A Tale Of Two Emus

One survivor of my recent, involuntary desktop cull was the icon for the Vanguard Emulator. Seeing it exposed made me realize it's been a few months since I last checked in to see how things are going. 

Longer still since I visited the forums to read up on what's changed. It's not always obvious just from playing as the detailed and informative State Of The Game post from last October emphasizes:

"While, to the player, the game might seem to be finished, there is a lot of back end work that has not been set up yet. If painting a picture requires one to start with broad strokes and finish with small details - we are still on the broad strokes - but the players see the finished painting."

As one of those players I completely concur. Every time I log in and play for an hour or two I come away with an impression of an almost fully-restored game. My Disciple is Level 13 and he can explore, quest, level , buy new skills, upgrade his gear, harvest, craft, everything you'd expect in the early levels. He can even work the levers of Civic Diplomacy.

Getting on for eight years since the Live game closed down, just to be able to do that much is phenomenal. As someone who tends to enjoy low and mid level gameplay more than endgame activity and who's very comfortable pottering around alone in a seemingly deserted world, I would be more than satisfied if the current iteration was as far as the team were able or willing to go. 

They wouldn't, though:

"...we are not finished, and we will not be finished for some time. We have come so far, but we have a long way to go. Our overall goal is to make the game as it was in its prime, pre-Free To Play Changes."

I couldn't say with any certainty what were the differences between the final subscription version of Vanguard and the first F2P ruleset. As I recall, the game began with a focus on group-play but then there were several, substantial revisions, first making the game easier, then much easier and highly soloable. Later, but well before the sunset, much of the former difficulty was restored and there was a brief focus on endgame raiding before the game went into maintenance mode and previously hard-to-get items like flying mounts were given away to anyone who wanted them.

Where the F2P conversion stands in all that and what kind of cut-off it represents for any given aspect of the game I have no clue. All I know is I found ways to enjoy every era almost equally so wherever the music stops is likely to suit me just fine.

This afternoon, when I logged in, I did what I usually do, namely saddled up and rode out to enjoy the gorgeous scenery. Even now, I find Telon one of the most beautiful virtual worlds I've ever seen. The graphics may be showing their age but, much like Lord of the Rings Online, the deep, fluid, emotional commitment behind the world-building makes the place feel preternaturally real.

By happenstance and good fortune, I ended up following one of my favorite routes in the whole game, along the riverside from Khal to Ahgram. The dry, sunbaked grassland between the two cities shimmers in a heat haze under the merciless blue sky. 

The brittle, yellow grass, taller than a young Raki, ripples in the hot wind coming down from the mountains. Dust cakes the hardened dirt road, where camels stand idle and towers cast welcome shade for the merchants as they pray for rain.

As I cantered across the plains, I found myself wondering whether the recent issues with my PC had somehow improved the graphics. Maybe the drivers I reinstalled? Everything looked even more magical than I remembered. Vanguard has always been a game whose screenshots don't quite do justice to how it feels when you're playing but I think the ones I took today come close.

I didn't do much more than ride the roads, stopping occasionally to kill a skeleton by the ruins of a temple here or a scarab beetle under a tree there. The login message explained there'd been a difficulty pass on mobs to bring them up to the required challenge level so I was curious to see if things felt tougher. So long as I stuck to the mobs I was meant to be killing solo, everything felt fine. 

When I reached the towering walls of Ahgram the sun was almost down. Long shadows darkened the waters in the harbor and the light was almost blue with dusk. It had been a glorious ride. I struggle to think of any mmorpg where I find so much pleasure in simply traveling.

Vanguard is one of the handful of online games I would miss like a friend if it wasn't there any longer so the persistence of the relationship beyond the virtual grave feels little short of miraculous. Another game I'd miss ferociously would be EverQuest II, which is worrisome, given that of all Daybreak's portfolio, EQII is probably the most at risk.

For some years I was concerned by the apparent lack of anything resembling a working emulator for the game. Although it can sometimes seem as if every lost mmorpg can be readily found again in the emulator greyscape, as Wildstar's exiled fans can attest, there's no guarantee.

With that grim thought in mind, I'm exceptionally happy to be able to confirm that today I took the Far Journey once again to disembark at the Outpost of the Overlord, where my latest ratonga necromancer, now a lofty Level 3, is resting after her efforts. It wasn't on any Live server. It happened on the EQ2 Emulator Project.

A companion to the Vanguard Emulator and linked on their website, I've looked at this one before but this is the first time I've been able to download, install and play the game. There are full instructions here, including the necessary links and I had absolutely no issues following them to get the game up and running in short order.

Once I'd made a character I was surprised to find myself watching a narrated slide show laying out the history of Norrath, from the Rallosian invasion to the Shattering. The emulator requires the Altar of Malice client, so I'm guessing this was the introduction you got back then, when you installed the game from scratch. 

I'm not sure whether I ever saw it before. Bits of it seemed vaguely familiar but that could be because I already know the story or because I've seen very similar introductions in other games. 

Whether or not it was really new to me, I watched the whole thing with both interest and pleasure. The illustrations are sumptuous, the voiceover is mellifluous and the whole thing makes for a very good primer on how the world got to be the way it is. 

Whether a genuine first-timer would get as much out of it as a veteran is another matter. I tend to feel having new players sit through long lore cut-scenes before they get to play their characters can be something of an own goal but then I guess it never did Final Fantasy XIV much harm. Compared to that carriage ride, this is barely a bump in the road.

