Sir Fluffykins And The Revival Of Interest

I didn't do much gaming this weekend, thanks to fantastically addictive new toy but I did spend a couple of hours in EverQuest II on Saturday. The Chronoportal event is on again and I saw there was a new crafting quest so I thought I'd take a look. The quest is fun but the whole experience made me think more about the game in general and how it and the genre have changed over the years, mostly but not wholly for the better.

I used to make a lot of characters in MMORPGs. Starting over was something I did all the time and many of those characters kept hung around for a while, so if I played a game for a few months, let alone a few years, pretty soon I'd be able to choose from anything from half a dozen to maybe twenty or so characters every time I logged in.

Naturally, a small percentage of those characters got played a lot more than the rest but all of them got some attention and it helped to keep plenty of games feeling fresher for me than they would have, had I kept to the traditional Main-and-Alt formula that was the norm back then. Looking back, I probably stuck with a few games for a lot longer than I otherwise would because of having lots of different characters on the go.

Making new characters and playing them was so much a part of my gaming routine for many years, I didn't much think about it. I went into every new game unconsciously assuming I'd try out most of the classes and races at some point, knowing that even if I only played for a few weeks, I'd most likely start over several times.

That hasn't been the case for a while now. I don't remember exactly when it stopped. It happened too gradually.

It certainly didn't come about because of any conscious decision I made, although I imagine it did have  something to do with the gradual decline in the overall time I spend playing MMORPGs. When you drop from forty hours a week to twenty and then to ten, there just isn't room in the schedule for constant re-starts. Not if you're planning on getting anywhere with any of the characters, anyway.

Thinking about it, I imagine it had more to do with changes in game design than anything. Golden-age MMORPGs, by and large, were no respecters of players' time. They were built to occupy as much of it as possible because the commercial success of the games relied on getting and keeping people hooked so they'd carry on paying that subscription.

To that end, although also because that's just what the first games did and the rest copied them, it took forever to level, travel was slow, fights took forever and so did recovering from them...

You name it, it almost certainly took longer than it does now. Often a lot longer. Even the retro games that seek to replicate that supposedly magical experience all cut corners, compared to how it really was, back in the day. Today's players, even the uphill both ways in the snow boys, won't stand for the same degree of tedium, repetition and plain awkwardness we all used to accept twenty years ago, mainly because we had no other option.

And all of that is fine. Things needed to change. Most players back then wanted gameplay to be easier and faster, whatever they claim now. I know I did, even if I didn't always like it when my wished were granted. 

One change I was never entirely comfortable with was the shift from character-based play to account-based. It always sat badly with me because I'd never seen my characters as extensions of myself and also I didn't always even see them as being friends with each other. Barely passing acquaintances, most of them, at best.

As the games I played started to shift, slowly at first but then with greater speed, towards treating the Account as the primary unit of player-identity, in the usual way of things, I fudged the issue by accepting the parts I liked and ignoring those I didn't. It's a strategy that's worked well for me over the years.

For example, I was very happy to see shared bank slots added to games I played, if only as a much more secure and convenient way of passing things from one character to another than dropping them on the ground or running two accounts to do three-stage trades. And when I think about it now, it's clear that even from the very start, when I was twinking my low-level characters by dropping weapons on the floor of the inn rooms in Freeport, I did see at least some of my characters as connected in some way, even if they could never actually meet, so sharing a bank vault wasn't that big a stretch..

For a dozen years, the direction of travel in MMORPG development was all one way - downhill. Everything got easier and more convenient. I didn't by any means approve of all the changes but as with most cultural drift, the final choice was always accept it or opt out. Since I kept playing the games, I have to acknowledge de facto acceptance of what happened to them.

The watershed moment for me came with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. That was the first MMORPG I'd played that expected you to stick to one character. There were plenty of classes and what-not but you could be all of them without having to revisit character creation. In fact, if you wanted to take the game seriously, you were going to have to do it that way.

I balked at that. Who wanted to play a game where you only needed one character? It wasn't the only reason Mrs Bhagpuss and I chose Guild Wars 2, when we had to make a choice between the two games in the summer of 2013, but it was a major factor.

