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.

There's A Party In My Mind...

I've been taking pictures of the games I play since I first discovered the screenshot function in EverQuest back in 1999. Where most of those shots are now, I have no idea. I document what I see almost obsessively but, perhaps unusually for someone who takes so many photos both in and out of game, I feel no compulsion to organize the results.

I'm not entirely blasé about the possibility of loss. I make sporadic attempts to back things up. I have multiple copies of various folders scattered across everything from SD Cards to thumb drives to old hard drives pulled from long-gone PCs.

It doesn't help much. I have no cataloguing system of any kind, not even a paper label stuck to the drive case. If I need screens to illustrate a post about a particular game I haven't played for a while, I generally find it quicker and easier to patch up, log in and take new ones.

It was largely because the LotRO patcher is so infernally slow that I ended up digging around in my so-called archives yesterday. Ten-year old screenshots of Lord of the Rings Online were far from the only thing I found.

It seems that at some point, a year or two back, I made a half-hearted effort to back up screenshot folders from all over the place and stash them on a particular hard drive, where I immediately forgot about them. More than ten thousand screens from Guild Wars 2 (yes, literally that many) I knew about but old shots from my original runs through WildStar, Allods, World of Warcraft, Rift and even Free Realms came as something of a surprise.

Looking through them I found some old favorites and many I'd completely forgotten. The oldest were from EverQuest circa March 2004. That leaves five years unaccounted for, including all the shots I must have taken in Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Horizons, Endless Ages and more I can't recall.

In the wake of my recent brush with acedemia I'm minded to make a concerted effort to gather all my screenshots together, put them into some kind of coherent order and back them up properly. I might also have to go through some cupboards and see if there any ancient hard drives lurking there - although I have a feeling I already did that about five years back...

One of the more interesting things yesterday's rooting turned up was the shots illustrating this post. According to the datestamp on the file, they were all taken in February 2006, apparently at a test of the event that restored and reopened the Ulteran Spires in Antonica and The Commonlands.  It was, presumably, part of the run-up to the release of the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, although the timing seems off, since that didn't go live until November of the same year.

I remember the event well but, as is often the case, documentary evidence recorded at the time conflicts with my memories. I was playing on the Test Server at the time, before Mrs Bhagpuss left Oasis (the server not the band, although I guess I didn't really need to clarify that...) to join me. 

What I remember, something which the visual evidence confirms, is that the PC I had then struggled to run EQ2 and that there wasn't a great deal I could do in big events beyond stand and watch a slideshow. The graphics look terrible, which was exactly how the game looked for me for several years. Most of the shots show me standing back while things happen at a distance, which is probably about the only way I could participate at all.

Even so, in the screenshot I've included that retains the UI, you can see I'm in a raid group. I've left the names visible, something I don't usually do, because it all happened in another country and besides which the wench is dead. Or at least missing in action.

That particular shot is both surprising and problematic, not because of the visuals but for what's happening in chat. I have believed for as long as I can remember, and I've stated many times in posts here and conversations elsewhere, that everyone I knew, who came from EverQuest to EQ2, had left within six months of the game's launch in late 2004.

Based on this screenshot, that's not true. In the chat box to the lower right you can see a cross-server conversation going on in a private channel. I'm talking to people on the Oasis server, where the original server we all played on, Steamfont, had only recently merged a month or so earlier. I'm telling them about the event that hasn't yet reached them on Live, while trying not to spoil the news that it ends with the appearance of a bloody great dragon.

One of the people I'm talking to is Mrs Bhagpuss but the other is a friend of ours from EverQuest. This makes me realize two things: firstly that I'd forgotten he'd moved to EQ2 with us at all and secondly that I've been overestimating the speed at which both he and the other people who transferred games gave up on EQ2.

Reconstructing the whole thing in the light of the new evidence, it seems that, rather than everyone having left EQ2 by the summer of 2005, six months after launch, it was actually more like a year later, spring or summer 2006, before the last person we knew finally quit.

One day, as well as cataloguing all my screenshots, I really should sit down and try to draft a timeline of my MMORPG history. When I try to put it in order there are so many contradictions and paradoxes.

I'm put in mind of an evening I spent at the end of my first year in college, when four of us who'd spent almost the whole time hanging out together tried to make sense of it all. We couldn't even agree on when we'd met, let alone who had been where doing what, when or with whom.

Of course, being students as the 1970s turned into the 1980s, we could blame our poor memories on drink and drugs. I've generally been (mostly) sober and always straight when I've played MMOs but memory is slippery.