The EQ2 emulator as it is right now, based on the very small fragment I experienced, feels considerably rougher around the edges than the Vanguard emu. Nothing wrong with how it looks or plays, more in the technicalities. 

I ran into several UI glitches in the half hour or so I spent there. None of the icons on the bar at the foot of the screen worked and I couldn't open my inventory with the keyboard shortcut. I suspect I may have glitched something by running ahead of the tutorial prompts and clicking on things before I was told to.

I'm not complaining. It makes me feel safer just knowing the emulator exists, especially since there's also the option to set up your own server. With that, it feels highly unlikely EQII fans will ever end up slumped on the Wildstar bench, out of the game for good.

I have no intention of playing on the EQII emulator regularly. I probably won't even check in on it every few months, like I do with Vanguard. I'm happy playing - and paying for - the Live version. But if that ever goes away...

Free Level 95s! Get Yer Free Level 95s! : EQ2

It's very rare for this blog to act as any kind of news source but just in case anyone missed it the lovely people at Daybreak Games have succumbed to an unaccustomed fit of generosity.

Today was the day of the Big End Of Summer Patch (not the official name). Since I was at a bit of a loose end, what with ArenaNet having broken GW2 (okay, really broke it...) and me not being able to stomach another WoW Invasion after the half dozen I'd just done, I thought I'd patch up EQ2, collect my 500SC and see what was up in good old Norrath.

Quite a lot as it turns out. In addition to the deluge of new content including new Public Quests, the entire Fallen Dynasty expansion converted to Fabled status for max level fun and a bunch of Level Agnostic dungeons added for (almost) all levels to enjoy together in a spirit of harmony, there were several rather significant Free Gifts.

• The Altar of Malice expansion is now free for everyone. Yes, everyone. Not All Access payers, not current level 95s and above, everyone.

So, how's that going to work, then? I mean anyone under level 95 is going to be a splotch on the dockside the moment they log in, right? Those mobs are tough. Well, how about this?

• Everyone gets a free Heroic Character and the start point for those is now Level 95.

And when I say everyone, once again, I mean everyone. Don't I? Okay, maybe I don't exactly mean everyone but I do mean everyone who's ever played EQ2. And not got banned.

Here's the small print:

"You must have had an EQ2 account in good standing on/prior to 12:00PM PT on Tuesday, August 23, 2016 in order to get the free Heroic Character. If you create a brand new account, it will not be eligible for the promotion, unless the account has membership."

It's pretty darn near everyone, amiright?

Now I would say those are two very generous giveaways. Of course, the previous expansion always goes free when the next expansion comes out but there's not even a firm date (or, as far as I know, name) for the next expansion yet. And although we already got given a free Heroic Character when they were first introduced, when they upped the level from 85 to 90 it was only those free HCs that got an upgrade; no-one got a second one.

Well now we do! What's more, that character will start in The Shattered Seas, which in my opinion is one of the most manageable, enjoyable and attractive high-level zones you could hope to find. Apart from the really depressing first few  minutes with the horrible miasma hanging over everything, that is. Just try to ignore that - it gets wonderfully light, bright and airy just a few yards further in, after you do the first few quests.

If anyone reading this is sitting on an old account and fancies seeing some of EQ2's higher-level content this really is a great opportunity. It's only going to be around until September 6 so don't miss out. Yes, I know Legion. All you have to do is log in and claim the Heroic Character before then - you don't actually have to play her.

You'd think that would be enough but there's more. Not much more but it is a significant little bonus for a particular and quite unusual reason.  For the next week everyone gets

• Double Personal Status, Double Guild Status and Double Alternative Currency

Hey! There's that word again! Everyone! And once again it means what it says. Double dibs on all those things that you probably don't want but are going to get anyway even if you are a rotten cheapskate freeloader. For a long while the practice has been to limit bonuses like this to paying customers only but for one week starting today it's a free for all that's free for all.

So there you have it. Or you will if you log in. Now pardon me while I go and make a bunch of level 95s I'll never play on a bunch of old accounts I haven't logged in for years. It's free stuff!

An Expansion By Any Other Name : EQ2

Right on the heels of my previous post about the direction of travel for Daybreak Games comes Holly "Windstalker" Longdale's latest Producer's Letter, here reported by the invaluable EQ2Wire. For anyone who plays the game or has been following the progress of DBG since the buyout it makes for very interesting reading. There certainly seem to have been some changes of heart - or attitude or policy, have it as you will.

A few months ago someone important at DBG clearly thought the future was going to be sufficiently different from the past that it was worth taking the risk of riling up the regulars and courting negative press by making a formal announcement that there would be no more expansions.  Spin that any way you want, it was always going to be read, in some circles at least, as raising a flag over the continued future of the franchise. Whether it was a red flag of warning or a white flag of surrender it surely signaled some kind of bad news.

As for whatever content might be doled out in Adventure Packs or DLC or Campaigns or even Campansions, well names are important. Even if the quantity and quality was equivalent, for a game that had pretty much banged out a minimum of one full expansion a year since launch (often two in a year in the case of EverQuest, where a cessation of expansion was also announced) a step away from expansions was always going to feel like a step backwards.

