Happy 26th Birthday, EverQuest! Now Give Me My Presents!

What does it take to get me to log into a game I haven't even updated in months? Yep. You got it.

Free Stuff!

It's EverQuest's twenty-sixth birthday and guess who gets the presents? 

We Do!

God. My eyes hurt.

Before we get to the gifts, there's quite a nice video. Let's all watch it together.

So, anyway, it's been more than a quarter of a century now. Last year was the Big Silver Anniversary and I imagine we got freebies then, too, although I'd be lying if I said I remembered what they were. 

Hang on, let me check my records. That is supposed to be why I keep this blog thing, isn't it?

Hmm. I didn't post anything about EQ in March last year until this on the 21st. By then the Anniversary celebrations were clearly already well under way. I wonder when they started? The game went live on 16 March 1999 so presumably on the sixteenth?

Anyway, let's not dwell on the past, be it last year or last century. Let's think about the present. Or the presents, more like!

So, what did we get?

Well, if you're a scuzzy freeloader you get 

A 50% xp buff

from now until 1 April. (Actually from whenever it started, which was probably whenever the game last patched or maybe from the sixteenth but, again, let's not worry about what went before.)

That might not sound like a big deal to players of modern MMORPGs but even though it's not the (G)olden days any more, when everything took f o r e v e r and we liked it, xp in old Norrath is still hard to come by and a fifty per cent bonus is a big one. If I wasn't so wrapped up in other things (And the weather hadn't turned so unseasonably gorgeous.), this would be the time to get back to trying to nudge my magician closer to the level cap

A Blade of Jade Ornament

That's a nifty cosmetic that can look like a sword or a staff or a shield. There's one for every character on your account but you do have to log each of them in separately to get it.

Can I be bothered to do that? Maybe. I did log in on every character on all my accounts, plus two of Mrs Bhagpuss's, last year, when I was doing "research" for my "25 For 25" series or whatever I was calling it. 

I never did finish that, did I? Never fear, I will. Probably.

That means I at least know where they all are. I wrote it down. So that will save some time, if I decide to claim all those Ornaments. 

(Ornaments, by the way, are what appearance items are called in EQ. I don't wholly understand how they work but I'm sure I can figure it out. I mean, I already did before, once,  but I've forgotten. I expect it will all come back if I try again.)

That's the extent of the free stuff for free players. Not that amazing but what do you expect for nothing?

All Access Members, naturally, do better. They get the above but they also get:

A Metamorph: Jade Prowler Cub

Whoah! Now hold it right there... We're going to have to stop before we even get started. A Metamorph? What the heck is one of those? I've never even heard that piece of jargon before. I'm going to have to look it up...

Ah! It looks like it might be the EQ equivalent of EverQuest II's Petamorph Wands, the device you use to make your pet look like something else. It also seems as though in EQ, the Metamorph process applies to Familiars. 

Unfortunately, that's another thing I barely knew existed in the older game. I can see I'm going to need to do some more research. Do any of my EQ characters have familiars? 

I right-clicked the Jade Prowler Cub from inventory on a couple of characters to see what would happen. On my necro, the giant jellyfish floating next to him poofed. Maybe that was his familiar. On my banker, it did in fact summon a familiar, or rather I got the message it had and he got the buff. What I didn't get with either of them was an actual Jade Prowler Cub I could see. Maybe it's invisible.

Anyway, you get one of those for every character. It doesn't specifically say you have to log them all on but the cub is only available until 20 April so logic suggests you do.

Let's leave that for now and move on to the next freebie:

A Goblet of Adventure II

Now, I know what that is! It's an XP potion.  Specifically, it appears to be a 25% bonus that lasts for eight hours. The Press Release says it's only available until 20 April and only one per account but unlike the Metamorph and Jade Blade it didn't appear on my cursor when I logged in. Or anywhere else.

On the other hand, I do have two Goblets of Adventure II in Claim. Maybe it's one of those? But items in Claim usually stay there forever...

I don't know. Not likely to use it anyway, so let's move on to:

A Level 100 Character

Aha! Now we're talking! I could do with one of those! It's one per account again and presumably you claim it via the drop-down menu at Character Select/Creation. I actually have two Level 100 characters showing as available there. I'm guessing I had one before? Not sure why I never used it.

For the ludicrously complicated reasons I've gone through many times before, none of the characters I actually play, if and when I ever do play EQ, are on the account I'm currently paying for. It's a long and stupid story and I'm not going over it again.

The point is, I have two characters on my All Access account who already took a Level 85 potion so I suppose I ought to bump the pair of them up to 100. It is tempting to make two new characters and leapfrog past, although since there's almost no conceivable circumstance in which I would actually play any of them, I have to concede it's a bit of a moot point whether it makes any difference one way or the other.

Also, 100 is still well short of the actual cap, which I think is probably 125 these days. Let me check...

Yep. 125. Although Gemini confidently gives it as 100:

 How do they get away with it? Seriously? How? Do people actually read this stuff and believe it?

Anyway, that was yesterday's topic. Back to today's.

Now I have to decide whether

a) To log in all my characters, so they can all have more crap they'll never use.

b) If not, which ones might use any of it, so I can just log them in instead.

c) Who gets the Level 100 boost? An existing character or a new one?

And I have a month to make my mind up. Seems reasonable. Maybe I'll get around to doing a couple more of those character studies for last year's project while I'm in an EverQuest mood. I hadn't even got to some of my  most-played characters. I'd like to get those out there, at least. The whole thing tails off towards the end so I'm not so bothered about finishing it but my Beastlord and my Magician deserve their moment in the sun.

Then again, I really ought to finish the full twenty-five. I never mentioned it at the time but I did have an ulterior motive for doing the whole thing. There are companies out there that will produce a hardback book based on a blog and I've always fancied having one of those for Inventory Full. 

Obviously it's completely out of the question to do the entire blog. You'd need to be a billionaire to pay for it and it would be bigger than the full Encyclopedia Britannica, back when that was a thing. Twenty-five posts about twenty-five characters, though... that would make a very nice, slim volume and for an affordable price.

Something to think about... Meanwhile, Happy 26th Birthday to EverQuest and here's wishing you many more of them