The Revolt in Gloomingdeep

Following on from the previous EverQuest post, I arrived in the main area of the tutorial.  It was time for it to teach me a few more things about the game.  There was a list of people to speak to… to hail, in the parlance of the game… who would in turn instruct me in some aspect of world.

A list of people to speak to…

But before I could start on that, I was told about the Find option, which you can invoke with Control-F or via the Find button that is placed on your hot bar by default.  This present you with a list of NPCs in the zone, with a description of each.  You just select the NPC you need to find and a glowing wisp trail appears to guide you to them.

Follow the wisp

For whatever reason I feel that EQ does this better than most games.  That includes EverQuest II, which has pretty much the identical wisp mechanic.  But the wisp in EQII seems to spend a lot more time confused as to which way you should be going.  It also seems more likely to send you towards impassible terrain before changing its mind.  In EQ, at least in the early zones where I have used it, the wisp is solid in its directions.

You end up visiting somebody to upgrade your weapon.  Base EQ weapons have basically two stats, damage and delay.  You want a big damage number and a small delay number, which together you can use to figure out DPS.   The upgrade actually just made my club slightly faster.

My polished club

You also learn some basics about spells from another NPC, which generally includes a spell to add to your spellbook.  The spell system was definitely influenced by TorilMUD, yet ended up as kind of its own thing.  It is still over complicated though, and I still have to go look at Allahkazam or some other site online to figure out what spells I need to buy when I level up as they’re all just at a vendor listed by name.

Another NPC tells you about the map, which is another item that came in after my time in the game.

The map of the tutorial safe area

The map is primitive, but better than nothing.  And it is community driven, as you can add and edit maps.  The game provides some basic maps, but the community does the rest.  You have to go download the collected maps if you want to know where things are.

Also, just to roll up a pair of items, one of the reason the wisp is superior in EQ is that the route it sends you down also shows up on the map.  That is a surprisingly useful aspect of the wisp at times.

I also talked to the NPC about mercenaries.  You can hire a mercenary to heal for you or tank for you.  While I have used the mercenaries in EQII, I have tended to stay away from them in EQ, mostly because my EQII characters have a lot of cash while I tend to be dirt poor in EQ and mercs cost in game money to keep around.  You have to fork over some in-game cash every 15 minutes for your merc.  However, the in-game economy is focused on richer, high level characters.  In the tutorial I was looting stuff that sold to the vendor for some copper or a few silver, yet the vendor is now scaled to display prices in platinum coins.  Hard to get there on loot, though a couple of the quests did give out plat coins.  So I gave that a pass for the time being.

You don’t really need a merc to start with anyway.  You’re just going to go kill some rats.

I am savagely beating this cave rat

The quests start off easy enough.  But eventually you hit some that are flagged as being for a group.  While the tutorial was more populated than I expected… I saw maybe a dozen people running around at any given time… it was a quiet bunch and grouping didn’t seem to be their thing.  So I went back and rented a tank mercenary.

Despite reading the intro, I rented the tier I apprentice tank, who is about as useful as a third nipple.  After having to flee from Spider Tamer Gugan, I went back and got the journeyman tank.  After that, things went much more smoothly.

The demise of the spider queen

From there, supported by my mercenary companion, I continued on through the tutorial, trying to do all of the quest.  The mercenary is free for a while, and then it starts charging you every 15 minutes.  First one gold coin, then two, then three.  I kept him on since he was effective, but when it is 10g to 1p, and I had about a dozen plat all told, that was starting to seem expensive.

On the quest hunt I found one I had missed previously.  But I am also sure I missed a couple.  The meta quest ends when you speak to Arias at one point, even when there are some sub-quests still available.  But you will hit level 10, which overall doesn’t take too long, and you’re all dressed up in the blue armor set that you acquire from the quests along the way.

I’m now a blue meanie

At that point the game sends you off to the Plane of Knowledge, the hub of Norrath.

Off you go then…

Of course, first you have to get there.  My memory of leaving the tutorial is pretty vague.  I think you can hang around until level 15, at which point you’ll get kicked out to the PoK, but if you want to leave earlier, you must take direct action.

Avoid the obvious cave.

