My first apartment was not what I would call 'luxury living'. The toilet liked to overflow while I was gone at work, the smoke alarm would go off if I boiled water, etc. Also, the furniture I owned consisted of a mattress and an inflatable couch. This is not to say that I didn't love the apartment, on the contrary, it had a very spartan charm which I definitely enjoyed. More importantly, though, I had a lot of nice electronic toys to keep me entertained. My Playstation (before they were called PSX's or whatever they are now), and my Nintendo 64 flanked my 28" television, which sat in the middle of the living room floor. The aforementioned inflatable couch really worked less as a couch and more as a very large pillow, and I could often be found sitting on the ground, my head leaning against my couch, playing Majora's Mask, or some other then-current title. Sometimes I would play Elite Force, but my lack of a computer desk, and the extreme discomfort of trying to play a FPS while sitting on the floor, made it pretty rare. I did have high speed internet, but I rarely used it.

All of this changed when Everquest entered my life.

This was a time long before World of Warcraft made MMO gaming socially acceptable. At the time, Everquest players were often shunned and mocked even by other gamers. I, like so many others, was guilty of ostracizing my gaming brethren due to their Everquest addiction, though I had never even really seen it played, myself. Then it happened. A good friend of mine (let's call him Mike, cause that's his name) got a copy of the game for his birthday, but, discovering that it required monthly subscription payments, never even took it out of the box. Thus, the trap for my free time was set.

Mike had invited a few friends over to hang out on a Friday night, and, noticing the Everquest box in his closet, I asked him if he was playing. He told me why he hadn't even bothered to open it, handed me the box, and told me to do what I would with it. We then proceeded to play a series of incredibly boring (though mercifully short) D&D campaigns. I took EQ home that night and tossed it on the counter.

The next day at work, I heard a few guys on break talking about D&D classes. I didn't really know anyone at work, and in the interest of making new friends, approached them, mentioning I had just been playing as a druid the previous night. Then they asked me what server I was on. It didn't take long for me to find out that they were hardcore EQ players. I mentioned that I had recently acquired a copy of the game, and, before our break was over, I was given a list of about 10 names of characters, a server name, and instructions to make a wood elven ranger. When I got home, I had a voice mail from my dad asking if I wanted my old computer desk from when I had lived with him.

The rest, they say is history, as I went through a dozen or more characters before landing on the little Gnome Wizard that would be my avatar in the world of Norrath. I have many stories from my time playing Everquest, but my favorites are from those early days, before there were any expansions (the 14th expansion comes out this November). Whether it was deleting a young character because it was sprayed by a skunk (an ailment which I was sure was both incurable and permanent), or complaining that it took forever to get from level 3 to level 4, these are stories to which many people who played EQ during that time period can relate.

So, what's the point of this long story? Well, while browsing the internet a week and a half ago, I stumbled onto a link from a gaming site I frequent which took me to the Everquest homepage. Nostalgia kicked in, and I longed for the good ol' days of MMO's. My wife was in the room at the time, and expressed her own interest in playing EQ again (she had had a character on my account at one point, never got too high, but she did play it occasionally). So, that day, we went out and bought two copies of Everquest: The Anniversary Edition. We have been back to the game for a little over a week now, and I have got to say, starting fresh after a 4.5 year break really is like starting for the first time. So many things have changed, almost all for the better. It really is the perfect time to play what is, in my rather informed opinion, the most fully featured MMO on the market.

So yeah, if you wondered why the title of this post is Deja Vu, there ya go. Oh, and on a similar yet totally unrelated topic, we rented Deja Vu yesterday, and I watched it during some EQ server downtime. Incredibly entertaining flick, and it comes highly recommended.