I've always wished I kept a diary. Above everything, that's why I'm glad I have a blog and why I plan to keep on blogging as long as I play. I should probably archive those screenshots, though...

More Fun In The New World

This could be a very short post. Very short indeed. It's tricky, writing about something, when you aren't allowed to describe anything you see, anything you do or how anything works. I can't even tell you what the "something" I'm not describing is called. The post title? Oh, that's just some old thing by X. Don't go reading anything into it...

And there's no use going show instead of tell, either, because even though I may have taken a portfolio of pictures, I absolutely cannot show them to anyone. Don't even ask.

NDAs have been in the news a lot this week where I come from. I switched the radio on as I was making breakfast yesterday and listened to a journalist explaining what the letters stood for and what the process meant as though it was some new species of bat just discovered in a cave previously unknown to man.

Obviously no-one reading this needs the acronym explained. NDAs have long been part of the DNA of MMOs. I've lost count of the number I've signed up to over the years. It must be dozens by now and technically I've breached them all, since I've always chatted to Mrs Bhagpuss about what I've been up to behind the chainmail curtains. Occasionally she might watch me over my shoulder and a few times I've even lent her my log-in so she could take a wander round.

What I have never done, though, is break the terms of the NDA in any way, shape or form that anyone outside of my own house could know about. In the days when NDAs for testing MMORPGs were routine, it was never much of a concern; back then I didn't have a blog.

And until now having a blog hasn't posed any problems with NDAs either. Since Inventory Full began, seven years ago, I've been in any number of alpha and beta tests for new games or expansions to old ones but I can't, off the top of my head, remember any that I wasn't allowed to post about.

Along with plenty of other MMO veterans I've occasionally bemoaned the lack of "proper" beta testing that isn't either a glorified free trial or a barely-concealed cash grab. How ironic, then, that now that I'm finally in one that's none of those things, I'm finding it more than a tad frustrating.

I'd really love to write about my experiences so far in excruciating detail. I have plenty to say, that's for sure. But I can't, even though I'm pretty sure any PR person would be happy to sign off on what I'd write.

Whatever the NDA says (and I have to imagine the exact terms because, although I've looked quite hard, I haven't as yet been able to find them) I'm confident nothing can bar me from talking about how I feel about testing pre-release games in general. If anyone wants to infer that I might be speaking from recent experience that's up to them.

There's a point in any alpha or beta test when you have to decide whether you really want to become invested in what you're doing. There's the reporting of bugs side of things, which is both a public service of a kind and a shrewd investment in your own entertainment futures, but other than that there's the question of how much time to spend on character progression in a testing environment that has no permanence.

It gets quite difficult. There's a lot to consider. If you're finding that you want to log into the alpha or beta test more than you want to log into the Live MMOs you're currently playing, or if you find that the development of your alpha or beta characters is more compelling and satisfying that that of their Live counterparts, then you have something of a dilemma.

In the "Cons" column, firstly, there's the impermanence. Yes, I do believe that fun is fun and no time is wasted if you enjoyed its passing but it's impossible not be aware that the goal you are working towards is ephemeral even beyond the insubstantiality common to virtual worlds.

Secondly, there's the prospect of repetition and with it burnout. Plenty of people have made the mistake of going hard at an alpha or beta test and then finding, when the game has gone Live, their will to do it all again has eroded, taking their interest down with it.

On the "Pro" side, there's pleasure in the moment. If you're having fun then you're having fun, aren't you? Why trade fun now for fun down the line?  It's fresh and new and you're keen. Why take the edge off?

Perhaps most importantly of all, there's that infamous meme: "better in beta". Well, it was, wasn't it? There's often a sweet spot in the development process - sometimes several of them - when systems are more forgiving or more challenging than they're ever going to be in Live. Also weirder. Testing environments are inherantly more volatile and volatility is both intriguing and exhillarating.


And then there's the vibe. In proper (closed, under NDA) alpha or beta tests communities are frequently - I would say usually - better-natured, more cohesive, more patient. People cut each other more slack. In a game with open PvP and full loot that might add up to a significantly different play experience.

There's a strong chance, then, that a closed test might offer the most enjoyable version of the game you'll ever see but against that you have to set the inevitable and possibly imminent deletion of your characters and the destruction of all the progress you've made. As I said, a difficult balance to strike.

Based on my past experience, when I've become both attached to my characters and immersed in their progression during pre-launch testing, I've gone on to have a good run in the game after release. That was the case in some of my very favorite MMORPGs of all time - EQ2, Vanguard, Rubies of Eventide...

