EverQuest cleaning house with server merges and character changes
Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest, Game mechanics, Guilds, Server downtime, News items
Sony Online Entertainment has sent out a customer service notification to EverQuest players, dealing with some changes that will potentially affect your account(s). Perhaps the biggest news is an impending server merge — “The Combine” and “Druzzil Ro (Xev)” servers will merge on January 21 at 3 a.m. PST, a process which is expected to last roughly five hours. The new server will retain the name “Druzzil Ro.” While server merges tend to be portents of doom and gloom by some players, EverQuest will also add a new server in March. Players will be able to vote on which type of server it will be…
EverQuest cleaning house with server merges and character changes originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Will RMT make SOE’s Station Access a relic of the past?
Last year, Massively’s Michael Zenke interviewed SOE’s John Smedley about, among other things, the future of SOE’s all-inclusive Station Access plan:
John Smedley: Sure. I don’t mind this being public. We are having ongoing discussions inside the company about making station access an all-inclusive pass. Everything that we have, you get as a customer. Station Access subscribers would get every expansion pack for every game, as well as future expansions for every game as well. For the same price now, without raising the price. We have two problems, though. One: we have third parties involved in this. LucasArts, for example, will have to buy off on this, as would others. Second is the less obvious one: Promising future stuff is the meat of the problem. We haven’t found the right way to word things yet. To be honest other priorities have gotten in the way. That’s what we want to offer people.
In the past year, Flying Lab’s “Pirates of the Burning Sea” was added to Station Access, but none of the things mentioned were ever mentioned after this. We EQ and EQ2 players STILL have to sign up for the Station Players Advanced Character plan — at a buck per month per feature — to see detailed information about our own characters.
With RMT for sure being a big part of upcoming MMOs The Agency and Free Realms, and given that both those and DC Universe Online will also be released on the PS3, where monthly subscription plans are unknown, it really looks like the business model for SOE’s MMOs is moving away from the monthly subscription plan.
If having the Station Access won’t give you any sort of benefit to the newer MMOs, what is the reason to keep it, aside from currently actively playing three or more SOE subscription-based games?
Assuring Station Access subscribers that their monthly investment in SOE games will be valuable going forward should be a top priority. Otherwise, players in these cash-strapped times will be looking at their expenses, and wondering if they really are getting $30 worth of gaming from their subscription.
Worlds.com files suit against NCsoft for patent infringement
Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Legal, Virtual worlds
You might remember earlier in the month we reported on Worlds.com placing down patents on two technologies that we commonly use in the MMO industry — scalable chat and system and method of enabling users of interacting in a virtual space — and how much havoc this could play with our favorite games. We also made the assumption that lawyers were going to begin marching from Worlds.com with suits in hand, beginning their demands of money. It turns out our assumption was right. Worlds.com has filed the necessary paper work to bring a suit against one of the big names in our industry: NCsoft….
Worlds.com files suit against NCsoft for patent infringement originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
A look back at 2008
2008 has been an absolutely amazing year for MMOs, and my personal progress through them.
Last year at this time, I’d just found the absolutely most perfect EQ2 guild — they were great raiders, loved grouping, and were fantastic people besides. With Clan of Shadows, I managed to do every flagging raid for Ruins of Kunark and was ready to step in and do my best to help the guild as they conquered Veeshan’s Peak. It wasn’t to be; I didn’t make the full membership vote. It wasn’t even close. That disappointment, along with other things to fill my evenings, eventually led to the end of raiding. Without raiding, though, I didn’t have much incentive to log in anymore. I tried to make things work with another guild, Delusions of Grandeur, but it just wasn’t CoS. I guess if I couldn’t make it in CoS, I didn’t want to settle for a lesser guild.
