It’s not wrong to be nostalgic. A lot of us old EverQuesters (as opposed to EverQuesties; we hate them!) have warm feelings toward what was, for many of us, our first MMO. Sure, the graphics were crude and the leveling was brutal, but there was the same sort of camaraderie based on shared suffering that you get in wars and natural disasters.

It’s not just the players that get nostalgic; SOE has gotten a little nostalgic as well for the time when EverQuest was the industry leader and set the bar that all other MMOs had to cross. “If only…” they might say, “if only we could return to 1999 and do it all over again!”

Thus will someday be born EverQuest Next, a marriage of World of Warcraft graphics with Norrathian lore, a game that can be both (circa 2004-ish) modern and (circa 1999-ish) nostalgic at the same time.

What if SOE, instead of looking backward, looked forward? SOE has already dabbled in other sorts of non-MMO EQ games. The RTS Lords of EverQuest tried and failed to compete with Blizzard’s Warcraft a year before World of… arrived, and Champions of Norrath tried and somewhat succeeded in applying the tropes of Blizzard’s Diablo series to the world of EverQuest.

Seems SOE really has this thing for competing with Blizzard on their turf. Well, it’s time to stop looking backward — or looking north to Irvine — and start looking into the future. I humbly present five more forward-looking concepts for EverQuest Next….

1. NorrathVille

Ever want to farm jumjum on the edge of Misty Thicket? Interested in exploring dark caves hidden in the depths behind the Third Gate? Have a hankering to teach moss snakes to kick in Jaggedpine Forest? Why not come down to NorrathVille and make your mark on the world? Stake out your claim to Norrath and defend your home from a world that wants to take it from you. As you gain levels, you rise in the hierarchy of your race and eventually become a lord or lady of your land, powerful enough to move your home into the Planes themselves. Play alone or with thousands of your fellow Norrathians!

2. Grand Theft Freeport

On the waterfront, your name means nothing; your race even less. All that matters is what you are; a wharf rat, scrabbling for any action you can get from the ships that survive the crossing of the Ocean of Tears and the pirate-infested Timorous Deep. Or maybe you’re a Freeport Guard, sworn to keep the city safe for the rabble that infest it. Or are you one of Sir Lucan’s Knights, spreading blight through the city under the guise of saving it? No matter how you do it, one thing is for sure: Freeport is YOUR city. And everyone else had better fall in behind you or get out of your way.

3. Team EverQuest

You never know what you’ll be facing, when you step through the portal. One day, a legion of dwarfs. The next, a flight of dragons. The only people you can depend upon are your buds. You signed on as an Elite Vermiculated Elven Ranger Quester for the gold, but now, it’s much more than that. Now, it’s personal. Using the industry’s most advanced matchmaking lobby, E.V.E.R. Questers form up and move out to some of the most thrilling and tactically challenging situations to be found in Norrath. Where regular raid forces fail, Questers succeed. And when squads of Questers face each other in training — well, may the best team win, and may the other guys have good luck finding rezzes.

4. EverQuest Party!

Fighting can be fun, but everyone knows the REAL hardcore challenge for a seasoned adventurer is looking good in the guild lobby. Anyone can slay a mindworm, but can anyone pull off a Starmetal Ruby-Encrusted Greatsword strapped to the back of a suit of Pearlescent Voidtouched Armor? With a velvet cloak emblazoned with your guild insignia? No? Then bust out some killer moves on the dance floor and show them who is the real Master of Motion. In EverQuest Party!, fashion is king. Earn Cred through street challenges and dance competitions, and spend it on armor never seen on a mortal since Veeshan first claimed Norrath as her own with a sweep of her claw. Outshine the gods themselves, and help new players learn the tricks of the trade — because the more followers you have, the more cred you command.

5. Qeynos Qarts

You may have seen kart racing games before, but never like this! In Qeynos Qarts, the tech from Modnation Racers and EverQuest’s lore combines to make a racing experience unmatched. Ride griffons, pegasi, roboboars, dinosaurs, balloons and ogres through some of the most amazing tracks since Pod Racers. Is that a cyclops coming over the hill? Will you steer around him — or try to capture? It’s your choice — it’s your track — but it’s OUR world, now!