I don't think I can remember any MMO that I enjoyed in testing but disliked when it launched. There's been the odd case, Rift being a particular example, where changes made soon after the game went live detracted substantially from what made the game so satisfying in testing, but even then it's been a matter of degree. I still enjoyed live Rift, just not as much.

In the case of the game I might be writing about there's a very definite chance that the Live edition won't suit me as well as the version I'm able to log into right now. Live games are generally more intense than tests and that's not necessarily what I'm looking for these days, particularly whenit comes with full-loot PvP attached.

All the same, as things look right now, I will be along for the ride when this thing goes Live. Whether I'll stay long, who knows? The bottom line is, I'm having a lot more fun than I expected. I plan on riding that while it lasts and hoping at least some of it carries over when the real game arrives.

And that, I think, is about as close to the wind as I care to sail. Shame I can't use the pictures I've taken, though. Some of them are gorgeous.

Remind Me Why I don't Live Here Again? : EQ2

Even though it happened today, I can't quite bring to mind the exact sequence of events that led to my creating a level 100 Fury on the Test Server. I think it started with the latest announcement about Everquest 2's upcoming expansion, Chaos Descending, which popped up in my Feedly this morning.

I've managed to fix it so I get the official PR puffs as they're released, rather than having to rely on spotting them on EQ2Traders or waiting until Wilhelm posts something. I've also worked out why I was getting my EQ2 news in French and put a stop to that. As it happens I can read French pretty well but that doesn't mean I want to.

There wasn't a lot in the latest post. Just the time and date for the now-inevitable Livestream, when a handful of self-conscious game developers will take an hour or so to deliver forty-five seconds of detail about the expansion. If you want to sit through it all you'll need to be on Facebook Live at 10am Pacific on Tuesday, October 9th.

Around about then I plan to be sitting on the balcony of a hotel somewhere in the Sierra de Grazalema, drinking a cold beer. I guess I could watch it on my tablet but I'm not going to.

It did make me think about what I might miss while I'm away, though. Mrs Bhagpuss and I generally go away for a week or ten days in October and sometimes we miss out on the start of Halloween in this game or that. We missed the very first Halloween in GW2 as I recall, which was a shame.

I think that's what made me go to the EQ2 Forums to see when the Nights of the Dead event begins in Norrath. I was also wondering whether there'd be anything new this year. I was guessing not. With its limited resources these days, Daybreak seems to be rowing back on the creation of a new quest for every holiday, every year - and honestly, there already more quests for the big holidays than most people are going to get through anyway.

It occured to me that NotD might already be up on Test and indeed it is! There's also a feedback thread right at the top of the first page of the In Testing section of the forum. And at the top of that there's the full running order for the event itself.

I was right about there being no new quest but there will be new stuff:

New Features for '18!

• TLE Server
  • Fallen Gate - All of the event is active, except a lost necklace cannot be looted from A Gleaming Chest in The Hedge Hollow!
• New Collection!
  • Grave Memories (added to Wake the Dead content)
• New costume illusions available from holiday merchants!
  • Hobgoblin
  • Aviak Stormrider
• The Nights of the Dead merchants have new things to sell!
  • Celebrations of the Dead XI
  • New mount!
  • New house items!
  • New equipment!
  • New Petamorph Wands!

I read the whole thread, which mentions a couple of other new bits and pieces and exemplifies the long-running, collaborative relationship between EQ2's developers and players - well, some of them. It's a wonderful antidote the negativity so prevalent in the Live threads.

As I was there, I happened to notice another thread, by Wilhelmina, Europe's answer to America's Niami Denmother and yet another player who was creating content before the term content creator was... um... created. The thread was entitled Free Level 100 Heroic On Test. That got my attention alright.

Wilhelmina has a clear and concise explanation of how to get your near-max level character for nothing, so rather than go over the same ground I'll quote her word for word:

• choose level 100 heroic on the launcher

• Once in game, proceed to Qeynos Harbor (on the docks, between the two gates leading to chronomages and loyalty) or East Freeport (on the docks, next to the door to South FP) and speak to Finch

• Buy the level 100 adventure bauble and use it

• Your char is now an unlocked heroic character, congrats!

As I've mentioned often, Mrs Bhagpuss and I played on Test for the best part of five years. We had some right old adventures there. Dramas, too. I have a whole load of characters on Test for whom I feel a great affection.

Before we moved to Freeport when it launched - and never came back (not planned, just happened) - several of our Test characters were max level, which was 90 at the time. They still are. I wondered whether I could use the free boost to level them up some.

Well, obviously I couldn't. Had I read Wilhelmina's notes properly I would have known that. She clearly and correctly states that you have to make a new character using the appropriate "Instant Level 100" button on the launcher. Reading comprehension for, as they say, the win.

