It’s now been a full decade since EverQuest Online Adventures closed up shop after a nine-year run in 2012. The PlayStation 2 MMORPG released in 2003, requiring console users to upgrade their hardware and make allowances for a more streamlined RPG experience. Even so, a small but loyal fanbase gathered around the game.
It’s that loyalty that’s fueling the ongoing revival rogue server, called Project Return Home. Despite being in a pre-alpha state, the emulator has been operating for a couple of years now and is accessible to any PC players (or even PS2 ones!) who might want to take a look at the era they once missed. Most of the dev chatter of this volunteer, open source project has been moved to the Discord. There the team’s talked about reconstructing smaller locations, dialogue additions, and even adding NPC greetings.
The team posted a FAQ earlier this year to explain what the project is about and how to access the Sandstorm shard. However, this is just the first of three servers in development: “Sandstorm was made very quickly and focused on multiplayer first. Hagley has been focused on implementing the game features like items, quests, mobs, etc first. Return Home is focused on the under the hood coding and stability portions of the game first.”
