Sands of EverQuest

Will I fall into the endless lands of EverQuest like quicksand?

Trial and error. All it is: trial and error. For all of you out there who is lost over what I am saying, (approx. 9 / 10 of you) I'm talking about EverQuest. I'll admit it, I wasn't a MMORPG fan. For all of you unknowledgeable, the term “MMORPG” stands for “Massively Multiplayer On-line Role-Playing Game”. Within the short-term story below, I will account the events among the arrival of the game that has whisked me away into the booming generation of MMORPG’s ... the mother of them all ... EverQuest ...

Basically, it all started with my addiction to plain old RPG’s. Then, I began playing multiplayer Total Annihilation over my GameSpy network. So, I was thinking, “My god. I’ve got to find a cross-breed: Multiplayer On-line RPG.” I thought ... and thought ... and researched, but didn’t find diddly-squat in return. And then, it hit me. Something I had absolutely NEVER tried or glanced at before ...

I was thinking about it, saw screenshots, saw 5-star reviews, but one thing held me back: the monthly fee. I’m young, so I don’t get much money (except allowance). Until ... that fateful day that I stepped into my local Walmart, into the Electronics section, and it was too good to be true: $29.23 for EverQuest: Evolution, which includes EverQuest classic, EverQuest: Shadows of Luclin, EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark, EverQuest: Planes of Power, EverQuest: Scars of Velious, and EverQuest: Legacy of Ykesha, a special offer for up to 40% off a new video card, an improved instruction manual that covers the original game w/ the expansions, and 3 maps: EverQuest Classic, Luclin, and Planes of Power.

And then I read the bottom of the box: 30 days free trial. My mouth drooped open, literally, awestruck. A game I want to try, sounds good enough. Comes together in a neat package, even greater. But with a free trial? Were my eyes deceiving me? Nope. I even asked the lady behind the counter. She said all things were thumbs-up. So, I whipped out my wallet, took out that $30, and proceeded to buy this game.

So, I drove home, opened up the box, and gasped, gazing at the true beauty of it. I inserted the first CD into my drive, opened up the instruction manual to the correct page, and began installing the game. 3 disc game. Not bad, for 6 games in one. So, I double-click on the game’s icon, and it begins loading up the included EverQuest Patcher. To patch everything up since the original release back in 1999, it took me about 10 min. to install all of the patched items for the game. Once completed, I finished opening the game, and, with anticipation, stared at the menu screen for EQ.

Could it really be this easy? No. Not really. Being on-line multiplayer and all, I had to create an account for EQ on-line at a website called “Station.com”. Alright. Easy enough. So, I trampled through the account creation screen, when a few steps ahead it asked for the CD Key. I panicked. I cursed at myself. Did I accidentally drop the CD Key card? Was it not packed in the box properly? I had lots of questions. Looking dismayed, I opened the CD case, the last place not looked at, and realized the CD Key was written on a label inside the 3-fold CD case. Hallelujah. Looks like Sony has some sly little devils over at their offices ...

Anyways, that’s not important. I entered my 11-letter/digit CD Key and buzzed on through the rest of my account registration, and activated my account with the 30-day free trial. I was set to go. I screamed out loud with joy, as I rejoiced while loading up the EQ program again. Once at the menu, I clicked on the “Login” button and entered my SN and password. For any of you unfortunate enough to stumble into me on one of the EQ servers, my SN is Space7777777 and my character name is Bolgast and I am a Level 20-something Shadow Knight. There. Now you know ...

... Although you probably could care less. I got off the subject ... again. So, where did I leave off? Oh, yes. I remember. I entered my SN and password into the “Login” page’s form, and waited for it to load. After a seemingly long time, I attempted to move the mouse cursor. No response. I pressed the “Return to Windows” key on my keyboard. I pressed “Alt-Tab”, hoping to exit back out to the Windows XP homepage screen. I pressed “Ctrl-Alt-Delete” hoping to bring up the Windows Task Manager. I pressed “Ctrl-Alt-Delete” TWICE, hoping to restart the computer. All of the above were to no avail.

