Can you go home again?

I know that old saying says you can’t, but I’ve always thought that was a silly saying anyway.  And right now, it seems that quite a few people are putting it to the test.  Many of my old EQ guildmates have returned in the last couple of months.  One of my good friends from back home is back to playing again and is hooking up with a guild that is going to go back through the content from PoP forward now that the flagging and key requirements are being relaxed.

Then, there is Tipa and Stargrace.  Their little project sounds fun as well.

In reading Tipa’s review of her EQ raid, I think she nailed it on the head.  Raiding in EQ was definately something special and raiding is done in a way that no game has come close to before or since.  Raiding is just different there.  It feels like raiding.  You have an army going against a mob that is fully capable of humbling that army.  Knowing the strengths, weaknesses and abilities of your class are VERY important on EQ raids as is having at least a basic knowledge of how other classes work as well.

Many of my friends in EQ2 who never played EQ or didn’t play it for long have a hard time understanding the pull of EQ and I’m not sure it is possible to explain it to someone who didn’t experience it.

Read what Jaye wrote about EQ1 raids.  Her point had nothing to do with EQ nostalgia… it was a totally unrelated post, but she reminded me of something that made me smile.  The part that really got me going was this:

“I’ve been leading raids on and off for about 9 years now. (I just did the mental math and freaked myself out). I cut my teeth on Everquest content. The number of raiders we had to manage made it feel like running a small city. We negotiated with other guilds over who was using /shout for their raid channel, who was using /ooc, and who was using /auction. There was no loot window, so we kneeled on the corpse and typed all the stats by hand, hoping desperately that we could lock the corpse long enough to get the item to those who deserved it. And my raid UI was a scrap of paper, comprised of chunks of 6 names, with lots of crossed out marks and arrows going here, there, and everywhere.Raid leading has come a long long way since then.”

Back in the day, there was no raid group, so raid leaders would frantically scribble on pieces of paper.  My pages listed names, classes, levels and guilds.  We could rarely field a raid force from just our guild, so we would open up invites to guilds we were friendly with and just assume that the players who showed up knew how to play their class.  You did your best to organize groups and then had to shuffle buffers from group to group because you didn’t have the ability to buff anyone not currently in your group.

My raid notebook was a mess of information.  I wrote down who looted what on what raid and tried to balance out loot so that if someone won something on the last raid, others would be first in line next time. 

It was chaos at its finest… and it was fun.  It was exciting. 

Even after the raid group was first introduced, EQ raiding still had that element of organized chaos.  When you are fielding a raid force of 72 people to take on a mob none of you have ever faced before, there was a feeling of expectancy and uncertainty, but through it all, there was also a feeling of comfort in knowing that you had 71 people at your back who knew how to play their class and who would be all business when the battle was joined.

Is it time for me to go back?

I’ve been asking that question for weeks now.  Every day, I get closer to answering with a very emphatic “yes!”