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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. ...

It’s 1999, my old broken down Super Beetle is sitting in the driveway, probably waiting on another rebuilt part for its underpowered engine, and Volkswagen wants me to know that it’s about to release brand new Beetles, and I could get one. My first car, actually. Picture taken with a Kodak instant camera my mom got me for Christmas. If I were rich, maybe. I had a Nintendo64 and enough cash to buy Beetle Adventure Racing. The kids and I spent many days racing pixel Beetles around. I never did get a new Beetle. By the time my financial picture improved, I could afford a VW GTI. ...

I apologize for the brief news on Crowfall. I’d meant to get deeper into the PvE, but while I was building up my kingdom in the creative mode, the test server came down and I moved on to other things. It’s been years since Chinese publishers ChangYou took over the Shadowbane IP, and eight or so since they released plans to relaunch it. Now, here in 2020, it looks like they are finally really relaunching the famed empire building, PvP MMO. Shadowbane was notable for the huge number of beast races available for play, as well as the EVE-like way armies could gather to siege or defend player-created cities. ...

Epic battle in my kitchen There’s one game series that stands above all the others, to me. It’s the game series that continually redefines itself in each new game and is always willing to take risks and try new things. Final Fantasy III/VI for the Super Nintendo blew me away. I’m not sure if it was the first Final Fantasy I played – the chronological list I found suggests that Final Fantasy Mystic Quest would have been the first. But it was the first that really redefined for me how great stories and great characters could combine with great gameplay to make something truly obsessive. ...

This is part four of a four part playthrough of the 2004 PlayStation 2 hit, Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest. All four parts will be available at this link. As Pelys’ blast from the Horn of Ill Omen sends us hurtling through planar barriers, Firiona Vie contacts us once again to tell us just how very close we are to rescuing her. She calls us her champion, and says that win against Innoruuk or lose to him, this new age will become called the Age of Hate. ...

This is part three of a four part playthrough of the 2005 PlayStation 2 hit, Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest. All four parts will be available at this link. Before we get started, I’m just going to put my notes up here. I’ve been trying to fit the geography of this game to the known geography of Norrath. Remember, we know what the whole of Norrath looks like, as we see it entire from the moon of Luclin in that expansion. There are no lost continents. This game came out during the time of EverQuest’s ninth expansion. Kunark, Velious, and Luclin were old expansions at that point. ...

I vahnt your cleecks We left off with King Leithkorias of Kelethin ordering us to follow the Black Scroll (a map that could not be understood by even the great Mayong Mistmoore) to the Underworld and there confront the orc commander that was fomenting so much Unrest (heh heh) in Faydwer. (In EverQuest, the subterranean realm is known as Underfoot, not Underworld, in another of the puzzling lore issues that should have been fixed.) ...

My post yesterday made me want to play EverQuest again. But one of the last things I want to do in gaming, is to play EverQuest again. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. In order to play either EQ1 or EQ2, I’d have to get really deep into it, and for a long time, because neither EverQuest is a game you play lightly or casually. I’ve done my time and waited out my parole. I did say I would be first in line for a new EverQuest and I wasn’t lying. I’ll dive deep into the next one to come out (and maybe that will be Pantheon, though with Aradune’s death, who knows if non-streamers will ever be allowed to play it?) ...

Before you start objecting to having an MMO up this far, I’m just going to present my bona fides: There’s a TON of games in the EverQuest series, and I’ve played most of them. EverQuest itself, obviously. EverQuest Online Adventures for the PS2? I have it. Champions of Norrath and its sequel, Champions: Return to Arms (which admittedly, did away with the EverQuest branding on its packaging)? I have them. Lords of Norrath, the RTS? Have it, played it. EverQuest pencil-and-paper RPG? Have it, ran a campaign in it as DM. EverQuest 2? Please. Landmark? Paid the hundred bucks, played it. ...

It takes a village to kill a monster My Switch profile says I have been playing Octopath Traveler for about 135 hours. This is only approaching the time I spent playing Skyrim, which is somewhere around 150 hours. I was about sixty hours in when I started finishing the job quests. First was Alfyn’s, only because I accidentally killed his Chapter 4 boss. Then my main character, the hunter H’aanit, and the rest of my main team. ...