Evil Is As Evil Does

It seems very old-fashioned now, but when EverQuest launched back in 1999, good vs evil was a real thing. Among a number of really quite significant choices you had to make at character selection was whether you were going to be a goodie or a baddie. Yes, Virginia, back then that sort of thing actually mattered!

If you chose to be Evil with a capital E you'd pick an Officially Evil race, Troll being the most reviled until the first expansion, Ruins of Kunark, when they had to cede that honor to the Iksar. Ogres came next followed by Dark Elves, who were more your suave, sinister evil masterminds. Or you could pick a good or neutral race and be Necromancer or a Shadowknight, which would mean your career would overwrite your racial heritage, a popular choice for anyone who wanted to be a Bad Gnome.

Most races had a city of their own and there were a lot of races. For maybe the first decade, most MMORPGs came with multiple races, alignments, classes and starting cities. Extensive choice was was one of the defining principles of the genre. If you picked an evil class that had to share space with goody-goodies, you'd get your own secret hideouts within the walls, often underground or in the sewers.

And you'd better have done your homework before you started. Character creation in the early days didn't mean tweaking sliders until you had something you could bear to look at. It meant getting a character you'd be able to play for more than a few sessions before you were forced to re-roll and start over. 

It was entirely possible to gimp your character, that being the awkward term in common use back then. If you picked the wrong race/class combo you might not even know anything was wrong until you started to look for groups and found no-one willing to take you on. 

The more immediate problem, though, came when you walked past some innocuous-looking guard standing next to a tower along the roadside out in the middle of nowhere, only to find yourself back at your spawn point, when it turned out you were the evil monster he was guarding that tower from.

In EQ, all of that was fixable over time. You might start out evil (Or good.) but you didn't have to stay that way. Every race had Faction and Faction was a Stat and one of the often-forgotten aspects of EverQuest's gameplay is that it includes a whole raft of stats that go up with use. Everyone talks about leveling up in that game but no-one talks about raising skills, even though EQ is as much skills-based as it relies on levels.

Another, mostly uncelebrated, fact about EverQuest is that at the start it was much more of a sandbox than a theme-park. There was no central storyline and questing, even though it was right there in the name, mostly seemed like an afterthought. There was a great deal of setting your own goals and working towards them and one goal a lot of players who'd picked Team Evil at the start liked to set for themselves was Getting Everyone To Like Me.

I did a bit of that. Not as much as some but enough for it to be the main thing I did for a few weeks on certain characters. My Ogre Shadowknight killed scores of corrupt guards until his faction was good enough to let him hand in their helmets for extra credit, then scores more until eventually he could stroll into the bank in North Freeport and get service like a regular citizen.

I did it partly to see if I could, partly because killing guards was great xp, and mostly because otherwise banking was a fucking nightmare. I'd have had to go all the way back to Oggok in the swamps, three or four zones away, or else to the dark elf city of Neriak, a trek to get there only to end up wandering the maze-like corridors for far too long before I figured out where I was going wrong. 

Before the second expansion, Scars of Velious, which added the icebound city of Thurgadin, filled with dwarves so cut-off from civilization they'd lost most of their prejudices and would trade with anyone, Evil characters were very restricted in things like where they could bank or shop or find services of any kind. Even traveling on the roads through what looked like open countryside could be fatal. The same thing applied to Good characters in reverse, of course, but somehow it never seemed to inconvenience them nearly as much.

The difficulty was compounded by race, meaning evil humans or gnomes would get a pass in places where Ogres and especially Trolls would be killed on sight. Dark Elves flitted somewhere in the middle, their options often hugely improved by the class choices available to them. There was a very good reason why so many DEs decided to become Enchanters, a class with a whole line of spells designed to let them impersonate other races or fool people into treating them nicely.

Thurgadin was all very well but it was even more inconvenient to get to than the racial starting cities. It wasn't until the third expansion, Shadows of Luclin, opened travel gates that took us to the moon, where no-one knew or cared what your alignment was, that it became practical to stay all evil, all the time. 

From then on, alignment and faction gradually lost their power and influence. Well, I say "gradually"... It was more of a landslide.

The fourth expansion, Planes of Power, didn't just add a completely neutral city, it filled that city with every conceivable service and facility, making it by far the most appealing place to set your bind spot, particularly since the expansion also came with the game's first instant, on-demand travel service. Granted, you still had to get to a physical object in the game-world, a "Book", and click on it, but there were Books outside every starting city and in plenty of other places, too, so that wasn't much of a problem.

That was, to most intents and purposes, the end of Good and Evil as a limiting factor in the game. There was and still is a residual effect - try rolling up a High Elf and strolling into Oggok and see how far it gets you - but for almost all practical purposes, it makes no difference any more. We're all murder hobos together and every newly discovered continent or plane or dimension can't tell us apart.

Planes of Power came out in 2002, a couple of years before EverQuest II appeared. You might have thought the experience the dev team had garnered by then might have led them to the understanding that, while some players quite enjoyed the challenge of a faction grind, most preferred to be able to play the game without having to prep first.

Not a bit of it. EQII launched with a hard-coded Good/Evil split that made even Classic EQ look like Hello Kitty Online. Everyone had to be either GOOD or EVIL. The big difference from the elder game was that your alignment was no longer tied to your race. You could be a good troll or an evil high elf. Unlike before, though, you couldn't be a neutral anything.

That was because in EQII your alignment was decided not by anything so crass as what you looked like. What mattered was where you lived. When you reached the end of the introduction on the Isle of Refuge, you had to choose to take ship either to Freeport or Qeynos. Going to Freeport meant you were evil. If you went to Qeynos you were good.

And don't think it wasn't going to matter much in the long run, either. Years after EverQuest had made it seamless for all races and alignments to work together, EQII decided it would be great if it wasn't only the characters who couldn't mix. How about if the players couldn't, either?

You could be in the same guild together but to form the guild everyone had to be of the same alignment and the guild hall would be in that alignment's city so good luck to anyone from the other side who joined later, trying to use the facilities. There was no mailing items to the opposition and quest credit and guild status had some sort of blocks on them, too, as I recall. Shared guild missions were supposed to be a big content driver but apparently no-one in the dev team had thought about that.

