Anashti Sul or She Who Could Not Be Destroyed

As time creeps forward and the mists begin to clear, Darkpaw's plans for the upcoming EverQuest II "Origins" server are slowly starting to take shape and they're... interesting. Yesterday, an outline schematic appeared on the official website and among the general information you might have expected for any forthcoming special rules server were some unusual and curious details.

Let's start with the beta. Daybreak has long been big on betas for everything from major updates to full expansions, so it's not particularly surprising to hear there's going to be one for the new server. The whole beta process is so routine now, there's a permanent Beta server waiting to be populated with whatever new code needs testing and a relatively straightforward process for players to participate.

What is notable in this case is the extent of the beta. At six weeks, it's edging towards the length normally reserved for annual expansions. That's a serious beta, as the bullet point list acknowledges:

• There will be a 6-week Beta to ensure we cover a wide breadth of testing.

Indeed, serious seems to be the keyword for this event. By far the most unexpected revelation in the announcement is the news that the server will operate on its own "design depot".

That didn't have much of an immediate impact on me because I have never heard the term before and had no idea what it might mean. Google was no help, pointing me towards any number of disparate businesses trading under the name. I suspect it's a piece of purely internal jargon used at Darkpaw or Daybreak or even EG7 but nowhere else.

Luckily, whoever wrote the announcement thought to include a brief but fairly clear gloss:

• It cannot be affected by Live design updates, and vice versa.

It appears a design depot isn't just an offshoot of the Live game running on a separate server with a different ruleset, the way all Time Limited Expansions and special projects have worked until now. It's almost (But crucially not quite.) a standalone game. 

• Code and Art are still across all server types, for a variety of reasons. For example, connections to external or shared resources such as Database, Authentication, etc. have completely changed over the years.

That deserves some unpacking. And a little speculation. Firstly, there's no real reason to provide that much detail in the context of this announcement, other than to try to head off the inevitable complaints that the new server isn't separate enough from the main game. 

EQII players, by and large, tend to be traditionalists but a significant and vocal minority are positively luddite. They tend to think whatever they had before was better, just because it came first. No matter how far the clock rolls back it won't be far enough for some of them, so it makes sense to get the rebuttals out there ahead of the attacks. 

For once, I do wonder if there isn't something more going on behind the upfront explanation than mere defensive positioning. There's just a slight suggestion of frustration in the phrasing, a sense that whoever set this up would have liked to go further but had to stop a little way back from where they wanted because they'd run up against technical issues they weren't able to overcome. 

It makes me wonder whether there might be a few regrets that no-one thought more about the game's past when they were framing its future. Players may not be the only ones who sometimes wish they could go back to their glory days. Assuming EQII ever had any glory days, that is...

Then there's the confirmation that this has never been done before:

• This is the first time for this type of separation for EverQuest II

Doesn't that make you wonder why it's being done now? It does me. If it wasn't deemed necessary to silo the previous TLE servers as securely as this, what's changed? Is it simply a case of the technology having moved on, making this a viable option when perhaps before it would have been too difficult or too expensive? Or is required to sustain a different pattern of development altogether, one that requires more strict segregation to minimize any risk of contamination?

When the project was first announced I somewhat flippantly described it as Darkpaw's response to the success of WoW Classic. Now I think that might actually be what they have in mind.

SOE, followed by Daybreak, pretty much invented the retro-server concept. They iterated on it until it became a major money-maker and a popular success but it took Blizzard, finally caving and copying the format, to show just how big a deal it could be. Classic's success made it clear that sailing as close as possible to the authentic past could grab the attention of literally millions of ex-players. People who used to play WoW "when it was good". 

I get the feeling Darkpaw's new server, which they've tellingly named Anashti Sul, the misunderstood goddess of death and resurrection, is intended to be something much more than just another version of the familiar format. By taking a number of extra steps to recreate as closely as they're able not just the general feel but the very specific ambience and gameplay of the original game, it looks like they're making a bid for more than just the usual suspects, the crowd who turn up for every new TLE server, play for a month or two, then leave.

What I'm suggesting is that this seems like an awful lot of extra work to take on, just for an Anniversary event. It seems a lot more like something you'd do if you were hoping to start a whole, new, separate strand of the business. Something like WoW Classic or Old School Runequest. 

Whether it'll work is another matter. I suspect the demographic that fueled the success of those two retro-spin-offs simply doesn't exist for EQII. It never had the numbers of either of those mega-successful titles and it's more than likely that most people who ever cared to come back to EQII have already done so, probably more than once. 