Obvious cave is obvious

There is a sign next to it that moves… for reasons I do not recall… but you get a message about the slaves having dug a way out.  You can go through the cave to exit Gloomingdeep, but you end up in Crescent Reach.  That is a whole different experience that came in with The Serprent’s Spine expansion where you can level up to… I forget how far, but pretty far… in a series of purpose built zones with quests and the like.

Wait, this isn’t the Plane of Knowledge

That’s not horrible, but it starts at level one and is an alternative to the tutorial.  If you’re already at level 10 or beyond, and if you want to do the PoK armor quests, going there won’t help you. (Unless you go find the PoK teleport book, which you will probably only be able to do if you’ve downloaded and installed all those maps.  It used to be in dangerous territory, but I think they moved it.)

I got back to the tutorial by camping out and selecting the “Tutorial” button from the character select screen, since I was too lazy to go find the teleport book.

Back in the tutorial you have to go find Arias one last time, select him, and say “I am ready to leave” to get out.  The tutorial tells you that at some point I am sure, but like so much of the information, it is in small text in various windows and easy to miss or forget.

Saying that to Arias will teleport you immediately to the PoK where you can run over and bind your soul… basically set your respawn on death point, just select the NPC and click on the “bind my soul” link in chat… and be ready to work on the armor quests.

I hear you are into bindage

The next set of quests, at least on a live server, will get you well along to level 20 or so.  That is what I seem to recall anyway, the evidence being the other characters I created on the server, which all seem to be level 20-ish.  After that, the game has tended to get a bit less directed in its help.

Of course, the last time I played was a while back.  Since then some new things have come along.  There are a whole series of achievements for going places and slaying particular mobs.  That might even be an interesting way to tour the game.  And then there is the Hero’s Journey, which the game popped up a window to tell me about.

Joseph Campbell would be… something

I’m not sure how deep that is… at level 10 it seems to just point me at an achievement in my level range… but it might be something to look into.

Now to see if I carry on in Norrath.  I’ve warmed up with the tutorial.  The anniversary events are about three weeks away.  I could wait for that or I could go do the armor quests and see where that leads me.

Towards the EverQuest Tutorial

As part of the post last week about the EverQuest progression servers that Daybreak announced for the 20th anniversary, Bhagpuss and I ended up exchanging comments about the tutorial.

There is a tutorial, though it was added at some point well after launch.  Neither I nor Bhagpuss nor Google could say exactly when… so if you know, here is an opportunity for you to leave a comment… and it has been through various iterations, so there is probably somebody out there who longs for the “classic” tutorial.

Anyway, I said that, despite its unknown provenance, I kind of like the tutorial.  I’ve been through it a couple of times, though not recently.  In fact, I think the last time I went through it was when Daybreak opened up the Vox server, which I think coincided with the game going free to play… which would make it 2012.

It has been a while.

Anyway, all this thinking about it made me want to go try it.  At least it would get me warmed up for the game in time for the big day next month.  So I cranked up the EverQuest client, logged in, and looked at the old server list window once again.

Choose a server, choose a race, choose a class…

There I realized that I was still subscribed to Daybreak All Access.  I mean, I knew that in some part of my brain… and I’ve let it slip some since I was playing EQII late last year because I did the three month at a go subscription, but they stop giving you Daybreak Cash if you unsubscribe early and so I let it run, log in to collect, but lose track of the point when I should subscriber… so they’ve clearly got my number on that one… but the fact that I had all the pay to play progression servers on the list kind of pressed that home on me.

Also, I like the little scroll window that first tells you how many of the expansions you own… a useful number I suppose… and then proceeds to list out, by name, in order, all of the ones you do own, followed, again by name and in order, all of the ones you do not.

Given that there are now 25 expansions in the wild, that can take a while, even if most of them are just three word names.  I had to wait a bit for the scroll to come around so I could get a screen shot with my own count.  I own everything through The Darkened Sea, which was more than I could mentally account for… but whatever.  Even watching that list scroll past I kept seeing names that seemed like they only just shipped, but.  Everything from House of Thule forward seems like it was recent.

