Yes it is true I am playing Everquest 2 once more.

It all started a couple of weeks ago my wife and I chatted once again about playing an MMO together.  I thought for a bit about trying Everquest 2 with her, and when I looked at my account status I discovered Sony had reactivated my account for the month.  I am a sucker about free time so I reinstalled EQ2 and started messing around a bit from the perspective of teaching my wife how to play.    Well the washed out five year old graphics engine and high learning curve was going to be a turn off to my wife and I suspect this venture into the game was going to be a passing fancy for me.   Then I found out a friend of mine had also taken advantage of the free play time.

Friends make games more fun; that is a proven fact.  So with the knowledge of my friend playing I created a new character on the server he was playing on which is now my 3rd server (all with characters no higher than level 22).

While we have only grouped together one time as we ran past each other, simply having someone to chat to made the game much more fun.   He also encouraged me to get into the guild he joined for more social interaction, and that was the best meta game decision I have made.   Guilds are the social heart of MMOs, as long as there are a few members online for me to chat to the game becomes much more than just a game it becomes a “watercooler”.

As for characters I started another Fury (half-elf) and a Troll Defiler (an homage to my very first troll shaman eq1 character), both of them have been fun to play but the Fury has been getting most of the play time lately.   I am finding that as I level up and experience some of the games subtleties, I am enjoying it more and more.  I think in my next post I will chat about those things EQ2 offers me that other games have not.