West Karana

It’s not wrong to be nostalgic. A lot of us old EverQuesters (as opposed to EverQuesties; we hate them!) have warm feelings toward what was, for many of us, our first MMO. Sure, the graphics were crude and the leveling was brutal, but there was the same sort of camaraderie based on shared suffering that you get in wars and natural disasters.

It’s not just the players that get nostalgic; SOE has gotten a little nostalgic as well for the time when EverQuest was the industry leader and set the bar that all other MMOs had to cross. “If only…” they might say, “if only we could return to 1999 and do it all over again!”

Thus will someday be born EverQuest Next, a marriage of World of Warcraft graphics with Norrathian lore, a game that can be both (circa 2004-ish) modern and (circa 1999-ish) nostalgic at the same time.

What if SOE, instead of looking backward, looked forward? SOE has already dabbled in other sorts of non-MMO EQ games. The RTS Lords of EverQuest tried and failed to compete with Blizzard’s Warcraft a year before World of… arrived, and Champions of Norrath tried and somewhat succeeded in applying the tropes of Blizzard’s Diablo series to the world of EverQuest.

Seems SOE really has this thing for competing with Blizzard on their turf. Well, it’s time to stop looking backward — or looking north to Irvine — and start looking into the future. I humbly present five more forward-looking concepts for EverQuest Next….

1. NorrathVille

Ever want to farm jumjum on the edge of Misty Thicket? Interested in exploring dark caves hidden in the depths behind the Third Gate? Have a hankering to teach moss snakes to kick in Jaggedpine Forest? Why not come down to NorrathVille and make your mark on the world? Stake out your claim to Norrath and defend your home from a world that wants to take it from you. As you gain levels, you rise in the hierarchy of your race and eventually become a lord or lady of your land, powerful enough to move your home into the Planes themselves. Play alone or with thousands of your fellow Norrathians!

2. Grand Theft Freeport

On the waterfront, your name means nothing; your race even less. All that matters is what you are; a wharf rat, scrabbling for any action you can get from the ships that survive the crossing of the Ocean of Tears and the pirate-infested Timorous Deep. Or maybe you’re a Freeport Guard, sworn to keep the city safe for the rabble that infest it. Or are you one of Sir Lucan’s Knights, spreading blight through the city under the guise of saving it? No matter how you do it, one thing is for sure: Freeport is YOUR city. And everyone else had better fall in behind you or get out of your way.

3. Team EverQuest

You never know what you’ll be facing, when you step through the portal. One day, a legion of dwarfs. The next, a flight of dragons. The only people you can depend upon are your buds. You signed on as an Elite Vermiculated Elven Ranger Quester for the gold, but now, it’s much more than that. Now, it’s personal. Using the industry’s most advanced matchmaking lobby, E.V.E.R. Questers form up and move out to some of the most thrilling and tactically challenging situations to be found in Norrath. Where regular raid forces fail, Questers succeed. And when squads of Questers face each other in training — well, may the best team win, and may the other guys have good luck finding rezzes.

4. EverQuest Party!

Fighting can be fun, but everyone knows the REAL hardcore challenge for a seasoned adventurer is looking good in the guild lobby. Anyone can slay a mindworm, but can anyone pull off a Starmetal Ruby-Encrusted Greatsword strapped to the back of a suit of Pearlescent Voidtouched Armor? With a velvet cloak emblazoned with your guild insignia? No? Then bust out some killer moves on the dance floor and show them who is the real Master of Motion. In EverQuest Party!, fashion is king. Earn Cred through street challenges and dance competitions, and spend it on armor never seen on a mortal since Veeshan first claimed Norrath as her own with a sweep of her claw. Outshine the gods themselves, and help new players learn the tricks of the trade — because the more followers you have, the more cred you command.