Once I was done staring at that I decided to go back to the Vox server once more.  I have characters on all of the progression servers… my thing seems to be to at least roll up a character and stand out in front of Qeynos even if I don’t play… but I wasn’t sure where any of them stood these days and I didn’t want any special rules of restrictions.  I wanted the tutorial.  So Vox it was.

I already have four characters on Vox, three in their low 20s and one at level 85 from that time they gave a free boost and then I couldn’t get to where the game was telling me to go.  That was almost five years ago.

Also, I thought surely the launcher was wrong when it was telling me about level 85 boosts.

Level 85 is hardly your best these days

Seriously, that was what the boost was five years ago.  Since then the level cap is 110 now.  Though, I guess looking through that list of expansions, it was 100 back then so it was hardly an invite to battle with anybody’s best back then as well.  The boost for EverQuest II has moved forward, but like so much in EverQuest, the boost there stays locked in the past I guess. (Bhagpuss seemed similarly bemused about this.)

But, again, I wasn’t here to boost, I was here for the tutorial.

So I rolled up a fresh character.  I had already done the usual suspects on Vox already, a paladin, a shaman, a warrior, and a druid, so I went out for something I hadn’t looked at in a while.  I considered a bard.  I do love EverQuest bards.  However, bards have always seemed like more of a group oriented class to me, and I wasn’t planning to group.  Instead I decided to go for a cleric.

EverQuest clerics are good, old school clerics, wearing heavy armor and beating people with blunt objects.  I like a healer that can take a punch and have always been a bit chagrined in WoW with cloth wearing clerics.  I mean, sure, they have mind control.  But wearing cloth like some sort of common mage?  But I guess you have the paladin if you want an armored cleric in WoW these days.

I ended up with a dwarf cleric named Dolenz because I was thinking about Circus Boy the other day or something.  I clicked the tutorial option… it is a bit confusing, because there is a button there on the character page that says “Tutorial” but I wasn’t sure what it did, so I clicked it a couple of times and figured it was just a toggle to indicate whether or not you wanted to go through the tutorial.  But then I couldn’t remember its initial state and, honestly, even if I did remember, it was not clear to me which state got me into the tutorial and which would drop me straight into Norrath.

Whichever I ended up choosing, it turned out to be the right one, because it sent me into the tutorial as I had wanted.

The tutorial, unlike a lot of what I remember about EverQuest, has a story of sorts.  It isn’t a very original story.  You’ve been captured by kobols and are in kobold jail and have to escape… because by industry convention all RPG starting stories must be a jail break or a ship wrekck scenario… and after a bit of an intro you end up in a room with a shirtless barbarian named Arias who has come to help.

Look at that oiled chest, 100% in my book

Arias takes you under his wing and introduces you to the basic concepts over EverQuest, like movement, the quest log, looting, and beating the tar out of kobolds.

Arias and I have done him in

I recognized the quest log, was hazy about being able to click on the keywords in dialog rather than having to say them, and was surprised a bit by the looting mechanism, which was a new one on me.

Well, new-ish.  It seemed to be very similar to what I saw had ended up in LOTRO when I came back for the legendary server there.

The loot just waits for you

It looks a little better in LOTRO, but it seems to act about the same.  And it was comforting.  One of the things I forgot to mention in my ramble about returning to World of Warcraft was how, after three months in Middle-earth, I kept forgetting to loot.  You get used to the loot just showing up in a window for you to pick and choose among.

After looting that key and learning again how to hand it to an NPC, Arias led us out of the initial story and into thee stronghold of the revolt.

The revolution begins here

From there I was set to learn a whole range of game mechanics.  But I will pick that up in the next post.

EverQuest 20th Anniversary Progression Servers Announced

More build up to the EverQuest 20th anniversary next month.

As promised in the previous Producer’s Letter there will be two progression servers set to open on Saturday, March 16 as part of the anniversary celebration.

Let’s take a look at what we’re getting.

Ultra Casual

The first of the pair will be called Selo, a name no doubt derived from the bard class song Selo’s Accelerando, which let your group move more quickly.

Selo moves you faster

This is appropriate because the Selo server will be the fast/casual progression server, with an experience curve that will  likely let you get to level cap much faster than you ever did back in 1999.  It will still be slower than live servers, but not as slow as any past progression server.