That was on a PvE server, of course. On a PvP server you couldn't even group together, let alone share a guild. In fact, screw grouping - you couldn't even talk to the other side. The two cities spoke different languages. But hey, PvP, right? Suck it up!

You didn't have to do that. In both PvP and PvE there was a long and complicated process you could undertake to switch sides. If you were really bloody-minded abut it, you could pause in the middle and become de facto neutral, but that only meant everyone hated you.

Was it popular? Maybe for PvP. On the PvE side of the divide, hell, no, it was not! Everyone hated it, surprise, surprise. Faction restrictions were some of the earliest to be revised and eventually removed. Even before the whole game was revamped by Scott Hartsman a year or so after launch, most of the alignment restrictions for PvE players had already melted away.

A residue remains, all the same. The two cities still nominally retain their alignments although these days there are plenty of other starting cities to pick if you want to be free of the worst of it. Those tend to lean towards one side or the other, even so.

Perhaps the greatest legacy of those bad, old days are the two mighty starting zones, Antonica and Commonlands, the former stretching out from the gates of Qeynos to the Thundering Steppes, the latter from Freeport to Nektulos Forest. Together with the cluster of very low-level zones attached to each city, these vast stretches of land kept most adventurers both busy and apart for the first twenty levels or so.

Back in 2004, I found the whole thing confusing and counter-intuitive. By inclination, I prefer to play neutral or good-leaning characters but Qeynos lagged so badly at launch I couldn't stand to be there. As I remember it, which may not be strictly accurate, Mrs. Bhagpuss and I started off trying to play in Qeynos but had to re-roll because it was just untenable. Freeport had its problems but at least it was a lot easier to move around. 

That we'd also both preferred Freeport to Qeynos in EQ was probably a factor. In EQ, Freeport was more like a neutral city than an evil one. Trolls and Ogres weren't tolerated but Dark Elves and evil classes could move safely through the parts of the city not controlled by the religious factions. Qeynos was a lot less sanguine about that sort of thing and felt a lot more restrictive.

That was how we ended up playing multiple characters on both side of the ideological divide, especially once the lag got sorted out and I'd upgraded my PC. It meant I got to know both Antonica and Commonlands pretty well. 

Maybe next time I'll even get around to talking about one of them.

Dirty Old Town

EverQuest II's Origins/Anashti Sul beta began yesterday. This morning I took a very quick look at it. I'm not intending to spend much time there but I couldn't resist the temptation to remind myself what  Freeport used to be like. Having spent half an hour or so walking the streets of the old city I can sum it up in a couple of words: shabby and inconvenient.

Before I get to the details, I'd just like to complement Darkpaw on the beta process itself, which is exemplary. I haven't bothered with an EQII beta in a long time, one of the reasons being that it used to be something of a pain installing the client. I remember it involved a lot of fiddling around to get it working and that switching back and forth between beta and Live could be awkward. 

Not any more. It could scarcely be simpler. There's a drop-down menu on the launcher. You just open it, select the server "Version" you want from a choice of four (US English, EU English, Beta, Public Test), apply your selection and that's it. The patcher sets up a separate installation in your EQII folder. It holds the unique data and it uses the same common data as your regular install, so there's no need for an entire duplicate client, which was one of the things that used to put me off. 

When you want to switch from one version to another, you just re-select your preference and everything is done for you. It's flawless and fast.

Am I the first to arrive?

The same can't quite be said for my trip to Freeport but it wasn't too much of an inconvenience. First I had to make a character. That didn't take long. I knew I wouldn't be playing her for long so there was no point in trying to make her look perfect. And ratongas tend to look pretty decent whatever you do with them, anyway. Unlike gnomes. Or most other races in EQII, come to that.

Speaking of gnomes, the captain of the Far Journey can't tell the difference between gnomes and ratongas. All "shorties" look alike to him, apparently, although he doesn't exactly come right out and say it. It's a weird moment, presumably unintentional, possibly related to the game not recognizing player races correctly and it would most likely have gone unremarked in 2004 but it struck me as quite uncomfortable in 2024. 

Of course, the Far Journey Tutorial was re-instated in the live game several years ago, so this may not even be anything specific to the Origins project. I don't think I'm quite curious enough to make a new ratonga on Live and see if it happens there, too, but I might submit a feedback report to the beta team.

I didn't really want to play through the tutorial yet again but by the time it occured to me to wonder if there was a way to skip it, I was in the middle of it anyway so I just carried on. Fortunately, the Origins build does allow you to opt out of all the Isle of Refuge content, something I'm pretty sure you couldn't do at release. I'm not sure when that option was added so I can't say if it's authentic to the 2006 game.

That doesn't look safe...

If not, then I'm very surprised it got left in. The rule of thumb for the upcoming server would appear to be: if it counts as a "Quality of Life" improvement, take it out. After a while it became so obvious that was what they'd done, I started to think more generally about how these retro servers work. 

It's bizarre, once you look at it objectively. The PR for every Old School or Vanilla or Classic server in every MMORPG always goes hard on authenticity, the idea being that by playing there you'll somehow come closer to the ur-version of the game: clean, pure, unsullied by commerce, undiluted by compromise, somehow real in a way the modern game can never be.

What that generally translates to in practice is the removal of most of the changes that players, specifically those who played during the era that's being - faultily - replicated, lobbied long and hard to bring to the game in the first place. While devs often make changes players didn't ask for, those rarely involve things like adding more convenient travel options or reducing loading times.

Old East Freeport. Unfriendly and unkempt.

New East Freeport: Urban renewal and civic pride.

As I was walking around Freeport, looking at but not really admiring the city the way it used to be, I kept running up against things that made my progress slower, more awkward, less fluent. The most striking example was the return of closed gates between each district. Not just the Neighborhoods, which have always required a zone transition, but the cardinal quarters of the city itself.

Each of those districts is now a separate zone once more but the inconvenience goes further. I'd forgotten that none of the internal "Bells", like the one you can click on in West Freeport to go to North Freeport, for example, existed in the original game. I don't know when they were added but it must have been after 2006. 

Even the spiral staircase that takes you from North Freeport to the East Freeport docks has been seamlessly removed. I ran down there, looking to take a short cut, and found myself staring at a dead end. Now that I cast my mind back, I have a vague memory of that stairwell being added at some stage and having to learn to remember to use it. Now I guess I'll have to learn not to.