5. Qeynos Qarts

You may have seen kart racing games before, but never like this! In Qeynos Qarts, the tech from Modnation Racers and EverQuest’s lore combines to make a racing experience unmatched. Ride griffons, pegasi, roboboars, dinosaurs, balloons and ogres through some of the most amazing tracks since Pod Racers. Is that a cyclops coming over the hill? Will you steer around him — or try to capture? It’s your choice — it’s your track — but it’s OUR world, now!

Carefully avoiding the words “jumping” and “on the” and “bandwagon” here, is it true that the “freemium” business model can save the ENTIRE MMO INDUSTRY? Aside from WoW, the only MMO that doesn’t need saving?

A couple of years back, you had your free to play MMOs (AKA “cheap Asian games”) and your subscription MMOs (AKA “Western games we like”). Then Wizard101 comes out with their two tier free/subscription plan, and then Turbine saves Dungeons & Dragons Online by making their game free-ish. DDO, a game most people had written off as a good try, suddenly became the belle of the ball and the industry Took Notice. It was only a matter of time before other marginal MMOs tried something similar.

And in this modern era, the only NON-marginal MMOs are WoW and EVE Online. I’d have thought Lord of the Rings Online would have been above this fray… until Turbine announced their flagship MMO would also be going “freemium”.

Someone at Sony made a call to John Smedley, I’m sure, asking why SOE wasn’t getting with the freemium program and making those megabucks for which they’ve been waiting. (SOE’s Free Realms already has this plan).

Yesterday, it happened. News of EverQuest II Extended spread through Twitter and the blogerati like ebola in a monkey convention.

There’s a twist. Where the other freemium games let subscribers and freeloaders mingle, EQ2 will be setting up a walled garden with the subscribers in their vast playgrounds, and the freeloaders in their ghetto. To even the odds up somewhat, players new to EQ2 will be encouraged to choose the EQ2 Extended option by virtue of the subscription game no longer having a free trial.

Aside from refer-a-friends or opting for the subscription version of EQ2 up front, people new to EQ2 will find themselves in the ghetto, and it’s not at all clear if they will be able to take their character to the subscription servers.

There will be four levels of players — the truly free players won’t be able to equip the best items, won’t have much inventory space, won’t be able to have much coin, won’t be able to have the best skills or spells, etc. They will be hitting the limits VERY quickly. As a fairly experienced EQ2 player, I imagine life for the free players will be… challenging. Hey, that’s not necessarily bad, if they know what they’re getting into.

Silver level loosens but does not remove some of those restrictions. Gold is a $15/month subscription which is more or less equivalent to the standard subscription and is the lowest tier with broker access. Platinum is a $200/year subscription which lets you access Sentinel’s Fate content and levels without having to buy the box (the other levels only give you up to The Shadow Odyssey for free, but you can buy Sentinel’s Fate separately).

To be honest, I don’t have a problem with this, EXCEPT…. for the separation between the standard subscription game and the freemium version. I don’t understand why new players aren’t encouraged to be in the vibrant servers that so desperately need fresh meat players ALL THE TIME. Make all the current subscribers Gold-level members, and just add in the other three tiers — free, silver and platinum.

Sure, we can copy our characters (at $35) to the freemium servers, but that wall is still there. In the end, SOMEONE’S going to be in the ghetto, and I just can’t help thinking it’s the people who have been faithfully paying their $15 every month for these past six years.

When I start a new MMO, I want to be dazzled — right up front. I know that MMOs want you to start out weak, with few abilities and few decisions to make, and introduce new abilities to you as you progress through the levels….

But I don’t care about all that. Drop me in the middle of the action, put me in an epic storyline, show me where I fit into the world, and you’ve got my attention. Lord of the Rings Online does that. I may not be LotRO’s biggest fan, but they know how to start a MMO. EverQuest USED to have custom starting areas for every single race, and by the time you ventured into the wider world, you knew your race — and class’ — place in the world. EQ2 USED to have race-specific villages around their capitals that did the same thing, after a common tutorial zone.

This being washed up on a beach without a past…. Thanks, DDO, EQ2, AoC and the rest of you. Been there, done that.