I started poking around back on EverQuest. I really missed my characters there. Not raiding, so much, but the friends, community and camaraderie that makes EQ unique. A lot of people commented that they’d love to play through EQ again, if they didn’t have to do it alone. So I thought we might do together what we’d never do alone, and along with ten or so fellow former EQ players, started Nostalgia the Guild on the Luclin server. NtG peaked in mid-summer when we got to dragon killing level and put the hurt on two of the three bosses of the original EQ, Lord Nagafen and Lady Vox. (We never killed the third, Phinegal Atropos, as a guild). SOE’s summer Living Legacy program had the unexpected side effect of boosting the power of our armor and weapons to raid levels, and a lot of things became possible with very few people. Although fairly diminished, NtG still meets Fridays to explore Old Norrath.
Stargrace took the Nostalgia idea and brought it forward 500 years to the devastated Norrath of EverQuest II. I eventually transferred half my characters from Befallen to Najena to join the guild there. I’m getting the urge to raid and group again, so I may be moving some of them back to Befallen… the loneliness of a server I have no history with dooms me to pickup groups with players I have never met and will never meet again. Nostalgia EQ2’s two active members aren’t enough to build a group or a raid… so there’s not much to do unless I want to do it alone. I hate playing by myself.
In February, I restarted my Neopets account with the sole goal of reaching and beating level 100 of their Shapeshifter mini-game. Shapeshifter starts out as the kind of brain twister that is fun to solve, but quickly goes well beyond the bounds of anything that can be solved by unaided humans in a normal lifetime. So this supposed kids game is really a test of your ability to develop an algorithm that can solve an enormous non-directed decision tree before the Sun goes nova. With help and encouragement from other solvers, I developed a Python program I called Shifter that could solve the hardest levels in no more than a day, and often far faster. On April 1st, 2008, I solved the last puzzle and was the Neopets Shapeshifter Champion for the entire month.
February also started my short-lived affair with Pirates of the Burning Sea. My son wanted to give it a try, so I bought a copy for him, intending to buy a copy for myself if I liked it. He grew bored with it. I liked it a lot, and made a character on his account, got up to a fairly decent level and was getting my free trading skills up, working through the storyline, and getting involved in some really exciting battles at sea.
It was on Station Pass, too! This was somewhat of a killer, actually. My son is not on the Station Pass, so I would have had to start paying for one or pay the PotBS subscription fee to keep playing, all the time I could be playing it for nothing extra if I just had my own account.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to start all over again, or pay to buy another copy of the game, so I just let it lapse. There were plenty of issues, but the game had amazing character and ship customization, absolutely gorgeous and tense battles, and I even liked the story. Sailing back and forth on the Caribbean though, not so much. Having to depend on a wide variety of people to make goods, definitely not so much. I wanted to play, but I just didn’t have the time or the money.
I felt sure that by the end of the year, I’d be totally engulfed in the one sure-fire hit MMO of the year, Flagship Studio’s Mythos. I’ve played a lot of Diablo clones, and even some, like Cronous, that try and take the action RPG into the MMO realm, but none had nailed it like Mythos. Even before they expanded the heavily instanced Overworld into a more world-like map with zoning only for cities and dungeons, I felt they had made perhaps the ultimate casual MMO… Rumors of money trouble inside Flagship turned out to be truth, and over a tumultuous weekend, Hellgate: London, their other title, was taken by their Asian publishing partner, and Mythos was dead.
I would like to be playing Mythos right now.
In March, a major new chapter of my life began when I was hired to blog about breaking MMO news for Massively.com. The pressure of writing so many articles, keeping a full time job, trying to keep Nostalgia rolling, and raiding in EQ2 eventually left me unable to do any of these things well. I put my full time job first, where it had to be, and focused on real life issues, like getting my son enrolled in college and figuring out how to pay for it (answer: I didn’t. I am broke all the time now 
). My Massively adventure ended after an ill-fated trip to the SOE Fan Faire put me in massive (sorry) debt, and my job was cut down to doing EQ2 guides, a task for which I was incredibly unsuited, since I was hardly playing EQ2 at all at that point (which continues to this day), and I’d never written a guide to anything in my life 
Massively and I parted ways in September.
I went back to writing just for West Karana, where I planned to change the direction of the blog from just chronicling my adventures in mainstream MMOs to seeking out, playing and being an advocate for lesser known MMOs.
