Back in the olden days (about five years ago), I used to play Everquest (EQ). The strength of EQ was probably its liability too: you had to team up to take on monsters (mobs) because they were so tough you couldn’t solo them. As a result, it forced community in the game because you had to get together with other players in order to even begin hunting.

Furthermore, the quests involved were sheer tediousness. For instance, certain mobs were on timers (say, a 30 minute timer). These certain mobs had items that would drop that were needed to fulfill certain quests. Sounds easy enough–just “camp” the spot where the mob would appear, wait no more than 30 minutes, and get your item drop.

As if. EQ did a couple things to make this even more difficult. First, there was only a chance that the item would drop. Even if it was a high chance (say, 1 in 4–and believe me, that can be a high chance for some of the drops) that meant you could be out there for several hours. But even that wasn’t difficult enough: they also made it so the mob could spawn “place holders” instead of the mob you needed. Thus, after waiting thirty minutes for the mob to respawn, you end up having to kill the place holder that does NOT drop the loot and wait another thirty minutes.

As a result, in order to actually complete your quest, sometimes you would have to get a group and camp the same spot for several days in a row (assuming you had some semblance of a life and didn’t wait there for 18 hours in one day).

There was another thing about the original EQ. If you died, everything that you were carrying stayed with your corpse. Wherever you died, that’s where your body lay. Sure, there were certain things that you could do to get your body back if it was in a really hard to reach place, such as summoning it. But that required a special class, and if you weren’t that class, that meant you had to pay someone else to do it (payment being in the form of game platinum, of course). More often than not, what would happen is you’d end up respawning wherever you were set to respawn at, with no weapons, armor, or money except what you had stored in your bank. Which meant that there were immediate cries of “Corpse run!” Usually, you’d try to get someone to cast a speed spell on you (Spirit of Wolf for those who’ve done this before) and then you run as fast as you can toward where you left your body, hoping you can remember where it was, praying that the mob is no longer in the area. Because if you were killed by it while fully armored and holding your best weapon, you know you’re not going to be able to take it on “naked.”

So why do I bring this up? Well, it’s been about five years since I played EQ. I did play EQ2 for a while, but they got rid of most of the above because of how annoying it was–yet EQ2 never seemed as good as EQ. Then, after the saga that I went through earlier this year, I was left with no computer at all. Now, with my new computer, I don’t have the ability to run either version of EQ. (I’ve only got 800 mHz and a 10 gig hard drive, which currently has about 800 megs left…)

But I found a different game. It’s low-tech, doesn’t have 3D graphics or cool music (it’s got some cheesy music, but sometimes I just turn it off completely). It also doesn’t have load zones (those who play EQ will know what a pain those are). And it also gets much closer to the core parts of what made EQ so much fun originally.

The game is Ashen Empires (AE), which you can download for free if you want. It’s semi-free to play too (meaning you can play for free but you can’t do all the stuff that you can do if you pay, and you’re limited at what you can do once you leave the n00b island). And what brought back the fun of EQ was…

I had to do my first corpse run in five years tonight.

I was exploring near the Orc or Ogre or whatever town of Krog with my character “Paladin Knight.” I went through this little canyon area because I had gotten a quest to kill a snake, a bat, and a kobold. The snakes and bat were both lvl 1 creatures so I figured this would be an easy quest. And there was a guy at the front of the canyon who said, “The kobold camp is at the other end of this pass, but beware lest they ambush you in the pass!”

Now my character was lvl 11. I was going through the canyon and kept getting attacked by grizzly bears, which were lvl 8. Even though they were lvl 8, they had a huge amount of hit points so after each battle I had to rest a bit to heal back up (which is similar to all the “medding” you got to do in EQ). But I was making my way through the canyon to the other side. There, I saw the kobolds.

They weren’t lvl 1 mobs. The one I saw was lvl 12. At that point, I was attacked by a black widow spider and a kobold mage. The spider was lvl 12 too, if I remember, and the mage was lvl 18!

Needless to say, I took off running back up the canyon as fast as I could. The kobolds didn’t follow, but in the process I was attacked by four grizzly bears, a snake, and a “sonic flyer” (which is a bat-like creature).

Interestingly, in AE you can run through other players if they’re in your way…but you can’t run through mobs if they’re in your way. You have to kill them to create an opening to get through. Having four lvl 8 grizzlies in your way, you’re not going to be able to hack through one of them before the other three get you…so I died.

AE is different from EQ in this: you lose what was in your backpack, but you keep what you were wearing (although it gets damaged). So I still had my weapons and armor on. I repaired them and went on my first corpse run.

After I got my belongings, I continued through the canyon again to see if maybe there was a lower lvl kobold somewhere.

Apparently there wasn’t because I got attacked by the high lvl kobolds again. This time, I barely made it back to the canyon mouth when I was rooted by the kobold mage and then the seven mobs that were chasing me got me. Second death in only fifteen minutes.

Time for another corpse run. This time, I was making my way carefully through the canyon when a massive spawn occured: four grizzlies right in front of me. I took off running and they all followed me. This time, I made it back to the town where the guards were able to kill the grizzlies before the grizzlies could kill me. At that, I raced back into the canyon hoping to get to my corpse before the mobs respawned. I did make it to the corpse in time, but they had respawned by my return trip. This time, I was able to avoid getting hemmed in by them on the way back to the town, and after the guards killed off the grizzlies once more I figured…maybe it’s time to take up farming (they have that in the game).

Whew. The sheer terror of a corpse run just makes a game that much better. Having to go back into the depths after you didn’t make it the first time makes finally getting out of it actually feel like an accomplishment. Sure, I died twice in the game and didn’t complete my quest (yet). But I know one thing: I’ll play AE again in the future.