Other missing conveniences I noticed included missing vendors all over the place. The woman who stands in the corner of the East Freeport bank, to whom I always sell my status items, for example, is nowhere to be seen. Then again, neither is the banker. There is no bank in  East Freeport any more.

I was somewhat surprised to find all the crafting tables are still in the above-ground crafting building in West Freeport. I half-expected we'd be sent back down underground to the crafting instance in the basement. Things don't seem to have gone quite that far but I suspect that's where everyone will end up anyway because there's no broker or anyone to hand out writs or even sell fuel upstairs now.

In fact, if there's any convenience you've become used to in the last ten or fifteen years, I recommend you forget it. It's not going to be there. It feels surreally ironic to realise that the new server will require a subscription to play but for your money you'll be denied access not just to all the in-game conveniences but also to some of the best perks the sub is meant to give you, like instant travel to any portal on the map. 

Old North Freeport - more gargoyles, more firepots, more water-damage

New North Freeport: more mages, more gilt, better paving.

If you think about the popularity of both Classic and Hardcore servers, where more and more options are removed to make the experience more compelling, maybe the ultimate in authenticity would be a server where you'd pay money not to be allowed to log in at all. The terrifying thing is, you know if any developer added something like that, even as a joke, someone would pay for it. And then complain that they hadn't got their money's worth because they could still see the server's name in the list.

I can't really make fun of such people. I mean, I re-subscribed to World of Warcraft just to play Classic and I will surely be making a character to play on Anashti Sul, as soon as the doors open in June. I can't say, though, that the appeal for me lies in the removal of all those basic improvements we were so pleased to see added to the game in the first place.

Neither am I crazy about returning to the original Freeport, now I've been reminded what it was like. It's not just the inconvenience. It's the way it looks, too. I remember now how often the Overlord's city was criticized for its appearance back in the early days. People complained it was dull and tired and nothing like what you'd expect a tyrant of Lord Lucan's pomp and arrogance to call home.

The problem lies in both the textures and the design. If the intention was to suggest a great city worn down by decades of chaos and war, it hasn't entirely succeeded. It looks more like somewhere that used to be important until the trade routes moved elsewhere and which now can barely raise enough taxes to keep the streets clean. There are even pigs wandering around as if Freeport was some market town that couldn't afford to keep its fences in order, not the greatest seaport in the nation.

If you're gonna eat 'em, don't give 'em names.

By contrast, the Freeport that replaced it looks elegant, austere and foreboding. No-one would doubt its military might or its economic power. It's colorful and almost pleasant in parts. You could imagine Lucan's fraternal despots staying on for a few days after a summit, just to enjoy the sea air and the public executions.

The new Freeport is also much busier. There are people everywhere; no wandering pigs to be seen. In part it's that plenty of NPCs have been added to provide services but there are also more citizens just standing around. The older Freeport looks half-empty by comparison, as though anything worth doing must be happening somewhere else.

And yet, Old Freeport does have an atmosphere, downbeat and depressing as it is. The wandering pigs may make it feel as though the city's glory days are long gone but it's still nice to see Lord Oinkles again. I even thought I heard a few insults I hadn't heard in a long time as I jogged through the backstreets. I wouldn't swap the old for the new but it's good to come back for a visit, if only to see how much better everything is today.

And that's about as much as I'm going to say about it for now. I could go on to talk about the Neighborhoods, several of which I visited today, but I'll save that for when the server goes live in a few weeks. 

I'll also save my thoughts about what it's going to be like to level up in an environment like this for later, too. I'll just throw this out there as something to consider, in case you're thinking of playing: if you'd find it humiliating to be chased out of a zone by a Level 3 spiderling, you might want to re-consider your options...

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation

Meet Mitsu, aka The Ratonga Formerly Known As Lana. Last time we saw her, she was trying to make up her mind where to go to avoid being dumped onto Antonia Bayle, when Kaladim closes down.

After I wrote that post I spent a fair while considering the options but in the end I decided to send her to Isle of Refuge on the grounds that it was a relatively new server with a ruleset I hadn't explored before. Even though I thought I'd done enough research before making my choice, it's possible I should have done more.

For one thing, I didn't realise until after I arrived that it was going to be a one-way trip. As the original press release puts it 

When Isle of Refuge launches, there will be no transfers allowed on or off Isle of Refuge. This is a new Norrathian community being formed, and we want you all to have the opportunity to build relationships and a thriving player economy. There are no plans to EVER allow transfers off the Isle of Refuge server, though we may open transfers TO this server at a future date.

Dragging out that creaky old metaphor one more time, Isle of Refuge is the Hotel California of servers; you can check in but you can never leave.

The reason for the lockdown is the Free Trade ruleset. Isle of Refuge allows almost everything to be bought and sold, including all kinds of Look-at-me! Aren't-I-amazing? items, the ones that mark a certain kind of player out as a Very Big Deal indeed, at least in their own head-canon. Can't have just anyone strutting around the Freeport docks like they're someone, without knowing they've paid their dues, can we?

Which is fine, honestly. I'll take the hit, even though I'm not going to be the one wearing any of that stuff, I can't see myself wanting to buy a transfer token to move a low-level character from one EverQuest II server to another, anyway. What would be the point?

"And see you're off the streets by curfew... or else!"

There's another aspect of the relocation I'd failed to consider. One that could prove more significant. To quote from the press release once again

To play on the Free Trade Server, you must be an All Access Member.

Which I am, at the moment. And again, it's not something I have any particular plans to change. I've been paying a subscription for EQII since the day it launched. For five years before, too, if comes to that. I'll probably still be subbing as long as the Isle of Refuge server lasts, unless it outlasts me, which I guess is not that much of a leap to imagine.

Of course, while I'll most likely keep a subscription going, who's to say it'll always be on this account? I've swapped before. It could happen again. That would leave the erstwhile Lana stranded, peering hopefully from character select, waiting for a call that could never come. I do still log in characters on my unsubbed accounts from time to time, but only those on the mainline servers like Skyfire or Maj`Dul.

But then, as the poets love to tell us, 'twas ever thus. Lana on Kaladim was as partitioned as Mitsu on Isle of Refuge. You need an All Access account to play on any of the special ruleset servers. No change there. I don't know why I mentioned it.