Whether someone in Marketing or PR finally got that point across or whether priorities and resources were genuinely switched around, the rather-a-lot-more-than-rumors of the death of the EQ2 expansion turn out to have been heavily exaggerated:

"Our next expansion release is right around the corner! Yes, you heard me right – expansion! The team has been churning away and when we looked at the amount of content we created, we decided to call our next release an expansion rather than a campaign or the much-loved term, “campansion.”"

We're still waiting on the full content list for the EXPANSION. Come to that we're still waiting on a name, although we won't have to wait all that long. In common with most MMO companies nowadays everything has to have its own full-blown PR campaign and this one begins on October 1st. With a Livestream on Twitch. Because of course it does.

We do have a little info:

"The 12th expansion for EverQuest II includes a sprawling overland and loads of content with quests, advanced solo and heroic dungeons, and a healthy number of raids including x2s and x4s"

I note "a sprawling overland" rather than the traditional two overland zones. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how sprawling it actually is.  I'm reassured to hear there will be "loads of content". Although come to think of it one of my favorite EQ2 expansions ever was Age of Discovery, which infamously had no content at all.

In an interesting and possibly controversial move

"...if you purchase (or pre-order) the next expansion, you’ll also get access to ALL of the previous expansion content (including the Rum Cellar Campaign)".

That's obviously a good deal for everyone who, like me, didn't bother to fork out for Rum Cellar but I can already hear the sound of whetstones, sharpening the tines of the pitchforks of those who laid out real money for the Adventure Pack just a few months or maybe even weeks ago. I'm kidding of course; no EQ2 fan ever lets her pitchfork go blunt.

But wait - did I say real money? Of course I did because we all know that old SOE worked out, eventually, that they were giving away the farm with the manic combination of triple Station Cash sales and expansions purchasable for SC. They put a stop to it forever, didn't they?

Apparently not:

"Altar of Malice and Rum Cellar will also be available to buy with Daybreak Cash through the Web site."

It's all getting very complicated.There's also a half-price sale on those two if you pay in real money but they're full price for imaginary money and after the end of September "Altar of Malice will no longer be for sale".

Is that at all or just at half price or for DBC? I think it means at all because, presumably, from then on if you want AoM you'll just have to buy XPack12 - after all it includes AoM and every other EQ2 expansion ever, so why would you want to buy anything else?

For that matter, unless you are insanely impatient, why would you want to buy AoM or Rum Cellar now, even at 50% off? Wouldn't you just wait and get them rolled into the new one? After all you've managed without them for this long...

On the other hand I have a LOT of Daybreak (nee Station) Cash on the account that used to be my All Access account but is now my free account and it doesn't have AoM. I could get the stuff I'm missing there while it's available for funny money, then skip a year and an expansion and pick it back up this time next year...

My head hurts now. Why do they make me have to think?

The Ton Up Boy : EQ2

It was only just over four months ago that EQ2's Altar of Malice expansion launched. Really? It seems a lot longer.

I bought AoM on release and spent a good deal of time there, going through the lengthy and generally interesting solo story quests, completing the solo dungeons and working on crafting. It's been a very good expansion from my casual perspective and from what I can gather it's been fairly well-received by the often cantankerous and curmudgeonly EQ2 careerists too.

Once SOE, as they were calling themselves at the time, got around to correcting the issues with tradeskilling progress, my weaponsmith hit 100 in something of a rush. Getting those last five adventuring levels solo, even as a Berserker, went a lot harder.

It's just as well the questlines felt enjoyable in and of themselves and that the material rewards - armor, weapons, augments, clickable items and so on - were worthwhile because questing in EQ2 is a painfully slow way to level. It's not just that each quest pays out only a small gobbet of experience, it's the time you spend traveling, hither to yon and back again, searching for the right creature to kill or the dead body to inspect.

Highhold Keep is a very pleasant zone to adventure in. Autumnal, open, full of xp.

Inefficient, then, if your sole goal is hitting the cap as fast as possible, and even if efficiency is not an issue there's the question of shortfall. For as long as I can remember EQ2 expansions have come with insufficient questing xp attached to bridge that gap from the old cap to the new. In the case of AoM I believe the shortfall runs around two full levels.

For group-oriented players that's rarely any kind of issue. A group player routinely hits cap in a handful of sessions "doing dungeons". Or so I'm told. It's quite a while since I grouped in EQ2. Even longer in anything that might have been called "current content".

Our guild used to be quite lively, with a dozen or so members and several on at once most evenings. For the last few months, though, and for the whole of the lifespan of AoM, I've been the only one playing.

I could, of course, look elsewhere for temporary group-mates but as yet I haven't experimented with the Level Agnostic Dungeon Finder. I want to - I just haven't had a moment spare.

Even if I'd had the time, though, it wouldn't have helped my Berserker. Those dungeons tap out at 94 and he was 95 coming in. In the end the gaps were filled with good old Chelsith, Chardok and Sebilis runs, done on double xp weekends with an xp potion running.

When the last of those weekends ended the 'zerker was still 25% shy of the target and I'm sorry to say I kind of forgot about him for a while. The job was so nearly done that in my mind it was. Then, the other week, when I needed to log him in to check something or other, I happened to notice he was still 99. Well, better do something about that, I guess.

The Phantom Sea is pleasant too - all sea-blues and greens and thick, leafy trees. Also xp.