And yet, another dozen years later, I find that, without in any way meaning to, I now have just one character in most of the games I play. I do, occasionally, roll more but I hardly ever play them. There just doesn't seem much point any more.

When all your characters have access to just about everything any one of them has - not just the ineradicable knowledge in your own head but the currencies, faction, gear, achievements and all the rest - motivation to do any of it again dries up fast. 

Add to that the unfortunate trend to reduce starting zones to maybe two at most, usually just one, and to streamline the leveling path so that it consists almost entirely of following one specific, linear storyline, and it quickly becomes clear that playing more than one character is a mug's game.

There's a whole, long essay to be written about those changes, how and why they came about, the upsides and the downsides, the unexpected consequences and the long-term impacts. This post is not the place for it.

This is just me commenting that, having decided to swap my "Main" in EQII from the Berserker I've played almost exclusively for a decade to a Necromancer I've played maybe five percent of the time, I've been surprised to find myself rediscovering some of the joys of having more than one active character in an MMORPG.

It helps hugely that the MMORPG in question is twenty years old and riven still with design artifacts from a former time. EQII these days is mostly an account-based game but not entirely so. All the important parts are there at the Account level - Heirloom gear, shared storage, currencies, Veteran rewards and all the many, many boons, boosts, perks and freebies from the Claim system - but there's still a lot that each character has to do for themselves.

Some of it can be annoying. I wouldn't complain if every character on my account woke up one day being able to speak all the languages any of the others had learned, for example. Other things, though, make the game feel alive in a way it can't for a character who's already been through most of it.

It feels really nice to travel through older zones and have the zing of discovery constantly echoing in my ears again. The xp is meaningless but the sound effects work like dopamine hits just the same.

Similarly, it's great to see Achievements pop for killing familiar bosses. Hardly any of the Achievements actually give me anything material and I have never had the slightest interest in Achievements in their own right but once again there's an autonomic response to the on-screen pop-up and the big burst of noise that makes the whole seem more fun, somehow.

Collections are all new again and so are the numerous Mastery quests, the ones that begin when you examine a body part from some new creature you just killed. And to my Necro, just about every creature she meets is new. 

Playing her now, it's very apparent that, although she did manage to level to one of the previous caps, she never really got out much. I think she took an earlier boost and then completed a couple of expansions but just about everywhere in Norrath she goes is entirely new to her and for me it makes the game feel new again, too.

Alright, not "new". Let's not get carried away. Let's rather say "refurbished".  

Whatever we call it, it certainly makes me feel like playing more and it gives me the confidence I might be able to get her set up in time to take over the lead for the next expansion without getting there feeling too much like work. It might even be fun. 

That, I'm remembering, was the main reason I used to make - and play - all those characters in the first place. It brings novelty into the experience without the need to swap games. Something developers might consider when throwing out babies.

Of course, I did swap games as well, so it's not a foolproof route to retention but I'm convinced I stayed with more than a few games for longer than I otherwise would because I was able to freshen them up for a while by rolling new characters and having it "mean something". Whether I'll ever get back to the old "more is better" mindset I somewhat doubt but if nothing else it's making good old Norrath feel interesting again for now.

The Method In Miragul's Madness

What with Chimeraland, Lost Ark and now Guild Wars 2's End of Dragons, poor old EverQuest II has had to take something of a back seat these last few weeks. Visions of Vetrovia, EQII's eighteenth expansion, launched at the beginning of December and I had been trucking along quite nicely there until the New Year but once I fell off the wagon I found it surprisingly hard to clamber back on board.

Norrath being Norrath, of course, there's always something going on. I missed almost all of Erolisi Day back in February. I didn't do the Public Quest in Commonlands even once and it's one of my favorites. I think that might be the first year I've missed it completely since it began.

I only lasted a couple of sessions on Kael Drakkel, the new Lore and Legend server. It was kind of fun, being able to go anywhere and do anything, but even after I'd stopped and thought about it for a while, I really couldn't see the point. 

