What does EQOA mean to me? What does it mean to you?

Many people are going to see our collective nostalgia as a weird thing to hold for a PS2 MMORPG from the early 2000s. They aren't going to understand our love for a game with outdated graphics, simplistic gameplay, grinding hours and hours killing the same monsters. While our Nostalgia is likely what drives the bulk of us, we also LOVE this style of game and there just aren't as many games with this unique style of art and gameplay anymore.

As many of us were I was a pre-teen when I started playing EQOA, I believe I was 12 years old. My best friend Jeremy got into EQOA and then he got me into it. The game itself got me through a lot of painful times in my life, I could burry my head in the sand and spend hours and hours making new friends while taking part in experience parties. I can remember nights with a 16oz Dr. Pepper, Pizza Rolls, Rock Top 40 on the radio and killing Orcs at Deathfist Citadel. I am sure its the same for a lot of people. 

It also opened me and Jeremy up to the world of MMORPGs. I was aware of EverQuest but I didn't have a powerful enough computer back then to run it so EQOA was an cost-effective way to get us into the realm of MMORPGs. From there we played Runescape with our little friend group at school, then we played Final Fantasy 11, which I got the HDD for the PS2 for. Later we moved on to World of Warcraft, New World, etc, etc. 

EQOA also gave us new friendships. A good friend of mine Chris, I met on EQOA. We grouped for hours one night and got to know each other. We added each other to our friends list, grouped a number of more times and eventually traded phone numbers, we had to of been around age 13-14. As we moved out of EQOA we stayed friends and as we graduated High School we decided to go to each others states. I went to Florida for his graduation and he came to Texas for mine. Since then we have visited a couple of times and still stay in touch to this day a little over 20 years later.

It also helped us keep friendships. Jeremy one day moved to Oklahoma from Texas and we had a problem. He had lost my number and I had lost his new number from moving. One day I randomly decided to make a Barbarian Shaman and I saw a warrior running around. I invited him to go do the low level quest and we started questing and fighting together. Before Jeremy had moved I told him I wanted to make a guild called, "Guardians of Alexander" because I really liked this Alexander the great inspired anime that was playing on Adult Swim. I tell this random Barbarian warrior about my guild idea and my eyes opened wide when I saw, "Mike?" In the chat. It was Jeremy and we were able to trade phone numbers again and stay in touch.

I really want to hear your experiences with EQOA, the good, the bad and the ugly. Share them in the comments of this blog post.

As an added treat here is my collection of EverQuest and EQOA.