This weekend, being Easter and a holiday, Daybreak chose to throw an xp party. Unlike the month-long birthday bash over in Everquest, where everyone got a 160% bonus for an entire month (and my Magician took advantage. tapping out at nearly 90), EQ2 only gets a weekend at double xp and you have to be an All Access member to get that. Which I am. So I did.

I began by gathering the plethora of daily and weekly quests on offer at the dock in Phantom Sea because why not have a little bit of structure? Then I flew up to Highhold Castle and dashed off the first of them, which amounted to repeating the solo dungeon step of the main questline.

It was only a few grimlings in that I realized something had changed. Instead of the infinitesimal, almost invisible, increments to my xp bar I was used to, I could see significant movement as each weak Heroic encounter dropped. Indeed, the amount of xp I was accruing looked remarkably similar to what I'd expect on a mentored run through those Kunark dungeons.

Just that single clearance to complete the quest left me with scarcely more than 5% of the level to go. I knocked that off today doing two short overland quests. Even the outdoor solo mobs seemed to be giving generous helpings of the yellow stuff.

Ssraeshza Temple may or not be pleasant and/or full of xp. I dinged 100 in the entry hall, ran into the middle, took this screenshot, then left.

So, either my perceptions have changed since the last time I played, or my memory is playing me up, either of which is possible, or Daybreak have tweaked things so that current, solo content is as good for leveling as mentoring down for older dungeons always was. I hope that's what it is because, if so, it certainly makes me feel a lot more positive about leveling up some of my other characters, who are currently languishing down in the 80s and low 90s.

The recent announcement on the future of DLC and "progress" for EQ2 made it clear there will be no level cap increase for a while; certainly none this year. With that in mind, the next step is to take a serious look at gearing up. The quest gear from the main storyline is a huge upgrade from what the Berserker was wearing before but I see that even Handcrafted, the lowest form of player-made armor, is better so there's massive room for further improvement.

Once the armor's settled, then it will be time to think about augments. That's a bucket of worms I've studiously avoided trying to untangle so far but it's going to have to be done sometime. Well, not really, but truth be told I'm quite looking forward to fitting some shiny gems in all those ugly, empty sockets.

Then there are the combat art upgrades - many of mine are still basic Apprentice level. I don't have an Alchemist to make those but Mrs Bhagpuss has one sitting at 95 that I could borrow and I already know how fast those last five craft levels go.

So many things to do. You know, I could probably be playing this game full time, if it wasn't for all the others...

Level Best : EQ2

EQ2 is in a strange place these days when it comes to leveling. The devs seem keen for players to get a move on and not hang around in the low and mid levels. We get regular boosts, sometimes for everyone, other times just for the paying few.

This weekend Gold players (we used to call them Subscribers but that's Olden Days talk now, apparently) enjoyed a 150% bonus to both adventure and craft xp and last week SOE bumped up the instant high-level Heroic Character option so that it starts at 90 instead of 85. A while back, when someone was fiddling about under the hood trying to sort out the mess the expansion had made of tradeskill xp, the whole crafting xp curve got compressed so now leveling a crafter takes a fraction of the time it used to do.

The message coming from SOE Towers is mixed. Even though the devs want us to get on with it, they still seem to have clear (if occasionally conflicted) views on how and where we should be leveling. A number of changes came in along with the Altar of Malice expansion that were ostensibly intended to persuade players to do the final five levels in the newest content, changes that were seen by some as heavy-handed and coercive. Over the following weeks adjustments and tweaks were made to address some concerns but then the controversial decision was taken to remove all xp from player-made dungeons, thereby shutting down the most popular option for fast leveling. 

The whole thrust seems to be all about getting players through the first 90 levels as quickly as possible, skipping them altogether if necessary, so everyone can cluster together in a critical mass in the content that was created during the last 12-18 months. As a way of getting around the longtime problem of population-dilution that relatively-successful MMOs have always suffered it seems to be working.

There's another motivation behind the drive to get everyone to the top of the ladder, too, it seems: a belief that old content just doesn't do a good job of representing the best an MMO has to offer. The cutting edge content, artwork and gameplay are all to be found in whatever zones, maps or expansions the designers worked on most recently, goes the argument, so to direct players anywhere else would be to do them a disservice.

It's not a belief that's unique to SOE of course. Blizzard chose to funnel everyone into the last 10 levels by bundling a free Level 90 character with the current expansion. That clearly paid off - well enough that we should probably expect to see something similar become an industry norm, at least for the few themepark MMOs that do well enough to get expansions.

Companies using a F2P model will necessarily hope to monetize the process (a Heroic Character in EQ2 will run you $35 if you buy your Station Cash at face value, although most regular EQ2 players probably get theirs for a lot less than that) but it may well be that future expansions will see everyone get one free bunk-up to somewhere near the top.

No doubt there will be variations on the theme. There's speculation that GW2's "expansion", if and when it comes, will use some kind of level-splitting mechanic to encourage (or even force) players to start over, all in the same place, perhaps effectively creating two separate games. Whatever the mechanics used, though, it does begin to beg the question "So what are all these levels for, then?".

It's not just levels though, is it? Once you start to pull on this thread the whole tapestry begins to unravel. Why keep all these old, barely-used maps and zones and dungeons? Or these ancient quests and events and raids that no-one ever does any more? In fact why waste time on a "world" in the first place? Instead of spreading everything out wouldn't it be easier to sell each of these "expansions" as a brand-new, standalone game - the next episode in an ongoing series? Just close down each version when the new one's ready.