The whole idea revolves around being able to do all the quests and see all the content without having to worry about leveling up but it seems to me you can already do that far more easily simply by taking a high level character on a Live server back through all the old content that interests you, either mentored down or just letting everything go grey. If all you want is the lore and the story, I don't begin to understand the argument that you have to be "at level" or that it needs to be "challenging". Surely, it's far easier to pay attention and follow the plot when all the mobs are either non-agro or one-shot kills. 

As for the supposed L&L gear ladder, where all named mobs drop a chest with an upgrade and there are several tiers of that to work through, it seems exciting until you start to ask yourself why you even need better gear. You can already solo everything very comfortably in the gear they give you when you make a character. If upgrades don't open the door to new content, what are they for?

It's an interesting existential question that I might return to one day but for now I've put Kael Drakkel on indefite hiatus. I found a lot more purpose in the current Chronoportal event, along with a good deal more "challenge" than I was expecting.

In a busy gaming season like this has been, I'd normally have skipped the Chronoportal Phenomenon. It's a very good event with much to recommend it but I've done it all before, more than once. For some reason, though, I found myself looking at the official announcement, where I noticed Darkpaw had added something new for this year's EQ Anniversary celebration.

As well as the obligatory new vendor items, there was a new quest, Beyond the Shimmering Portal, and a new dungeon, Miragul's Madness. That was enough to tempt me back. I never miss a new holiday quest. They're usually light, fluffy, easy and fun. 

Since both the quest and the dungeon were attached to the Chronoportal event, I assumed by "dungeon" they meant one of the instances in which EQII players get to revisit great moments from the elder game's past. Those can be quite intense at level but mentored down they're relaxing holiday entertainment.

I logged in my Berserker, pretty much out of force of habit. He's been my main character for so long I'd forgotten he's no longer quite at the top of the tree. It's my Bruiser who's been doing most of the VoV content so far so he's the one with the best gear right now.

Still, that wasn't going to matter in what I fully expected to be a semi-humorous, light-hearted holiday romp. I took the instant travel option to Commonlands and stepped through the portal into the Chronoweave, the limbo dimension where all the time portals stand neatly beside one another for your time-travelling convenience.  

I spoke to the guy with the feather over his head and picked up the quest, which sent me, as expected, into the new dungeon. And that was about the last thing that did go the way I thought it would.

In retrospect, I suppose the fact that the new dungeon comes with both solo and heroic versions should have given me a clue. I don't think that's the case with the rest of the instances, all of which are technically Heroic content but which scale using the Mentor system, meaning they're eminently soloable for anyone a few levels above the nominal level of the zone.

Miragul's Madness is not one of those. It's a fully-fledged, current end-game dungeon. All the mobs are Heroic Level 127-128s and the solo version uses the same upscaling as the ones in the latest expansion. As EQ2i warns you, loudly, right at the top of the walkthrough, "Content in the SOLO zone is level 127 ^^^ heroic and extremely difficult, if not impossible, at level 120 wearing Visions of Vetrovia box gear. It cannot be accomplished wearing pre-VoV gear." 

Oh, well. In for a penny...

Having glanced at the wiki before I started, I was somewhat apprehensive on the first pull. My berserker was 125 with much of his gear upgraded from the free starting kit but the reason I'd swapped from him to the Bruiser was because the Berserker hadn't been having the easiest time of it in Vetrovia's instanced content.

Things went well enough in the first room. Plinking away with the bow, the pulls were manageable. My 'zerker and his trusty Shissar merc had no trouble chopping them down. As they killed, I looked around the room. Impressive. The colors were tasteful, the lighting subtle, the architecture coherent and cool. There were some nice little details and the general feeling was one of class. The screenshots don't really do it justice. 

It also became apparent early on that this dungeon was bigger than I'd expected. A lot bigger. I began by killing everything and waiting to see what happened. The format of most holiday instances is fairly predictable: kill a bunch of mobs then maybe a mini-boss to open a new area, rinse, repeat until finished. 

The main difference between those kinds of knockabout escapades and a proper dungeon is mostly the Bosses. In a holiday instance bosses are generally tank-and-spank pushovers with no real tricks. In a real dungeon every Boss comes with about a gazillion hit points and a bunch of really annoying scripts.