EQ2 recently opened up a new starting zone, the re-built city of New Halas. SOE has a history of trumping old starting zones with new brilliance, more or less making the old ones obsolete. Greater Faydark was supplanted by Neriak, which bowed to Gorowyn, and now, it’s barbarian time.

I started Toadsong, a froglok paladin, to see if EQ2′s latest starting zone could match the strong storyline that, if you were a Sarnak, anyway, admirably did the job of explaining your origins and how you fit into the world. The quests sometimes didn’t make a lot of sense if you were some other race, but hey. Sometimes all of us look a little lizard-like in the evening.

New Halas is a lost colony of dwarfs, Faydwer dwarfs building upon the ruined battlefield of Coldain dwarfs from the not-yet-rediscovered continent of Velious. With Mithaniel Marr’s blessing, New Halas has been rejoined to contemporary Norrath, and the follows of Mithaniel and his dead sister, Erollisi, have flocked to the new land in order to live simple lives of bravery and valor, and to form a front-line defense against the harsh snow orcs of the north — and the ancient, mysterious evil that slumbers beneath.

You, the player, awake with no memory of the past after your boat is attacked by snow orcs. Too weak to fight, you must first acquaint yourself with the basics of movement, combat, crafting and harvesting.

With those new skills at your command, you come upon a group of pilgrims trying to make their way to New Halas to worship the Marr twins. Beset on all sides by nature gone cruel, you earn your first complete set of armor, and make your way to an ancient battlefield, where the spirits of dead orcs and dead dwarfs continue their eternal battle for a small stretch of ice.

Not far past that, a small camp of barbarians send you to investigate the various orc-filled islands in the area, which lead eventually to an investigation of strange creatures from tunnels beneath New Halas itself — creatures from lost Velious.

Having finished all the tasks set her by the people of New Halas, I ended up level 26, in a decent suit of armor, with my crafting at level 9, and a mission to head to Butcherblock to pick up the Golden Path storyline which starts above the docks.

New Halas does its job; introduces the basic mechanics, tells a story and predicts Velious’ rediscovery, isn’t so difficult that anyone would ever feel challenged or in danger or with any need to group (unlike, famously, the old newbie islands, with at least one and usually more like three encounters for which you would really need to group).

I got a little tired of swimming back and forth between the surface and the subterranean tunnels after awhile. But it wasn’t all that far.

Once to Butcherblock, though, things took a turn for the dull. Milling groups of mobs, just waiting for an adventurer to kill them for quests. Gad, that’s SO BORING. I get bored just writing about it. The “Golden Path” story just has you doing quests until you hit 32, after which you may proceed to Steamfont.

The quests in Butcherblock always were in hubs, but some hubs have been combined. The docks now are combined with the old Gorowyn outpost quests. The above the docks quest hub has been vastly expanded; I haven’t spent much time there, but I suspect some Kaladim-area quests have been moved. After the occasionally interesting New Halas quests, Butcherblock comes as a real dunk in cold water.

So, New Halas thoughts:

Good: Decent introduction to the game, tells a story through its quests and leaves the player equipped as well as via the evil-leaning Gorowyn starting zone.

Bad: Tired “shipwrecked and powerless” storyline. I personally don’t like all-white landscapes, I think they look boring. My opinion. Fails to give people any idea of their role in a group, or why they would even want to group.

With the EverQuest server merge in full swing, SOE has offered free server merges for everyone for a limited time. My twisty EverQuest career has taken me from Erollisi Marr to Fennin Ro, back to Erollisi Marr, then Stromm, then back to Erollisi Marr, then Luclin, then back to Erollisi Marr…. EMarr always brings me back.

Now, thanks to the server merges — and by the way, those are working out well, Bazaar is more full than ever, Guild Lobby is positively stuffed. I didn’t get spammed with group invites as I was logging in all these characters, but I bet i could have found one.

Anyway. This is a totally self indulgent post, but there ya go.