Transfer the characters (maybe just the names) and you're off and running. All the thrills and all the publicity of a new product launch without the trouble of having to come up with an actual new product. You could even sell alpha/beta access to the new one for, oh, what, say half the lifetime of the old? Run them in perpetual overlap.

The benefits are obvious. No need for divisive stat squishes or re-balancing: there's no power creep and the "inflated economy" resets before it becomes a major pain. Could probably even re-use a lot of the art assets if you go with the ever-popular cataclysm scenario. Once you start to look at it this way it's hard to remember why anyone ever thought a truly "persistent virtual world" was a good idea in the first place.

Naturally the games need to stay online. We need that social media integration. Can't keep the digital downloads flowing without all those Twitch streams and Twitter feeds. We can keep "massively multiplayer" too - more players = more microtransactions (although perhaps we should start calling them macrotransactions? "Micro" is a tad unambitious after all...). So I guess we can still market these things as MMOs. Be a shame to lose the brand recognition...

Eh? What? What's happening? Hmmm, I think I might have nodded off for a moment there. Was I having some sort of bad dream? What was I going to write about? Oh yes, my weekend in EQ2.

Well, the berserker didn't quite make 100. Topped out at 99.7. Even with 150% server xp, full vitality and a 110% potion running, the xp that dribbled in from the AoM questline wasn't all that impressive, so it was back to Freeport to see a Chronomage and off to good old Chelsith for a couple of circuits before banging through a few mentored dungeons. If they want us to do the new content perhaps they might make it competitive. Wait, I didn't say that! I like my mentoring xp!

The new zones are gorgeous though. A visual feast and beautifully designed. Tons to look at and pleasingly little to fight before you get to see it. I took a lot of screenshots and gosh-wowed all over the place. That globe is freakin' amazing! And I got a version for my house!

The storyline continues to be interesting if completely confusing. I lost track of what was going on a while back but I know the Akheva are in it up to their necks and something about the Shissar? Anyway, the last few quests should just about see me over the line even without bonuses.

Also I got some crafting in that took my Sage from 62 to 75 in just over an hour. I remember when that would have taken a week. And the sage started Raffik's questline. It was nice to see the little fellow again. So, a fun weekend, all in all. Let's do it again sometime soon. And when I'm a hundred I might start a new character. Er.. when the Berserker is level 100 I mean. Not much chance of me going a hundred hours without making a new character somewhere.

There's nothing like leveling up, is there? I love it. Can't get enough.

Level 100 - The Easy Way : EQ2

What a difference a patch makes. Just a short while ago the crafting channels and forums were buzzing with discontent and frustration. Tradeskillers appeared to have lost out to adventurers yet again in the leveling stakes. The crafting questline for the new expansion topped out with the best part of three levels left to go and other than a single daily giving around 8% of a level the only option appeared to be to grind writs and plenty of them.

Adding injury to insult the xp return from writs was dismal. Feldon at EQ2Wire calculated it would take around 180 timed "Rush Order" writs to do the full five levels, reduced to 130 if you first completed the quest sequences. Breaking the numbers down he observed "Each tradeskill writ from level 95-97 awards ~3% XP. This is with vitality and an XP potion. The number drops to ~2.4% for levels 98-100. These numbers have traditionally been 5-7% per writ!"

Players of most MMOs often express the opinion that no-one is listening to their concerns. The more cynical members of the community sometimes suggest that no, they are listening, they just want us to have a hard time. It's true that issues can often be left to fester for months, even years, before anything gets done. It's also true that the solution, when it comes, isn't always the one people asked for, or were expecting, or wanted.

This time no-one had to wait for long and the fix that went in with last week's update did, beyond any doubt, address the perceived problem directly and effectively. So, everyone's happy, right? Well, not exactly. There are a few naysayers:

"So, I just tested out today's change to tradeskill exp. I am now getting a FULL LEVEL of experience doing ONE writ at level 74! This is absurd!"

"SOE, you have made a big error here"

Those quotes are taken from the nine-page thread on the forums. I don't claim to have read it all but from a quick flip-through a more common reaction goes like this:

"THANK YOU for the change to writ xp! Awesome!! Now going to level all my crafters!"

"The change is appreciated."

"Thank-you very much for listening to crafters and increasing the xp for quests and writs. I think it is a good balance, I have to work to get to 100, but not feel like this is an endless grind. I read both of these threads, and it seems you can't satisfy everyone, but I for one am very happy. Thanks again!"

I was largely unaware this was going on. I'd read the patch notes, which say only that "Altar of Malice missions, repeatable quests and all Tradeskill Writs will now multiply experience rewards based on your experience modifiers such as veteran bonus, vitality, or potions. I hadn't even considered the potential effects on lower level crafting. I took the changes to be relevant to the expansion levels only. A close re-reading does make it clear that's not the case but who gives update notes close textural analysis?

I might have noticed, had I chosen, as I occasionally do, to knock out one of the Loyalty dailies with my Sage, currently somewhere in the 60s or 70s. As it happened I didn't. The only post-patch crafting I'd done was the Tranquil Sea daily, where I had noticed a very welcome increase: xp on the hand-in jumped from about 8% to over 20%. Nice.