It’s not that I don’t like the AAA, high budget, huge marketing department MMOs. I just find them too similar to each other. So many players look eagerly to a new MMO to banish the blahs they feel with the game they currently play. They play the new MMO for awhile, discover that it’s essentially the same as the game they already played, and pronounce the entire genre dead.
I was looking through MMORPG.com’s list of games, and some of them looked totally, wildly different from anything I had ever played. Somewhere in those hundreds of games would have to be dozens that went in a new direction.
Oh yeah, there were. BUNCHES!
In early July, I discovered Wizard 101, probably via Massively. This was an entire MMO built around a wildly kooky collectible card game. I was absolutely and utterly hooked. This was the sort of thing I’d been looking for — an MMO that was just entirely out of left field. It was superficially a kid’s game but quickly turned into a game requiring strategy and teamwork and great skill in deck building. I played until they turned out the beta lights, took a couple week’s break, then started right in on the live game.
If anyone wanted to dip their toes into MMO gaming, I wouldn’t give them a copy of EverQuest II or World of Warcraft. I’d sit them down in front of Wizard 101, right where the Headmaster of Ravenwood School of Wizardry is giving a test to see what sort of wizard you are. It’s not Hogwart’s by another name. It’s something new, unique and fun. Wizard 101 was one of the breakout hits of 2008, and I expect wonderful things from it in 2009.
My on-again, off-again relationship with City of Villains flipped “on” again for awhile in July and August. I love the idea of a super-hero, comic book game, and I like what NCsoft has done with the game since they acquired it from Cryptic, and the character creator is unparalleled, but… the repetitive gameplay just can’t keep me for long. I started to get into their crafting system, but after awhile I just stopped logging in. I’m still subscribed, for now, because I am waiting for the mission designer coming in Issue 14 or 15. I want to see what that is like.
Spore owned my gaming time for a few weeks in September. I really wanted to like the game and very much enjoyed building new creatures, vehicles and space ships. I just didn’t get into the space game that is the majority of the time spent playing — you breeze through the other portions in an hour or less. It still has a place on my hard drive.
Recently, I’ve chucked pretty much every game into the back seat in order to play Dream of Mirror Online. I played this game briefly earlier in the year, and it made a very good impression, but the huge number of games out at that time pushed it away before I’d gotten to level 10, where the jobs, and the game itself, open up. As I played it, I couldn’t help remembering the last game that made me feel this way — the original EverQuest. I began to notice a lot of similarities between the games — death penalties, slow leveling, an emphasis on community over leveling, wide open zones and dungeons — it was EverQuest! A Taiwanese game company had managed, somehow, to meld EQ’s gameplay and community with the Asian anime-flavored, cinematic games. Absolutely stunned me, and I am having a lot of fun playing it.
Honorable mentions: Guild Wars — I want to play this more. Why don’t I? I don’t know! Probably because I hate playing alone. Florensia — another Asian import. I loved the fact that it had a cool land game AND a pirate-themed sea game, but it reminded me of DOMO so much, I figured I’d just play DOMO (good call). Vanguard — even though it runs crappy on my machine, I still pick it up now and again, and it still has a spot on my hard drive. Spellborn — this was intended to be a major part of my fall gaming, but it has been pushed to next year. I still have high hopes for the game, if not for the publisher’s commitment to the title.
2008 was a very intense year for MMO gaming, full of tales of intrigue and adventure — and that’s just the marketing departments! Some of this year’s biggest releases — WoW’s expansion, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online — I just could not find time for. 2009 isn’t looking as intense as 2008, but it might well be SOE’s time to shine if they can get The Agency and Free Realms out the door. Champions Online is also scheduled for the year, and perhaps DC Universe Online as well, giving NCsoft’s City of Heroes a run for its money and market share. News of Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic should keep people thirsting for more space-themed adventure in 2010. And, Spellborn!
