Everquest Rebooted
I went from Game to Game
I aged, I grew and lost my innocence
I soon became enraged by each
and every bad experience
Apologies in advance for the disorganized nature of this post. It's one of those days where I have way too much to do, and not enough time to do it. Anyway…
Sony are taking a chapter from Mythic, and offering 2 "Sleeper" servers. From the FAQ:
First, this is specifically not a classic server. We are not attempting to revert EQ back to its original state. Not only is that a technical impossibility, but the nostalgia people have is due more to it being the first large persistent world that people encountered than any specific gameplay mechanic that has since been changed. That feeling is no more able to be recaptured than the feeling of a first kiss.
This server is primarily a new-player server, it just has a twist in how the content is unlocked to allow players to play through the progression of content as it was released to the game. At its core, what we're doing is simply locking out expansions, similar to what would happen if you didn't own them at all, until some in-game criteria has been met. Generally, this will be defeating the end game content for the expansion. Defeating Vox and Nagafen, for instance, will likely open up Kunark for the server.
That does mean that anything that is tied to an expansion will not be available until that expansion has been opened up. So, when the server first launched, you won't have Iksar, Vah Shir, Frogloks, Beastlords, or Berserkers. It also means that anything that has been opened up to all players over the years will be available from the start. In-game maps is a good example. Also, anything that has been added since release or changed since release will still be there on the server. Freeport and Ro will be using their revamped graphics, for instance, and boats won't work on the new server any better than they do on other servers.
Although Sony insists these are not "classic servers," they're…um…classic servers. Except that, unlike Dark Age of Camelot, expansion packs will eventually be unlocked. Mythic of course made their classic servers with every expansion except the cluster-fuck that was Trials of Atlantis, but the impetus is the same. Make it like the good 'ol days, and you'll get some old-timers back, if only for awhile. (The fact that Mythic did absolutely nothing to encourage players to experience the classic PvE areas is a topic for another post .)
I'd like to see this concept expanded. In fact, I'd like to see server "reboots" happen earlier in the lifecycle curve. A Tale in the Desert reboots the game every so often, for example. What if the solution to "the grind" wasn't to make leveling easier, but to make the level stack lower, and more interesting. Perhaps 25th level is the highest level, and every 6 months the servers (and characters) are rebooted. There'd have to be some changes in the way we think of the game, of course. Perhaps the ongoing world story is advanced after the reboot, maybe even advancing the timeline a hundred years. The deeds of your pre-reboot character may give your new 1st level character a special ability or item. In between each reboot, players' actions have an impact on how the storyline progresses. To keep guilds and the social fabric together you could keep your old character names and associations. And how many times have you wanted to check out a game, only to realize that the servers are so mature that it's almost impossible to break in? In a game where everyone is a noob every 6 months, jumping in gets a lot less intimidating.
Of course, this increases the workload on the designer staff by magnitudes. New art and content have to be created for every reboot, and there's no guarantee that the player base is going to enjoy the changes. On the one hand, players love new content. On the other, they're fickle about change.
Which brings us full circle back to why "classic" servers are appealing to players. We bitch and moan about the buggy days (sometimes weeks) after launch, but a couple years later we're hearkening for the good 'ol days. Classic servers are a great way to pull players back into the good 'ol days, with the bonus that most of the bugs have been worked out years ago. A game where reboots happen more frequently could also take advantage of the stability that on-going development brings. And hey, for those longing for the good 'ol days, there's always server roll-backs…
Whaddya think?
June 27th, 2006 at 10:49 am
Figured I’d get this out of the way…
BRING BACK PRECASTING BI-YATCH!!!1!
June 27th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Thank you for contacting Amber Night Customer Support.
Precasting is working as intended.
Thank you for playing.
June 27th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
There’s a bunch of EQ players who have just one goal: Be First. They used to jump from server to server as they opened, with the purpose of dominating the game. If they didn’t get in the right guild, they’d jump again. I restarted in Stromm, which was full of such jumpers. When Maelin Starpyre started, they jumped again. Same with Antonius Bayle.
These jumpers have been waiting for a new server like this. Look at the forums for The Combine server. All you see is just how hardcore the players will be. The benefits of six boxing versus merely two boxing. Best powerleveling techniques.