Even so, I'd lay odds Anashti Sul will have a bigger opening than just about any previous EQII retro-server. It does look like it's going to be genuinely different to anything we've seen before. A number of significant changes that haven't been applied to any previous Progression or TLE server are part of the package this time. 

For example, there's a return to secondary functions for base stats. I'd actually forgotten they ever had them, largely because it's not my kind of thing. Still, I instantly remembered what it used to be like when I read:

• Attributes have restored secondary functionality, agility will help avoid melee attacks, intelligence will increase ability potency, strength will increase melee damage, and wisdom will grant extra resistance.

It's not just a detail, either. It's a signifier. It's flagging up the importance to many players of the necessity for a certain kind of mindful choice in gameplay, while tacitly acknowledging that, while the current Live game may be ferociously complicated in many ways, it isn't necessarily as thoughtfully complex as it once was.

I'm not much of a one for min-maxing stats so the thought of being able to passively dodge some damage by having a few more points of Agility doesn't fire my enthusiasm a whole lot. I'm much more excited by this:

• Freeport and Qeynos are back to old school, in both appearance and functionality. Livable neighborhoods, and their quests, are back!

At one time, this would have been huge news but we already had the Neighborhoods returned to us a while ago, which does blunt a little of the impact. They didn't come with all of the quests, though, and I'm not sure we were able to live in them. That's going to be a trip.

As for the starting city revamps being rolled back, I'd completely forgotten Qeynos ever even had one. I'm curious to know what changed because I have no memory of it at all.

Freeport, though; that I do remember. I even wrote about it here, in the very early days of the blog. That was over a dozen years ago and quite honestly I can't remember what Freeport looked like back then although, reading that post, it's beginning to come back to me. I certainly remember the old Blood Haze Inn as it was in that screenshot.

On the flip side of what's coming back is what's staying the hell away, something that seemed even more important to some folks on the forums as I scanned them yesterday. It's a revealing set of negatives. 

No Krono means no way to buy influence or progress with real money, I suppose. It should also stop inflation from getting out of hand too quickly. Coupled with a "very limited" cash shop, it's probably as close as Accounting will let them get to the authentic in-game economy c. 2006.

No persistent instances means every dungeon run has to be completed in real time (Or at least that's what I think it means...). On Live you get a timer, generally three days, during which the server saves the state of the instance so you can go in and out to resupply or take a break as you feel like it. Now if you leave, all your progress will be lost and you'll have to start over from scratch. I'm a bit vague on why we want that but it's certainly how things worked back in the day.

No spell research means no offline upgrades. If you want the next quality level of a spell you'll have to make, buy or find it and scribe it in game. I hope it also means Adept and Master spell books will drop off mobs again or things could get awkward.

Those are what you might call the "Positive Negatives". Then there are the Negative Negatives, at least one of which I don't quite get.

No weight means coin and items will not cause encumbrance. The interesting thing there is that the devs apparently wanted to bring the mechanic back but weren't able to for technical reasons. It's scary sometimes to think what some people consider fun, isn't it?

No tradeskill combines is a huge positive to me but I've already seen people moaning about it on the forums. There's a borderline-sociopathic subset of EQII vets that considers the game's original crafting set-up to have been near-perfect. I just hope none of them hold office anywhere. 

Luckily, the delusion isn't held by anyone at Darkpaw with authority to make it happen so Anashti Sul will use the crafting system as it was immediately after sub-combines were removed, which was also before the addition of pretty much all the crafting quests. Get ready to spend a lot of time at the tables.

No holiday events. This is the one that puzzles me. I can absolutely see why the purebred server won't want to share current holidays with the mongrel hordes of Live and TLE but surely it's going to want the original holidays as and when they arrive? It's not as though they wouldn't be in keeping with the premise of the server. Anashti Sul is bench-marked as "reflective of the 2006 era" and the first Frostfell was in 2005. 

If we're really not going to get even the original events, I can only imagine it's because they've proved impossible restore to their original form. It's going to make for a pretty bleak experience after a while, though, if there literally aren't any holidays. After all, Norrath pretty much runs on egg nog and pumpkin pie...

There's more but those are the highlights. I confess I'm feeling quite jazzed  for this. It looks like it could be quite an event.

I may even be keen enough to make a beta character, just to see the sights a few weeks early. If so, you can count on a photo essay here, assuming there's no NDA. I'll probably hold off until the official launch in June, though. 

It's not that long to wait. Is it?

 

Note: All screenshots taken on the final day of the original EQII beta in 2004.  Complete with original letterbox framing.