I logged my 90 Ratonga Bruiser out and made a Ratonga Fury instead. I wasn't going to go ratonga at first. I spotted that on Test you can make a free Freeblood, EQ2's vampire race, something that has always required a cash shop purchase on Live.

I tried. I flipped through a dozen or so random variations in character creation. They were all unmitigatedly hideous. More Nosferatu than Count Dracula. Knowing I was getting something for nothing wasn't enough to persuade me to make one, even just to run around for a few minutes to get screenshots for this post.

In the end I decided on (yet) another Ratonga, why not? Can't have too many ratongas. At least the class was something new. I don't have a Fury on Test and I've never successfully played one for long on Live. Always thought it was a class I'd enjoy but somehow it never quite seems to happen.

I followed Wilhelmina's instructions and in a few minutes I had a permanent Level 100 Fury. It was very straightforward but there are just a few things to be aware of, should anyone decide to try it for themselves:

There's the usual astonishingly loud DING! when you log into the world for the first time, followed by a flurry of opening windows and flashing achievements. Don't be scared! It's quite safe!

For some arcane reason (actually because it was the main Level 100 content at the time this boost was added) you appear on the dock in Phantom Sea. Don't be scared! It's quite safe! So long as you don't move.

Luckily you spawn within arm's reach of a World Bell. Use that to go to either Qeynos (if you're a goodie) or Freeport (if you're bad).

After you speak to Finch and get your Level 100 Adventurer Bauble and use it, as well as losing your temp flag and becoming Level 100 for the duration, you'll also get a mount and a box of gear. DO NOT USE EITHER OF THEM!

Okay, you can use them. As in you can equip the mount in the appearance slot if you want. I wouldn't. I did and I regretted it. It looks great but it moves like a boat in a force 9 gale. You will feel seasick riding it. 

Also you probably do want to open the pack, if only to to get the extremely large stacks of potions - they go to 900 where the ones you got as a try-out character only go to 10. The gear itself, though, is without exception much worse than what you already have on.   

Not that it matters much because if you carry on then the first thing on your agenda is to do Yun Zi's 2017 questline, which will render even the better of your two free sets completely obsolete. Someone really ought to do a logic pass on this stuff once in a while...

If you decide to carry on playing, don't try to level up. You can't. Not unless you buy the Planes of Prophecy expansion. Maybe that will get added to Test as a freebie when Chaos Descending, er, descends...

And finally, don't forget your free Level 100 Tradeskill boost. It would cost you 3,500 DBC on Live - that's like $30! And this one does work on existing characters!

I just bumped my Level 90 Sage to Level 100 and I'm going to get myself a full set of all the trade skills at Level 100. There are nine of them and I have ten characters. Why not?


When we used to duo on Test, Mrs Bhagpuss and I covered all the crafts between us. You need to be self-sufficient because you can't rely on buying what you need (Test has no economy to speak of) and while everyone is astoundingly helpful, sometimes there's just no-one around when you need a spell or a potion made.


Test is actually a fantastic place to play EQ2 if you're a self-reliant individualist. It has a permanent 100% bonus to xp, you can buy things from NPC vendors that aren't sold on Live (like all the Advanced spell books) and now you even get to start at Level 100 if you want.

Maybe I should play there...

Chipping Away At The Foundations : EQ2

I haven't logged into EQ2's Beta Server yet but I have been browsing the forums, where the tone is markedly different from the grinding negativity of Live. Similarly, the /Test chat channel, which I've been in for a decade and more following my five year residency on Test as my main server, has been buzzing with positivity as the stalwarts there take a run at the next Holiday on the rank, Hero's Festival.

The EverQuest games have always benefited from a strong culture of dedicated service among a subset of players, those who have always understood that MMORPGs are a collaborative hobby as much as a commercial enterprise. From the Guide program, through well-established, permanent Test servers to an extensive and well-organized beta process with a full supporting incentive and reward structure, determined, invested players and developers have co-operated to build the best games possible.

The latest iteration of this worthy and welcome process is the Daybreak Insider program. I haven't signed up yet but only because I'm not sure I can offer the time and commitment just now. It looks like a good way to become involved in the future direction of the MMOs we play and enjoy, not to mention getting some insider gossip and advance knowledge. I wonder if there's an NDA?

Stats! We love 'em!

The reason I was on the Beta forums this morning was to see what people were saying about crafting. While I have four Level 100 adventurers ready to go and an instant Level 100 token in the bank, I only have two max level crafters.

