To play or not to play

[bluejam]

Hello everyone,

I've just recently read about P99 on the Emu forums. I played for a short period of time during the earlier Emu days so I'm familiar with the whole concept.
Kudos to the team and their efforts!

On "Live" I was active from '99 (a few months before Kunark release) to around 2002, some weeks into the PoP expansion.

This project would be a nice opportunity to experience the glorious old days once again which does bring up several problems though.

I never was a hardcore raider - maybe because I am from Europe, but was a member of an US based guild since the first day which meant raids usually at night for me -, nor did I ever play excessivley.
First main character was a ranger who I leveled up to 52 including first epic, got annoyed with this toon (crappy defense, pointless bow etc), so I created a new one in 2000 after a short break. I fell in love with my iksar monk!
Never looked back, got to level 65 around PoP, raided, quested, "AA'd" aso.
So in 2002 I quit because I wasn't far from college and EQ became more time consuming in my opinion (flags *argh*, the necessity to grind AAs, uber time consuming dungeon key quests - Vex Thal key was just ridiculous-). Looking back now I should've just switched servers and joined a casual european guild.

Ok, lets cut to the chase. I was wondering if there's a place for people like me on this server. 1 1/2 years left until I'll graduate college, after that it's "job-time". I won't be able to play every day, especially not for several hours in a row. 3-4 months before "the end" I probably won't find any time to spare beside the whole studying drama. I don't know exactly, but time will not be a surplus once I have a job.
Futhermore I do have more than enough time until the Kunark release to level up an avatar. Of course I chose a monk again because a) I have no *real* idea how to play another class and b) I don't really want to play another class. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
Sadly I HAD to start a human monk - although I very very very much dislike them. I said to myself "come on, get over it, this way you can play NOW", but I keep getting reminded how awesome an iksar monk is. Well, so I thought. I've just read about the XP penality (I forgot all about it) and it sounds HORRIBLE! Iksar -20% and monk -20%! For someone that won't have much time to play after this summer, it sure is an argument against waiting in my opinion.

The quintessence of my dilemma is: should I wait for Kunark and live happily ever after or should I continue playing that hidious human?
AND even more important: should I "waste" my time on this game once more or forget all about it and look for another time killer (not game-wise I mean)?

No fees is great, so I'm not "forced to play" for my buck, but are there other casual players out there for me to group and eventually raid with..?
Sadly I have no real life friends who play MMORPG. Otherwise I could have at least one steady group to hang out with.
edit2: The thing is, there are already so many level 50 characters waiting for new hunting grounds while I'm still sitting here thinking about playing.
I wouldn't want to chase raiding guilds (which is what I want to do in the end: raiding), always being one or more steps behind, because I don't have equal time to grind levels / gear etc.

Thank you for reading in case you made it through. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

edit: PS: I forgot to mention that I find the noob leveling very tedious - granted it has been more than 8 years, but I never had to experience the hardcore way because a friend of mine helped me out with some basic equipment, nothing too fancy, but it did help. Of course it was even easier with my monk since I had him twinked somewhat by my first main char.