Month: March 2019

But that is where you end up when you take a hard look at what made a game what it was. You start back down the path of the original features and have to examine things like corpse runs and instancing and the like.
–Wilhelm Arcturus, the Ancient Gaming Noob

I’ve posted recently about playing two EverQuests: one, the recreation of “classic” EverQuest that is presented by Project 1999, and the other a return to my character on the “live” EverQuest server as it exists today (I had stopped playing just before Kunark came out in 2000). I prefer Project 1999 for a lot of reasons, and figured I’d write a brief series of posts that compare and contrast the old and the new EverQuest, especially in terms of how well it is hitting what Holly Longdale has said are its twin pillars: “classic high fantasy and community dependency.” I’m going to argue that the layer upon layer of features and content added to EverQuest over the past 20 years has not improved the game.

To begin with, let me outline what I believe some of the key elements of EverQuest were at launch – four systems through which the game delivered compelling fun. They’re not the features or ludemes – those individual pieces all played in to these overarching systems. These four systems should give us a good basis for discussing whether or not the features that have been added or altered in the past 20 years have made the game better.

• Combat: primarily player-vs-environment, group-based monster slaying. I would argue that this is EverQuest’s “core” system, the one which was most well-developed at launch and which to a large extent defines the game. Just about everything in EverQuest is tied to how well your character(s) can kill monsters in the world.
• Exploration: seeing new parts of the world. Norrath used to be a beautiful place, with “hallmark” locations that were fun just to look at and poke around. The world has gotten larger since launch – for better or worse – and some of the locations have been revised considerably (here’s looking at you, Freeport).
• Social Interaction: the way that players grouped, talked, played together. This system is the key differentiating factor for EverQuest, as there are other games that do these other three systems as well or better – but without large numbers of other players to do it with.
• Crafting and Questing: making new items yourself or getting them from NPCs. These are arguably two distinct systems, but I’m combining them into one, at least for purposes of this series. These two systems weren’t very robust when EverQuest was launched – there were few quests, and crafting was difficult to understand and practice. Both crafting and questing have seen dramatic changes over time as various patches and expansions have accreted mechanics on top of one another to try to “fix” or enhance these two elements of the game.

These are what I consider to be the four key systems in EverQuest. I’m going to posit that Combat and Social Interaction play more strongly to the “community dependency” pillar; Exploration, Crafting, and Questing play more strongly to the “classic high fantasy” pillar. In the next four posts in this series, I’ll cover each element in some detail, describing what I think the original EverQuest did right, what needed to be improved at launch, briefly look at changes they made to effect those improvements (and whether they did the trick), and a few alternative ideas they could have considered to conserve what was great about the original while adding things that were new.

From the outset, I’d also like to acknowledge the fact that this is all “armchair designer” talk. Some of what I’m going to talk about may be idealistic and far removed from the realities that the EverQuest team has likely faced over the years with the pressure to “publish or perish” to retain the user base, typically with a fairly short time window. I am sympathetic, to a degree – but this is my blog, so I’ll write it like I see it. Expect an article on EverQuest’s combat soon.

In a recent post, I said that I no longer play MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games). So…shortly after I wrote that…I logged back in to Project 1999. For those who are unfamiliar with P99, it’s an attempt by a group of fans to re-create “classic” EverQuest, prior to the Shadows of Luclin expansion in 2001.

Project 1999 is enjoying something of a renaissance, with nearly 1,800 players on the server on a regular basis – definitely up from the ~800 people on the server that it had two years ago when I first tried it. With more people comes some of the traditional flame wars and whatnot on the forums, but also more opportunity for fun.

In the throes of nostalgia, I also decided to see if I could recover my old EverQuest account. With the 20th anniversary of the launch of the game, I saw stories of folks who were able to get into accounts they hadn’t used in over a decade…and I figured: why not try for 19 years? I’m pretty sure I hadn’t logged in to EverQuest since early 2000, as I left the game shortly before the Kunark expansion launched.

Lo and behold, the great staff at Daybreak Games were able to connect me with my account. It had been tied to my college email address, which of course I no longer access. After a bit of a download to get the current version of the game, I logged in to Calthaer – the wood elf bard I created upon launch back in 1999.

