There’s a promotion going on now where returning EQ and EQ2 players can play for free for the next couple months (and trial accounts too, from the sounds of it), and I figured I may as well pop back into it for a bit.

I sold off some junk I was carrying around, and decided I may as well finally get around to processing the claimable items and veteran rewards I’d been accumulating. You get them for purchasing expansions or subscribing for a certain number of years, but I’d never gotten around to actually assigning them to a character, since I wasn’t sure if maybe I’d want them on an alt or something. I finally just stuck the major ones on my main enchanter, though of all of them, the only really important one is a self-resurrect ability. It’s only usable once a week, but it still means having to go begging for a res less often.

I also got a taste of just how out-of-date my gear is. Compare my current gloves on the left with the pair on the right that were being offered in trade chat (click for big):

I visited a few old places, and Qeynos was the same as ever and I was the only person there. I went on over to Erud’s Crossing, where I discovered that the Kerrans on the island there had somehow shrunk over the years…

Firiona Vie and Karnor’s Castle were also the same, though I was a bit surprised to find some people actually in Karnor’s. Freeport is a radically different city now, having been redone a few years back, but I don’t think it’s for the better. It’s too big and twisty now, and the graphics aren’t really *that* much better, with way too many perfectly flat surfaces and angles still (the rock texture looks really fake when you get closer).

And just for kicks, I took the boat to the Ocean of Tears, which has apparently also been redone. The boat’s a lot faster now, too.

I missed most of the later expansions, so I’m sure a lot of new zones have been added. Looking at the atlas, I can see the Buried Sea zones off of Toxx Forest, a bunch of new ones in Northern Antonica, off of Crescent Reach, a bunch off of the Lavastorm Mountains, a small handful in Faydwer, a couple in the southeast of Antonica, off the desert, and a bunch of new Planes, which will almost certainly be too high level for me.

Maybe I’ll get around to checking out some of those new zones, as soon as I figure out which ones are within my level range. And maybe I’ll go revisit a bunch of the older zones and put together a little travelogue of nostalgia…