Miragul's Madness is a real dungeon. I had to read the walkthrough carefully before every Boss fight and even then I mostly got it wrong first time. How I would have managed on my own doesn't bear thinking about. 

There are a lot of bosses, too. Seven you have to do plus a bonus one you can ignore. Or, in my case, chase futilely across the entire dungeon in a humiliating slow-motion crawl as you discover your DPS is nowhere remotely close to what you'd need to stop a fleeing snail from making its O.J. Simpson-style getaway with the loot from the last boss, the one you actually did kill.

All of the bosses were hard work with the possible exception of Takaboom and Hakapow, a couple of flying monkeys.The walkthrough dismisses them, accurately enough, with a simple two word tactical briefing: "straight fight".It was, inevitably, my favorite, mostly because I didn't have to to think about anything, just keep hitting.

The rest of them required a lot more attention than that. For a holiday event, the sheer amount of effort, not to say risk, involved would be orders of magnitude out of proportion to the quest rewards, a choice of a couple of housing items. Fortunately, the drops from each Boss more than make up for it.

I was very pleasantly surprised when I opened the first chest to find a piece of 295 Resolve gear inside. While that's nothing special, it is on a par with what drops from Bosses in solo instances in the expansion and significantly better than Sig line quest rewards. When I got to the final Boss, something that took me two sessions over a couple of days, his drops were even better at 300 Resolve.

All in all I think I spent about four hours there. It was a significant effort but it felt worth it. Some of the bosses were more than a little annoying (Looking at you, Edrigen.) but most of them were fun in a mildly masochistic sort of way. I'd be telling a very different story if I hadn't had a walkthrough to follow but since I did I'm not complaining.

Although there's clearly some decent solo gear to be had in Miragul's Madness, I wouldn't go back for another run for a while. I enjoyed it but I don't want to do it again right now. 

What I'm not entirely clear about is whether I'll have the chance to come back later. If the dungeon is indeed tied to the Chronoportal event then it's only going to be sticking around for a couple of weeks. The event ends on 16 March.

Miragul's Madness is a very well-designed, fully fleshed-out dungeon. I thought it was better than some of the expansion instances. It does seem like an awful lot of work for something that's only going to be available for two weeks a year.

Maybe there are plans to keep it in play after the event goes away. I hope so. While I wouldn't want to go through it all while it's still fresh in my mind, I might very well fancy another trip in a few weeks with my Bruiser or my Necro. Whether it stays or goes, though, it's an impressive piece of content that bodes well for future updates.

The EQII Roadmap tells us to expect more new dungeons in Game Update 119, due next month. Let's hope this sets the benchmark.

Art House Director

It's long been my contention that the only people who don't believe EverQuest II has the best housing in MMORPGs are those who've never taken the time and trouble to experience it in all its astonishing glory. Their loss.

It's not my job to convince anyone, of course. That would be down to Daybreak Games' marketing department, assuming they have one. I sometimes wonder. Anyway, I just wanted to post a few pictures of a couple of the new artworks that arrived with the Chronoportals event that's live throughout March.

Just for logging in you get the magnificent "Rise of Kunark" oil painting, which is the Keith Parkinson box art from the original boxed expansion. You can buy a 15" by 30" photo stock print of that from the official KP website for $80. Or you can have this one, framed, resizeable to several feet on a side, for free.

There's an absolutely astonishing wealth of artwork available within EQ2. Occupy White Walls might think it's breaking new ground with its virtual gallery gameplay but clearly DAISY hasn't been round my imaginary Maj'Dul house lately.

 If there's one reward that's guaranteed to get me collecting event currency it's artwork. All of my characters' walls are covered with paintings and etchings and drawings. There are statues and sculptures everywhere you look.

One day I really ought to buckle down and find out just what's available. My virtual collection ressembles my real-life pre-MMORPG buying sprees - random, chaotic, occasionally serendipitous.

Niami Denmother, as always, does a superb job of cataloging these things. Here's her list of the latest additions. With illustrations, naturally.