My absolute first character, Mehve the Erudite Wizard, was deleted long ago. I totally regret that, because she was the one who made that epic days-long journey from Qeynos to Freeport that still remains one of my favorite EverQuest memories.

I made my second character, Etha Tanglewood (bottom right) when I camped Mehve in Rivervale after an exciting and nearly deadly run through the Beholder Maze and Runnyeye, into Misty Thicket and finally to safety beyond The Wall. That made such an impression that I decided I wanted to play one of those brave but isolated halflings, and Etha became my main.

It was with Etha that I joined my first EQ guild, the United Norrath Coalition, with whom I stayed until the guild leader dissolved it years later. It was with Etha and in UNC that I met Noffin, Lorika and Faedor, with whom I went on many adventures. While in UNC, I went on a few pickup raids to Hate, Fear and Old Sebilis and I couldn’t see any reason why UNC (and its close ally, Legion of Fate) couldn’t raid as well. Everyone seemed up for it, so we started raiding the planes. Back then, someone was rating the guilds of Erollisi Marr week by week based on their accomplishments. We made it up to #17. I think Etha’s druid epic — the weapon she still wields today — was the second UNC epic. The first was Jalanea’s shaman spear. In Etha’s offhand, by the way, is the Tanglewood Shield off of Wuoshi, given to me by Divine Grace. I’d known SOE had totally ripped off the Tanglewood name for its shield in Velious for some time, but never thought I would OWN one. Now that anyone can solo Wuoshi, it’s more common and not valuable at all.

Somewhere along the way, I made an alt, Nina (middle left), a warrior. I think I originally made her in order to have a character who could wear all the Small Bronze armor I was winning somewhere, perhaps Sol B. Anyway, I eventually tried leading raids as Nina instead of Etha. A horrifically failed Fear break ending in an eight hour CR ended her career as a raider. After that, I stuck with characters who could teleport.

Tsuki (lower left), the gnome mage, I made because I’d won a Robe of the Oracle from the Oracle in the Ocean of Tears, and halflings couldn’t wear robes (Mehve by this point deleted). I had this impression that mages could just park their pets someplace, go AFK, and come back a day later having gained a dozen levels. This was, of course, absolutely correct, and led to SOE nerfing pet aggro. All this did was get mages to go AFK closer to the action, which led to their occasional deaths, especially since a favorite sport for monks was training AFK mages and watching them die.

After UNC dissolved, I joined Divine Grace, one of the top EMarr raiding guilds and THE top Eurasian raiding guild on the server, with Etha. DG was great, but I felt that, as a druid, I couldn’t contribute great healing or great DPS. This was somewhat before SOE pumped up both these things for druids. I felt the only real attributes I brought to raids was porting people TO the raid, and buffing/debuffing elemental resistances. Once those were done, the guild leaders really didn’t care what I did. Well, they cared when I evaced my group to the Ssra Temple zone by accident as we were downing the Arch Lich. So that was that.

My boundless admiration for the UNC rogues — Noffin, Anavrin, and Kelvan — got me wanting to make one myself. Plus, as a rogue, I could get groups in all SORTS of places which never invited druids. This led to Tipa (top left). Her name fit with the theme — Etha and Nina being my other halflings — and it was more than a year later that I found out there was an NPC in Misty Thicket with that name, Tipa Lighten. I must have had the name somewhere in the back of my mind when I created her. Bored with Etha, I leveled Tipa up very quickly and left Divine Grace to join Noffin and Kelvan in A Twist of Fate. I think Lorika and Faedor had joined as well; not sure if maybe Lorika had quit by that point.

A Twist of Fate — led by the near-psychotic Tormentcia and her endless real life drama — was an up-and-coming hardcore raiding guild which, if you could wade through the guild drama, was pretty good at getting together and getting things done. I got my second epic, the rogue epic, with them. The drama, though, was getting out of hand, and I switched guilds one last time to Crimson Eternity, which remains my guild on Erollisi Marr to this day.

