03 | May | 2024 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

It was always on the EverQuest roadmap to launch at least one new special rules server this year in order to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the game.

EverQuest Anniversary Time

They had been slotted in for a may launch on the somewhat bloated 2024 roadmap.

The EverQuest 2024 Roadmap

If that image is hard to read I have it broken out in detail in a post from earlier this year.

Last week Darkpaw dropped the details, indicating that we would be getting TWO time locked progression servers to celebrate the anniversary. Named Teek and Tormax, they will have the following rule sets.

Teek will be launched with these rules:

Standard Time-Locked Progression unlocks—New expansions unlock automatically every 8-12 weeks. (Early expansions unlock more often. Other exceptions apply. The specific schedule is below.)
Experience: Progression standard. It starts off slower than live but faster than EverQuest at the original launch and increases at Gates of Discord, Depths of Darkhollow, and The Serpent Spine. At The Serpent Spine, the experience is like normal live servers. Legacy Experience is not included on this server.
Focus Effects: Remain unavailable until the Shadows of Luclin unlocks.
Random Loot Enabled: The Teek server is a server that randomizes loot. Rare NPCs will drop loot from a pool of NPCs of a similar level within the same expansion. This pool will include themselves. Raids will drop loot from other raid NPCs of a similar level within the same expansion, also including their own loot. Rare NPCs have a greater chance of spawning.
Free Trade Enabled

Unlock Cadence:

Server launches in Ruins of Kunark
Twelve weeks after launch: Scars of Velious
Eight weeks later: Shadows of Luclin
Eight weeks later: Planes for Power and Legacy of Ykesha
Twelve weeks later: Lost Dungeons of Norrath
Four weeks later: Gates of Discord
Eight weeks later: Omens of War and Dragons of Norath
At this point the schedule becomes consistent. Enjoy expansions for twelve weeks when a new level cap is unlocked, and eight weeks in expansions where the level cap stays the same.

True Box:

This server starts with True Box enabled. You may have only 1 client per computer logged into the server at the same time.
When Omens of War unlocks, the server switches to Relaxed True Box. You may have up to 3 clients per computer logged into the server at the same time.
When The Buried Sea unlocks, True Box will be removed.

While for the Tormax server the rules… look very similar:

Standard Time-Locked Progression unlocks—New expansions unlock automatically every 8-12 weeks. (Early expansions unlock more often. Other exceptions apply. The specific schedule is below.)
Experience: Progression standard. It starts off slower than live but faster than EverQuest at the original launch and increases at Gates of Discord, Depths of Darkhollow, and The Serpent Spine. At The Serpent Spine experience is as normal live servers. Legacy Experience is not included on this server.
Focus Effects: Remain unavailable until the Shadows of Luclin unlocks.

Unlock Cadence:

Server launches in Ruins of Kunark
Twelve weeks after launch: Scars of Velious
Eight weeks later: Shadows of Luclin
Eight weeks later: Planes for Power and Legacy of Ykesha
Twelve weeks later: Lost Dungeons of Norrath
Four weeks later: Gates of Discord
Eight weeks later: Omens of War and Dragons of Norath
At this point the schedule becomes consistent. Enjoy expansions for twelve weeks when a new level cap is unlocked, and eight weeks in expansions where the level cap stays the same.

True Box:

This server starts with True Box enabled. You may have only 1 client per computer logged into the server at the same time.
When Omens of War unlocks, the server switches to Relaxed True Box. You may have up to 3 clients per computer logged into the server at the same time.
When The Buried Sea unlocks, True Box will be removed.

Summary:

And as you read through those, you might be excused for considering the “they’re the same picture” meme from The Office as an appropriate response. I had to compare them a couple of times to spot any difference.

The Teek server will be a random loot server, which means raid bosses across an expansion will share a common, combined loot table. It will also be a “free trade” server, which means that nothing will be “bind on pick up” and you will be able to trade or sell whatever loot you acquire.

And the Tormax server… will not have either of those options enabled.

These are somewhat meaningless distinctions for me personally, as the likelihood that I would end up in a raid is close enough to nil as makes no difference.

The pacing of expansion unlocks has been tested over many such servers at this point, so those values are not unexpected. It will take a year to get from launch to Omens of War and Dragons of Norrath unlock, and another five years at least, at the rate of 12 weeks per expansion, to catch up to the current expansion on the live servers, as they keep launching new expansions every year.

There is probably some point at which these two servers will be merged, probably Tormax into Teek, probably somewhere in the two year range when things settled down to the real hard core who want to do it ALL again. And it will likely be somewhere in the 2030s before the remaining server gets merged into Vox or another live server, having run its course.

That is quite a commitment. The game could very well be close to celebrating its 35th anniversary if things run out to the latest expansion.

As for the starting plan, I am a bit miffed it is going straight into Ruins of Kunark.

I mean, I love Ruins of Kunark. It is maybe the best MMO expansion ever, and one that set the standard for many expansions to come. But I haven’t been writing a series of posts about Kunark starting points. And when you put Kunark in the mix, with better gear, a new race, better and more coherent zones, people are going to go there.

Some purists will be out camping in West Karana, but the smarties in it for the long haul raiding tour will be up in Kunark right away.

Then again, the likelihood that I would fully commit to either server was almost non-existent in any case, so this is like me complaining that there is only tapioca pudding on the desert menu when I wasn’t going to have desert in any case.

But there it is, coming May 22, 2024. I’ll probably log in to see the launch… or to see the server queues for the launch. I won’t make any commitment beyond that.