Made it to level 20 and got too bored to continue. The server itself is fine, I just thought my appetite for EQ was bigger than it turned out to be. The game is so mechanically primitive that it just isn't fun to play on a micro level. I can enjoy EQ when I can box so there's actually shit to do, but playing a single character is just too uneventful for me. That shit was fine around the turn of the millennium, but it doesn't hold up anymore. The knowledge that the endgame content will be 100% monopolized forever doesn't help, either.
On top of that, the anti-QoL features that were reinstated (book-medding, no tab-cycling, etc.) just made the gameplay even more tedious. These things simply make the game worse and have no redeeming qualities, so while I would never ask to have them removed, I will refrain from playing when they're there. They turned it into a game that I don't want to play, so I don't. It's just too much of a constant nuisance. The "true spirit of classic" isn't to my liking, for the same reason that I don't want to ride a horse to work.
In 1999, the game was innovative and had the magic of discovery. Those things are now gone, but with all the obstacles and tedium put back in, it just isn't a very good game twenty years later. It was briefly entertaining to see the old world again, but the endless hours of auto-attacking and frantically trying to click on the elbow of the right mob just wasn't fun for more than a week. It was fine when I was 14 and nothing better existed. Now I'm 34 and there's about 500 games I'd rather play.
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