That was clearly going to cut my time-to-cap from just doing dailies considerably. Indeed, it whisked me along so briskly that by today my weaponsmith was already a quarter of the way into level 99. I had a free afternoon so I thought why not make that up to a round 100?

After doing the daily (pickles again - what is it with pickles?) he had less than half a level to go. Back in Freeport he grabbed a Level 99 Rush Order. He even remembered to buy all the new "Essential" recipe books before setting the timer off, for once. Those are the basic ones the craft guild NPCs sell. The "Advanced" ones with the rare recipes are all dropped or come as quest rewards.

The rush order allowed about eight minutes to finish but it took well under half that, even allowing for running out of Effulgent Coal half way through and having to go to the vendor. The xp was very reasonable at over 5% with vitality (no potion). At that rate it would take less than 45 minutes to hit the cap.

On the down side, however, it would use up a lot of mats that I'd really rather hang on to for something more useful. And I really don't enjoy doing writs. So I abandoned that idea. I did the Adorning daily since the guy that gives it was standing next right there with a feather over his head. That was mostly for skill-ups but it did give a couple of percent. Then I thought I'd see if there was anything going on in Mara, which used to be craft central back in the day.


All the old favorites there were greyed out at my advanced level but stap me if I didn't run into Captain Ethan, who'd written me some letter I'd completely ignored. He starts the crafting questline for the last expansion I think. He sent me on a lengthy trip, first to The Feerrott, then to Stonebrunt Highlands, then Loping Plains and finally all the way to The Ethernere.

That took about as long as it would have taken to do most of the Rush Orders I was avoiding but it was about 10,000 times more entertaining. Unfortunately even a single writ would have given more xp. So I abandoned the idea of racing to 100 and decided to leave it to the dailies. It was only going to take a couple more after all. What's the hurry?

Going back to adventuring, which was lagging behind crafting by a little over a level, my ratonga changed his trade clothes and rolling pin for plate armor (another detail he's been known to overlook occasionally with fatal consequences) and headed over to Highhold Keep on Kithicor Island in the Phantom Sea. After a few tussles with one-legged undead orcs and skeletal gnolls he was doing his hand-in when he spotted a green glowing feather over someone's head way off in a corner.

There's a whole arcane language of feather-colors in EQ2 that I don't pretend to have kept up with over the years but that one looked identical to the one that hangs over Skritt the Crafting Daily ratonga. A quick flit across the lawn, another change of clothes, ten barricades quick-welded at the forge and a hand in later and boom! 100 Weaponsmith.

I was totally not expecting it and the deafening DING! and dazzling lightshow took me so much by surprise I barely managed to snap the screenshot above before the message and the glow faded away. That would normally be that because, much though I enjoy a little crafting now and again in EQ2, the prospect of taking another character all the way up to the top fills me with something quite like horror. Only now there does appear to be a window of opportunity...

I think I'll get my Sage working for an hour or two tonight. Just in case. Apparently there may already be a nerf correction on the Test server. It's not so much that I want to go faster for going faster's sake - its more I'd do just about anything to avoid doing writs ever again.

Ratflation and Ratblocks : EQ2

Time was they only asked you to kill ten rats. Those days are over. Now it's a dozen of these, fifteen of those, twenty of the other.

Not complaining. Always liked a kill quest, me. These odd worlds we spend so much time in? They run on murder. Solution to every problem it is. Rats in the cellar? Kill 'em. Goblins in the barn? Kill 'em. Bandits stole your hat with the feather in it? Kill 'em.

Never kill 'em all, mind. You'd think that'd be a better way to solve the problem for good but no. It's always 'go and kill ten so the rest get the message'. Specially where revenge comes into it. Lizardmen killed your brother? Bribe some passing stranger to kill a dozen of them so they'll...

Ogres. What can you expect?

So they'll what, exactly? Feel your pain? Empathize? Desist from fratricide in the future? Maybe it's just so you feel you're doing something. Revenge - one of the stages of grief. Actually, the only stage.

Paid murder's not just for farmers or the recently bereaved. It's the tried and tested methodology of the research scientist too. Suspect the food supply's been poisoned? Toss a few chunks to the nearest Joe with a bow, tell him to go feed some wild animals then come back and tell you which ones died. Strange green glow around those weird little guys who turned up in the night? Send some adventurer off to kill a bunch, hack off a few chunks of flesh and bring it back for tests.

There's almost no problem that can't be sorted out quick and clean by murder. Just gotta kill enough people. If the first twenty didn't do the job send your amateur assassin back to take out twenty more. This is how we live now.

It's not so bad. Yes, there are more to kill. Always more to kill. But look how much faster they die nowadays. Really, when you think of it, a Kill Twenty is a lot less than a Kill Ten in the old money. More like a Kill Five. Not that anyone ever asked for just five. Well, not often.

Whatever way you slice it, having twenty to kill when there are forty or fifty milling about right there, in the camp or the field or the temple, that's a lot better than a kill list of five and you can't find 'em. Come to that, if only it was five.

I am. It's all on Zam.

This guide was handing out quests in Cardin Ward, Sunday afternoon. Why she was in Cardin Ward? Beats me. Oh, I know. She was doing something for some ghosts and Cardin Ward's in Obol Plains which is in The Ethernere which is where you go when you die. One of the places anyway.  So, ghosts.

