Sway once said to me Â"Everquest scratches a lot of itches, Certis, and also youÂ're the greatest.Â" I have to agree on both counts. Where else could you play an online game as comfortable as an old shoe that offers socializing, combat, and a tried and true level system? The realistic answer would be that pretty much all MMORPGs offer that kind of experience, but they all lack something that Everquest has in spades: Everquestinossity. The game is practically brimming with it.

Knowing this and curious to the changes made since I stopped playing the game mere months after its original launch I snapped up the expansion and re-entered the world of Norrath. My first thought upon entering the game was Â"I have a tail; how far weÂ've comeÂ" My second thought ran somewhere along the lines of Â"Where the hell is everyone? IÂ'm lonely and I donÂ't know what the hell IÂ'm doingÂ" Everquest basically feels the way I remember but has clearly changed much since I last played. Right away I notice that the striking new black transparent interface makes much more sense than the old beige layout. It contains access to every function you could ever need; everything is customizable and it leaves a bit more game screen open for the actual game.

I created a Vah Shir (a cat person) and began in the starting cat city on Luclin. The Shadows of Luclin expansion pack was made to bring Everquest into the 21st century with upgraded graphics that easily slow your computer down as quickly as any new game released today. What an achievement, that a game as old as Everquest can still bring my frame rate to its knees rendering an overly complex city that happens to be completely void of player characters. A running theme in the Everquest today is next to no population in any of the Â"newbieÂ" zones and a lot of the mid-range areas as well. This includes starting cities like Framrate-optopia where my cat started.

So a new player diving into Everquest alone for the first time will leave that new player curious where the Â"massively multiplayerÂ" part of the game went. I can assure you the players are still around, theyÂ're just mostly on the Planes of Power killing gods and twinking newbies with reckless abandon. This means that if you jump in alone youÂ're going to have a very difficult time finding a group to play with. With years of evolutionary opportunity, most EQ cliques have probably developed their own language and require a firm paddling while wearing elf ears to join. IÂ'm not saying itÂ's impossible to start alone and make a go at it, IÂ'm just saying it wonÂ't be much fun. Enter Elysium.

Elysium, being the Elysium that he is, jumped at the chance to join me in Norrath. HeÂ'd already compulsively bought every expansion you could own (and probably a few you canÂ't) so he was more than ready to hook in. We decided to play it straight for a while and not get any high level buffs put on us before we hit the newbie zone. Instead we honored the fine Everquest tradition of killing rats, skeletons and skeleton rats. Unless they had weapons, then we ran away. One thing I do like about the Vah Shir newbie area is that if you die you spawn right back in the newbie killing fields again so another club wielding skeleton can beat you to death much sooner.

Once we got past the newbie areas we hit the Planes of Power so we could check out some of the new expansion areas IÂ'd never seen before. IÂ'm no graphics whore but I must admit IÂ'd forgotten how utterly bland a lot of the Everquest world is. Blurry, patchy green landscapes, sparse and depressing Â"treesÂ" and low level textures as far as the eye can see. The new zones appear to have some new creatures that you wouldnÂ't see in the older areas of the game. By Â"newÂ" I mean Â"same as the old models but red, gigantisized and maybe with a new horn somewhere on their bodiesÂ" Bottom line on the graphics, despite tentative swipes to improve player and NPC models Everquest is getting a little long in the tooth graphically.

Throughout our travels we spent a fair bit of time in the Planes of Power themselves. A teleport stone to almost every major area of the world is offered up here and destroys much of the need to travel long distances while dodging giants and other high-level monsters intent on thwarting your corpse run. It is on the Planes that you will find uber-players chilling out and buffing newbies so they can level up faster and eventually buff others for fun too. It is also in the Planes one can sell bones to high level Necromancers for more plat than any player would ever have seen in his or her first month when EQ launched. The ease of fiscal productivity along with players selling high level equipment dirt-cheap in Norrath means that there is no more fighting and effort to score new and sought after items. Most every thing can be had for a fraction of its worth a few years ago and money practically shoots out of the ground when you snap your fingers. The drive to score Â"phat lewtÂ" and plat is one itch Everquest scratches all too easily these days. Long gone is the sense of accomplishment of saving up for weeks to buy that Runic Staff you had your eye on.

For some not having to camp for hours on a spawn to score an item is a bonus but despite the logic behind it, Everquest has always been about effort, determination and long hours working towards a goal. In the new almost instant-gratification system of new Everquest thatÂ's been lost because thousands of people before you have already put the time in! This leads us to possibly the poorest implementation of player vending machines I have ever had the misfortune of using. The Bazaar.

Enter the Bazaar and you might think youÂ'd stumbled across some twisted Blair Witch re-enactment where players press their noses to the walls and keep their heads bowed to the floor. You immediately see why they do this when you try and take your first step. ItÂ's a slideshow, sometimes not more than four frames a second if youÂ're lucky. You see, the Bazaar is a large room full of hundreds upon hundreds of players trying to buy and sell goods. The process is simple, you bring up the bazaar window and spend five minutes trying to click on various submit buttons as you fight through the lag. Once youÂ've managed to narrow down what it is you need and how much you can spend the interface will list every item within your search range. Once you find the player offering the best price you simple double click on the item in question, pay your money and get the hell out of the area before your video card explodes and your modem goes on strike.

No wait, I was lying to make reality seem less like hell again. After choosing the player who has the item you want you right click on his name which points your character in the merchantÂ's direction, regardless of silly things like people or walls that happen to be in your way. So begins a desperate and sadistic round of staring at the floor (to ease the frame rate up a bit) and walking into people, desperately searching among the hundreds of players merchants standing forever AFK in long rows for the one guy who has the item you want to buy. Truly, I donÂ't see how they could have ever thought this was the best solution for the issues of player vendors. IÂ've never seen anything like it and I hope I never do again.

After asking Elysium if weÂ're having fun yet he suggested we make a post in the boards to see if anyone wanted to join us. Indeed, the world is full of gamers eager for an excuse to suckle on SonyÂ's teat. With a weekly group of guys from the forums came the elusive fun factor I was looking for. Not necessarily because Everquest plays better with larger groups, but simply because the group of people playing were having a great time talking while pulling endless waves of enemies and trying desperately to find SwayÂ's corpse.

Â"I got bored so I think I wandered that way and then down past all of those red, angry badger things and then further down where I think I molested one of their sisters and then they killed me. I donÂ't know where my corpse is but we should probably retrieve itÂ"

ItÂ's nice to know that no matter how much Everquest changes, some things will always stay the same.

- Certis