The first thing I noticed was that he was naked, and was swaying on his feet – drunk. It all came back to me – sitting in the West Freeport gate, giving away my armor and weapons (except for a Spiked Collar – clearly a prized possession I was loathe to part with), getting “drunk” on Dwarven Ale, and saying goodbye to friends – Starrhawk, Mungalung (an Ogre warrior…his name just came back to me as I was typing this), and others whose names I can’t recall. I was even still a member of the Silver Circle – the guild I used to belong to. Of course, saying “Hello?” in guild chat yielded no response – I am sure I must be the only surviving member of the guild.

The other thing I noticed was that I was ugly. I know it’s debatable whether the new character models are better or not…put me firmly in the camp that hates them. My wood elf bard had disproportionate limbs and waddled like a duck when he ran.

In addition, West Freeport was radically altered. In place of the white and red brick walls and dusty streets was a drab, brown fortress with no distinguishing features. It almost looked like someone decided to imitate an Imperial town from Oblivion, but without any of the sense of style that the Elder Scrolls games manage to inject into their fantasy world. The map at least helped me get around, but – what a disappointment.

Armor and a weapon were going to be essential for survival, so I checked the rest of my inventory. Besides some Dwarven Ale, I had a fishing pole and bait, a few gold pieces, and some sewing and smithing items (I was trying to build up my skill and make studded leather prior to my departure – trade skills were very difficult in the original EverQuest). First I went to the docks and did some fishing until I found a rusty dagger. Then I went out to the Commons (no more east and west) and started hunting some wolves to make small patchwork leather armor.

After making a few pieces of armor, I headed out to Rivervale, where I knew there was a lady in Misty Thicket who sold patterns. After tooling around for a while finishing up my patchwork set (and even making myself a pair of studded leather leggings), I saw the book that lead to the Plane of Knowledge, the new “hub” for the game – and I went there.

After exploring the place for a bit, I saw a guy called V’Lynn Renloe with a tag for “armor quests”. Thinking to myself that I needed armor, I hailed him – and got a quest line in a window for Misty Thicket. I returned to the woods, killed a bunch of stuff, and was rewarded with a “Note about your fourth trial.” With the instruction to hand that in to my guildmaster, I go to the bard guildmaster in the Plane of Knowledge – who doesn’t accept the note. Since I came from the Greater Faydark, I head there – that guildmaster won’t accept it, either. It looks like I just wasted my time – I’m sure this note goes to somebody, but I have no idea who.

After checking online, I do see that this guildmaster will hand out quests for “newbie armor”. I start in on this, which involves killing a bunch of low-level monsters in Greater Faydark (where I am also completely alone – no one’s in Crushbone, either). After collecting a bunch of stuff and combining it in the forge, presto – I have a Tranquilsong Helm.

It’s the best piece of armor I’ve ever owned in EverQuest – decent protection and a very hefty addition to my skills (+6 Stamina, +5 Charisma). In the original game, you didn’t start getting armor that could buff your attributes until level 15-20, and even then it was doled out in +1s and +2s. I wonder to myself why I just spent time putting together of patchwork armor when this quest gives a much better reward…moreover, I wonder why patchwork armor is still in the game, with these quests around. It’s clear, upon reading a few guides, that there’s a lot more to tailoring now as well – there are clearly a few competing “systems” of tradeskills, with monsters dropping a variety of pelts and silks, none of which are compatible or convertible from one system to the other.

It’s clear that EverQuest is…well, just what it is: a program from the 1990s that has been haphazardly “patched up” in an effort to stay relevant and retain its user base. The game has player housing, “mercenaries” (NPCs you can hire so that you don’t have to group up with other players), hub zones, and elaborate quests. While some of this is an improvement over the original game, much of it is not – especially when the sum total of its pieces is considered together.

The conclusion of all this is that I won’t be continuing in the “live” version of EverQuest. Every zone I went to – all mainstays of the original game, each one populated with a lot of players in Project 1999 – was completely empty. It didn’t seem like a “massively multiplayer” game any more; it was just a virtual world that you could explore all by your lonesome. I’ll write a few more posts about the game mechanics that have fed in to this situation over the next few weeks. For now, though, I’ll log back in to Project 1999 and try to make a few platinum.