And anyway it's done. For well or ill, Mitsu is on Isle of Refuge. She's going nowhere. Except, maybe she is. Maybe she's going forward. I haven't quite decided.

Excuse me, but do you have a room I could rent?

I was excited to play her when Kaladim began. It was a busy, bustling new server experience with everyone starting from scratch and pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. I had fun. Only my fun was much slower than everyone else's. 

By the time Lana had clawed her way to level 20 the bubble was somewhere up by the cap. I lost traction and fell away, returning briefly when the timer got to expansion #3, Echoes of Faydwer, the first with new, low-level content. Another half dozen levels and I was gone again.

Looking back, two things kept me connected to the character; firstly her look, which I'd crafted more carefully than most, keeping her in a full set of very low-level chainmail that made her look as though she'd stepped off the boat that very day, topped off with a spectacular flashy helmet from one of the summer holiday events. Secondly and perhaps more potently, there was her name: Lana.

The look she still has. The name is lost. I knew it would never survive the move to another server, any server. You can guarantee any short, familiar real-world name will have been taken years ago, let alone one freighted with import like this one. There are a lot of famous Lanas to model a character on.

I might have been miffed about that had I not had another Great Idea. I'd just finished Supercute Futures Two and written a post about how very much I'd enjoyed it. I've always been all about naming my characters after fictional favorites, even though almost every EULA strictly forbids it. Fortunately, my tastes drift so far from the median there's precious little chance of anyone noticing, far less reporting my choices.

The question was whether to go for Mitsu or Mox. Easily answered. Mox was taken. That suited me. I prefered Mitsu. Maybe some day I'll get one of those Mercenaries you can rename and call her Mox. That would be too cool. 

It's not as nice as my old place but it'll do... for now.

So there I was, with a character, a name, a server and maybe even a goal. The only thing I was missing was a home. Except, wait... didn't I say something in that last post about how Lana had a very nice room, all decorated to her taste, back on Kaladim?  

Actually, no, I didn't. Or rather I did, but in a paragraph I took out in the edit because when I logged in to take a screenshot of the place I couldn't find it. Only an empty inn room.

It took me a while to figure out why that was. I was sure I remembered placing a bunch of holiday rewards beside the furniture Lana had crafted for herself. So where was it?

I'll tell you where it was. It was in her room in Temple Street, that's where. When Kaladim launched, one of the unusual features of the server was the partial restoration of the original racial neighborhoods. For years they'd been unavailable, converted into quest-and-combat instances, only to be entered by those on one of the racial questlines. You couldn't live there any more. 

Except on Kaladim, you could and I did. That's where Lana's room was. And now she's Mitsu on Isle of Refuge that's very much where it's not. Mitsu has an almost empty inn room to keep the Freeport militia from running her in for vagrancy and that's all.

Well... the inn room and her choice of a bunch of free, Prestige homes, all available in /claim. In fact, she could have any home of her choice, if she cares to dig into the communal account slush fund. There's almost 30k in Daybreak Cash in there. 

Now she's on Isle of Refuge all the chains are broken. There's no reason for her to act like it's 2005 any more. The new server doesn't care and now neither do I. She can't share in the considerable largesse of her elders on Skyfire - shared banks aren't cross-server - but anything available on an account level is hers for the taking.

Mitsu is rich. Beyond her dreams. Will it go to her head? 

We'll see.

All The Trees Of The Field Will Clap Their Hands: EverQuest

When I went to log into EverQuest yesterday evening the servers were down for an update. I popped in to the forums to read the patch notes and this line jumped out at me:

"Treants in classic zones have reverted to their classic appearance."

It's a short, simple sentence but it raises a surprising number of questions, like which zones, exactly, are we calling "classic" these days? Just the ones from the original release, like in "WoW Classic" or "Core Tyria"?  Or is it the supposed "golden age of classic EverQuest", by which we could be talking about anything up to and including Planes of Power?

I'm not sure there even were any treants in Kunark or Velious or Luclin. Actually, I'm pretty sure there weren't, so I guess it's a moot point. And what exactly was a treant's "classic appearance", anyway? Blowed if I know. It must have been easily fifteen years since they changed it. I tried to remember what they used to look like but I came up blank.

Then there's the semantic value. If something's looked a certain way for more than three-quarters of its existence, isn't that its "classic appearance"? Whatever it looked like before may be its original appearance, but "classic"? I'm not convinced.

The biggest question, though, has to be "Why?" Did anyone care? Have there been complaints? Is there some kind of Treant Classic Appearance Committee that's been lobbying for a rollback ever since the fateful Day of Change?

It's not the first time this has happened, either. I remember being equally surprised a while back - maybe it was last year or the year before - when I saw a similar patch message about wolves. I think it was wolves. It might have been rats.

Whatever it was, they reverted too. I wasn't playing much at the time so I didn't follow it up although I have a vague memory of going to Velious to take a look. In which case it was probably wolves. Not many rats in Velious. Ratmen, yes. Rats, not so much.

As soon as the servers came up the first thing I did was log in my Druid. She spends most of her time hanging out with the other druids at the North Karana druid ring, just a short run from the South Karana bridge. I ran her down there and over  the river then carried on, past the centaur village, down to the old two-spawn back in the hills.

Time was when you'd need to join a list for that. Those treants had a life expectancy measured in seconds. Now they live out their days in peace, creaking and groaning in the wind. And they do indeed look like they did back when I first saw them. I remember now.

It's a very cartoonish look. I didn't realize at the time. On a 15" CRT monitor they came across as considerably more threatening, especially when they came lumbering towards you, waving their branches. Now they just look comical.

So that's the classic look. With that itch scratched, naturally I started to wonder what the non-classic look used to be. I thought I remembered but I wasn't sure. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, right?

I could think of a few places to check. I took my Beastlord on a quick trip to Plane of Nightmare. I'd felled my share of walking trees there, for sure, and been killed by them. But no, those trees always had their own model. They still do. I guess it's another kind of "classic". 

Over in Blightfire Moors, a zone from 2006's The Serpent's Spine, I found treants with a familiar
look. I think that's the one that's just been reverted but I can't say I'm a hundred per cent certain. I kind of wish we'd had some warning. I'd have taken a few screenshots, just for the record. It's not as if it matters but it would have been nice all the same.

There was something else in the patch notes, too. Try this one on for size:

"Painting: Tassel's Tavern when placed in housing should now correctly teleport you to the tavern in classic North Freeport."

