Shards of Dalaya
For anyone getting the urge to fire up the original EverQuest for nostalgic purposes, Shards of Dalaya is a free way to do so as long as you have Titanium version or higher. SoD is an EQ emulation, free to use and play although donations are appreciated and used to keep the server running. It makes use of 6 expansions and place names and mob populations have been modified from the original game, Dwarves for example start in Underhill (formerly known as Ak’anon). The basics remain the same, you’ll probably die a lot while getting used to it again, but at least now you don’t lose exp, you incur exp debt which must be paid off before you can gain any new exp.
AA’s are still part of the game as well, but at level 5 I won’t be seeing those for a long time. The server admins allow you to box 2 accounts at a time, but no more than that, so I’ve created a warrior/cleric combo for the time being. A lot of reviews I read about the game complain that they changed the lore/gods along with many of the quests, but I never followed much of the lore back in the day, or cared much for one god or the other.. and quests, well, EQ has never been quest friendly especially when compared with EQ2 or WoW. It seems like good fun so far despite the extremely outdated graphics. And uhmm, it’s free, so quit playing or quit complaining =)
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Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 12:36 pm under
SoD was fun at first. However SoD suffers the same problems that most free servers suffer. Customization that’s not properly balanced (magic is WAY too powerful, melee classes are useless), and bitchy GMs. Breathing the wrong way will get you jailed. No really, I’m serious. Have a problem in game? Good luck, the GMs don’t care, and there’s constant server rollbacks due to unannounced and random patching. The latest was a 16 hour rollback, people lost plat, but the only thing that was reimbursed were quest items. Just an overall amateur operation. It’s free yes, but your time is not. I’d rather pay for EQ and get customer service and a relative level of reliability then throw my time away at SoD.
September 21st, 2008 at 8:53 amIt’s still pretty much the same story at SoD. Expect to deal with bitchy staff (That get extremely butthurt when their ideas are criticized in the slightest) and pretty much constant nerfs. While there is decent content in the game, far too often it gets nerfed into suck because of new stuff rather than just making better content.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:35 am