The Collector's and Premium Editions of Planes of Prophecy both come with the first ever Tradeskill Boost but I didn't buy either of those and I'm not going to upgrade. In any case, it's not getting to the starting line that concerns me - it's getting to the finish.

The last few expansions all came with fully fleshed-out crafting questlines that matched the adventure version in depth and complexity. Well, almost. They were substantial and satisfying, anyway, and for every expansion since Velious the crafting line has been the one I completed first.

That was when we still had Domino. Now that she's gone back to Canada things are different. I'm not even sure EQ2 has a dedicated Tradeskill dev any more and we already know there won't even be a Signature Tradeskill Questline when PoP launches. It's scheduled to be added in an update at an as-yet unspecified later date.

Nevertheless, we'll be getting ten more levels on November 28th. With no questline to bump up the xp, my Weaponsmith and Sage are both going to have to settle down at workstations and grind writs.

According to the Beta forums, at the moment that's a mountain to climb. There was a brief period when crafting xp flowed like water but that was because of a beta buff. Once that was switched off the complaints began to pour in.

There was good reason for the change. It wasn't just to slow testers down or make it harder for them to get the promised reward for hitting max level in Beta. As Caith, one of the EQ2 devs, put it on Discord:

"The reason we turned off the beta bonus xp is so that we can get an accurate picture of how it would be on live, and adjust as required".

Very sound. Unfortunately, not all of the necessary pieces are yet in place to give an accurate reading. The invaluable and indefatigable Niami Denmother explains it thus:

"You need to do level 100 or higher rush orders or work orders. (Only level 100+ have the new xp rewards on completion) *Currently* they're using Maldura recipes for the level 100 ones and not everyone bothered to get those recipes. This is temporary. They've cobbled together a leveling path for all the eager testers while they're still working on the real writs, and some other crafting goodness for us. We've got a month - they ARE making progress, we're just trying to progress faster than they can keep up."

Isn't it always the way? Players burn through content so much faster than developers can churn it out - even in Beta.

Sparkles are good

Meanwhile I'm working on my harvesting skills. It's all very well getting an instant Level 100 crafter
but unless you plan on buying all your mats from the broker (very expensive) you're going to need at least one maxed-out harvester to go and get the stuff.

Or maybe not. These days anyone can gather or mine or lumber or fish. The minimum skill levels were removed a while back. All that happens now, when you harvest a node well above your skill level, is that you fail a lot. Which is fine, because you also get a skill-up on most attempts, successful or otherwise.

So, you can go out and gather the mats you need if you have the patience and skill up while you're doing it. It's a monumentally slow process though. And you don't get any rares at all until your skill passes the former threshold.

I spent an hour this morning harvesting in Sinking Sands with my Level 100 Inquisitor who is also a Level 50 Carpenter. She was boosted from nothing to 100 and has never done much field work. With a cap of 500 based on her Adventure level most of her skills were in the 20s. After an hour they're all around 100 and she has enough mats to do a few levels on Rush Orders.

Too lazy even to get off the horse.

I could find out what the relevant trade questline is for her level and go do that. If there is one. I'm not sure there is. It depends who the tradeskill lead was when the game was going through the fifities. If it was Behn there'll be nothing.

If I did, though, she still wouldn't have the harvesting skills because most craft quests provide their own mats or don't use any. There's a whole separate Harvesting questline - several in fact - that I could do to catch up. I've written about that before. It's very good. Maybe I'll do that.

Only, harvesting is really relaxing. And fun. And satisfying. It is in most MMOs but especially so in EQ2. What's more, if you're catching up on a level 100 in older zones, everything's gone grey. The wildlife wanders past you and leaves you alone. You can drift.

That's the one I want!

Even in level-appropriate zones at 100, geared up from the last expansion, topped out with panda hand-me-downs and guarded by an equally well-turned-out mercenary, there are precious few interruptions to the zen-like calm brought by knocking chips off rocks.

I took my Berserker around Phantom Sea and Obulos Frontier for a couple of hours on Saturday, buffed up with an old potion I dug out of the bank that came from when I was still religiously doing my Crafting Apprentice quests every day.

With maxed skills, harvesting AAs and items and the boost my Berserker/Weaponsmith has a 27% chance per strike of getting a "Bountiful Harvest" (more stuff) and a 9% bonus to his chance of finding a Rare. It was Rares I was after, looking to supply my Warlock/Sage so he could upgrade his, the Necro's and the Inquisitor's 90s spells to Expert before the expansion lands.

I have no idea what to do with this but it sells for 84k Plat...