Remember, way back when, when the thought of paying $$$ TEN DOLLARS $$$ for a permanent mount was considered insane? Then Blizzard introduced their sparkle pony for $25. Suddenly, $10 didn’t look so bad, and $25 became the new industry standard. You want a cool mount, you forked over a couple of sawbucks with a Lincoln chaser.

The Blizzard sparkle pony would be as fast as the fastest mount you could ride; if you could ride a flying mount, then your sparkle pony would take to the skies where the stars in its wings would blend seamlessly with the stars glowing in the firmament above Azeroth. Better yet, when you bought the horse, all your characters could use it.

EverQuest has just announced its own version of the sparkle pony (at the industry standard price). These four mounts are “fast, and if you have another faster mount, it will match speeds with that mount”. The normal, store-bought mounts run more slowly than characters normally run. The fast mounts drop from raid bosses or are won from Legends of Norrath loot cards.

These new mounts also come with boosts to AC, mana and health, godsends to the casters who normally stay mounted when they can, trading mobility (remember, horses are slow) for the ability to med continually.

EverQuest also sent word of their new DPS mercenaries. With two flavors, melee DPS and magic DPS, these new mercenaries join the ranks of the previously introduced tank and healer mercenaries. This means that in many normal groups, any three classes could fill out any missing roles with mercenaries as needed, though you’ll still want to be flagged through the Seeds of Destruction to gain access to the good ones.

It’s no exaggeration that EQ would be a far lonelier place without mercenaries; it’s common to see them in every group, and nearly everyone has one ready to go if needed. They are useful, but not so useful that they can replace a real, live player. Though I hear some of the melee mercenaries can outdamage a normally geared player….

Modern, traditional MMOs are full of “yes you CAN”. Yes, you CAN get great gear with little effort. Yes, you CAN get useful things done in just a few minutes. Yes, you CAN choose to never group at all and yet see and do most everything. Yes, you CAN play through the entire game and never connect with even one other person, if that’s what YOU want.

EverQuest’s original tag line was, “You’re in OUR world now.” Play their game, you play by their rules. EQ came from the MUD world, where chatting and roleplaying were as important as gaining levels and loot. EQ was a really elaborate graphical chat room built around bringing people together and giving them things to do — together.

That’s fallen out of fashion. You shouldn’t HAVE to play with others if you don’t want to, and because quite a lot of people felt that way, quite a lot of people left to play MMOs with somewhat more options in how to play and with whom to connect.

EQ remains its old curmudgeonly self, still emphasizing the social part of MMO gaming, still requiring grouping and friends to progress. Now that EQ’s had another round of server merges, there’s no better time to start hooking up with the people. It’s taken this much time for the EQ server communities to recover from the LAST server merges; they should be used to new people by now.

I returned to EverQuest as my rogue, Tipa. I’d changed mains to Dera/Brita during the Gates of Discord expansion when the level cap was 65 and Crimson Eternity was largely in Plane of Time gear, but I’d leveled her on an alt basis to the Omens of War level cap, 70, in the years before I quit EQ entirely. I’d casually played now and then since, so she was level 71 and at about 420 AAs when I started playing again a couple of months ago.

The current standards for a beginning raider in EverQuest at the moment are level 85, 1000 AAs, and flagged through Tier 9, which opens up all the group zones and instances in Underfoot, the latest expansion.

14 levels wouldn’t be that much in WoW — a couple weeks of solo questing mixed in with some normal mode dungeons along the way. In EQ2, about the same amount of time. In EverQuest, each level is a battle. There was a quick method to gain levels up until about level 80 via doing three specific monster missions and then turning them all in at once while under the effects of the Lessons of the Devoted veteran’s award, but that’s been fixed. Nonetheless, I made it to level 81 doing those.

Then came the flagging through Seeds of Destruction (previous expansion) and up through Underfoot. These were the Tiers; the first several tiers give you the ability to hire more powerful mercenaries, which, with the recent addition of melee and wizard mercenaries, now form integral parts of most groups. The last couple tiers open up Brell’s Temple, the shining city of Kernagir, Volksa’s Husk (the body of a immense but dead lava worm) and the Convorteum, the xp and loot zone where all the cool kids go.

It would have been impossible to do this at all without friends, and without Krijhok, it would have been impossible at all. He decided to get me flagged, and whenever I’d log in, if he was around, he’d take me along on another mission.

Through Krijhok and other friends, I’ve been on a whirlwind tour of the newest bits of EverQuest, and am now at level 85 (yay!), 503 AAs (/shrug, but better than 420), and flagged for Volska’s Husk, the first Tier 9 zone.