Never would have known about it at all but someone was talking. Never would have gone all the way over there but he showed what she was handing out. Sixty-six slot backpack. Sixty-six slots. Say that again. That's like the biggest backpack you can imagine and a half. Worth some traveling, for sure.

A thousand plat says we never set foot in Kael

With guide quests you can't hang around. These guides, they pop up, do their thing, pop off. Never know when or if they'll come back. Sometimes you have to finish the whole thing before they go, which is a stresser. This one, no. Got it in the book, you can finish it whenever.

If you can find it. First problem right there. For some reason it's under Kael Drakkel although what it has to do with giants appears to be precisely nothing. Don't believe you even go to Kael. Asked her about that she had some excuse. Didn't really listen to be honest. Or much care. Sixty-six slots.

Plan was to knock the whole thing off this afternoon then do a little write-up here, go into the whole "Guide" thing, how we used to have GMs and Guides doing little turns all over, all the while, whether that was good or bad, like that. Not happening.


Ran into a problem early on. Found the little island in Phantom Sea with the Newsie (don't ask - nicer not to know), got her to explain what she wanted (hard going), found the first thing easily enough. Vellum. Undead rangers have it. Why? No idea. Apparently you can't wander morbidly around the ruins of the old ranger guild hut in what's left of Kithicor Forest without you have some vellum in your... on your... bones.

Old place has seen better days. Although, come to think of it, no it hasn't.

So, that part zipped by. Needed a dozen, killed a dozen, still a dozen wandering about. Good start on the vellum. Shame about the ink. Naturally, you want vellum, it's to write on; you want to write, you need ink. (Pen? Nope. Going to use her finger for a pen - again, best not to question these people - just go along with whatever they want. Saves killing a dozen Rotted Treants for twigs at least).

Ink comes from squid. We don't have squid. We have octopuses. Near enough. Off to kill a dozen. Must be a long message. Except - no octopuses. No Savage Entanglers to give them their Sunday best name.

Quick! Get the camera!

Okay, some. Four found in just over an hour. Flew all over, low above the waves, looking. Used up a bunch of otter totems searching below the water. Thick like fog down there. Miserable.

There was a named one, called Plongeur. Fancy Dan. Killed him. He didn't count (didn't drop anything either) but he brought along a pal. He counted. That was the first. Proof of concept you could call it.

Right place then. Set off slaughtering sealife by the score - piranha, sea anglers, eels, turtles, some kind of weird biped thing on the sea floor - trying to make a bit of space for Entanglers to come in. Got a couple, three. Not nearly enough. So too slow.

So there it lies. To be picked away at as and when. There's a lot of flying to and fro between the 'kill fifteen Allu`thoa'  on one island and 'kill eight sulfuric viscids' somewhere else. It'll get done in time. With a sixty-six slot bag at the end of it you just better bet it'll get done.

Proves the point though. Nothing wrong with a bit of ratflation. It's the ratblocks you gotta worry about.

The Numbers Game : WoW, EQ2

As I observed not too long ago, it's been obvious for some time that Warlords of Draenor was generating a lot more, and a lot more positive, interest than the previous couple of WoW expansions managed. Even so, the revelation that WoD fever had tipped WoW's subscription pile back over the 10,000,000 mark was a surprise.

The pull of that vortex is now so strong it's moved on from consolidating the faithful to sucking in even the furthest outliers but no, I am not here to announce that I have joined the merry band of pod-people. I'm just here to compare that number, ten million, with the very much smaller number that Feldon of EQ2Wire has been dropping into conversation of late.

The number in question is 50,000. Apparently that's the the current "active" population of EQ2. Here's a quote "Otherwise, a game with some 50,000 active players gets unfairly tagged as a “ghost town”." I have no idea what the provenance of this 50k figure is but it sounds exceedingly low, not just by comparison to WoW's 10m, but even to Everquest's heyday of 500k.

So, what does constitute a viable population for an MMO from a large operator these days? If Feldon's figure is there or thereabouts accurate then it would seem fifty thousand customers gets you regular content additions up to and including an annual expansion (and one of pretty darn high quality at that, as these gorgeous screenshots attest). I believe Mark Jacobs suggested 50k would be sufficient to keep Camelot Unchained in business. Meanwhile Carbine's WildStar is widely perceived to be struggling with "hundreds of thousands of active players" (source).

No-one seems to like giving out detailed population figures any more but companies do seem happy to show vague traffic-lights on their server status page. As I write this late on Friday evening GMT, ten of EQ2's sixteen "Live" servers are showing "medium" and one "high". We are still some hours off of US prime-time. For that matter, a dozen of Everquest's eighteen servers are at "medium" too.

What "Medium" means in the context I have no idea. Could be a couple of hundred players, could be a couple of thousand. About all you can say is it must be better than "Low", which is the status for every one of Landmark's nine servers (and both of Dragon Prophet's but no one really cares about that).

In the end, as a player, I guess not much matters beyond enough people playing and paying to keep the lights on and the updates flowing. Then, too, the numbers playing very much do not seem to convert directly into quantity or quality of content provided. It's probably a fair bet that GW2 has ten times, if not twenty or thirty times, the players EQ2 does but the Altar of Malice expansion feels at least as substantial and satisfying (and considerably more coherent) than the sporadic, stuttering scattershot entertainment doled out this year in The Living Story.

