Frostreaver, Lethar And You - EverQuest Goes To The Polls

Yesterday, Wilhelm tipped me to a very interesting development over at EverQuest that I might otherwise have missed. I don't really keep up with the news on the original game any more and Darkpaw's PR Dept. doesn't seem to like sending out emails every time someone changes a comma in a quest dialog, the way some of them do. 

What's happening is that they're running a poll to decide the format of the next Time Locked Progression server, which isn't even due to launch until May 2026. That's quite some lead time to start discussing how it's going to work but this isn't some box-ticking exercise designed to make it look as though players have some agency when really they don't.

For a start, there's not just one poll. There are three. And if you click through you'll find there are more than twenty questions to answer in all! The categories are Expansion Unlocks, Special Rules and Bonuses and they cover everything from what should be available right from the start to whether there should be open PvP. 

The tally on that last one is closer than I would have expected:  22% For and 78% Against. The polls have only been open for a day or so, though, and they don't close until 15 January, so there's plenty of time for that ratio to change. 

In fact, there's time for everything to change because another unusual aspect of the process is that you can change your vote as often as you want. It's an ongoing evaluation and people are encouraged to debate the details in the separate forum threads that accompany every question in the polls and thereby change hearts and minds. And votes. 

I remember ArenaNet running a very similar, albeit not as well-structured, discussion process in Guild Wars 2 concerning the never-ending, grindingly slow revamp of World vs World. They had the conversation first, as I recall, and then there was a vote at the end. It was a long drawn-out waste of everyone's time, not least because almost all the developers who were working on it either left or got moved to other areas of responsibility long before anything was decided, only no-one at ANet thought to mention it until years later.

 

This seems far more focused and purposeful, with timescales and dates that everyone knows will be kept. Whatever the conclusion, there will be a fresh TLP server next year, just in time for Summer. Actually, there are going to be two of them but I'll get to that in a minute.

After more than twenty-five years, it's no surprise that the core audience for EQ consists of hardened veterans, most of them competitive raiders. For them, the game is more like an eSport than an MMORPG and both the tone and nature of the commentary in the threads seems to substantiate that perspective. As a complete outsider to that way of looking at the game, I found it very instructive to hear people explaining, quite cogently, what they were looking for and what they wanted to avoid.

Even in 2025 I think EverQuest retains something of its reputation as a difficult, slow, unforgiving game in which grind and repetition are necessary to progress. This is very clearly not what most of the people who've taken the trouble to vote and comment in these polls so far believe. 

About the only thing they seem to find too slow is the speed at which they can get to the next expansion. Multiple commenters make the observation that the game isn't difficult now and probably never was. It's just much too slow. 

They also think the reason most, if not all, TLP servers lose their populations after a few months has nothing to do with people not liking the later expansions. Instead it's all about having to slog through artificially long periods before they can get to the next unlock and the next raid tier, thanks to the pre-set times always being far too long.

Perhaps the oddest thing to me was the way everyone seemed to want to get past the Classic/Kunark/Velious eras as fast as conceivably possible, many wishing to skip them entirely. Far from the base game and its first two expansions being revered as possibly the best opening salvo of any MMORPG, the first couple of years of EQ's life are now seen as not much more than an annoying speed-bump on the way to the good stuff.

There was a lot of support for starting at Planes of Power,  itself seen as merely an aperitif before the real Golden Age of Norrath, which now appears to begin with the opening of the Gates of Discord. To quote one commenter "So tired of early content, the game doesn't even start to be fun until Gates."

 

GoD was, of course, the expansion that did its absolute best to send most of Norrath's population scurrying for cover in Azeroth the moment World of Warcraft arrived. Its sequel, Omens of War has always been popular but it's fascinating to observe the complete rehabilitation of the once-despised Gates of Discord.

Lost Dungeons of Norrath, however, always very close to the top of any list of my own favorite expansions and certainly my peak for social gameplay, appears to be widely dismissed and occasionally derided. I'm fairly sure that's because it held little interest for raiders even at the time. It was a superb expansion for introducing diffident outdoor and solo players to the joys of dungeons and full groups, building their confidence and teaching them the techniques required to succeed. But of course no-one has the slightest need for any of that now.

When Wilhelm told me all of this was happening, he wondered if it might be a response to the success of The Heroes' Journey, the pirate server whose owners Daybreak is currently taking to court. I don't think that can be the case, given the options being polled. Even though most respondents are broadly in favor of everything happening a lot faster, what they want to speed up is the time between expansion unlocks, not the xp rate itself. 

Most seem to feel leveling is so fast already it's trivial. Their problems never revolve around the journey to the cap, only what to do when they get there. The constant complaint is that all the options being polled are too long and people will leave because they'll have weeks in the endgame of each expansion with nothing left to achieve there.

