Back to the Future...

It’s been a few days since I had logged in to EQ2 or even kept up to date with the current news and forums that I usually troll. As such last night I had a nice little shock. I logged in to the game and there was an unusually long download, so of course I recognised there had probably been an update or some event had started since I had last logged in. I paid it little heed as I was cooking my dinner at the time so left it to download whilst I chopped and sizzled. When I came back to my PC it had finished and I logged in, immediately heading to the Ring War public quest for some fun and a stab at getting my Chestpiece of Woe. As it turns out it again was not my lucky night.

I decided that I had had enough of Velious for one night and gated back to the guild hall. Now for some reason I still find our guild hall quite laggy at times so when I do I tend to just zone out on to the docks in Antonica and sit there whilst I am chatting to guildies. Anyhow, I was sitting there reading the chat channels and noticed a few folks asking about where some ‘portals were. I thought this was a bit strange as travel through Norrath was easier than ever and use of the old wizard ports was not as common or even really required nowadays, unless you wish to travel to the Kingdom of Sky. It was about then I noticed a load of folks hanging around at the lighthouse right next to the docks in Antonica, so I went up to have a look. There was a weird purple lightning ridden portal there and three chronomancers, one of which was selling goods. They reckoned that strange portals to an ancient time were popping up all over Norrath! I waddled over to the portal by the lighthouse and sure enough, when I ran my cursor over it I saw the text pop up ‘to an ancient time’. Of course I clicked it.

I was told via a screen message that I had automatically been mentored down to level 20 and I found myself in an instanced version of the Firemyst Gully zone, but this time with lots of yellow ^^^ Gnolls wandering around. It didn’t take Voltaan long to discipline a few puppies and soon he was converging on the ugly skull hut in the middle of the zone, outside of which was an advisor. The advisor said something but before I had a chance to read it he was attacking me and Voltaan had one more puppies nose to smack. It was then I noticed two more doggy paws right at the back of the skull hut. Voltaan is so tall he had to bend down to look inside and lo’ and behold, there’s ole Fippy Darkpaw! (I once named had a Rabbit we called Fippy in his honour). So that was what the ‘portal to an ancient time’ thing was all about. I’d totally forgotten Everquests twelve year anniversary was upon us and it looks like as a nice little tribute EQ2 has portals all over the place where old EQ players can go to get their nostalgia on and bash some old nameds.

Next stop was the Enchanted Lands where I found the portal (with some direction from Sjlverwolf, thanks mate) between the Wizard portal and the Druid Ring. This portal mentored me down to level thirty and sent me to that small valley instance that is usually off Antonica (I don’t recall the name!). The scene was supposed to be the ‘Old plains of Karana’ and I wandered around killing some lions and centaurs. Once these had been dispatched a Gnoll Shaman dude ran to the centre of the Druid Ring did a bit of chanting and Voltaan very considerately pulped his nose for him and gave him a good spanking. For a few moments I looked around and nothing else seemed to be happening and I was all like ‘oh, so that’s it?’. It was at that point I noticed a Ranger right by the entrance tunnel that I couldn’t quite believe I had missed earlier, so I ran over for a chat. He told me about Quillmane!

As soon as he did and I recalled Quillmane was the Pegasus who used to drop the Pegasus Feather Cloak of Levitation in EQ1. So I looked up and there he was, flying around in ever decreasing circles until he hovered in the middle of the Druid ring. A couple of things hit me then. One, the graphics for the Pegasus are fantastic and in this age of EQ2 flying mounts, I want one. I have no idea if Sony have any plans to put the model as available to players at a later stage for a flyable mount, but I damn sure hope they do. Quillmane looked awesome. For a short amount of time. After Volt had finished with him, he looked like a sheesh kebab. It was so cool. He dropped the Pegasus Feather Cloak too! The second thing that hit me was that the instance had been successful. Not in that Volt ‘won’ so to speak, but it was successful in stirring up all the memories I had of camping that damn Pegasus in South Karana just so I could hover everywhere with his cloak on. My EQ1 Druid, Kildurin never got past level 46, and when I quit playing he was still wearing that cloak. Great memories.

Quillmane [courtesy of EQ2]

I’ll be doing more of these portals back to an ancient time tonight I think. Lavastorm is next and I have no idea what nostalgia that is going to dig up, but I’m looking forward to it. Bravo SoE. A nice (slightly) redeeming feature after such a poor showing of an expansion. Restored my faith. Just a little.

Be well.