It’s finally here, something I have wanted for years: a single-player friendly version of classic EverQuest. I pre-ordered and I can play it right now, I just have to get past a major mental hurdle. This is a beta, and one where your character is wiped at the end.
Many years ago I had been in the betas for WoW and EverQuest Online Adventures and been fine with losing progress, but these days, I struggle with that sort of thing. What’s the point of leveling up a character if it’s only going to be deleted? But what’s the point of anything I guess? I’m trying to reframe my thinking and focus more on the journey. We’ll see if it works!
Anyways, the EverQuest Legends beta:
it rules.
The beta starts you someplace familiar if played EQ waaaaaaay back when: the offline tutorial zone, which is a very fun throwback.
The tutorial teaches you the very basics, but this is a very odd and obtuse old game, so anything else you need to learn will come from experimentation, pop-up windows, or asking players in the chat.
And there’s a lot to learn, for both new players and veterans. Legends fundamentally changes the EQ experience from one built on grouping to making a multiclass character who is essentially an entire party. This begins during character creation and then you unlock your third class at level 10.
Even as someone who has played EQ on and off since 1999, I had a lot to learn here. First thing: how to access the updated UI (options -> interface -> load UI -> modern). The “modern” UI lacks the charm of the original, but it’s a bit more helpful and easier on the eyes.
Combat and traversal are pretty much the same (thankfully “Find” still gives you a path to follow to your target), but you choose the difficulty of the zone you enter.
This… takes some getting used to. “Fast-paced” is not a term I’d use to describe EverQuest, especially when playing solo, but that’s kind of the case in Legends. My Warrior / Cleric was barreling through enemies in the starting zone of Everfront Peaks with essentially zero downtime, so I decided to give the difficulty modifier a try. I turned the dial up a bit and set off.
I was able to defeat enemies many levels above me so I got cocky and cranked the level to 4. I killed a couple enemies, got some decent XP and rewards and then more enemies came and then more and more until I finally lost the war of attrition and was defeated by the swarm of aggro. At this point I decided to drop the difficulty back down to three.
As you increase the difficulty, the enemies start getting wild and dual-classing.
It’s delightfully absurd, and a big way Legends differentiates itself from the original game, the current live servers, and Project 1999. Another way is the loot system. Legends uses a variation of modern EQ’s Advanced Loot, which means you can adjust your auto-loot settings to always / never loot specific items. Legends takes this even further, allowing you to sell and store items right from the loot menu, which is a time-saving godsend.
There’s still so much to talk about like combining items and instancing, but that’ll have to wait for another time. As for right now I just want to get back into the game, even though I know this character won’t last the month.
All screenshots captured by me on PC.
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