It does rather feel as though one of these MMOs is over-performing while the other slides by on a bare minimum. Of course not everyone has to play by the exact same rules. As J3w3l points out, WoW seems to have special dispensation when it comes to keeping their vast horde of active players from wandering off: "How in the hell after over a year of absolutely no new content can they gain subscribers. Any other mmo doing that would be shutting down its servers about now yet they are thriving."

WoW loyalists, and there seem to be an inordinate number of them, are fortunate. They exist in a safe, certain world alien to almost all other MMO players. There is simply no prospect for them of waking up one morning to learn that their favorite MMO has gone dark. They certainly don't need to subscribe or play to feel secure that their game of choice will be there when and if they need it. Not for current or ex-WoW players the angst and uncertainty that LotRO players most likely feel gnawing at the back of their minds every day these days. No chance of Blizzard doing as NCSoft did with City of Heroes and closing down WoW because it's making money, just not enough.

I'm happy WoW's doing well. Much better that than for it to be slipping slowly into oblivion. A high tide lifts all boats as they say. I just hope some of the leaky vessels the rest of us prefer to sail in can keep bailing long enough to make it to their own safe harbors.

The Far Seas Trading Company: Preliminary Findings: EQ2

Several years have passed since The Far Seas Trading Company made a sudden decision to end their contracts with Qeynos and Freeport, stopped ferrying refugees to the great cities and closed the sea-lanes to the Isle of Refuge. We never got much in the way of an explanation. Just a few rumors from some drunken sailors hanging around the East Freeport docks.

The marinated mariners are still swaying there on the corner, retailing their long-stale news, but Lord Lucan D'Lere isn't listening. He's had other things on his mind until now, what with being kidnapped, having to put down an attempted coup and organizing the defense of Freeport against a bunch of dragons, but he's finally managed to clear his diary and he's commissioned a full investigation.

Turns out he's no more convinced by the shaky cover story than the rest of us. He wants to know what's really going on and what do you guess but he knows just the ratonga for the job. When The Overlord sends for you it's best not to dicker, I find. There's an execution every hour in the plaza and those traitors have to come from somewhere.

So it was that I found myself stepping off the dock into an oddly familiar landscape. The old place has looked better, I'll say that. My heart sank a little in the blued gloom. Are we really destined to spent the rest of our adventuring lives under nightclub conditions? Can't we have some natural light for once?

Well, yes we can! Imagine my relief when, early on in my fact-finding investigation, I discover the Etherneresque aethers to be a purely local phenomena. Take a few bloodied steps through the knee-high forest of grimlings and daylight returns.

The blue hue emanates from Malvonicus's tower, which has suffered the inevitable fate of all Mage Towers, namely having been exploded and frozen in space/time like some final year art project for Surrealism 101. Someone Tampered With Things They Wot Not Of and this is the highly predictable result:

 The place is crawling with befuddled and highly aggressive Far Seas Traders plus a horde of the aforementioned freakish midgets, something you really don't want to look at too closely or you'll wake up screaming. My first altercation with one of the twisted traders came altogether too close for comfort so I called for back-up after which I had few problems. A metal suitcase upside the head quietens even the feistiest freak as the saying goes.

From then on it's business as usual. Everyone has something they want doing. Tok and I wander around collecting planks and rubble for barricades, retrieving research papers, rescuing the innocent and subduing the rest. As we do a fascinating story begins to emerge.

It seems a while back the Far Seas Co. discovered a horde of supposed Shissar artifacts, which they naturally decided to exploit examine. With commendable, if surprising, concern for public safety they chose to conduct their experiments in secret, hence the closure of both the refugee operation and the sea lanes. The possible exclusive commercial advantage they might theoretically have obtained by doing so was, I'm sure, no more than a fortunate co-incidence.

No-one pulls the wool over Lord Lucan's eyes for long, though, (or twice for that matter) and that cat is now very much out of its bag. The Far Seas Trading Co.'s cosy little operation in the ironically-named Tranquil Sea is now firmly, and quite literally, on the map.

Getting there was simple but for a while I was worried that getting around might not be. One odd effect of the catastrophe at the tower was the grounding of all flying mounts. A portentous message to this effect was being broadcast as I arrived.

I was concerned at the prospect of being forced to ride everywhere at the dizzying breakneck pace most Norrathian mounts consider a gentle canter but fortunately the embargo proved to be only temporary. A gnome I rescued from the cellar under the tower whipped me up a little something that gave me back my wings around the fallout zone but in any case they worked just fine as soon as I got clear of the miasma.

I was thus able to fly around sightseeing and spotting landmarks from the good old days, when I myself was a refugee, freshly salt-crusted. The old place really hasn't changed all that much apart from being overrun with grimlings.

Most of the old crew are long-gone of course but I did run into one familiar face. Waulon Highpebble gave me a recap of his history and the times our paths have crossed. I just nodded when he told me about Captain Varlos's deception. Came as a complete surprise to me. I think I must have been in a meeting that day.

For a first day I felt the investigation went splendidly. I'm confident The Overlord will be pleased with my report when I finally get back to Freeport to present it to him, although I have the feeling that day might still be quite some way off. It looks as though there's an awful lot of digging to do before the full story comes to light.

And who better to dig for it than a ratonga?