MMO Memory Box: EverQuest 2 ~ Blaugust Day 15
This is part of the Blaugust series!
Even though I didn’t have too much experience with EQ1, I bought into EQ2 at launch. Why?
Ratonga.
The game let me play a rat, and that was enough for me. So instead of being at WoW launch, I was at EQ2 launch, a little sad that my little rattie had to be a “bad guy,” but content to play a rat.
The whole good vs. evil thing was really played up back then. The original box had two sides, even, one that (pictured above) showed Overlord Lucan D’Lere… And the other side that showed Queen Antonia Bayle.
EQ2’s packaging gave off an air of grandiose confidence in their newest game in the EQ series. I mean, look at how…
…many…
…foldouts…
…this box had. On both sides, even!
The box contained a whopping 9 installation discs. Plus a bonus disc and a multi-disc Starter Kit of some sort. All in this nice little fold out disc thingy with a cute disc holder.
I’d never seen a game that had 9 discs for installation before. Wow!
I made a lot of good memories back in EQ2, and still have and play characters that I rolled from back in the era. While I was still a pretty solo player, the happy thing about EQ2 was that it had content for folks who wanted to group, but was also very much solo-able… something I was looking for in a game, but was much more rare in games of that time. This was one of the games that I came back to on and off over the years, and fully embraced the F2P conversion.
I remember working up my little ratonga through the different class quests of the time, getting her to become an assassin. Years later, before Ratonga became a neutral race, I betrayed Freeport to realign and become a Swashbuckler. At that point, the EQ2 stats said that Swashie Ratonga made up 2% of my server’s population. I was so proud. 🙂
I still love playing my Swashie Rat from time to time – mostly to mess around in events and housing. I’ve kitted her out with wings to fly and gave her the free boost to level 90… though I haven’t really played her much and have no idea what kind of build I should have for her. That’s okay, though. I have my memories and I can still visit her whenever I like.