I think my favorite this time has to be the golden statue of Firiona Vie. I've "met" Firiona so many times now I feel I actually know her. It's a bit odd to have a life-size statue of her in my house. Not bad odd. But still odd.

I put her right in front of my trophy wall. There could be implications there that don't bear close examination. Best not think about it.

I bought a couple of the new paintings. "To The Tavern", The Halas one, almost has a hint of Alex Toth about it. Quite a lot of EQ2 paintings have that sensibility.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to go on placing objects in this particular house. According to the stats I'm at 640/700 but I might be able to expand. Doesn't matter. I have plenty more houses. One thing no-one is ever going to run out of in EQ2 is storage space for house items.

Enough about art. Since I'm home, I think I'll go and have a lie down. Read a little. Listen to some music. Saving the world can wait another day.

File It Under Fun From The Past : EverQuest, EQ2

Last night I was working on getting my EverQuest II Warlock to the level cap. He was a few bubbles into 108 when I finished Plane of Innovation, the first of the solo dungeons from 2017's Planes of Prophecy expansion. I exited into the lobby zone, Coliseum of Valor, and handed in my completed quest to the Goddess Druzzil Ro. Ding! 110.

It's a very positive indication of the quality of that expansion that I've now run four characters through all or most of the Signature questline and it still feels fresh and enjoyable. Counting the one character I bumped straight to 110 via the boost that came with last year's Chaos Descending, I now have five max level characters. It's the most I have ever had at one time in either EverQuest.

One of the benefits of having multiple characters at the cap in EQ2 is that the whole account gains a 20% xp boost for each, up to a maximum of 200%. My All Access account now has a "permanent" 100% xp bonus. That encourages me to carry on and level up even more characters. The faster and easier it gets, the more I enjoy it.

I put quotation marks around "permanent" just now because you get the bonus for having max level characters, not specifically level 110s. If and when the cap goes up the entire bonus will go away until I can level up all over again. Still, it's here now and for the rest of the year, at least, and I plan to make some use of it.

While I was dismantling clockworks and foiling Meldrath's schemes for the umpteenth time I was half following a conversation on the Test channel. For the longest time, one of the least-celebrated pleasures of playing Daybreak MMORPGs has been the wealth and depth of chat options available. Not only can you make custom channels, you can invite people to join them from any server and even from other games.

It's a great way to keep in touch with people you once played alongside, long after you may all have gone your separate ways. It's been many years since I played regularly on EverQuest II's Test server but all my accounts are registered with the Test channel and I regularly see and occasionally chat with familiar names from years ago.

This time they were talking about a new Public Quest that had just appeared for testing. In recent years, Public Quests - PQs as everyone calls them - have proliferated across Norrath. From their humble beginnings in Antonica and The Commonlands PQs have spread to Velious, Kunark and even The Planes. They feature increasingly heavily in recent expansions and public questing is becoming almost de rigeur for the holidays.

I've been running the new Erollisi Day PQ several times a day, most days, since it appeared a couple of weeks ago. I've hatched two eggs and the extraordinarlily cute familiars that popped out are bouncing along behind my Berserker and my Warlock in the least appropriate manner imaginable.

According to what I was hearing, the Test server was struggling to muster enough people to give the new PQ a good airing so I logged out and swapped accounts to throw one of my characters behind the team effort. The best I could do was either a Bruiser or a Necromancer at Level 90 but the PQ was supposed to be "for all levels" so I was hoping my lack of a maxed character on Test wouldn't matter.

It didn't, but my lack of the latest expansion on that account did. I asked where the PQ was and someone told me to go to Sinking Sands and use the portal there. That took me to an ethereal, unworldly lobby-zone where the portals for the Chronoportal event hung in space, drawn from all across Norrath.

I'm a bit vague on whether that's new for this year or I just missed it last time around. Later in the evening I found the portal to the Qeynos Hills instance next to the Antonican lighthouse, so you can still travel to the past from the specific locations as well. Although didn't that one used to be over by The Tower of the Oracles?

Whatever the story, I couldn't get in to see the new PQ, despite being in a raid group with the eight or nine people who could. I went to the Test board on the official forums and recounted my experience in case it might be considered a bug, then I wandered off to do some Chronoquesting on my own.

