We’ve been getting into EverQuest a little here, and some perfect storm of the new version of the best PS2 emulator out there, PCSX2, EverQuest nostalgia (BF and I spent some time making new EQ characters on various servers and checking up on our older characters) got me wondering how the EverQuest Online Adventures fans were doing with their reboot, Project: Return Home.
I’d never played EQOA when it was live for the PlayStation 2 – I was already playing actual EverQuest, and there was no way I would have the money or the time to play two of them. But when I saw the PS2 disk for sale in the local used game store, what the heck, I bought it.
I never even tried it – I knew it wouldn’t work, after all. After I downloaded the new PCSX2 and confirmed I could still play my Champions of Norrath campaign with it, I put in the disk and… it came up. Couldn’t connect to anything.
Turns out there was an expansion I did not have – EverQuest Online Adventures: Frontier. I have never seen this in any store, though eBay has several copies for sale for cheap (though I imagine people get it in less licit ways). Anyway, given you have that disk, you can download their specially set up version of PCSX2 and you will be able to run around and level up in EQOA. Thinking about it.
We were talking about how much we disliked what the EverQuest Prophecy of Ro expansion did to the much loved Freeport and Commonlands zones. When we restart on the Aradune server in a few weeks, we did confirm that the original zones would be still just a memory. Project1999 still has the original zones, though.
I have an old copy of the original EverQuest zipped up in case I ever want to play P99 again, so I thought I’d just unzip it, download a fresh copy of EQ Zone Viewer, and just soak in that old school ambiance. It was great.
We watched some videos on what Freeport looked like in EQOA, and it’s an interesting take. It’s not our Freeport by any means, but it isn’t the smeared mess the one on the live servers is.
I’m pretty excited to restart EQ. BF made his troll shaman; I made a dark elf shadow knight. Not on the new server, but just to get a feel for things. I was working on a spreadsheet for all the newbie SK armor quests when it occurred to me that a start-from-scratch server wouldn’t have those quests. It will be killing rats for tattered armor for us.
I’m happy to report that I fulfilled the promise of my superhero life in DC Universe Online today when I successfully rescued the 90th cat from a tree. Superman, move over. I got this covered.
Also, I used the Wayback Machine to look at my old blog when it still existed and realized I had apparently redesigned it at some point in the past, so I copied the design… and made a few changes. Hope you like it :)