EverQuest II Time Locked Expansion Server Names Poll Unlocks the Irony

Meanwhile Daybreak is going forward with their EverQuest II nostalgia plan, involving those PvE and PvP Time Locked Expansion servers, and holding an in-game poll to decide what they should be named.

As noted over at the EQ2 Wire, Daybreak first went to the forums and asked for name suggestions and then… I think… drew from those suggestions.  My suggestion didn’t make the cut.  I figured that since the last great server experiment, EverQuest II Extended, got the name Freeport that it was time for Qeynos to be recognized.

That was a faint hope I am sure.  The anti-Qeynos sentiment on the team, present since before the 1999 launch of EQ, remains strong and we’re probably more likely to get a server named Qekaerbyad than Qeynos these days.  Anyway, it didn’t make the cut.  Instead, these are the names you get to choose from in the currently-running in-game poll.

My choices indicated

For the PvP server there didn’t seem to be any obvious stand out choice, but I have always felt that Bonemore was a particularly grim sounding name, so I went with that.  Deathtoll seemed too unsubtle while the rest didn’t really resonate with me, but any of the names would probably work.

On the PvE side I could say something for Stormhold, that dungeon in Antonica in which we spent so much time back in the early days.  In fact, that would have been my go-to choice had the obvious winner not been glaring at me.

Yes, I think the only appropriate way to vote is to go with the “we’re going to keep bringing it up until you bring it back” name, Isle of Refuge.

This is almost a text book example of what SynCaine refers to as “SOE being SOE.” I cannot imagine how that name made the cut for the vote.

First, the name implies that this subscriber-only server will be a place to escape from whatever sins you care to count on the live servers.  Screw you, freeps!

Second, they will be naming a server after a zone they took out of the game which represents a good chunk of the nostalgia they are attempting to milk pander to recreate.  How is that a good idea, reminding everybody every single time they log on that the Isle of Refuge server does not include the actual Isle of Refuge that those likely to play on this server want?

So clearly, I feel you should log on immediately and vote for Isle of Refuge.

Make Isle of Refuge happen.

Qeynos Reskinned – And The Beat Goes On

In which I complain about slights both real and imaginary.

Qeynos? There is no “there” there!  Let’s talk about me.

Firiona Vie, EverQuest Spokesmodel

Long have the residents of Qeynos suffered neglect as the second city of Norrath.  Ever have we been in the shadow of our rival city, Freeport, and have been discriminated against because of our unjustly diminished stature.

In old Norrath, in the original EverQuest, a vast right coast conspiracy placed Freeport at the center of the world’s activity, with many smaller racial home towns feeding naturally into it via the Commonlands or the Ocean of Tears.  It acted as a crossroads and became the destination for those looking to trade, and it flourished.

Classic Norrath

And even as the bounds of Norrath grew, even as the bazaar took over from the Commonlands tunnel, Freeport remained an important destination.  Ever is there activity in Freeport.  It was important enough to get a complete revamp a couple of years back, along with the Commonlands.

The updated Freeport docks

None of the original cities of Norrath have had such attention lavished upon it.

Certainly not Qeynos.

(Conspiracy theories and a few pictures of the new Qeynos after the cut.)

Some Armor Quests Now Work, Others Still Broken

I went on last night to see if the newbie armor quests on the EverQuest Progression Servers had been fixed.

The Halas ones, which were mentioned in the patch notes from yesterday to appear to be working now.  My barbarian warrior alt, Hafdan, who I made mostly just to suit up in the newbie armor, was able to make his helm, breastplate, and bracers.

The Horned Helm of Hafdan

However, the Surefall Glade quests appear to have been overlooked.  This, of course, affects our group, Deneldir being a half-elf druid from Surefall Glade.

The Surefall Glade armor quests were conspicuously NOT mentioned in the patch notes and when Potshot went and tried them, they still failed in the same old way.

So progress was made on the Progression Servers, but not everybody’s problem was fixed it seems.

I chalk it up to the continuing conspiracy against players that start in the Qeynos area.

In Norrath You Can See Forever

And it is starting to bug me a little.

There is a distinct lack of fog in EverQuest these days, and fog is one of the things I associate with early 3D games.

My thoughts primarily hearken back to the original days of games like EverQuest and Tribes in that regard.

The fog that hid the tree tops in Surefall Glade, the fog in the middle distance that made me tread carefully across the Qeynos Hills towards Qeynos.

Or the fog that hid the far side of a battlefield in Tribes, out of which the occasional tracers or disc projectiles would fly.

I had to use Google to find some old screen shots to show what I mean.

Foggy, foggy Fippy

Barbarians in the fog and snow

Now you may look at that and say, “Hey, you know it is raining in most of those shots, right?”

True, but these were the best screen shots I could find, so you’ll have to trust me that, at least in my memory, the fog in the game was present even when it wasn’t raining.

And these days in EverQuest, this is what I see most of the time.  Outside of Qeynos it is this.

Running towards a clear blue horizon

From our favorite bandit camp in West Karana, the view is this.

A clear vista of West Karana

But for me, the clincher, the proof in my mind, that the fog is gone, is this shot from Surefall Glade.

Are those supposed to be trees?

Surefall Glade, the zone where I started, the first place I saw back in 1999, used to have the permanent layer of fog above it, so the giant tree trunks seemed to disappear into the mist.  It was like a Northern California redwood grove in the winter.

Now it looks like great big wooden dowels holding up a blue surface.  Or if I turn the picture upside down, it could be pilings sticking up out of water.  But either way, the fog is gone.

Of course, things have changed over the years.  I started playing EverQuest on a 400MHz Pentium II machine with a 3dfx based Voodoo 2 card, which I upgraded soon afterwords to a very nice nVidia TNT2 based video card.  All that fog was there as a blind to keep from over-working the then current crop of video cards.

These days my current machine is considerably more powerful and the video card, a GTS 450, benefits from a decade of research and development.

My machine might now be too powerful to bother rendering fog as it can handle any request that EverQuest throws it.  Moore’s Law may have rendered fog rendering obsolete.

How about you?  Do you remember the fog back in the day in games like EverQuest and Tribes?  Is my mind coloring in blank spots with fog?

And do you see fog in old Norrath today?