So, I figured out that maybe the computer’s frozen state was a fluke, because of all of the stuff that I use it for. So, I re-booted Windows XP and re-loaded the EQ launcher, making it back to the “Login” screen. I logged in ... only to result in the same state. By this time, I was getting VERY fed up with this whole “MMORPG” craze-thing because of what I was dealing with in the current state of EQ.

And then one more idea hit me like a ton of bricks: I upgraded to a new graphics card from Circuit City for some big bucks a few months ago so I could play my favorite RPG ... possibly my favorite game ever ... Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. And before I loaded up EQ for the first time, a pop-up box (that I naturally ignored) had told me that there was an updated driver available for my graphics card. YES. I finally stumbled upon SOMETHING that may hold some FACTUAL proof of what I’m up against.

So, I went onto the Internet through my Internet Explorer (I have Broadband: I can go on-line with IE without having to be on-line using AOL / AIM. Thank god.) and downloaded the updated driver. WOOHOO! I screamed for joy. I finally got something. The question is: was that REALLY the problem to begin with? I mean: the graphics were fine. So, to make sure that the driver didn’t mess up the whole computer, (with all of the games on it, mind you) I booted up another one of my favorite RPG’s: Neverwinter Nights. NWN has been a faithful game since I got it long ago, so I booted it up, loaded one of my “saved game“ files, and sure enough ...

When you rotated the camera, it rotated as slowly as if you were playing off of an old Windows Pentium 1 computer. Alright. That was the last straw. This was all EQ’s fault. Since I got EQ, it put me into a world of hurt, making me update my drivers, thus RUINING most of my games [presumably]. I exited out of NWN as fast as I had come on to figure out, much to my dismay, that when I clicked on the “Start” button on the regular Windows XP desktop, it faded in S-L-O-W-L-Y. When I clicked off, it faded out S-L-O-W-L-Y. Okay. Now I’m REALLY angry. Not only has that driver now ruined NWN AND my Windows XP along with the computer, I was thinking, “Gee. I should go into the computer’s system and use a rollback performance in conclusion with XP to erase the driver update for my graphics card.” Translation: Press the “Undo” button on my driver update. Simple enough, right? Right?

What do you think? WRONG! I surf the computer until I make it to the driver page, I attempt to perform the rollback, but, with you reading this imagining the look on my face: the rollback for the driver was impossible for some reason or another, granted by an error message. Crud. So, looks like I’m going to have to live with the NWN / Windows XP slowness for now: I haven’t tried EQ to see if it works. Although, even it does, that doesn’t help me much because of the XP malfunction and all of my OTHER games that are now the slowest thing on the planet ...

So, I load up EQ. The Patcher ends. (of course finding nothing, since I had already downloaded all available patched files EARLIER in the day {Yes, it’s late, now}) I press the “Play” button. Suddenly, in the snap-of-the-fingers moment, I am kicked BACK out to the XP desktop, with a simple, yet frustrating, error message: “No 3D Devices Found.”

By this time I’m tired, hungry, thirsty, angry, and downright ticked at the NERVE this thing has. I mean, COME ON, I’ve already read EVERYTHING about the game in the instruction manual AND I’d prefer to have this game INSTALLED by either: (1) End of the year, or, (2) Before EQ2 comes out. I am so frustrated, I think that the best thing to do is re-install the entire EQ game. I mean, what’s the harm? My account isn’t going to be erased, because it is registered / saved on Station.com, so, isn’t it safe to assume that the EQ install was possibly ... BOTCHED ... in some shape, way, or form?

I thought so. I un-installed EQ off of my hard drive, whipped out the EQ CD case YET AGAIN, and proceeded to insert the correct CD’s to finish the install. Once again, I booted up the Patcher, thus meaning that the 100+ patched files HAVE to be downloaded ALL OVER AGAIN: it’s mandatory. I sighed, and sat through another 10 min. without EQ on my computer’s monitor. SO, approximately, the entire install (plus patched files) took about 20 minutes. Thus concluding that out of my whole day (nearly wasted by attempting to get EQ to work) it has taken about 40 SOLID MINUTES of INSTALLATION ... ALONE!