Say what, now?

I had to look this one up. It took a bit of research but apparently there are teleport paintings in EverQuest just like there are in EQII. They come from racial "Heritage Crates". You can buy those in the cash shop. 

If you collect all of them (I think there are four) you can get an Achievement called "Human Art Collector". That gives you yet another painting, Tassel's Tavern, which will teleport you to the inn of the same name... in old North Freeport.

That's right. Not the reviled, revisionist nightmare everyone hates and shuns but an instanced version of the much-missed, original North Freeport zone. Or perhaps we should say the "classic" version.

As many people have already asked, if we can go to an instanced version, why can't we just have the classic version back for good? I mean, you just did it with the treants...

It's all getting a bit Philip K. Dick for me. I think I'm going to go and have a lie down.

A Little Something On Account

Between us, Mrs Bhagpuss and I have seven Daybreak accounts. I made the first when I bought EverQuest in 1999. As soon as Mrs Bhagpuss watched me playing she wanted a go so we shared that account for a couple of months, in flagrant breach of the EULA.

We didn't really need Sony Online Entertainment's contract enforcement team to tell us that was a bad idea. As our desire to play expanded to fill most of the available hours it soon became clear we didn't just need separate accounts, we needed separate PCs.

An account each was fine for the first few years. Our shared origins made for a few problems now and then but mostly we settled down to me using the original and Mrs Bhagpuss using the newer one.

That arrangement didn't last as long as you might imagine. Somewhere along the line, for reasons I can no longer remember, we swapped. In short order each of us ended up with yet more characters on both accounts. Don't ask me why. I'm sure it made sense at the time.

The 66-slot backpack as it looks from the outside.

Fortunately for both of us, all of that only ever really applied to EverQuest. We managed, by and large, to keep our characters and accounts seperate in EverQuest II and only I ever played any of the other All Access titles.

We'd probably still have just the two accounts if it hadn't been for one of John "Smed" Smedley's brilliant wheezes. He experienced a damascene conversion to the free to play model and, despite a determined rearguard action by a substantial cadre of veteran players, managed to drag the entire business around to his "free to play - your way" of thinking.

The transition began cautiously with a new f2p server, Freeport. I can't now recall exactly how the whole thing worked but I seem to remember that to play there you needed a new account unsullied by subscription payments. Or possibly we just thought it would be tidier that way. Better late than never, I guess.

Whatever the reason, Mrs Bhagpuss and I made new accounts and  started over. Freeport was a great success and we were very happy there for several years. It remains one of my favorite servers in any game although sadly, like most of the really good ones, it no longer exists. It was merged and merged again until all that remains is a legacy title that I proudly display above the heads of my Old Freeportians.

We'd have stopped at four accounts if it hadn't been for another of SOE's half-baked fancies. EQII had muddled along perfectly happily for many years with the best housing offer in MMORPGs. It could have gone on like that indefinitely but there always has to be someone who thinks they can do better, doesn't there?

Apparently what decorators had been missing all these years was competition! Cut-throat competition. A whole set of league tables was created, with awards and prizes and titles and guess what? All hell broke loose.

Smed's always been strong on PvP, even when it's seemed a bad fit for some of the games under his watch but I don't think even he could have imagined the mayhem his little sideshow would unleash. Housemakers couldn't actually beat each other to death with ulthork's foot umbrella stands but they found plenty of ways to turn what had been a polite mutual appreciation society into a self-declared celebrity death match.

No-one cares about the mechanics any more so I won't attempt to recount them. Suffice to say we made another three accounts because if you want to win a popularity contest the more votes you can keep in your pocket the better.

Born too late.

All of which is a very long preamble to explain how it was that I came to be logging in seven accounts this morning, five of which haven't seen daylight for several years. My goal was to secure for each of them the very excellent Great Escape Crate that I mentioned a couple of days ago. I'm not sure if the offer is time-limited but better safe than sorry. Wouldn't want to miss out on something I'm never going to use on characters I'm never going to play. Forget the irony, just give me the stuff!

It's not as though it was the first time, after all. All the accounts have Heroic characters on them from previous giveaways, including Mrs. Bhagpuss's. She hasn't even logged in to EQII since before Heroic characters existed but I always log in her accounts to grab a free Heroic if there's one going.

Across my own accounts and the "neutral" ones I appear to have boosted have no fewer than three Ratonga shadowknights as well as an Iksar warlock and a Ratonga bruiser, who even has the same name as the one I'm playing on my regular account. I don't remember making any of them, although a couple seem to have been played, at least a little. I still have plenty of Heroic tokens left, too, if I feel like making some more.

Why, yes, thank you. I would like another ratonga.

As I was searching through the Claim window for the current promotion I noticed a number of other freebies I seem to have missed. One of Mrs Bhagpuss's accounts had something that particularly struck my eye, an unlock for the Freeblood vampire race, normally available only through the cash shop.

That unlock came with something called the Velious Winter Rewards, which I vaguely remember. It was part of a promotion back in the winter of 2010/11. It happened back before my current account even existed, which explains why I don't have one. Or at least not on that account. I checked my old main account, though, and not only do I have the unlock there, I've already claimed it!

So I could have made a Freeblood any time in the last decade. Why didn't I? I have no explanation. I even have a free character slot on that account. Maybe I'll go make one now.

In fact, if I wanted, I could go on a character-making spree. I discovered this morning all the free accounts and one of the formerly-subbed ones had something called the EverQuest II Adventurer's Pack waiting to be claimed. It contains a couple of two-hour 100% xp potions and a character slot unlock.

Where did that come from? Google couldn't tell me and neither could the forums, although I did find this useful link that gives you a complete list of every flag on your account. You can also use the in-game command /show_account_features although it only gives you the highlights.

From that I can see that my main account doesn't own the Adventurer's Pack and never did.Why? No clue. It's a pity, though. I could have done with another character slot on the account I actually play rather than on all the ones I don't. I guess I could start multi-boxing...

I was so sure I'd used all of these...

There are so many more things waiting in Claim for me to either get around to using or deciding who should have them. Every account gets Veteran Rewards these days and even the free accounts are up to Year 10. There's only one more to come after that before Daybreak stopped counting. They went to loyalty points from Year Twelve onwards. You get those from doing dailies. I have about twelve hundred of them.

