I just wanted to stop in and say hello. I played EQ for many years on the Druzzil Ro server.
I came to this server a little more than a year ago to try it out. I played for a couple of months but figured my play time did not warrant the cost of the subscription.
A few weeks ago I saw somewhere that EQ was going free to play which brought me back to this site as I no longer own a computer not made by Apple. I saw through the various threads about how the server was saved and figured I'd give it another go. Being free I don't feel as though I'm not getting my money's worth if Im not playing x amount of hours.
While on the live servers I mainly played a Ranger and a Necromancer. I figured this time through I would try something different. I have played a few characters up to lvl 10 or so just to get a feel of how they play. I want a class that can solo when necessary, but is still fun to play in a group. My play times are erratic at this point in my life. I have two young kids which take up most of my time at home. I will most likely just be playing a few hours at night a few days a week. With this in mind I have started the following characters.
First up was the Beastlord. I have decided that the beastlord class isn't for me. I'm sure it gets better later on but I just did not have fun while playing him early on. I then tried a Shaman which seems to play pretty good and I will definitely play him here and there but I am not convinced this would be a class I would want as my main character. I then went back to my roots and rolled a Necromancer and quite easily leveled him up to 13 or 14 or so. I did have fun, but it was basically de jevu all over again.
At this point I went to the Internet looking for some information on other classes. I found the old Xornn Guide to Enchanting linked at the project1999 website. That is when I made Xahnn. I died an awful lot the first couple of levels. But figured this could be a class I could get into. Another thing I found was the old EQDiva site through the wayback machine. I vaguely remember my wife looking through this when she first attempted a bard way back then. The more I read about the bard the more excited I got of the possibilities. I found old guides to how to solo with one. Song twisting instructions. How to set up single touch macros. How to set up multi song macros, which apparently is not considered good technique it seems. Anyway I decided to give the bard a go.
I created a Human bard in Qeynos. Beldan I believe he is named. Sadly I couldn't think of one that would be accepted so I just hit the button until I saw one that looked halfway decent. I equipped my little sword and put my candle into the secondary slot. Got my tunic from my Guild master and went to work.
I will post more of his exploits in the forum for stories and such. I hope that he is the character for me this time around. Other classes that I thought about were a Monk and a Paladin. I have never played a monk before and honestly never realized they could solo decently. They do seem quite interesting though, and if it is true that they can solo dcently when I cant find or dont have time for a group I would definately be interested in checking one out. Most of the information I have found on them is not from this era of EQ. If any Monks from this server could give me more info on them please do. As far as a Paladin goes I played one on live to 50th or so. I remember soloing very well with him. I had got him the Fabled Ghoulbane at a very low level with my Ranger. So once at level he pretty much tore through anything undead up to 50. I figured without such items a Paladin would be much slower to level and much harder to solo with.
Anyway thanks to those who read through this terribly long post.
Xahnn