The EverQuest II 10 year anniversary just passed, and I posted about hitting the 10 year mark myself with the game last week.
This past weekend, while taking a break from Warlords of Draenor so as not to burn myself out on it right away (a hazard as I spent the two weeks running up to the expansion binging on the game), I decided to log into EverQuest II in order to see if I was eligible for the 11 year veterans reward.
Yes, I can do simple math. How can I get the 11 year award just days after the 10 year anniversary?
SOE, as part of the enticement to get people to buy expansions, threw in a 90 day boost to your veteran’s status with the first four expansion. Having purchased The Desert of Flames, Kingdom of Sky, Echoes of Faydwer, and Rise of Kunark (and The Shadow Odyssey, which was the last EQII expansion I purchased, in part because I haven’t even made it into Rise of Kunark yet), I had, like many long time players of the game, an extra year on my record. And so SOE has to be a year ahead of the game when it comes to these things.
There was also a point in time when SOE was only counting the time you were actually subscribed to the game. I think that went in at some point after Rise of Kunark. Up to that point the calculation was based on when you created your EQII account (or the launch date, if you were in the beta). So, despite taking time off, I was always eligible for the latest award. Then they got picky, people were complaining in the forums that it was not “fair” for non-subscribed time to count (I seem to recall Scott Hartsman backing that idea, but I could be wrong), and I wasn’t playing very much, so I fell behind.
With the advent of EverQuest II Extended and free to play, SOE eventually changed their minds, no doubt wanting to avoid complications, and set veteran rewards simply based on your account start date again, and suddenly I was overloaded with such items to claim.
The rewards vary in quality. They started out as anniversary loyalty markers… you usually got a title, a house item, and a couple experience potions… then somebody at SOE thought that such awards might help with player retention and we ended up with a batch of rewards for the first two years. There is a one day award. Yay, you didn’t uninstall and walk away after a day with the game, have a 12 slot bag rather optimistically called “The Bag of Endless Adventure!” I think of it more as the bag of about 15 minutes of resource harvesting, but you go with your experiences. You can see the semi-complete reward list at the wiki.
Anyway, enough of that back story, though this post is going to be pretty much all back story and nostalgia.
I logged in with Sigwerd, a berserker and the last character I played as a “main” or sorts, and I didn’t even have to type in the /claim command to check. There in the system messages in chat was a reminder that I was eligible for the 11 year reward. So I typed in /claim and brought up the list.
The 11 year reward is a prestige home in the form of the Isle of Refuge.
More after the cut. Warning, back story and nostalgia ahead. Also, screen shots.