I also used all my Legends of Norrath packs just as the card game was about to sunset so I have a bunch of prizes from there, scattered across several accounts. Some of those are very nice. The only problem is I can't decide who should get them so they just sit there in /claim. I look at them once in awhile and it makes me happy.

Then there's all the Goblin Games tickets. That was a quasi-cash shop thing that got discontinued years ago. I thought I'd used all mine but at some point there must have been a giveaway because all the accounts have stacks of fifteen.

I did a few goblin games this morning. The prizes are pretty good but because SOE was trying to get around the lottery laws you have to play an actual game to make it "game of skill" not a "lottery", even though it's a game a blindfolded monkey would win every time.

Plus some bright spark thought it would be nifty to have an actual goblin that spawns and invites you to an actual goblin cave, meaning you have to have a conversation and zone in and out every time you use a ticket. I run out of patience after about five goes.

None of this would be a problem if EQII hadn't always been so extraordinarily generous with the free gifts. It's not just a load of old tat. It's quality stuff. Stuff you want to have. And there's a lot of it.

Maybe I'll take this opportunity to go through the whole shebang and hand things out to whoever needs, wants, will use. Wouldn't that be lovely?

Only I'd probably need to be on lockdown until this time next year to get through it all.

Best not tempt fate. I guess it's safe enough where it is.

I Covet The Waterfront: EQII

Yesterday marked the first day of Frostfell in EverQuest II. The midwinter celebration is a huge event in Norrath's calendar, bringing a welter of quests and activities, several seasonal instances and a whole zone dedicated to games, crafts and gift-giving.

There are no new quests this year, which is probably just as well. There are already nearly two dozen, several of them multi-part, some repeatable. There are three new Collections, all of which I completed in a ninety minute session last night.

EQ2 Traders, as always, has full details. I found the gloss there very useful although I was familiar with the mechanic from previous holiday events. Each of the three Collects comprises nine items, three sets of three, to be found in three locations - a home city (Qeynos, Freeport or Neriak), a secondary starting city (New Halas, Kelethin, Gorowyn) and Frostfell Wonderland Village itself.

I started in Freeport for the very good reason that it was where I found myself when I logged in. There were purple sparkles scattered across the cobbled streets of Lucan's capital and I wasn't the only one trying to grab them. Track Harvestables came in handy once again.

It was while I was grubbing around down by the waterfront in North Freeport that I noticed the hole in the wall. I know Freeport pretty well after living there for a decade and a half but it still has the capacity to surprise. I must have passed the building in question a hundred times and yet somehow Id never noticed how different it looked from the rest.

The walls were grey stucco, patterned with swirls. Fancy. An archway opened into a small, featureless courtyard. Had it always been there? How had I never noticed it before?

Against the outer wall there leaned a crude ladder. Planks nailed together. Why was it there? Had it been forgotten by the plasterers? Left behind by burglars? More to the point, could I climb it?

Climbing in EQII is quite specific. It was added as a feature in the first expansion, Desert of Flames, back in 2005 and has been included in content ever after, albeit somewhat sporadically.

Climbable surfaces are usually easy to spot; the walls are marked with the tracks and handholds of previous climbers or there are ladders or nets. All you need to do is move close enough and your character will begin to scale the obstacle, hand over hand.

Freeport predates all that. When it was built there was no climbing in the game and as far as I know, no-one ever bothered to go back and add climbable surfaces to original game zones. But we never needed special skills to climb back in the old days. We just...climbed.

And the way we used to climb was by jumping, hoping to find a piece of geometry that extended, invisibly, far enough into the horizontal to allow a precarious perch. I looked at the ladder. The expression "thick as a plank" came to mind. Those were pretty thick planks.

My Berserker tried a standing jump with a little jink forward. He landed on the first cross-strut - and stuck. Good start. He tried again and there he was, on the next rung. Third jump he fell off. Luckily no-one was watching except his Mercenary and he's paid not to laugh.

The ladder turned out to be fully climbable - old school style. I'm not sure I've climbed a ladder that way in EQII before. I kind of think I have but I couldn't say where it was if I did. 

At the top was a wrought-iron railing and no roof. I stood and looked down into the courtyard of the room with the hole in the wall and I pondered. I knew now that the ladder could be climbed but I was no wiser as to why it was there in the first place.

And I'm still not. Does it have a role in some quest, possibly for a class I've never played? Did some designer place it there intending to add some feature they never got around to finishing? Is it some kind of in-joke? I have no idea although I'd bet someone does.

One thing occurred to me as I stood on the roof. I've known since almost the start of the game that there are buildings you can rent in Freeport which have outdoor views. I actually own one on some character or other. Unless it's in Qeynos. Whichever, that one's a closed rooftop with no real view but I've seen and visited a large Freeport house with a rooftop terrace and views of the harbor. Maybe this was it...

Not to undercut the tension but yes, it was. I went round the front and checked the door. I was outside 7, Compassion Road, one of the original Guild Houses. I took the tour and went upstairs. The six-room home has not one but two rooftop terraces, both with great views. And neither of them is the rooftop I climbed onto.

There was a time when I coveted that house. It seemed impossibly expensive. Not only did it cost three platinum to buy the lease but 250,000 status as well - and you had to be in a guild of at least Level 30. And if you could manage all that, weekly upkeep ran to fifteen gold and 50,000 status.

Well, that may have been a pipe dream in 2004 but fifteen years later it's trivial. I have almost a million platinum on my Berserker alone, his one-person guild dinged Level 63 two days ago and he has enough Personal Status to pay the upkeep for almost as long as the game has been running. Fourteen years-worth, in fact.

I did consider buying it. It's a fantastic property in its own right and I'm pretty sure it's breakoutable. I could have a whole section of the Freeport waterfront all to myself.

In the end I decided against it - for now, at least. I already have an astoundingly over-furnished mansion in Maj'Dul on that character, which he long ago broke out of, giving him access to much of the city. Plus he's in the process of landscaping his Mara Estate, a bona fide small town, complete with river, ocean and fields, no breakout required.

EQII is one of those games where it's all too easy to take on more than you can handle. I don't need another housing project right now - I still have my Inquisitor's Baubleshire to deal with and my Wizard just set up home in the Mistmoore Crags Estate.