So here’s the rankings of the new content I have seen.

The “Old Man McKenzie” Monster Missions — AKA the Plane of Knowledge Monster Missions — these missions, which require your group to be of the average level of 80, have you go back in time and take on the roles of characters in the end-game dungeons of pre-expansion EverQuest. You can choose your characters from any race/class combination that was available at the time, and they all are equipped in what would have been very good gear for the time. Your mission is to kill a selection of the named mobs from Sol B, Lower Guk (Live Side) and Lower Guk (Dead Side). Your reward is a heck of a lot of experience, a lot of plat, a brew that can be turned in for level 80 rewards, and a heaping shovelful of nostalgia. It’s not that hard to find or make a group to do them, either. A+

Secrets of Faydwer — I only went to this expansion a couple of times to grind mobs for xp. I found it dull. I did not see very much of it all, so I can’t really speak to the whole thing. It was fun to be with friends I hadn’t seen in years, but the friends were the fun part. Grinding mobs can only be dull. C.

Seeds of Destruction — Players rampaging in the Plane of Time have caused so much damage that time itself has been rent asunder. The player’s job in this expansion was to mend time by going back to pivotal events in Norrath’s history and assuring that things work out for the best. Among the zones re-imagined was the whole Qeynos Hills area, back when Blackburrow was a real power in the region and Qeynos itself just a small village named Oceangreen. Many of the quests can be done solo, but they usually end with a group mission. B

Underfoot — Dungeons built on the WoW model, with scripts and minibosses, but without the AEs, even though you would really like to just AE the stuff. But, in the inimitable EQ style, any one mob could wipe the group and every mob has some ungodly number of hit points, so that’s out of the question. Still, it’s the most dungeon crawl-focused expansion since Dragons of Norrath. However, the tiered flagging required means a lot of people are left banging on the doors, hoping for flagging missions to get them in. It does ensure, however, that everyone sees all the new content — they have no choice. B-

EQ is still going strong and it’s still EQ. All the good things about EQ are still there; some of the bad things, like death penalties (mostly gone) and the inability to solo or form balanced groups (mercs can help a lot) aren’t really a problem now. The recent mergers mean, for the moment, the places are crowded. But the game really isn’t made for people who want to solo the game. It might be possible, but I can’t imagine it would be any fun. And after all, there are games for that.

I guess all I have left to say is this:

Just received the following from SOE:

Important Information regarding your EverQuest account

Greetings, EverQuest adventurer!

In order to maintain a high level of gameplay across the EverQuest universe, on June 22, 2010, EQ will begin consolidating the following servers. These merges are scheduled to occur between June 22nd and July 6th, 2010.

• Stromm + Luclin = Stromm-Luclin
• Drina + Maelin Starpyre = Maelin Starpyre-Drinal
• Xegony + Druzzil Ro = Druzzil Ro-Xegony
• The Tribunal + Bristlebane = Bristlebane-The Tribunal
• Saryrn + Bertoxxulous = Bertoxxulous-Saryrn
• The Seventh Hammer + Tunare = Tunare-The Seventh Hammer
• Prexus + The Rathe = Prexus-The Rathe
• Quellious + Povar = Quellious-Povar
• Erollisi Marr + The Nameless = The Nameless-Erollisi Marr

Become a part of EverQuest’s future! We’ll be launching a new server in the coming months and Zatozia will be looking for your input into what it should be named. Keep checking http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/ to find out how to choose your favorite.

To help make this tranition as smooth as possible, we will be offering one free server transfer to all affected characters for seven days after your character is moved to the new server as a result of the server merge. Please see below for additional details. We will also be offering reduced rates on several customer service items in the in-game Marketplace between June 22nd and July 26th, 2010.

Character transfer tokens are subject to usage rules available in the Marketplace description.

We hope that these changes will provide players with an even more enjoyable EQ experience.

—

There’s more, but the e-mail text was a single monolithic image, and this is as much of it as I want to retype. Short summary: Most of the normal rules servers are getting a merge, you will have an option to transfer your character to any other server once the merge happens. Earlier created characters get first priority to keep the name.

Back when SOE was last deciding on new servers, there was talk about making a new progression server with changes based on feedback from their last couple. We might be seeing that now. I guess we’ll see.