It was a very successful run. I came back with eighteen rares. Naturally, only two of them were the specific rares I needed but if necessary I can sell the wrong ones and buy the right ones with the proceeds. I won't though. I'll end up using them all.

I also bagged some rares I didn't know what to do with and after investigating them I realized I barely even understand EQ2's spell progression any more. Or the augment system. Or the various upgrading options for gear. It's so ferociously overwrought after fourteen years of continual development I'd be amazed if anyone knows what's going on.

And that's the fun of it. Come the new expansion it'll be all change again. I'm going to try and catch up then, in theory if not in practice. I can hardly wait!

All of which means this probably isn't the best time to be revisiting old systems and trying to remember how they work. I think I'll just go and hit some rocks. That, at least, never seems to change.

A Test Of Patience : EQ2

See that up there? That's what you get for not logging in for five years, that is. A screen full of pop-ups and a cacophony of alarms and sirens. Oh, I get the message: everything's changed. Don't expect to just pick up where you left off, fairweather friend. There's plenty of work to be done before you'll be having any fun here again.

It's unavoidable, I guess. It would be irresponsible to let us just charge off, all unprepared, in our ancient, outdated gear, flinging our superannuated spells and clicking away at a cluster of icons that no longer connect to anything. An awful lot changes in most MMORPGs just in six months leave alone five years.

Still, it's offputting. How many potential returning customers take one look at the splurge of demands, instructions and warnings spilling across the screen, think "sod this for a game of soldiers" and log off for another few years? I know I've done it a few times.

This morning I logged onto EQ2's Test server. It was the the first time I'd been back since we left, supposedly just for a few weeks, when SoE began their Grand Experiment with the launch of the original F2P beta. We liked it so much on Freeport that we never went back. I still play there even now although Mrs Bhagpuss, despite maintaining an All Access account, hasn't really played anything other than GW2 for the last three years.

Before that Test had been our home for about half a decade. We both had multiple max-level characters and we'd had a long and often intense relationship with the tight-knit, idiosyncratic and frequently fractious Test community. It was a very different experience from playing on a "Live" server, what with the tiny population where, almost literally, everyone knew everyone else, something that often resulted in the server-wide equivalent of guild drama. Oh, the eternal politics!

And then there were the endless bugs, the broken content, the regular, direct contact with the developers, the permanent 50% xp bonus and the complete absence of customer service. It was a unique environment to be leveling up in, that's for sure.

Playing on Freeport felt almost like playing the game on easy mode after all that and I think we were about ready for some normality. Also, on Freeport we had our own guild. For most of our time on Test we were the only two active players in a guild we had helped to found but didn't own. The leader left fairly soon after we joined and before long so did everyone else. We did try to get the guild transferred to our leadership but at that time there was no mechanism for doing so.

Well, there is now. That was one reason I logged in today. I thought I'd start the ball rolling and get the guild switched to my leadership. Only, wouldn't you know it, in the five years since we left it, as I thought, in stasis the original leader has returned! It would seem she was playing pretty actively for a while until about six months ago. No-one else has been on and she's demoted the entire roster other than her characters to "inactive" status so I'm not even an officer any more, which means I couldn't even begin the leadership transfer process now if she takes another break for a few years.

As it happens, she logged in for the first time since February just three days ago. I thought about sending her an in-game mail asking to be re-officered but do I really care? I think that in the extremely unlikely event I was to go back and play regularly on Test I'd rather just make a branch of our own guild, move into that and start over. Maybe I'll sleep on it.

In the meantime I had plenty of busy work to occupy my morning. I only logged in two characters, Bruiser and Necromancer, both level 90. Naturally, even though I'd been actively playing them right up to the move to Freeport, they both had full bags. Completely full. Every slot.

My overflow filled up with discontinued or revamped items the game was throwing at me so I
needed to make space fast. A quick squint at the contents of the bags showed a lot of house items. That looked like an easy fix - go to my houses, dump the furniture, clear overflow and work from there.

Except I'd completely forgotten how nicely decorated my houses on Test are. How much time and effort and care and attention I'd put into them. How cosy and welcoming and familiar they looked and felt. So I couldn't just plonk crap down anywhere. I had to spend time looking at it all and placing it properly.

A watched gnome trap never springs

That would have been all well and good only, in the Bruiser's three-room Freeport apartment, nothing could be placed at all. I couldn't figure out why but luckily I found a couple of 36 slot boxes in my bags and free spaces for them in my House Vault so I shoved everything in there and slammed the door. Kicking the can down the road I think they call it.

It's not this bright and cheerful in game, believe me. I tweaked it in paint.net.

