[Thulghor]

Started messing with it today on the Stormhold server. Created a high elf paladin and an ogre guardian (bet you can guess the names). Isle of Refuge, while close, is not what it was starting out originally. It's the same island this time, but hit with some kind of undead plague or something.

It's also kinda weird to see all the non-classic EQ2 races that were released later running around, like Sarnak, Frogloks, fairy people, Freeblood vampires, and those Kerafyrm dragonkin things (Aerakyn?). I'm honestly surprised they never included giants, coldain, or orcs as a playable race.

Still seems reasonably challenging, and the tradeskill system has gone back to an earlier iteration (although it is not quite the original classic system). Amusingly, you can easily kill yourself tradeskilling again.

I actually grouped with some people to do some questing, although just about everyone I ran across is either French or German. Luckily I know a little German, so that wasn't totally bad. Not sure what's up with that.

I also had forgotten just how shitty the engine runs even on modern systems. While I would love to set everything on supermax, it chokes down to 30 FPS or less if I do. Running it on high presets with a few things turned up a bit seems alright though at around 45-60+. My system doesn't suck either. I was kinda hoping they might have optimized the game engine a bit, but it looks like they never did.

Pretty awesome to hear the late Sir Christopher Lee as Lucan D'Lere again though. Forgot how bad ass that was. May he rest in peace.