Crimson Eternity, led by a rogue (Westleey), loved its rogues. We had a huge rogue team, complete with sekrit chat channels and passwords. I’ve never been in a guild before nor since that gave rogues so much to do. Nonetheless, as we started getting deeper into the Gates of Discord expansion, the need for other classes outweighed the need for rogues. Being a Pacific time player in an Eastern time guild, by the time I got home from work, the raid would often be filled with enough rogues and I’d be left sitting out.

I’d made a cleric, Dera (top middle), on the Stromm server when it opened in 2003. Stromm was the last normal rules, no transfer server EverQuest has opened and the only one to be named after a player. Being at the top of the leveling curve was fun. During this time I lost my job and, unemployed, could raid with Dera in the morning (in Lost Sock Patrol and later, Viking Alliance) and raid with Tipa in the evening. This was amazingly fun, but it led to an overdose of EQ that I couldn’t sustain — it’s like I wasn’t doing anything with my life but playing EverQuest. Nonetheless, I kept it up as long as I could until I eventually found another job. Since I could no longer play both characters, and since Stromm by this time allowed people to transfer out, I moved Dera to Erollisi Marr, bought all the OoW spell runes I could find, and re-applied to CE as a cleric. I changed her name to Brita during the move, Dera’s name having been used.

There I stayed and played until I moved to WoW and then EverQuest 2. I returned to EQ a couple of times, but after the marathon thing when I played Tipa and Dera on different servers, my self respect would never let me play any game that intently ever again. EverQuest itself had inoculated me against EverQuest and all EverQuest-like games.

A bunch of us old EQ vets were chatting one day on this blog and Stargrace’s. We wondered if we could ever recapture the old EQ feeling of starting off powerless in an immense world where you had to rely upon others to advance. We picked a server — Stargrace’s old server, Luclin — started new characters, and embarked on a tour of Old Norrath wearing only the stuff we ourselves won in battle or quest rewards. The new-to-us Serpent’s Spine expansion gave stuff better than we could find elsewhere, and the introduction a couple months in of Defiant armor essentially trivialized the game. In retrospect, we maybe should have avoided Serpent’s Spine and restricted the use of Defiant armor… but with those, we were able to put Vox and Naggy on farm status, so it all worked out. Tipa the Ranger of Luclin is middle right in the picture above, but since her name was taken (by Tipa the Rogue) on Erollisi Marr, I had to rename her.

Rounding out the characters. Upper right is Nashuya, my SK. She was my roleplay character in Children of Darkness, and I had a lot of fun with her. She’s wielding Narandi’s Lance from Egat’s 10th Ring War. In the center square stands Patience of Fennin Ro. I made her (and a bard, Dulcet Obligato, long since deleted) to play with some friends I met through the EQ Guide Program. I’m not sure why I deleted the bard. Since my Guide character was named Esperanza (Hope), I kept the theme (if not the language) when I made Patience.

Why Esperanza? Well, I was very into my local church at the time, St. Matthias in Seaside, CA. Etha Gray was an occasional attendee; she had a radio show and was VERY respected in the community. She was (and is) an amazing person, and I named Etha the Druid in honor of her. Some of the congregation volunteered at the Luz y Esperanza food pantry in Salinas, so when it came time to name my guide character, I thought I’d keep with the church theme and choose that for a name.

Lastly, bottom middle, Tsukina the Necro. I created her to save Tsuki’s name when I transferred her (Tsuki the Mage) to Stromm to help Dera out. I ended up transferring her to Luclin, along with Brita (nee Dera) and Etha, in order to support the Nostalgia guild.

The Grand Consolidation brings all these characters home to Erollisi Marr. Tsuki came back from Stromm. Tsukina, Brita (renamed to Dera again), Tipa the Ranger (renamed to Ranoma) and Etha returned from Luclin. Patience came from Fennin Ro, and everyone else was already there.

Question remains — now that I have all these characters with all this history on one server — what do I do with them?