It turned out the problem with item placement was because I'd left the Bruiser's house "Published" under the viewing system so that people could come visit it. He has a Gnome Trap set up in there and he'd published the house under the name "Gnomes Welcome" hoping to catch a few. Sadly his little plan didn't work because he hasn't paid any rent since 2010 so no-one, gnome or otherwise, has been able to get in since then.

The Necro had no such issues. She put all her miscellaneous house items down thoughtfully and carefully although in the indigo gloom that passes for lighting in Neriak you could hardly tell. That gave me two characters with about 15% of their inventory available, rather above the average for characters played by me.

One thing I really love about EQ2 is how everything, including simple UI service functions, have lore-appropriate animations and mechanics.

From there it was on to the eternal round of resets. Racial traits and AAs mostly. I've long since lost track of how many times SOE and now DBG have enforced a complete respec by returning all my hard-earned points and insisting I spend them all over again. There was a point where it was a real nuisance, back when there was no option but to do everything manually. That's something you still have to do for the racial choices but some time ago they added a bunch of templates for AAs that let you install a default spec with a single click.

It's an option I greatly prefer. I just hit "Leveling Solo" for both of them and what used to be an hour's fiddly, annoying tool-tip reading and button-clicking went by in less than a second (not including casting time). Should I ever set to playing those characters "seriously" I'll probably need to make some tweaks but for now they can at least venture out of their houses without the risk of being knocked down and trampled by rabbits.

Welcome to my parlor, said the ratonga to the gnome.

It does still leave the issue of hot bars. I copied the UI layout over from my Berserker on Freeport so that part's done but the bars themselves are in a shocking mess. Everything's in the wrong place and loads of things are duplicated or even quintuplicated. It really needs for them all to be emptied out and re-filled by hand, which will take more time than I'm willing to spend right now.

Maintenance aside, it was great to see those characters again. They were such a huge part of my life for such a long time it seems bizarre that I'd left them so easily and completely. Not without a second thought, because I do think of them quite often, but certainly without actually doing anything to check on them and make sure they were getting on alright.

Now, there's a funny story about how I captured this one...

Partly it was that it used to be a major enterprise to set up an account for the Test server. You used to need a full installation in a separate directory for one thing. Now, though, it's as easy as selecting "Public Test" from the drop-down menu at log-on. It took me less than five minutes, from deciding to do it on a whim, to stepping onto the surface of alternate Norrath once again.

I'd like to keep logging in to Test regularly now I've made the effort to come back. I'd like to wake up all my old characters and get them fighting fit even if I don't ever take them out of their home cities. I'd like to...but then I'd like to do a lot of things.

We'll see. At least it's a start.

A Testing Experience: Everquest, EQ2

Isey posted a comment that got me reminiscing about my very early days on Everquest's Test server. I started to reply but I had more to say than would fit into a comment so...

My very early experiences on EQ1's Test server were what really nailed me onto MMOs, I think. I started EQ in late 1999 and by early 2000 I was already finding the community a little difficult. I server hopped a few times looking for something that felt right and ended up on Test.

At that time it was normal for Test to be taken down on the fly with no warning several times during a single evening play session. When the server came back up, which could take anything from a couple of minutes to many hours, there would often have been a roll-back. All the experience you'd gained, any levels, any drops you'd found, any progress of any kind - gone.

Oh Noes! That is not right!

Even if there was no roll-back your character would be restored at the last "save". In those days Everquest saved your character automatically but incrementally. I can't recall the exact increments but they were in minutes not seconds. When this automatic process kicked in a message would appear in the chatline telling you your character had been saved.

The game also saved progress when you took certain significant actions like crossing the invisible barrier from one zone to another. In Everquest it was always wise to hunt near a zone line for reasons of self-preservation (although not at one, where the risk of being run over by the train of mobs following someone else's desperate flight was ever-present). On Test, doubly so. Skipping back and forth between zones was like putting your xp in the bank.

At that time the level-cap in EQ was fifty. The visual indicator of your character's level was a yellow bar divided into five sections known as "bubbles". Later a blue line was added beneath which broke each bubble down into a further set of ten. That happened because gaining xp in Everquest was so attritionally slow at that time that you literally could not see any movement whatsoever on the yellow bar when you killed anything, which was deemed to be somewhat disheartening.

A later add-on version

After the blue line was added we used to talk about "doing a blue" or "getting a yellow" and
it became possible to talk about progress in timescales shorter than "a session" but back in early 2000 a full evening's play on a normal server would possibly, maybe get me one yellow, 20% of a level, if I was very lucky, stuck at it, killed non-stop and, most importantly, didn't die. One death would wipe out the majority of that progress.