These new servers will have nothing for EQ newbs. However, the jerks from every other server will be there looking for them, to prove how much better they are because they got to level 50 in two weeks.
Stromm had the absolute worst community of any EQ server - EQ being reknowned for its unusually strong communities. In a year, Combine and Sleeper will be combined into one server - mark my words - and in two, it will be a wasteland. The jumpers will have returned to WoW, where they’d been lurking, jumping there from server to server as each opened, trying not to find self worth in compulsive gaming.
June 27th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
This proposed rebooting game environment would lend itself very well to guilds who wanted to role play each subsequent character as a new generation in a grand family. As Amber mentioned the deeds or sins of the previous generations could influence in some way their heirs.
Perpetual, player driven content. I’d buy that for a dollar. [or 15.95]
June 28th, 2006 at 5:23 am
I agree with Syntax Heir, the idea for story progression/starting fresh/rebooting is actually very cool. So good job coming up with a great idea! Fortunately it probably won’t be stolen because of the amount of work that would need to be put in for it to work. Still, a great concept!
June 28th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
I don’t remember what pre-casting was… and I saw the game from both sides. What is/was precasting? Of course, I jumped ship shortly after Velious, I think… it was around that time that I dropped EQ like a hot turd and started DAoC.
Oh, by the way. Please stop talking about DAoC.
I can see it dying soon now that EA has it, and I miss my friar and bonedancer something awful. It’s just… I can’t take the bad with the good (no facts of life for me!), so I can’t go back for it’s remaining months of life.
Every time you mention DAoC, I cry with melancholy nostalgia. It’s like tearing out my heart.
Amber, you are a cruel mistress.
June 28th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
I think Tipa has a more realistic view of what is likely to happen. When DAoC made the non-ToA servers, people who re-rolled there had absolutely no intention of playing the game as if it were new. No one I met, not even the friends who re-rolled there with me were interested in exploring the world. Mostly people spent the first week leveling like fiends so they could get into RvR ahead of the other realms, so they could take relics unopposed and gain those benefits. Of course task dungeons made it so they didn’t need to use any of the pve content, but I don’t think much of it would have been used regardless. People would have gone where the leveling was fastest, ignoring the rest.
DiabloII is the same way. The ladder restarts periodicly, and most people don’t work through the game in any linear progression. They beg way points form others higher, and they do Tristram runs, and tomb runs, and ignore act 3 altogether, then they do Izual and Diablo, then do Bloody Foothills runs, then 20 levels of Baal runs, then few cow runs, then they repeat in NM difficulty. They go to great lengths to avoid 90% of the game. Granted the DiabloII player base mostly have the attention span of a cockerspaniel an the manners of… well only DiabloII players actually behave that way in my experience( limited I admit ), but I think the trends for other games would mirror this as closely as the game world would allow. I know the DAoC re-roll fealt like I was playing DiabloII in Hybernia. Except without the cool drops and not seeing any of Hybernia while I was there
Honestly I think you would run into what DDO did. You would make this great game that if played in the right attitude would be really a great experience. Then your players would arrive and behave with the attitudes that they bring. And your game would die a horrid agonizing death. If you leave it up to players to abuse a system, or other players, even the smallest incentive will see them do it with a regularity that will astound and disgust you. I feel sorry for the designers at Turbine. They made agreat game with almost no way to check the abuses asshats and mouthbreathers.
June 28th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
I still feel that EQ would work better if they put up a server that was Original Game through Planes of Power (with maybe some of the expansions like LDoN turned on too, basically everything but Gates of Discord and Omens of War), and when you killed Quarm at the end of the Plane of Time, everyone who was involved in the fight would be reset to level 1 and stripped of equipment, but given some fancy title. Every time you participated in killing Quarm, your title would advance up through some ranks. So then you’d see some level 35 guy hacking away in a dungeon with a title like “Lieutenant Commander” and know that he’d helped kill Quarm 11 times.
June 28th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Scotia,
Pre-casting is a UO term. The ability to cast and hold a spell, equip a weapon, strike, then unleash the spell.
It went something like:
Explode cast
Halberd
Explode lands
E-bolt
All three would land in rapid succession and would clobber anyone who was caught unprepared.