Fittingly, since all the quests celebrate events or tropes from the older game, EQ2 is once again planning on making some play of the Chronoportal "holiday" to help EverQuest celebrate its twentieth birthday. The event, which is always in March, dates back to 2011. I wrote about it the following year.

It's too early to say what the rewards might be. Usually there are some nostalgic paintings to hang on your wall. This year you get one of those just for logging in. Unfortunately the art assets haven't yet be linked so I can't reproduce or even describe it, only confirm that it's called Rise of Kunark.

What with yesterday's digression on casual play and last night's foray, I have been thinking - and researching - the current state of play on the Test servers for both EverQuest and EQ2.

It seems that, since last August, you have been able to create a Level 100 character on EQ2 Test for free. What's more, you can also bump a tradeskill to 100 for nothing. That's a very good deal. I do already have two Level 90s there, though, both of whom are also high-level crafters. Leveling through the 90s is good fun so I probably wouldn't bump them. I might add another class, though.

What's considerably more attractive is the deal available on EverQuest's Test server. I had completely forgotten that the long-running battle to keep Test free from copied characters was lost over a decade ago. 

Back when I played there was a strong feeling among many Test regulars that allowing characters to be cut and pasted across from Live would somehow damage the soul of the server. At the time I kind of agreed, but then again the practical advantages were so compelling it seemed churlishly selfish to insist on such a self-abnegating standard of purity.

Anyway, SOE enabled copying and it still pertains. This morning I copied my Level 93 Magician from Luclin/Stromm to Test and her clone is standing in the Guild Lobby, hoping for buffage, as I type this. To my considerable surprise there are forty other characters idling along with her, which is a Woodstock-sized turnout by Test standards.

There are major disadvantages to playing on Test but also some huge benefits, double xp all the time being the biggest. You can also re-copy characters as often as you want and all their gear and money comes with them so you have an endless money machine at your disposal. Which would be amazing if Test had an economy. Which it really doesn't.

How far any of this goes remains to be seen. I would love to hit three figures in EQ but I also know that it won't feel quite "real" on a copied character. Then again, since I swapped my All Access accounts around I haven't been playing the original mage much, anyway...

One way or another, all things Norrath seem to be heartily back on the agenda. I guess anniversaries do have weight. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what the official celebrations bring but in the meantime maybe I'll light a few candles to my own past glories, such as they ever were, and take a few turns around the Test servers, where I once had some of the funnest times ever.

Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends... Everquest, EQ2

Somehow, what with the flurry of publicity surrounding Everquest's sixteenth anniversary and the nostalgic jolt I got from playing through Tipa's homage to a lost era, I find myself unexpectedly back in Norrath once again. Or, I should say, Norraths. Plural.

Everquest the Elder is running a whole raft of celebrations, including new anniversary quests and the opportunity to re-run all of the previous ones. Everquest quests have a tendency to be long and fiddly so I'm thinking I'll pass on that offer. The sixteen days of 160% bonus xp, however, is too tempting to ignore.

Yesterday I put two levels on my human Druid (birthdate January 24 2000) taking her to 62. My human Warrior, the first real character I ever made after the hapless half-elf fell to his death and deletion in the first session, added a level and a half killing wisps and borer beetles in North Karana. It brought her, very appropriately, to level 16. Sixteen levels in sixteen years. That's what I call a smooth level curve.

The real focus, though, is on the Magician who took SOE's Heroic shilling almost exactly a year ago. She's slowly (so slowly) climbing the endless, ever-extending level ladder, the top of which currently rests on 105. She's standing on rung 88 right now and if she'll just buckle down and do Franklin Teek's tasks each day for the rest of March with her double xp Lesson of the Devoted veteran reward running she might just make 90 before the anniversary celebration ends.

That, however, almost certainly requires more patience and discipline than I can muster. I'll be happy enough if she can get 89.

Much more manageable is the new Chronoportal quest over in EQ2. The Chronoportals were added in 2011, in somewhat of an unseemly rush, to celebrate Everquest's 12th Anniversary. Why the 12th and not the 10th, who knows? Maybe someone at SOE prefers Imperial to Metric. Anyway, they came and they stayed and jolly good fun they are.

