[P1xt]

Unlike a lot of other players, I haven't been playing on Emu servers for the past decade. My memories of EQ are over a decade old, because I've not been playing on live either. I did pop in one one of the live progression servers a year or so ago but it was pretty 'meh', my idea of recapturing the good ole days doesn't involve an 'us or them' battle to 'win the game'.

Over the past few months I've tried a few emu servers. TAKP is awesome and felt like I was right back in the day. Classless was a good idea, but there just seemed like there was, for lack of a better word, a 'meanness' to the community that was, well, off-putting. RebuildEQ was a fantastic idea (I played here the longest) but they sort of fail at 'truth in advertising' - pretty much across the board, the 'rebuild' is centered around the core philosophy of nerfing the ability to solo in order to encourage grouping which pretty much just feels like a gut punch on a server where the typical population is 1-6.

So I tried UltimateEQ

My first thought was 'this is going to get old quick', because within an hour of logging in I was blazing through kurns like a hot knife through butter, collecting tokens, getting gear - and omg the gear - better stats at level 10 than I ever had at max level back in the day. An hour in and I'm thinking 'sure this was fun as ****, but the fun can't possibly last'.

I was wrong.

Sure you're mowing stuff down and getting your tokens and getting your T1 gear in no time - and feeling a bit of both 'this is badass, I am badass' and 'well, this isn't really classic classic, if I can just mow through this, what is there left'.

I'll tell you what's left - tiering up, maxing out your lowbie gear then going for T2 gear, then T3 - progression quests that send you out to kill the big baddies from each expansion through PoP. I haven't got to them yet, but after PoP there are 'ultimate' zones (I believe beginning with Crushbone).

And, even though the gear flows freely and the early game just flies by - by the time you get to progression, it is challenging, and for all the non-classic gear you're wearing you actually have to put your classic hat on and play well and with strategy and THAT was what, for me, brought me right back to the Everquest I am so nostalgic for.

You can two box. But, you don't have to.

You can use MQ2/warp through the early content (but have to cut out the warping and actually fight your way in once you get to PoP progression and beyond).

The community is fantastic. People are actually nice, for no reason, other than that it's the norm on the server.

The GM is fantastic - imagine a server where not only does the GM respond promptly and in good spirits to bug reports, but where he also tells the community in advance what he is planning next for the server and then actually schedules releases warning everyone in advance when a patch is going in or the server's going to get a reboot.

UltimateEQ is a fantastic server, with a great GM, a wonderful community - and yeah, shit's not classic, but somehow I just don't care. This is fun.