It will also advance much more quickly, starting in the Shadows of Luclin era and opening up a new expansion on the first Wednesday of every month thereafter, starting with the Planes of Power unlock on May 1, 2019.  That will give people a little extra time to get ramped up on those initial levels.

After it catches up to the current expansion level, something that will still take close to two years (so many expansions, and probably a new one at the end of the year), it will become a normal live server.  There is a FAQ for the Selo server available.

Hardcore

The second server will be named Mangler, named for the black guard dog that hangs around in one of the back rooms of the Fool’s Gold in Rivervale.  It is of the more traditional progression server style.

Yes, my dog bites

The experience rate for Mangler will be somewhat slower than the usual, already slowed progression server norm, and is aimed at the more hardcore raider faction.  For this server, expansions will unlock every 12 weeks until Gates of Discord opens, after which expansions that include level cap increases will last for 12 weeks while those without will last for 8 weeks.

That still puts the life of this server out in the five year range.

There is also a FAQ up for the Mangler server.

True Box

Both of these servers will be in the “True Box” model that Daybreak has adopted, which means that you will not be able to multibox.  Multiboxing was deemed the literal worst thing ever by a loud faction of the progression server community.  And I get that it can be annoying to see one obvious group all being controlled by a single person owning your favorite spawn.  Further, I agree that on a server like Mangler, it is probably in the zone.

My Reaction

I want to say right up front that the idea of starting a progression server on the 20th anniversary of the launch of EverQuest that kicks off anywhere but classic is complete bullshit.

Seriously, who at Daybreak thought, “Let’s celebrate classic by bypassing classic!” was a good plan?  That was enough to make my playing on it go from “sure thing” to “maybe.”

That aside, I am also confused as to what “ultra casual” means to the team at Daybreak.  On hearing them use the term “casual” I thought they might relax the whole “true box” thing so people could dual box a tank and a healer or something, like I did back with Fippy Darkpaw.

Or, even better, maybe allow mercenaries onto the server from day one… in classic… so that you could hire your own in-game healer to follow you as you explored.  But neither will be the case.

I guess I am okay with the faster XP curve.  I can see the argument for not wanting to wear the hair shirt if you’re in for a casual tour.  But the whole faster expansion unlock thing?  That seems to be the opposite of what casuals have been asking for out of a progression server.  It is the hardcore raiders that always want the next unlock once they’ve finished up the current expansion.  Casual players have traditionally been the holdouts looking for longer stretches with each expansion since they tend to play at a casual pace.

Giving substance to that unlock history, it seems as though the hardcore raiding guilds are planning to avoid Mangle altogether and hit Selo instead, since it pretty much gives them what they have been asking for; the ability to level up more quickly in order to raid and faster unlock times for expansions so they can have new content for their guilds more often.

The casuals… well, if you trust the Progression Server section of the the EverQuest forums… are feeling left out.  I don’t seem to be the only one who thinks that starting anywhere besides classic is simply wrong, but there is the usual amount of arguing back and forth as to what the server ought to be, interrupted only by the person who opened a thread asking for a PvP progression server.  That seemed to unify a lot of people… against PvP.

But the key factor here seems to be badly set expectations.

Daybreak told us there would be an “ultra casual” progression server back with the Producer’s Letter, but did not bother to explain what that might really mean.  So for a couple of weeks people got to make up their own idea “ultra casual” server in the head, setting the expectations themselves in the big blank that Daybreak left open.  I certainly did so with my thoughts about mercs or true box.

And then Daybreak told us what they had in mind and it failed to match almost everybody’s self-constructed view.  No surprise there I suppose.  Remember when they told us H1Z1 was going to be for Star Wars Galaxies players?

We shall see if the heat in the forums leads to any changes.  Unlike EverQuest II, where the company often seems to blow with the loudest wind in the forums, the Progression Server section of the EverQuest forums has a long standing tradition of being ignored by Daybreak.  An actual post by a Daybreak employee there is generally looked upon as something akin to a miracle.

But starting a progression server anywhere except at classic… no… just no.  That has got to be fixed.  On a server where the unlocks will be once a month, I can’t even imagine an argument for skipping straight to Shadows of Luclin.  It will be unlocked soon enough already.  Seriously, what the hell?