Despite Rampant Hacking and GM Shennanigans, Fippy Darkpaw Server is Still Stuck on Velious

Another entry in my sporadic attempt to chronicle the key events of the Fippy Darkpaw time locked progression server.

And the way things have been going, you might think that SOE had never done a progression server before. (They have.)

Either that, or that somebody there feels that drama is the best advertising they can afford.

First there were complaints about absentee GMs when it came to contested raid bosses, which turned to complaints about how the GMs started handling things when the did show up.

Then there problems with the raid bosses themselves and the wardens guarding the Sleeper, whose awakening is the keystone event of the Scars of Velious expansion.

Along with that, some of the drops needed to complete the 72 item quests that make up lions share of events required to “complete” the expansion were missing.  This is one of those, “You know, you did one of these progression servers just a couple years back, did nobody take notes?” sort of things.

By way of a solution, if a couple of now deleted posts on the progression server forums were to be believed, some GMs took it upon themselves to hand out missing items to a few people who asked… just not to everybody who asked.  Like people weren’t already torqued about the GM sponsored Fight Club thing.

Meanwhile, Ten Ton Hammer has a piece up about the prevalence of hacks in EverQuest, and how they are especially common on the progression servers where there is fierce competition for the fame of being the first on the server accomplish one of the key gating tasks required to unlock the next expansion.

When asked by Massively about the hacks issue, EQ Producer Thom Terazzas said that the EQ team was primarily focused on the upcoming expansion. (Which sounds like the same response Ten Ton Hammer got with their own inquiries.)

All of which adds up to mean that the Scars of Velious expansion, which went live on the Fippy Darkpaw server on August 29th, still is not complete.

The Current State of Velious

No vote on the next expansion can occur until that happens, so the 60 day buffer between the final event and the affirmative vote for the next expansion going live still looms between current players and the Shadows of Luclin expansion.

At least I think that is how it needs to go.  I have saw a post over at the unofficial Fippy Darkpaw forums that said that waking the Sleeper was the sole gating event to starting the count down to the Luclin vote.  The Sleeper was woke 17 days into the Velious cycle.  I still think you need to need to complete everything to kick of the timer for the vote.

I suppose we will see what was the real trigger.  If it was just the Sleeper, then the vote for the Luclin unlock should show up in the middle of November.

Otherwise, we are now into 38th day since Velious went live on Fippy Darkpaw with no end in sight.

Compare this to the Kunark expansion, which was done in 13 days, and the goals for the initial release were brought down within 10 days of the server launch.

And finally, over on the unofficial Fippy Darkpaw forums, people are trying to assemble a list based on memories of what happened with the last progression servers, The Sleeper and The Combine which launched back in June 2006, of what issues might come up with Luclin.

They will at least be forearmed.  Will SOE be forewarned?