End Of A Legend

The news that Daybreak Games is to sunset the Legends of Norrath collectable card game didn't come as much of a surprise when it was announced yesterday. Despite Massively OP's yellow journalism (to which, once again, I decline to link) I don't read anything into the choice of Friday for the announcement. We're all on a seven day, twenty-four hour news cycle now. The days of burying bad news before the start of the weekend died with print media.

Anyway, the straws were in the wind a while back, when the client for the game was decoupled from EverQuest and EQ2. It's hardly the most upsetting of sunsets, given that in the many years the game has been available to play I've never done more than run through the tutorial and open my free packs.

All the same, I do feel mildly miffed. I will miss opening those imaginary packs of imaginary cards once a month, hoping for a loot card to drop. Over the years it has become something of a ritual. One more small death along the way to the big one, I guess.

There's still time for a couple more rounds. The final date for clearing the decks is Aug‌ust 1‌7, 20‌16 at no‌on pacific. The final round of free cards under All Access membership will arrive by Ju‌ly 1‌8, 20‌16 at 10‌AM paci‌fic, which is also the last opportunity you have to buy packs, assuming anyone ever does any more.

The very exact and precise notification of the timing DBG have announced seems unusual. Presumably they are aiming to avoid any messy in-fighting or even spurious threats of legal action over supposed virtual assets and obligations. Not that any amount of detailed information before the fact will prevent that. There will be plenty of people who go to log in and claim their dues after the cut off date having heard nothing about the game ending. There always are.

I logged into the standalone client to see how many packs I had left to open and to start thinking about claiming all the Loot that I've left sitting in LoN over the years rather than bothering even to move it to the Claim section of the games themselves. I probably don't need to explain that my /claim is stuffed to bursting with freebies I've never gotten around to using...

I was surprised to see, since I was, for once, paying attention to what was on the screen instead of
ritualistically clicking through check boxes, that to date I have accumulated almost 5,000 different cards on my longest-standing All Access account. I am also Level 9 in LoN just from opening packs.

For a few seconds I considered screen-shotting the lot. There's some lovely artwork in there. Then sanity prevailed. I'm sure someone, somewhere, is archiving them as I type. They will live on the internet forever. And if they don't, well, we'll muddle through somehow, I'm sure.

It did make me consider just how much work has gone into this small, uncelebrated game over the years. And how much "art" is produced commercially to no real end, day after day, year after year. It's no wonder Keen can't find anyone with the time to make him a Twitch logo.

The ratio of Loot cards to regular game cards has always seemed quite generous to me. It seems to run at less than one Loot card per five packs but better than one per ten. I am in the habit of holding a safety margin of 20-25 packs unopened in reserve, so each month when I get my five freebies I open them until either I get a Loot card or I've opened ten packs. I rarely have to open all ten.

Today, though, I had a bad run. Because the game is closing soon there's no reason to hang onto the packs, which was just as well because I opened fifteen without a Loot card popping. The LoN client was also lagging very badly, possibly because lots of people are trying to clear their backlogs like me. More likely, DBG is under yet another DDoS lockdown as it has been all week. H1Z1 at the root of that, as usual.

Because I've played a lot more EQ2 than EQ since the free monthly packs were added to All Access, I've mostly chosen to allocate any Loot cards to the newer game. You have always had to specify, at the point of opening the pack, which game you are pointing it at.

Today, partly because I've just recently gotten EQ re-installed on my new PC and I'm back playing there again, partly just because of the bad run, I switched the target to EverQuest. That really changed my luck!

In three packs I got two Loot cards. One was an ornamentation for a dagger, which I will never use, but the second was a mount! Mounts are a big deal in EverQuest and my magician has been riding the raptor that comes with the Heroic Level 85 boost for what seems like forever. That mount puts her at a ridiculous angle, staring at the sky, and it marks her out as a Heroic upgrade, so it's great to have a low-slung lizard to ride instead.

Mostly what I've received over the years have been pictures. There are a lot of those. Some of them are very nice but they tend to have ludicrously ornate frames that overwhelm the illustrations so most of mine are still in the "box". I've had some exciting drops, though. I got a house once.

There is a very useful page on the official LoN website that allows you to see every Loot card for both games in detail, along with which packs to open to try to get them. I have used it to go for specific items but not with much success. There are sixteen packs to choose from and usually I just pick from the list at random.


I also have a Choose Your Loot card that I haven't used yet. That allows me pick any Loot card from any pack there's ever been. I've been saving it because, the way my mind works, until I use it I own ALL the things. Yes, I am Schrodinger's cat. I'll have to collapse the wave function before August 17 though. I'll probably go for the Ice Cream Cart. Always wanted one.

I only have about thirty unopened packs left but Mrs Bhagpuss, who hasn't played EQ2 or over three years and EQ for a lot longer than that, has 120. They aren't going to go into the void. If she doesn't want to open them then I'll do it. Could take a while.

