The Ancient Gaming Noob

And Then We Were Three February 18, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest.
Tags: Fippy Darkpaw, Nostalgia, Progression Server
4 comments

How hard is this game that I am posting about hitting level 3?

Well, Skronk and I made it that far.

Though I would guess that we only played about 40 minutes, tops, to get from levels 2 to 3.  Working in a group helps.

It also helps that we managed to get ourselves a little better armed.

Skronk got himself a pair of clubs while Vikund found a worn great staff.

So far, so good.  Grouping up has helped speed things along and the slow pace of levels hasn’t deterred us yet.  Granted, we’re not going lightning fast.  I saw a level 12 looking for group that night and I saw a group of level 15s the next.  I don’t have that kind of time to invest daily.

But with our advancement we have both managed to collect a bit of cash.  It was time for Vikund to see what other spells he could obtain.

That meant a run back to Halas and some research.

Back in the day, back in 1999, spells in EverQuest, like most everything else in the game, were doled out the way they were in TorilMUD.  Every five levels you hit another tier of spells from which you could choose.  So you had some at level one, then another set at level 6, 11, 16, 21, and so on.

However, somewhere along the line, they changed all of that.  You got more spells and regular intervals.  If you run through the tutorial that is in the regular game, you get a bunch of those spells as part of the intro.  On this server though, there is no tutorial and nobody tells you what spells you get.

So you can figure it out the hard way, by going to the spell vendor at your guild, or you can look it up on the web.

Allakhazam, still my friend after all these years.  It was the place to go in 1999, and it still seems to be the place to go in 2011.  There I found a listing of all the shaman spells and the levels at which I can learn them.

I didn’t grab them all, but I now have a little bigger selection of things in my spellbook.

So, slowly, things are developing.

And, while we were out the other night, we got to see Fippy Darkpaw make his regular assault on the front gates of Qeynos.

The guards got him.  They always do.

So Vikund is developing into a useful character… for level 3.  The heroic barbarian shaman.

Now I think I had best start working on some clothing.  He’s got the figure for the bare chested look, but you really have to wax oil a chest like that on a regular basis.

Anyway, our EverQuest quest for glory continues.  Looking for level 4 soon!

EverQuest is Enormously Popular… At Least When it is Free… February 17, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest.
Tags: Fippy Darkpaw, Nostalgia, Progression Server
5 comments

Actually, EverQuest, even when not free, is still enviably popular after being around for nearly a dozen years.  I am sure a lot of games would love to have a loyal, subscription paying population of the size that EQ still enjoys.

But it wasn’t quite clear exactly how popular the new EverQuest progression server was wandering around outside of Halas.  The area, with its winding paths through the snow to Blackburrow, limits how much you can see.  So you might only see a half a dozen players running around at any given point.

You can see by the west side of the map that the going is a bit twisty.

(Map of Everfrost from EQ Atlas mirror on the EQ Mac wiki, which has all of those hand drawn maps we used to use back in the day.  I had a binder with all those maps printed out, each with notations for additional landmarks with coordinates, back in the day.)

The real sign of how many players there were in the area was the complete absence of the mob conga line that, on live servers where nobody goes to Halas any more, wanders through the zone like some mutant Disney parade.

The absence of something is subtle though.  Like the phrase, “It’s quiet… too quiet,” something missing does not convey the message the way, say, a mass of people camping the front yard of Qeynos does.

Oh my!  People were out in force and the lawn in front of Qeynos was littered with dead bats, rats, snakes, beetles, skeletons, and even the occasional gnoll.  Fippy Darkpaw, the server’s namesake, and who occasionally gets up the nerve to assault the Qeynos front yard, was nowhere to be seen.

I got an IM from Skonk saying that he was rolling up a character at about the time that I had made it to Blackburrow with a group I had joined.  Our group was taken unawares by a train of gnolls and was mostly wiped out.

I used this as an excuse to say good bye to the group and started making my way to Qeynos.

Getting through Everfrost and then Blackburrow was easy enough with the mass of players slaying and/or training everything in sight.

Then it was a run through to the front gates of Qeynos, where I found Potshot, on as Skronk the monk, foundering in the pond in North Qeynos.

I wasn’t alone in forgetting Norrathian water safety skills.  I jumped in, if only to share the pain, and then somehow we both managed to get back out and on to dry land.

(Thanks to Beleg in a comment on a previous post for mentioning the “go to first person view” method of getting out of water in EQ!  I will, I hope, remember that in the future.)

From there we grouped up and joined in the mayhem outside the gates of Qeynos.

Getting used to how the game feels and reacts, how to accomplish simple tasks, how to work as a team, and how to even find one another, was quite a task.  Having been spoiled by WoW on just issues like targeting a mob and attacking it… and getting it to notice you’re attacking and respond in kind… it is a different world.

Granted, some of that was the game lag caused by the milling mass of players hunting in our area.  A large rat might be right before us one moment and then yards away the next while we were standing trying to fight and empty patch of lawn.

And there wasn’t a lot of margin for error if we took on a mob too big for us.  Skronk might look like Ming the Merciless, but he was more at the Probationary Trainee Merciless end of the scale, while Vikund had all of two spells, one buff and one heal.  And with Vikund’s mana pool, he could cast that heal twice in a fight before running low on mana.  And each cast was good for maybe 20% of Skronk’s health, after which it sometimes turned to a run or die choice.

When the choice came Skronk, like a good tank, died.  Vikund, like a healer, and a healer who is soul bound way back in Halas, ran for the zone line.

Eventually Vikund came up short in running and died, sending him back to Halas.  At that point we called it a night, though we both managed to make it to the exalted level of 2 before the evening ended.

I expect that the new progression servers will continue to be very busy through this weekend, since that is when all of those reactivated accounts are playing for free.

It will be interesting to see (or hear second hand, as I’m tempted to subscribe and play more, but won’t go it alone without a regular group) how things work out once the free period is over.

I applaud SOE for having the second server backup plan in place and putting it into action so quickly.

But by the same token, I hope they have a plan to merge the two progression servers into one should the population drop off dramatically over the next few weeks.

Nostalgia can be fun for an evening or a weekend, but the novelty can wear off over time.  The main thread in the EQ forums right now according to the esteemed Van Hemlock is “EQ Hard is Hard!” or as Stropp called it, “Experience is Too Slow!“

As for me, the experience per kill felt about right compared to my memory of nearly 12 years ago.