I shut the door of 7, Compassion Road and went back to my shiny hunting. An hour or so later I'd finished all three collections and handed them in. My Berserker was the proud owner of a Bleachbone Faun Mask (the sunbleached skull of a deer, complete with antlers, set in a silver hood, covering the whole face and making him look like the first jump-scare in a 1970s horror movie), a Bleachbone Faun Cloak (a silver cloak, embroidered with an image of the same skull and quite  possibly made from the flayed skin of the same deer) and a Bleachbone Faun Staff (made, I'm guessing, from whatever bits of the deer were left over).

What connection those gruesome items have with Frostfell and its happy-go-lucky cheer I cannot begin to imagine. They're druidical, that's as much as I know, but what druids have to do with goblins, false beards and Dickens parodies beats me.

It's another culture. Who am I to impose my values?

On with the revels!

An Easter Egg Hunt : EQ2

Mrs Bhagpuss and I were talking the other day about Easter Egg Hunts and how they were never really much of a thing when we were growing up. I think I may have done one, once, as a child but I'm not even sure about that.

The concept is one I know more from popular culture than personal experience. Maybe I would have felt differently about it when I was eight years old but the idea of poking around in the shrubbery on a cold April morning looking for my chocolate eggs has considerably less appeal than simply having them handed to me indoors.

Going on an egg hunt in virtuality, though: that's an altogether more appealing prospect. It was late last night when I happened on an alert from the invaluable EQ2 Traders Corner. What would we do without Niami Denmother? You can have all your Developer Appreciation Weeks - praise where praise is due - but what we really need is a Volunteer Appreciation Week for all the people like Mum and Feldon and whoever it is who runs the EQ2 Library.

Rather than rush into something while I was tired after a long day at work I wrote myself a reminder to check it out next morning. I'm at that age now when if I don't make notes I can't be sure I'll remember what I was thinking about the day before. Actually I was always that way. I can't blame it on the passage of time.

Pet egg. Do not pat.

EQ2 wasn't the first thing I thought of when I woke up this Good Friday. That would have been Hot Cross Buns. After a brisk walk to the bakery and a breakfast that was fruity if a little dry, I sat down at the computer, where I immediately spotted my note. So that worked!

The egg hunt is itself a genuine "Easter Egg" in that it's neither a quest nor an achievement nor any sort of directed content. As Niami Denmother puts it "With no announcement, an eggstra special surprise appeared in Norrath".

There are five "Beast'r" eggs, each with a name more suitable for a dwarf bent on taking up a career in animated movies: Bumbly, Cheeky, Cheery, Frisky and Lovely. They spawn in all cities and starting areas so I went to the place I know best, Freeport, to look for them.

They aren't trackable and they don't appear to be lying about the streets in the flagrant fashion of most holiday collectables. All the ones I found were in relatively out of the way places. Even so, they weren't hard to find.

Just answer the questions and the beatings won't be so severe.

The eggs are quite big and bright and hard to miss. As soon as they appeared it won't have taken long at all, I'm sure, for people to begin noticing them and inquiring about them in chat. I wonder who it was who thought to ask a guard about them?

It would certainly never have occurred to me. It's been a very long time since I asked a guard to show me the way to anything. I'd pretty much forgotten it was something they did. It is, though.

When I was growing up we may not have had Easter Egg Hunts but we did have helpful policemen. I was taught as a child that if I was lost I should ask a policeman and even as a young adult on some of my early trips to London I would ask a policeman for directions before I'd ever think of looking at a map.

These days it could be days - weeks - before I even saw a policeman and even if I did I'd certainly think twice about asking where the nearest post office might be. Times have changed.

When it comes to MMOs, it's hard to think of a law enforcement agency you'd be less likely to approach with a frivolous enquiry than Lucan's Freeport Militia. They have an appalling reputation for casual brutality and that's the nicer ones. You'd expect the Qeynos lot to send you on your way with a snappy salute and a kindly gesture but in Freeport it's generally best to keep your head down and not make eye contact.

He was brought up by humans in case you're wondering. A troupe of traveling actors by the sound of it.

Still, a seasoned adventurer has little to fear from any city guards these days. Training's not what it was and most of the militia couldn't take a firm handshake from a level 100. My Berserker posed the question and got a swift and positive reply. "Cheery Beast'r Egg, is it? That way sir, above you and to the South East. Just follow the glowy trail. All part of the job, sir. Mind how you go!"

I found the first egg at the back of the inn in East Freeport where all the mercenaries hang out, that cosy little balcony over the harbor, where sailors gaze out to sea and soak their troubles in rum. I found the second one there, too. And the third.

At this point I was beginning to think all I had to do was lean on the rail and wait for the rest to spawn but I got into conversation with an ex-captain who'd lost his ship and next thing I knew I found myself in Beggar's Court searching the slave quarters. Somehow I accidentally killed one of Lucan's taskmasters (it was self defense - these things happen, you know how it is) so after I'd hidden the body I thought it might be a good time to look for eggs a little further afield. Like The Commonlands.

It took no time at all to find the last two I needed: Bumbly and Cheeky (or was it Cheery?). The final egg turned up in a Kerran hut, where the entire family was standing around staring at it, probably wondering how to cook it. They're a fussy, faddy race.

Anyone would think you cats never saw an egg before.

Picking up the final egg popped a new title - "The Eggcellent Adventurer". No pun left unturned. And all five of the eggs become cosmetic pets. Very well worth the small effort involved.

With the detour into piracy and subversion the whole thing took a couple of hours but the egg hunt alone you could probably knock out in half an hour or less. It's short, simple and a lot of fun.

Like the "Current Events" in GW2 increasingly I find that this kind of unpublicised, low-intensity background content is what I look forward to and enjoy the most in MMOs. Far from being mere filler it seems to me that this stuff is a lot more satisfying than many of the over-hyped big ticket events.

Seeing Blizzard working this seam with with their micro-holidays I am guessing it's something of a trend. It's a good one. Long may it continue and let's not be limiting to holidays, either.

Free To Play: GW2, LotRO, EQ2

It takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.

Lana del Rey

It was around a year and a half ago that GW2 moved from a "Buy to Play" business model to what ANet call "Free to Play". In common with many such transitions it's very arguable whether the result is "F2P" in the true sense or some form of open-ended free trial.

