dungeon. With the level 50 buffs I was able to solo the starting mobs which are lv 25 heroics,I was only a level 19 Cleric,each kill gave 7500 exp ,around 6% of a level I also got some loot ,fun times :). The dungeon looks good I will likely make a post on it soon.I haven't edited the footage I have yet but here is the start of the adventure, I ran out of disk space for recording which is why it kind of cuts out hastily.I managed to free up some space and capture more footage of the run which I will edit together at some point this week.
If you do feel like making a character on the server you can find the start-up guide here, its fairly straightforward,I didn't have any problems apart from the first 3 download links didn't work, the 4th link which is hosted by Mediafire worked perfectly and I was in the game fairly quickly after the download.
https://vgoemulator.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4481
I use to love leveling alts in EQ. I had access to quite a few accounts so I would buff them to the hills and they would just go around slaughtering everything leveling quickly.
While I don’t have the time right now to fit in another game as some games I’ll be playing are releasing soon. I’ll try and check into at some point. Sounds like you have had some amazing adventures so far it in.
It’s great to see a community keeping an old game alive. Far to many games end up shutting down and that is the end of them forever.
It sounds like it is an amazing game just to explore around in.
A while after EQ I did try out EQ2 for a short while. It was just not the same to me. I just kept missing all the friends that no longer played EQ and I knew they did not move over to EQ2. I only got a couple of levels in EQ2 if I can recall before moving on.
I've played EQ2 more than any other game I guess, that was my intro to MMORPGs back in December of 2004.I bought most of the expansions until around 2010 when they introduced mercenaries and free to play and the game started to lose its magic. Nowadays its pretty silly with characters doing damage in the hundreds of millions to lame trash mobs and storylines that don't interest me at all.
2022 was the first year I got a taste of old-school original EQ. I played for a couple of months on the Project 1999 server. I made a dwarf cleric and managed to get him to level 20 but found that game far to grindey to really get into. I even lost a whole level trying to get from butcherblock to unrest, an aqua goblin killed me right at the start of the zone and I died maybe another 10 times trying to get my corpse back.I went from close to level 16 down to level 14 with one bubble of experience needed to get back to 15 , it was brutal and I didn't log back in for about a month.
I found the Vanguard emulator from watching a Youtuber called Superbitsandbob play it, we have pretty similar gaming interests so I tend to keep an eye on what he's up to if Im looking for new games to check out.
So far Vanguard seems like the true spiritual successor to the pre-Luclin Everquest legacy that Brad McQuaid was designing.I guess it makes sense as Vanguard was Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover's next project after leaving the Everquest dev team.
It's kind of sad everything that happened to cause Vanguard to be sunset, I would have loved to see it get at least one major expansion and some AA tress added. There is so much that could have been done with that world.
I guess the VGOEmulator devs can finally add new content or finish unreleased content like the Black Dragon Volcano/Dark elf raid zone.
I think Vanguard will be my MMO home until Pantheon -Rise of The Fallen releases, again another sad note that Brad McQuaid passed away before seeing that project come to fruition.
Anyways thanks so much for the vote on my little Vanguard post this week ,that means a lot to me :).