Establishing Roots in Midgard

While initially I thought I'd be spending the weekend leveling my mauler in DAOC further, there were more pressing issues calling me...one of them being housing. Even though I'm not sure how long my stay will be, I just couldn't resist. I spent nearly two hours Saturday evening riding through Hibernia and Midgard housing zones looking for that perfect spot. It had to be waterfront and close to the market. Finally, I settled on a plot. There are four sizes of homes and the cost and maintenance of three of them were reduced drastically from last time I played. For new players, however, the costs are still high but definitely doable in a month or two of play time.





During my Saturday session of gaming, my partner in crime a couple feet away kept looking over to see what I was up to. Eventually, the nostalgia wore him down and he started the DAOC download. His tutorial perspective was different than mine though. Unfortunately, he has succumbed to the leash-led zombie masses and was heard grumbling "Why the $@*& can't they just show me where to go and why the $@*% is it so dark here?" I thought his stay was cut short as he logged out frustrated.

Meanwhile, I logged in all my old high level toons. Several of them had received respecs and I had no clue where their points were spent previously. And trying to find information on how to spec wasn't very successful. Unfortunately, Mythic never had any official DAOC forums for players to share information, and there are very few outside sources these days to find help for DAOC. One of my favorite classes back then was my valewalker and fortunately her spec hadn't been reset. So after about an hour of dragging skills to hotbars and hoping I was using the right ones, I took her out for a test drive.

I picked up one of the instanced mission quests, headed in, and kicked some serious butt. My other half returned and did the same with his friar, his prior favorite. So it looks like he'll be sticking around awhile as well as I now have a house neighbor.

Surprisingly, I've been seeing over a dozen members online in my old guild. One of them was a familiar face who coincidentally is just playing for the ten free days as well. And alliance chat has been busy with lots of activities scheduled, which is great to see.

Funny thing about nostalgia. When I returned to EQ1 I realized my memories were sweeter than reality and I just couldn't play it anymore. My return to DAOC is just as sweet as I remembered. It's such a great game with so much to do and definitely deserves more players than it has.