Trolling EQ

Fisdib is almost ready to start farming the Minotaur Caves in Steamfont, and for fun I decided to check out all my existing characters on the Testserver. Its been hard to hop back in mid stride having missed a lot of things over the past, oh, 12 years (hence my fresh start with Fisdib). My two main EQ characters on my main account before leaving were Zraka Chakakhan and Braack Baccarat – both trolls. Looking back this surprised me and I am not sure why I chose trolls. I am not a fan of the new


 

models but perhaps the cartoonish nature of the old ones was fun. Regardless, for reasons unknown, trolls it was. I spent a lot of gaming time as them in EQ (and picked troll in DAOC as well) before moving on to Alliance-y type races and avatars in WoW and beyond. I may examine that decision in a future post. I had a main enchanter on a second account but I leant that account to a guildmate a long, long time ago and don’t even remember the login. No worries, free 85 and all that.

I decided to roll a new troll to see what the experience is like. Would it be as familiar as the Steamfont Mountain experience? Only one way to find out! I rolled up a Shadow Knight (so few Troll choices… Shaman, Warrior, Beastlord, SK) and boy, Innothule Swamp is a LOT busier these days. You can’t step out into the water without aggroing mobs and several pile in on the fray. This makes it a difficult start (haven’t found the troll mercenary giver-person) so I logged into my main Warrior to see what items I had to hand down. I had a lot! [Side note: this reminded me of how much I hate current BOE/restrictions on loot.]

I decided to finally move Braack out of the Great Divide and make the trek to Grobb to twink out my SK. This led to my next cool new EQ discovery – the mapping function. Pick a start zone, pick an end zone, and follow the glowing trail to there. Thank god – would have been hell for me to sort out the journey. I still expected a LONG run, but thankfully there are world portals to quickly zoom you between zones and planes and zones – so the other prodigal son returned to the swamp. I almost zoned into Guk for fun.

Twinking made things easy and I quickly leveled up. Getting the feel for it and now I am torn on whether to preserve the leveling experience and learn as I go, or to just do more reading and research and jump into my fee 85. Right now I don’t have a *purpose* in EQ – I have just been doing it for nostalgia, so that makes it a tougher decision. It isn’t like I am rushing to level to raid, or have a regular group of friends to grind/level with. Questing is a pain in the ass in EQ (keep getting no drop items that I don’t know what to do with..) and EQ was never one for story. I’ll sort it out. I think I may put a new character through the new-new character experience and see if that provides better next step clarity. The experience so far of the old-new character experience has been consistent with what I remember, and I think that is great.

The next chapter is up to me. Which is a fun, open thought in a MMO universe wrought with hand-holding.

3 comments / Add your comment below

  1. I never got around to playing a troll in the original EQ (mostly because I was scared of the added difficulty with being evil), but I always loved that model. It was distinct and scary in a sort of evil way.

    Then they went and made both trolls and ogres into tall, thin, muscular men. I hated it. I mean, it was kind of nice for the various doorways of the world where seeing what was inside was impossible with a fat troll in your way.

    Still, I really loved having some fat races. Every modern MMO does ‘everyone is skinny, deal with it’ and it is absolutely terrible. At least EQ2’s troll model doubled-down on the ugly, which is another aspect sometimes lost in new races in favor of attractiveness.

  2. Funny you mention that Murf – there was only one other regular playing troll in our entire guild (and we had a good roster back then…) I wish you could toggle on the old graphics – definitely would play that way.

    As you mention, even ugly races are fit and anatomically fit in with ideals.. then they just mess with faces/scars/warts (etc.)

    I didn’t get into EQ2. I do want to go make a troll there now though, and see what I see =) I am the absolute worst MMO tourist right now!

    Ah collision detection – just imagine the drama that would cause in WoW with today’s MMO players. Wait.. did that sound too much “get off my lawn?” *Grin*

    Thanks for stopping by – blog-rolling you!

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