A Token Effort

Introducing...

The Community Token System

Wait! What? What the heck is that? 

You may well ask. Here, I'll let Angeliana, Senior Community Manager for EverQuest II explain. 

Got that? Good, because I'm not sure I have.

As far as I can make out, it's a new reward system for participating in events. Sometimes inside the game itself but mostly on social media. 

There's one running already, Can you guess what it is?

No, you can't. You'd be all day trying. It's an anagram competition in which you have to unscramble the names of ten NPCs. Here, have a go. See how you do.

• ovine roofgarden
• bermilksop nostril
• age hypo thorp
• alvina vibes
• ashton kneecapped
• celery mayo
• balking bilgegregg
• adrea hemoglobin
• atomize hats
• alga stung

No? Me neither. I've been playing this game since 2004 and none of those is ringing any bells. And do you know why? Because, like any rational person, I don't pay any attention to the names of NPCs. 

Why would I? I'm not going to hang out with them or call them up on the phone. Either they want me to do something or they serve a function. Why would I need to know the full name of a bank teller or a shopkeeper? Maybe, if it was on a name badge, I might know their first name but would I remember it for next time? 

In fact, I have all overhead names in EQII set to Mouseover so I only ever see them when I specifically target someone. I don't need all that visual clutter and cruft.

Looking at the anagrams, several of which are really good, I suspect Angeliana, or whoever came up with the list, enjoys making anagrams out of peoples' names in real life. I've known people who do that, some of them quite compulsively. 

People who aren't engaged with the whole anagram concept but want to make some kind of puzzle tend just to randomize the names or words into gibberish. True afficionados make new words and often try to make them as funny as they can or fit them somehow to the personality of the name's owner. That's clearly what's going on here.

Obviously, I won't be sending in my answers because I don't have any. If I did, though, I'd be sending them directly to Angeliana in a Private Message, which seems quite an odd way to go about it, although I guess you can't have people just posting the unscrambled names on a forum thread.

Except I have seen other games do similar puzzles and use exactly that form of response, which always suggests the whole thing is actually a giveaway, not a competition at all, like all those codes you can type in to get freebies that are supposedly special rewards for doing something in particular but which get re-posted on third-party websites and social media and work for absolutely anybody. Not that I ever uses any of those...

In contrast, this is a genuine competition. There are only thirty prizes and Angeliana is going to select them randomly using  a "Wheel Of Names", which she says like it's a thing we all know. She's even going to record herself doing it "to show validity of the wins."

It all seems remarkably complicated to me, especially for a couple of tokens to spend in a gift shop. Maybe Ogor the Ogre (Even Ttobey isn't buying that name.) sells really good stuff, though, like the endgame raid gear Shintar was telling us you can get for another new token feature in Star Wars: the Old Republic. 

Yeah, he isn't, though. I was curious so I went to have a look at what he's got to offer. He was very easy to find. He's in Qeynos and Freeport (Because in Norrath it's standard practice to be two places at once if you're an NPC.). I never have a clue where any new NPC is likely to set up their stall in Qeynos but in Freeport it's always down by the docks or in the charmingly-named Execution Plaza (Political prisoners executed every hour, on the hour, since 2004.)

Better yet, you can ask a guard and get directions. They used to just swivel on their heels and point but now they still do that but also send a glowing trail right to the person you're looking for. I tried it just now and Ogor was literally about  fifty feet from where I was standing, so that was embarassing.

As you can see, he is not doling out raid gear for a token or two. He hasn't got any useable gear at all. Someone more cynical than me might say he hasn't got anything useful at all.

He's got a lot of house items, which is always nice but nothing so special you could imagine anyone wanting to unscramble a whole bunch of anagrams, then type the results into a chatbox in the hope of winning a lottery to get enough tokens to buy two of them. And remember, this is "a bit harder of an event", which is why you get two. Mostly, I can only assume, you'll be getting just one. If you're lucky.

Other than that, Ogor has a couple of quite nice petamorph wands, some decent appearance-slot robes, a couple of illusion items, some fireworks, two vanity pets and a peculiar-looking ground mount in the shape of a wolf wearing a saddle and bridle. The wolf looks like there's moss growing on it, too.

This is all the same sort of stuff that routinely gets given away in holiday events, of which, as I've noted before, Norrath has a plethora. It appeals to a very specific demographic that seems to make up a significant proportion of forum posters and quite possibly of the playerbase as a whole. I can't remember exactly when it happend but at some point in its twenty-year history, EQII became a game suited mostly for absolutely obsessive min-maxers at one end and completist collectionists of fluff at the other, with not an awful lot of room for anyone inbetweeen.

The latter are going to see some merit in the new Community Token System, I'm sure, although collectors and decorators tend to be picky. The endgame statisticians are presumably going to ignore it entirely. Whether there's much cross-over between the two factions I wouldn't care to speculate.

I don't think I'd go out of my way to earn tokens for any of Ogor's stock. If I happen to acquire any, though, I won't complain. I'd quite like those petamorph wands. 

I suppose it's going to depend mostly on what the events are like. I note that as well as competitions and similar events on the forums or Discord, Guides can also hand out tokens as rewards in the game itself. I haven't seen a guide event for a while but it's nice to know they still exist and also that Guides now have a way of encouraging players to join in with ad hoc events rather than just re-running the familiar Guide Quests (Not that those aren't always welcome - you can get some nice bags that way.)

Angeliana does also say that "From time to time, he will even get some items added" so we can hope for better, later. I very much doubt he'll ever have anything more than cosmetics to give away, though.

And that's fine. When I first read the forum post announcing the new feature I did worry for a moment that it was a replacement for Panda! Panda! Panda!, which does give some very good gear for the minor effort of some extremely easy questing.

The supposed lore explanation "Ogor the Happy, wants terribly to be an adventurer. Alas he cannot, so he needs you to get him some Norrathian Fables and bring them to him. In turn, he will let you choose from a plethora of items he happens to have sitting around." does make his motivation sound remarkably similar to Yun Zi's. I suspect that has more to do with lack of imagination than anything else. It's also how Qho's super-annoying gathering questline is explained.

Also, I just proved myself a liar by remembering their names immediately, without having to look anything up. I guess some NPCs do familiarize themselves over time after all.

Good luck getting a funny anagram out of either of their names, though!