Happy holidays, fellow gamers 
Allakhazam editor rages at SOE Station Cash
Filed under: EverQuest, EverQuest II, Business models, Opinion
There has been much unpleasantness following last week’s announcement by SOE that they would be introducing Station Cash to Everquest and Everquest II. But few write-ups have been so frequented (or adamant) as that of Allakhazam editor Tamat. The main gist of the argument is that this change was forced upon all servers, rather than providing the option to choose switching to a server offering these transactions. There are also concerns over how the items, available only by microtransactions, change the dynamic of play in the games.
We invite all of you, readers, to tell us what your experience of the Station Cash items has been thus far. Have you used the system? Are you excited or annoyed by the gear available for money? In short, is it more fun or just funds?
Allakhazam editor rages at SOE Station Cash originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 20 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
EQ: Exploring the Depths of Darkhollow
Depths of Darkhollow, EverQuest’s tenth expansion was set in the vast underground series of caverns of Underdark Darkhollow, a vast series of caverns beneath Norrath inhabited by the remains of the Illithid Illisin empire and the upstart, warring factions of the Wurine (werewolves). It continued the previous Dragons of Norrath expansion’s effort to reposition EverQuest back to its Norrath-centered fantasy roots after two large expansions, Gates of Discord and its follow-up, Omens of War, took players off Norrath and into the middle of an alien invasion. After all, where could you go when you’d just killed off all the gods of Norrath in Planes of Power?
EverQuest found the answer in Dungeons and Dragons’ tales of the Underdark, the mystic realm far beneath the surface world.
That’s where we found ourselves last night, in Stoneroot Falls. The zone is named after the the huge falls that get their source ultimately in the river that cuts through Nektulos Forest.
Tarfu and Elryndal were on when I got on. We’d decided last week to head to Stoneroot, the 65-70 hot zone, to get some experience after a few weeks bopping around in the Planes of Power. To be honest, though, I didn’t feel the experience in Stoneroot was all that better than it was in the Plane of Fire. It was, though, someplace new.
Coldheat logged on before we headed out, so my cleric mercenary got the night off, a big relief to her, I’m sure I felt kinda bad for Coldheat, though.
I’d hated Stoneroot Falls when I played a cleric. It’s a zone full of ramps, water, and crazy shifts in elevation. It is very, very hard to get around in the zone without invisibility and levitation, neither of which were easy to come by for a cleric. Invis potions cost 13 plat a shot in PoK, and levitation — for a PST player in an EST guild, it was unusual to be able to grab a SoE from a ranger or druid before everyone headed out to the zone. The Buried Sea expansion would fix this with guild banners, but that was still in the future.
Deep Orcs in the second section of Stoneroot, not far from the secret entrance to Dreadspire Keep, seemed best for our level on tracking, and we headed that way.
We pretty much made, and wiped on the first pull. Oops.
On the way back, Coldheat died and Elry and Tarfu got pinned down by continual adds in the water. We eventually got it together and let Elry pull with pacify.
We settled down to a good, three+ hour grind after that. I dinged 68, Coldheat got level 64, Tarfu made like twelve AAs (used a potion) and I think Elry said he had over six.
I’m now either at or just beyond the level of my first serious character, my druid Etha. Closing in on my rogue, also named Tipa, who’s 70, and within sight of my highest level character, the level 75 cleric Brita. Still 17 levels from the current cap, though.
I’m hoping we can do some of the easier Darkhollow missions sometime. There were some which were just crazy hard, but others were fun and had great loot.
It was a really fun night. It was great to talk to Lazarretto, who is having fun in his new guild and has started up his own EQ-focused blog, Complete Heal, which everyone should check out
Allakhazam editor rages at SOE Station Cash
Filed under: EverQuest, EverQuest II, Business models, Opinion
There has been much unpleasantness following last week’s announcement by SOE that they would be introducing Station Cash to Everquest and Everquest II. But few write-ups have been so frequented (or adamant) as that of Allakhazam editor Tamat. The main gist of the argument is that this change was forced upon all servers, rather than providing the option to choose switching to a server offering these transactions. There are also concerns over how the items, available only by microtransactions, change the dynamic of play in the games. We invite all of you, readers, to tell us what your…
Allakhazam editor rages at SOE Station Cash originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 20 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
EverQuest merging servers, adding NEW server in 2009
Actually in an EverQuest group *right now* so can’t write this up fully, but briefly, next month, Druzzil Ro (Tarew Marr) will merge with progression server The Combine to become Druzzil Ro (Tarew Marr, The Combine).