Back when they appeared Chronoportals were very much a group affair. As Ark warned at the time and as the really excellent Zam walkthrough still warns today, these were not meant to be soloed. I remember running them in a Guild group that first year and in PUGs the year after. It seems so much longer ago than just three or four years.


Well, if you're a level 99 Berserker (hmm...really must get that last 25%) fully kitted out with Fabled quest gear from the latest expansion you can forget those dire warnings. It took just ninety minutes or so to run through all eight solo and most of that was traveling time.

If you aren't quite so crazily overpowered you can still complete the new quest if you're very, very careful. Hunt the Past, requires that you visit all eight Chronoportal instances but you don't actually need to complete any of them to close out the quest and get the reward. It's a scavenger hunt in which all the mobs you need to kill are either close to the entrance just inside the instances or tucked away in a quiet corner and, unlike everything else roaming around, they are all intended to be soloable. There are no longer any level requirements to enter the instances and the quest mobs scale to level so in theory anyone can do it.

After a short search through the Commonlands, interrupted by the sighting of a hitherto unknown (to me) named armadillo called Thrumplate that necessitated a change of character to get someone low enough to get drops from a level 10 mob to come and kill him, I found the questgiver, the unpronounceably-named Tazstra K'Rzheett, on the clifftop above the Commonlands dock.

From there it was a straightforward and highly-enjoyable jaunt around Norrath via bell, spire and stone circle, meeting and killing familiar faces from the past. It turns out that last year's addition to the event was a Collect, which I was able to complete as I went.

The reward for the new quest is a choice of two house pets, one of which is the very amusing Guk Basilisk, a goofy model I've always liked. He'll make a fine addition to the menagerie.

The Chronoportal event itself runs for another week. It's a lot of fun and if I can find the time I may well run someone else through it. Whether there's anyone on the roster who can breeze it like the Berserker, though, is another matter entirely.

Less Is More: EQ2

Yesterday I mentioned EQ2's Chronoportal event. It's an atypical example because it seems it was almost thrown together as an afterthought and yet it's all the better for it.

The original Everquest understandably makes quite a big deal of its anniversaries and in 2011 EQ2 decided to join in. Some of the designers cobbled together eight instances using existing models and zones and drenched them in Everquest nostalgia. They pretty much did it in their spare time so they didn't create any baroque, overwritten story arcs or add any long-winded, time-consuming quest sequences. There's just a quick, optional introductory speech from one of the Chronomages to fit a fig-leaf of lore over the offending intrusion from the world of pure entertainment and then it's straight to the action.

That's what I call cutting to the chase

Travel isn't an issue. The portals open right beside bells or druid rings so the furthest is at most a couple of loading screens from anywhere. You can't quite group with anyone because each instance (one per tier from 20 to 90) has a minimum entry requirement of ten levels below the tier, but other than that the instance itself mentors you all to the same level when you zone in.

Oi!! Biggles!! She's over here!

Once inside, all the instances are small and compact. In a good group they each take five to ten minutes. You can run through all eight in an hour or so. All the mobs are tuned for a group and are quite tough if you are doing them at level, although they can be soloed with care by some classes and by most classes with a mercenary (an option which didn't exist when the instances were designed, of course).

What? Yes of course I did a camp check.

The loot is excellent for level and the event would be popular for that reason alone, but it's also very well-received by long-time players because of the strong nostalgia factor and the really rather good jokes. The boundlessly optimistic Fippy Darkpaw makes an early appearance, to the evident despair of the other gnolls, and several magicians see their epic hopes dashed yet again as they rush back from afk bio to see some guy in plate standing over a pile of horsefeathers. Best of all, a number of adventurer stereotypes offer the wisdom of crowds on how to spawn the Ancient Cyclops. I laughed out loud at these last time and they still raised a chuckle a year later.

As well as the good loot that drops, each instance rewards two Ancient Platinum Coins which can be spent at a couple of special vendors. All they sell are nostalgic house items, and each item costs just one Coin. There are twenty-six things to buy (four new ones were added this year), making it easy to acquire all the coins needed to collect everything.