The majority of new content added since that changeover requires the Heart of Thorns expansion, which has to be purchased separately. That seemed to make some kind of sense when the action was taking place in the region of Tyria known as the Heart of Maguuma but the latest addition to the world, Lake Doric, lies slap up against the walls of Divinity's Reach and yet you still can't go there without a HoT flag on your account.

Whether you call it true F2P or not, the entirety of the content that launched with the original game and most of what was added in the first three years is available for no more than the bandwidth it takes to download it. Already having three accounts I managed to resist the temptation - until last week.

It was returning to LoTRO as a free player that inspired me to try the same in the MMO that's taken up most of my attention and gaming time over the past four years. The first few hours of my return to Middle Earth reminded me of something I discovered when John Smedley first tried to nudge a reluctant clutch of Norrathians in the general direction of what would become "free to play - your way".

When the Freeport server, EQ2's first attempt at a F2P offer, went into beta Mrs Bhagpuss and I were comfortably settled on Test. We'd been there for five years. We had multiple max level characters, houses, a guild, all the trimmings. We went to Freeport out of curiosity. We never came back.

The Freeport experience was probably the high point of my time in EQ2. Some of that was the inevitable attraction of starting afresh on a new server but most of it was due to the restrictions - and to the options available for circumventing them.

Having less inventory space, fewer character slots, a limited selection of gear and spells, being throttled back in experience gain, controlled in use of the broker and of chat channels - all of this, far from making me feel constrained as a player made me feel more free to play the way I wanted to play.

Of course I could always have played that way. There was no restriction that the Freeport ruleset  imposed that I couldn't have imposed upon myself at any time, on any server, simply by an effort of willpower. Having an outside agency make those choices for me, however, was something I found surprisingly empowering.

A great part of that sense of empowerment came in the knowledge that any and all of these restrictions could be overcome, incrementally and discretely, at a time of my choosing. I found it much more involving, enjoyable and, yes, immersive, to know that I would need to obtain and use an "unlocker" to equip a Legendary or Fabled item or that I'd have to buy a token to place something for sale on the broker.

What the particular set of restrictions on Freeport did for me was give me back control. Instead of "everything now", which is what all MMOs under the subscription model purport to offer, every session became a series of interesting decisions. What's more, those decisions added to my sense of immersion because it felt as though my characters had both a deeper agency and a more interactive relationship with their world.

Some of this same sense of solidity and "thereness" returned to me when I began to explore LotRO's free to play experience. As on Freeport, where I paid the one-time $5 fee to upgrade to "Silver" status, which imposed a different, more lenient ruleset than the bare-bones offer, in LotRo I'm playing as a "Premium" member because I was once a subscriber.

The first and greatest benefit I noticed was that, as a Premium player, I find myself relieved of any need to quest. I have more to say about this but it will keep for a separate post. Suffice it to say, I am finding the freedom to mount up, ride out and take adventure as it finds me to be far more in keeping with the magnificent setting than the old "go here, do that" ever was.

The "task boards" and the free crafting materials tasks in towns and settlements provide all the structure and reward that's needed. If I end up playing more than the hour a day I was expecting (and I played for nearly four hours yesterday so that may happen) then I'll be happy to pay to extend the number of tasks I can take. 

When I was a subscribing player I found the Auction House overwhelming so I avoided it. Now, limited to five auctions, I'm using it with pleasure. Inventory space remains a severe problem but that's a "feature" of LotRo for players of all access levels and always was.

I still believe the EQ2 "Silver" account as it operated during Freeport's heyday represents the gold standard (ironically) for F2P conversions but there is one way in which LotRO's model is preferable. There was no way to buy upgrades in EQ2 other than with Station Cash, which itself had to be purchased with real money (albeit often at a stupendous discount).

In LotRo you earn LotRO points simply by playing. Granted the gains are small but so far they are also steady, a drip drip drip of five points here, five points there. I very much like the idea that the more naturally and organically my characters experience the world in which they live, the more their options open up. It seems to me to bring a degree of immersion to the underlying structure that marries imagination to practicality almost seamlessly.

GW2's free play has fewer restrictions than either Freeport era EQ2 or current LotRO. The sub-cap game is already heavily level-gated for everyone regardless of account status and many of the additional restrictions in F2P mode are intended only to prevent gold-spammers and other non-playing parasites from exploiting the lack of a box fee.

There are some very significant changes to the rules nonetheless, all of which I feel enhance rather than diminish my enjoyment of the game. There are strict controls over what can and can't be sold on the Trading Post, which means that the search for suitable gear becomes a core part of gameplay, something I always find deeply immersive. I also found the requirement to reach level 10 before entering a racial capital and level 35 before being allowed to set foot in Lion's Arch to be both aspirational and motivating.

Individual players will quibble over which particular restrictions are onerous or unwelcome. I do feel a bar of level sixty is a tad high for access to WvW for example and I'm not at all impressed with the ban on free accounts converting gold to gems.

Overall, though, once again I found that moving to the more restrictive environment of what is supposedly the least desirable account option had precisely the reverse effect on my interest and involvement with the game. I haven't felt as much "in the world" in GW2 for years.

There is, naturally, a scale of diminishing returns to consider. A player who begins with only the basics and chooses to stay will, over time, almost inevitably buy his or her way out of most of the very constraints that created the positive impression in the first place. In a worst-case scenario the end result would be an experience functionally identical to the fully paid version.

Even so, the process will be slower and there will be ample opportunities to consider the implications of each upgrade. Under these kinds of buy-in systems it becomes possible to manage or even micro-manage the impact of every inventory upgrade or quality-of-life improvement. It's an approach that allows for each new acquisition to be properly anticipated, appreciated and enjoyed.

None of these counter-intuitive benefits is or should be specific to the payment model. The exquisitely ironic twist is that in attempting to make their "free" offer sufficiently unattractive to induce players to spend their way out of the restrictions imposed , what developers have managed to do is re-discover some of what made MMORPGs so immersive and addictive to begin with.

Far from seeing these design choices as penalties MMO developers should be extending them and building on them within the mainstream structures of their games. The developmental stages shouldn't be imposed by Account status - they should be integral to character development, something  to be amended or removed at a time of the player's choosing not by payment of real-world cash but by in-game actions or payments in the currency of the character.

Free to play rules are too good to be wasted on free players.