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 :).