So, I press the “Play” button, thinking that EQ should load up anytime soon. Yet again, I was dumped back onto the XP desktop with the same pesky error message: “No 3D Devices Found.”. By this time, I am so ticked I could throw my mouse AND keyboard through the screen. Trying to end my anger, I shut off the computer, and waltz off to my couch to watch a solid 2 hours of television.

After my 2 hours of peaceful meditation (sarcasm), I booted up my PC accordingly, when it hit me: Maybe the re-boot will FIX the slowness of my XP? Hopefully. I log in, click on the “Start” button ... it S-L-O-W-L-Y faded in, and, when I clicked off, it S-L-O-W-L-Y faded away again. This time, I had no choice but to log onto IE and search for the ... (*gasp*) Troubleshooting Guide for EQ. I luckily found an adequate one on EQ’s homepage. I load it up: first thing it says is that: “DirectX 9.0b, the patch available for download since 3/04, may interfere with the ability of EQ’s running ability. To run EQ with DirectX 9.0b ...” So, I’m happy. I cursed at myself for not realizing this, as I proceed to S-L-O-W-L-Y make it through the “Start” menu and onto the “Run” menu. I enter the keyword “dxdiag” to bring up none other than ... The DirectX Configuration Utility ...

I looked at the version number: sure enough, I had DirectX Version 9.0b. Duh. How worse could my luck get? Answer: none. So, the first thing I did (which the Troubleshooting Guide also suggested) was go into Windows XP's internal files and shut off all background applications ... ALL! The next thing I had to do was uninstall my current video driver. There's one key hint that they don't mention though ... vital, really ... YOU HAVE TO RE-INSTALL IT, SO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR REGISTRATION KEY, VIDEO DRIVER TYPE, ETC.

Then, after the long un-install / install process, I went to DirectX, deleted it, and downloaded DirectX 9.0 ... with the 9.0b patch. Next, I went to my video card manufacturer's website and I downloaded the most updated drivers: that didn't take long. By this time, I was slowly moving my cursor over to the "Start" button, expecting it to come up so very S-L-O-W-L-Y, yet ... it came up faster than before the slowness occurred. I shouted for joy and realized that somehow my video card had been hosed, because I knew that I had enough memory and that shortage of memory wasn't making it sluggish, but ...

Anyways ... next I deleted some files that would re-create upon launching of EverQuest: The "uifiles" folder, the "userdata" folder, eqclient.ini, eqmain.dll, eqgame.exe, eqgfx_dx8.dll, EQGraphicsDX9.dll, all files named after my character (not that I had any), and any other character files that started with UI___##.ini. Yay! Now that another measly task is finished, I proceeded onto ...

Loading NWN. Everything else on the Troubleshooting Guide didn't apply to me, and I wanted to see if my new installation of my graphics card had fixed NWN's destroyed graphics. Sure enough, the pan camera was operating great and so was the movement. Houston ... we have made a breakthrough. Shouting for joy / rejoice YET AGAIN, I closed out of NWN and proceeded to boot up EQ. The moment of truth had come. I pressed "Play" / "Yes" / Esc. x2 / "Login" / SN & P* ... and ... the moment we've ALL been waiting for ... (at least I had ...)

The server roster showed up. I shouted like a maniac, screaming at the computer, telling it I had beaten its own game fair-and-square, and that I was "King of EQ". Well, that was short-lived. With my only excuse to NOT play EQ out of the way, I happily chose the Newbie server with Tutorial mode, created a character, bought a few items, and, voila! I am addicted to EQ and play it HOURS UPON HOURS ON END.

Final verdict: If you like RPG's ... get this game. If you don't like RPG's ... get this game. If you like / don't like MMO's ... get this game. If you love MMORPG's ... MY GOD THIS GAME WILL KEEP YOU AWAKE HOURS ON END AND IT HASN'T CHANGED MY LIFE A BIT ... I SWEAR! (*twitches*) NOT A TAD BIT WRONG WITH ME ... ALL OF YOU ARE PARANOID FOOLS ... HEY ... MY SHADOW KNIGHT JUST LEVELED UP ... W00T!!!!!!!

- "Grim Reaper"