It would seem counter-intuitive, then, to move to an unstable server with a much higher risk of losing progress but there were good reasons, or reasons that seemed good to me at the time. In 2000 Everquest was a runaway success. Servers were bursting at the seams with players. One of the main complaints was overcrowding. Certain areas had xp modifiers or had mobs that dropped items which could be handed in for bonus xp and those areas were permanently camped, often with waiting lists. Even at low levels mobs had a respawn time of 12-20 minutes. You either waited a long time between spawns at the good spots or roamed around and took lower rewards off whatever you could find. If you could kill it. If someone didn't steal the kill.

At busy times the atmosphere could get overheated, fractious, recriminatory. I heard somehow that fewer people played on Test because of the risks involved. Better yet, in recognition of those risks and in an attempt to offset them, Test had a large, permanent bonus to xp.

There was no way to transfer to Test, nor to bump up your character's level, nor to get free gear. All those inducements and incentives came years later. At that time if you wanted to play on Test you rolled a character there and leveled up just like any other server.

Alright, who saw me first?

I rolled a necro, a new class to me. I picked it because I'd read the necro could solo, something that was supposed to be beyond most classes in Everquest (In my experience most classes could solo, with the exception of Rogues and Warriors, and even there some determined individuals managed it somehow. Whether soloing them could be classed as any kind of entertainment is another matter).

I loved playing my necro. He seemed very powerful and versatile compared to the ranger and cleric I'd been playing before. Not that there weren't problems. The trick I mentioned before about zoning to force a save clashed badly with the inability of pets to cross a zoneline. Same thing if you camped out to character select, which would also force a save but cause any summoned skeletons to collapse in a clatter of bones.

After a while I discovered that dropping a coin would force a save. Those were the days when you could drop anything on the ground - armor, weapons, food, gold. You'd see it lying there where you dropped it and you could pick it up. So could anyone else. That's how we traded items from one character another on the same account in those days before shared banks and in-game mail.

Boy, twinking was a scary thing to do back then. Take some precious item like a Shiny Brass Shield, drop it on the floor and camp out then log another character back in as fast as you could, hoping no-one else saw you drop it or just happened to pass by and picked it up. I used to do my swaps in one of the upstairs rooms in an obscure Freeport Inn and I was always paranoid I'd been followed.

Anyway, I quickly got used to the outages and the roll-backs, to the ritual of dropping a copper every time I looted anything worth keeping or made any noticeable progress. I loved the lower population density. I could get camps worth camping without having to wait. Even with the occasional roll-back, what with playing a more capable class and having the benefit of the boosted xp I was having fun and going faster.

Then came The Wipe. I'd made it into the mid-20s, much higher than any character I'd had before. I came home and logged in to... nothing. With no warning whatsoever there had been a full character wipe of the entire server. Huge controversy ensued. Verant, as it was then, made various contradictory statements and took several positions. I'm not sure the truth ever came out in full, but as far as I remember it was eventually established that the wipe had been done by someone who didn't have proper authority as part of some in-office power play.

After several days of dithering a decision was made to reinstate all characters, naked. We got our characters back but we didn't get our stuff. A one-time offer was made for Test characters to move to a Live server of their choice. I thought long and hard about it and decided to move to the then newly-opened Lanys T`Vyl. Thus ended my first run on a Test server.

Meet and greet in Thundering Steppes

I'd been bitten with the testing bug and I'd also found my limit. I'd take pretty much any disruption, difficulty or disadvantage up to losing my character as fair trade for the excitement, novelty, camaraderie and fringe benefits of helping to test new content and systems while I played but I had to have a permanent character. If that's in doubt, I'm out.

Like Isey I subsequently played on DAOC's Test server, although never as my main server, and saw it utterly ruined by the decision to allow copies of Live characters to be imported. I would have played on EQ2's Test server from the beginning had they not delayed its launch for several weeks so that by the time it came up I was established elsewhere. I made and played a character there as soon as it became possible and when Mrs Bhagpuss and I came back for a second run at EQ2, when Scott Hartsman began to turn the sinking ship around, we made Test our permanent home. That lasted five years, until we moved to try the beta version of the Freeport F2P server and somehow never came back.

It may be that my days of testing are over. Other than SOE I'm not sure if any companies run full-time, as-Live Test servers any more. Even SOE have moved on, doing most of their testing on Copy and Beta Test servers these days. Perhaps it was something of its day and that day has gone. If so, I'm privileged to have had the opportunity to experience the brief flowering of something very rich and strange.