The end of LoN, along with Planetside, a game I never even downloaded in all the years I had the option, probably signifies something both about the future of Daybreak Games and of the EverQuest franchise but I have no clear idea what that might be. It's apparent that DBG is clearing out what someone in charge sees as the deadwood but to what end is impossible to say.

They could simply be reducing costs to increase profitability (or mitigate losses). They might be cleaning up the business to make it more attractive for sale. They might simply be removing older properties that are not well-used and which are increasingly time-consuming to maintain - housekeeping in other words.

The acquisition of SOE by Columbus Nova has been a strange and mysterious event in gaming. Unlike other takeovers or sales, where one gaming company has assimilated another, the purpose and intent is hard to fathom. I find it hard to imagine an investment company choosing to run a portfolio of low-impact MMOs long term, but equally it's hard to imagine them buffing the current roster of games to a shine that makes a profitable resale likely.

As all MMO sunsets do, it makes me aware of the fragility, the evanescence, innate in the genre. It's really not a hobby for anyone who deals badly with loss. The thought of all my EverQuest and EQ2 characters slipping into darkness disturbs me more than it probably ought. The knowledge that, as  Vanguard and Warhammer attest, games can get a rez is a considerable comfort but still I'd hate to lose my little people and their homes. So much time and love has gone into all of that.

But that's life. Everything is mutable. Doesn't do to dwell on it.

For now the servers are up (hackers permitting) and the worlds live on. Let's enjoy it while we can. And don't forget to grab your Loot!

Legends Of Norrath Now Requires A Standalone Client : EQ, EQ2

The Patch Notes for EQ2's upcoming Scourged Wastes update are available right now for the Test server, although the patch itself hasn't yet arrived. I learned this as always from the invaluable EQ2Wire. It's Update 100, which might explain why it's such a major content release, although if so Marketing has been surprisingly shy about making a big deal out of that triple-digit landmark.

As I was waking up and drinking my morning tea (black, no sugar, thanks) I was jolted awake by this line in the patch notes:

Removed the embedded Legends of Norrath (LoN) client from the EverQuest II client. If you wish to continue playing LoN, please download and use the standalone client available at www.legendsofnorrath.com.

Feldon doesn't comment but it strikes me that this is quite significant. Or could be.

Ever since LoN went live back in 2007 its main function has been to provide in-game loot for EverQuest and EQ2 players. Oh, there was a time when significant numbers of people played Legends of Norrath as a game in its own right and for all I know they may still, although I'd want to see some convincing evidence before I'd believe it.

As far as I can recall it has always been playable outside of the game from a standalone client although I have never until today even visited the web page, much less thought of installing it.

When LoN first appeared in game I played through the tutorial, which I remember finding very confusing. I never progressed as far as a match against another player. After a couple of desultory games with the AI I gave up on LoN as a game-within-a-game and thereafter never gave it much thought other than as a source of free stuff via the occasional Loot Card.

There was a period when LoN provided actual dropped loot in game, too. Back in 2007, which seems insanely longer ago than nine years as I recover these memories, I must still have been playing EverQuest as my primary MMORPG, because I clearly recall Booster Packs for LoN dropping as loot from mobs while I was hunting in the Crypt of Nadox and other Legacy of Ykesha zones.

Those packs were tradeable and they sold for big money on the broker back then. Not, I think, because anyone wanted to expand their deck to play LoN. No, the premium price was for the chance of getting something like the Bot Made Ice Cream Cart , still one of the coolest items ever added to the game and one of the very, very few I have always coveted.

At some point, either at the beginning or very early on (I can't recall which and the brief wiki entry doesn't mention it) a stipend of five LoN cards per month was included with the All Access sub. Ever since then opening and hoping has been a monthly ritual of my EQ and/or EQ2 gameplay.

Over the years I've had a few nice "drops" including mounts and houses although never the elusive ice-cream cart. A while back the rules were changed so that you had to log in each month and claim the free cards (also your 500 Station Daybreak Cash) because the entitlement no longer rolled over and since then I don't think I've missed a month.

The terse patch note doesn't mention anything about the stipend but I have to wonder: if the games have been de-coupled, what is the future for the free packs? I'd like to know.

I did try logging in to test it for myself but although the patch notes may be up the patch itself is not. The process for logging in to Test is unbelievably easier and smoother than it used to be back when I played, though, so I'll try again later.

In the meantime I've downloaded and installed the standalone client and tried it out. It seems identical to the in-game version except that it's slower and very laggy. You'd think that would be the other way around.

I opened packs until I got a Loot Card. It took me seven tries, which is about average in my experience. The loot is now in my account Claim list so I guess that, for now at least, the only substantive change is the access method required.

I'm off to post about it on the forum. It seems like something that should have been handled a little more sensitively than with just a line in the Test server patch notes but that's SOE/DBG all over.