Don't have nightmares

The event runs for nine days and doesn't outstay its welcome. It's very much a drop-in event with no compulsion to keep running the instances after you've seen enough (unless you're determined to get the rareish Pegasus Cloak and that might even be a kind of nostalgic meta-joke in itself). It's a textbook example of how to do more with less. First time round it was tossed up with no fanfare or hype and it returned this year in the same way. It's obvious that it was designed by people who were making something they thought was fun and it transmits.

More like this, please.

Events, Dear Boy... : EQ2

When exactly did it start? There must have been a time once, when you could wake up fresh, in that room you favored upstairs along the corridor away from the bar perhaps or maybe out among the pines, rolled in your dew-drenched cloak beside the cooling embers of your campfire, looking forward to a day filled with adventure. Another day of magic and mayhem just waiting to be seized.

It is Soulday, Grayeven 3 of the year 3881 and I have otters to train. It's been a busy week. A busy month. A busy year. Even before the Frostfell Village wardrobe had folded itself through four dimensions and packed itself flat back under the bed, the ever-traveling fair came rolling into Gorowyn, half-elven barkers hanging bunting from any Sarnak that couldn't scuttle away fast enough. They'd barely packed away their tents before full moon signaled a frenzy of mushrooming and root-beer in fairy grottoes across Norrath.
 

A Dungeon? Might be able to fit one in on the 17th

Then there are the Holy Days. The gods made a poor job of being dead, or gone or whatever it is that gods do when they lose patience with being farmed twice a day and five times on Sundays. Errolisi Marr still finds time to sponsor a whole raft of dubious romantic rituals for the day held in her honor. Day? Hah! It lasts two love-sodden weeks by when we're all heartily glad to see the back of her. Don't say anything though because here comes her god-buddy Brell, twenty feet tall with a tankard like a bucket, god of fatty liver disease and drunken one-night stands and another one who thinks there are fourteen nights in a Day.

The hangovers have scarcely had time to fade before Bristlebane arrives and we all know what fun he is. Oh come on. Some people have no sense of humor. At least he can count.

I think it's some Elven thing?

Oh but wait, that's not all. Those are just the events that get on the Calendar. At least that gives them a veneer of internal consistency, unlike meta-events, viz and to wit Everquest's  Anniversary, currently being celebrated in EQ1 by the appearance of loot-laden Fabled versions of everyone from Fippy to Venril Sathir and in EQ2 through the medium of modern dance Chronoportals.

I only pick on Norrath because that's where I spend a lot of my time. I could throw a dart at my monitor and come up with a similar list from any icon on my desktop. (I wouldn't do that. Obviously.) I was barely in Azeroth for three months and I think I saw four major Holidays. Rift is pretty much all either event or holiday, with the current one being a post-modern masterpiece of self-congratulatory backslapping. Someone at Trion has the irony meter turned up to 11, that's for sure.

Excuse me, weren't we at war?

Is it too much? We've done dailies (How we've done dailies...) but dailies at least have the "merit" of always being there. Events bring a pressure if not to complete then at least to take part. They're fun, especially first time through, but they come back year after year and they bloat. All last year's rides return and there are mutterings if anything's missing and if there's nothing new. When does a good thing turn into too much of a good thing?

I'm a big take it or leave it-er. In the words of Richard Hell, I can take it or leave it each time. Even so, I get pulled in. I know people who trudge through each Imaginary Holiday with the grim, set smile of an ex at a wedding. I've even known people stop logging in altogether, overwhelmed, unable to keep up.

I'm not against fun. I used to get as excited as anyone when Santug Klaug popped up in Plane of Knowledge and started yelling or when someone started jabbering hysterically over guild chat about giant skeletons taking over Qeynos Hills. But those were surprises. They were adventures. We didn't know they were coming. Not to put too fine a point on it, we didn't have a Calendar!

When you find yourself wishing it would just be over already, it's not fun any more. I like events but if we could just snap them along a bit? Maybe the "Days" could last for a weekend, not a fortnight? That'd be a start.