Why I still play EQFollow

Jeff Green of Games For Windows magazine (formerly Computer Gaming World) asked in the Everquest forum for people to email him and tell him why we still play. Here is what I responded with.

My wife and I have played Everquest for around 4 years now. We each have 3 level 70 toons (group based gear not raid based gear), and a large number of alts that are level 50+ that we play. My wife and I both 2 box - play 2 toons at the same time - as our computer room has 4 computers, 2 for each of us, networked together.

Everquest is our time together. Our children are grown and out of the house, and Everquest is what we do to be together as a married couple. We spend a lot of time grouping together, usually both of us 2 boxing. Sometimes we'll have one or two others in our group as well. And we also play separately when one of us has free time and the other does not. The main reason that Everquest works for us is it is a game where we COOPERATE TOGETHER as a team when we are together, yet can play separately when only one is available to play.

Two expansions ago I was ready to move on from Everquest to just about anything else (for example - CIV IV). My wife was not. We decided we would not move up any of our toons past level 70 (we each have 3 level 70 toons) since grinding xp and getting new levels was no longer so interesting to us, but would instead both make brand new Drakkin druids to level up in the new TSS expansion. This was the right move since this expansion, besides adding 5 more levels making the maximum 75, also adds a whole new set of areas which has a lot of entertaining and enjoyable quests to do to go along with xp grinding. So while Everquest is still Evergrind XP (or Everraid for raiders) as its core game mechanism, it now has these neat quests that equip us and entertain us along the way. And it is entertaining and enjoyable enough so that we are both here to stay for quite a while.

Pre-TSS had lots of quests and such, but TSS took Everquest questing to a whole new dimension. My hats off to the Sony development team for putting this together, and I hope they can maintain and even enhance this kind of quality gaming experience with the upcoming expansions.

Ditto: My wife and I have been playing EQ now for about 3 years, but very casual. I'm far more into playing, but I also echo the sentiment that it helps us enjoy downtime together in a way that makes both of us happy. We also have good friends who are married and play together as well; some would think it sad that our 'double date nights' start in PoK, but I'm sure this crowd will find it at least amusing. It's nice to know that there are more EQ families out there than I expected.

I'm another that plays with thier spouse every night, rather than wasting time and brain cells watching TV.

Between us we have 7 accounts and all are maxed out for toons. One of the accounts is just for tradeskill mules. We are casual players and enjoy the variety of different characters and combination of characters.

We each 2-box, with 4 main computers and 2 back-up computers in the room - makes for an interesting cooling promblem in the summer, but no need for heat in that room in the winter.

As evidence that we are casual, we have 4 level 69 caharacters, 4 level 67 characters and the rest are scattered between level 1 (the mules and bazaar traders) and about level 55. We have no desire to raid, therefore have never joined a guild. We do lots of quests together and occasionally group with other folks that we have run into over the years who have the same mindset - most of whom are also couples playing together.

Oh, and we are in our 60's - there are lots of the "older generation" in this game as we have found out.

I posted on The Steel Warrior some thime ago that my warrior would never get to 70 without guilding, but I was OK with that and got a large response that he very probably could. At this point he's 1 gold bubble from 69 and very likely to hit 70 before the end of the year - thanks to TSS.

EagleFlight/Dyciere, and a host of others

I and my wife also played together for 4 years. But in April she quit to spend more time with our new daughter. But she will come back, oh ya she will..

Hubby and I play together as well, in fact I got him started. We play together almost exclusively, though we do belong to a guild and do attend guild events, certain raids, help with epics, etc. Our mains are both 64 and we recently moved an alt each to new accounts, giving us a total of 4, and we each 2 box. Druid, beastlord, enchanter and paladin, we are set! We can do LDoNs, we can do DoNs, we can exp in many places our beastlord/druid duo couldn't.

I feel the same as the person who said people tell him to get a life, which they believe is lived by partying or watching TV. I'd rather have dental surgery than watch TV most nights, though I do like to read. We have kids at home but they are 10 and 13, and relatively self-sufficient - no we don't ignore them, that's one of the main reasons we play together almost exclusively, so we can do what we want at our own pace.

We took a break over the summer but after hubby played a whole bunch of other games and I got sick of Neverwinter Nights (the only decent single player RPG in my opinion) we came back. We aren't uber, don't care to be, we just like the variety, the content, the huge number of choices that EQ offers. Oh, and we are in our 40's as are quite a few others we know - not everyone who plays EQ are kids, though there are some (usually easy to spot) which suits us just fine.

I recently just got my girlfriend to play EQ with me, and she loves it, much to her own surprise. She would complain that I would spend too much time gaming, so I cut back to spend more time with her. Then she bought EQ Titanium. Now we duo a bit each night, and it's fun to see her grow as a player.