Having decided to completely sit-out LDoN and wait for the next expansion to launch, I had time to reflect. When I started on Teek, it had been my intention to see as much of the game as possible, and to ride the server all the way to Live. During the nine months since, I had indeed been able to see far more of Norrath than ever before, but still, only a small fraction of it really. And the time, effort, and cost of that modest achievement was not insignificant.
Largely left out of my tale up to this point were the many times I had tried to find groups, but ran out of play time before I could, and so had to give up. Or the occasions I had negotiated with my family to carve out enough time to raid, only to get benched. Or the many, many times I had stayed up far later than I should have, leading to exhaustion and poor performance at work the next day. Or the annoyance all of the above caused my family, along with the accompanying guilt thus caused to me.
As I looked further down the road of Teek, I was forced to reckon with a number of hard truths. While I could likely still carve out enough time to just barely keep up with the playerbase through grouping, it seemed highly unlikely that I’d be able to raid again. And without being able to raid, many of the zones of future expansions would remain locked to me. And the required time cost and family aggro for this middling success, again, would be significant.
And so, with a heavy heart, I decided the time had come to bid farewell to Norrath for a second time. I will always love EverQuest, and it will always hold a special place in my heart, but it is clearly not a game designed with players like me (time-limited, and uninterested in boxing or paying for power-leveling services) in mind.
For anyone who might stumble across this record in the future, know that I absolutely loved my time on Teek, and don’t regret a second of it! Returning to a world I had last walked 20 years earlier was a magical experience, and I will carry my memories of Teek as warmly as I do those from Firiona Vie and Xegony from two decades before. And so, I bid you all farewell, and hope you have memorable adventures in whatever worlds you journey!