But more excitedly, EverQuest will be adding its first new server since the progression servers. Full details below.
New Worlds of Adventure
On January 21, 2009, EQ will be consolidating “The Combine” server and “Druzzil Ro (Tarew Marr)” server into one server to be titled “Druzzil Ro (Tarew Marr, Combine).” The merge will begin at 3 a.m. PST and will last approximately five hours.
In addition, in conjunction with the upcoming EQ 10th Anniversary celebration, SOE is expecting to add a new EQ server in March 2009 and players will be able to vote on a new server type. To provide your input on the type of server you’d like, visit EQplayers.com in January.
We hope that these changes will provide players with an even more enjoyable EQ experience.
Character Names
Priority for character names will be based on the date the character was first created. Subsequent players with the same name will have an “x” appended to their name until a unique name can be determined. The same process will be applied to guild names. Players who wish to change their names can type “/changename” into their chat windows. Guilds that wish to change their names will need to use the “/petition” command.
Inactive Characters
Accounts with characters below level 10 that have been inactive for six months or more will be purged from the EQ system.
Accounts with More Than Eight Characters
Accounts with characters on the merging servers will have their character names alphabetized, and only the first eight listed will be accessible until characters are deleted to make room. Any characters past the first 8 are not deleted, they are simply inaccessible until one of the first 8 is deleted to make room.
Shared Banks
If a player’s account has characters on both servers, the most recently updated bank will have priority unless it is empty. Players must empty out the shared bank they don’t want to keep before the merge. If players wind up with the wrong shared bank (they didn’t empty out the other one in time, etc.) they can use “/petition” to have the other shared bank copied over.
UI and Character Settings
All character UI and character settings will need to be reset.
Corpses
All corpses will be sent to Shadowrest.
EQ players
Player information will be updated to reflect new names/guilds/servers.
Artifacts
New servers will allow two of the same artifacts.
Server Transfers
Free server transfers from the surviving server (Druzzil Ro) will not be available in connection with this server merge.
~ Sony Online Entertainment
Handful of player-created quests come with updates to EverQuest, EverQuest II
Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Patches
The folks at SOE passed over word that new updates are coming this month for both EverQuest and EverQuest II. While both games are mostly receiving simple tweaks, there’s a few unique additions coming to EQ. A few players participated in a quest workshop recently, and some of their hard work will soon be implemented into the live game. A patch today to EQII is primarily adding changes to the game’s UI and adding some sorting options to the quest log. Aside from the two player-created quests going into EverQuest, the venerable game is also gaining improved camera controls, a reduction in…
Continue reading Handful of player-created quests come with updates to EverQuest, EverQuest II
Handful of player-created quests come with updates to EverQuest, EverQuest II originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Handful of player-created quests come with updates to EverQuest, EverQuest II
Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Patches
The folks at SOE passed over word that new updates are coming this month for both EverQuest and EverQuest II. While both games are mostly receiving simple tweaks, there’s a few unique additions coming to EQ. A few players participated in a quest workshop recently, and some of their hard work will soon be implemented into the live game. A patch today to EQII is primarily adding changes to the game’s UI and adding some sorting options to the quest log.
Aside from the two player-created quests going into EverQuest, the venerable game is also gaining improved camera controls, a reduction in linkdead reconnection time, and the removal of a long quest chain series to access content in the Serpent’s Spine area of the game. For the full patch notes for both games and a bit of holiday PR, read on below the cut.
Continue reading Handful of player-created quests come with updates to EverQuest, EverQuest II
Handful of player-created quests come with updates to EverQuest, EverQuest II originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