Having scanned the options and taken the temperature, I very much doubt I'll bother voting at all. I was quite keen on the idea of a THJ-style server with accelerated xp and enhanced soloability but that's very far from what's being suggested here. Frostreaver (The name's already set - no voting on that, this time.) is just another raid-centric server with no particular appeal for anyone else.

But then there's Lethar.

In August, Darkpaw plans on launching a second TLP server and they're not taking votes or inviting feedback on this one. Well, not yet, anyway. Maybe that will come although the announcement suggests otherwise. 

This other new server, Lethar, is coming in August. It will have as its USP a brand new ruleset called called Personal Loot, about which nothing more is yet known.

Lethar will also start with The Serpent's Spine and previous content unlocked, all seven years and eleven expansions of it. TSS was Sony Online Entertainment's partially successful attempt to reboot the game by adding a complete, new leveling path from creation to cap, alongside - as opposed to instead of - all the others. 

It was generally reckoned to be a good expansion and it did appear to attract quite an influx of new players for a while. My guess is that if Darkpaw is planning on mopping up any disaffected Heroes' Journey players still willing to give them the time of day, Lethar and its mysterious Personal Loot Ruleset might be the bait.

I'll await further news with interest. The notion of a fast track through old Norrath with no group required does have its appeal. That said, it has to be remembered just what "fast" means in this context. I suspect even if Darkpaw went the SWtoR route and tacked on a truly massive multiplier, progress would still feel lethargic by modern standards. 

Not to mention there are now thirty-two expansions, which is why, even at what's been the most accelerated pace seen so far, it still takes about seven years to get from one end to the other. I don't imagine ever giving even one full year to an MMORPG again, let alone more than half a dozen and if I ever did, it surely wouldn't be one I've played for many years already.

I think it's time to acknowledge publicly that my time in EverQuest, as anything other than an occasional tourist, is over. I hope these new servers do well and I wouldn't rule out dropping in on one or other to see how things go but the chances of my ever settling down on either of them is so small as to be functionally non-existent.

Unless the Personal Loot ruleset is truly revolutionary, of course. But what are the chances of that?

It's A Boot Time : EQ2

You might not think getting to Level 10 in an MMORPG much of an achievement. I'd agree with you, although longtime veterans of EverQuest and its contemporaries could give you an argument, I guess. As far as EQ2 is concerned, however, reaching your tenth season, as the roleplayers used to say, is something to be celebrated.

That's actually going to kick me in the small of the back...

When my Conjuror dinged 10 last night not one but two banner headlines flashed across the screen. There was the regular accolade for hitting double digits that the game hands out on any server - usually in the first hour or so, if you haven't been slacking - but there was also a second pat on the back for doing it on the new, time-limited progression server, Fallen Gate.

I say "pat on the back". It was a bit more than that. More like a kick up the backside.

As has been observed elsewhere, Daybreak chose to sweeten the progression pot this time around with a variety of rewards that apply not only on the new server itself but to any character on the account, regardless of which server they call home. The most prominently promoted of these has been the execrable Pedipowered Posterior Punter.

This abomination has the effect of a mount (29% ground speed bonus) and it goes in the Mount slot but visually it's a back item. As a Fae with wings it looks terrible. Even more terrible, that is, than on anyone else.

The "Leaping" effect also seems to cancel my Fae "glide", a short, aerial coasting effect that kicks in every time I hit the space bar. At least it doesn't cancel the Fae "featherfall" racial trait that eliminates falling damage.

Fortunately, the joke mount, which I am never going to use on any character that has anything else to ride, obviously, isn't the main cross-server benefit of playing on Fallen Gate. If you get to Level 30 there's a boost for the newly-added Familiars that looks worth having. There are also account-wide rewards for completing any Heritage Quest.

I'm a bit hazy on what those rewards might be. From a modicum of research it appears to be infinite access to the HQ reward itself, for free, in perpetuity for any and all characters you might make on that account... always providing the vendors that supply them are a) present on your server and b) present in game.

Any color you like so long as it's orange.

At the moment the Inheritance Merchants are disabled due to some exploit or other. I fully expect that, if and when new Progression servers appear, those Merchants will be on vacation in much the same way the /claim window on Fallen Gate is miraculously empty.

Well, almost empty. For some arcane reason (appropriately) there's single item left in my claim locker: the Arcanna`se Effigy of Rebirth. I believe this has survived because somewhere in the small print of the sales literature for the last expansion it stated that this freebie would be useable on TLE servers.

Should be applied to inventor.

Of course, no-one said it would work there.

I'll save claiming my effigy for the Live server (actually I'll probably forget to claim it at all and even if I do I'll certainly forget to use it...) but it made me think about the whole outlawing of claimable items on Progression servers. The intention, supposedly, is to avoid tainting the pure, retro ambience with all the fluff and powercreep of later expansions. It's an explanation that doesn't really bear up under even the most casual scrutiny.

Anyone who's played EQ2 for a while - even a few hours - has access to a number of rewards that include things like speed boosts and xp potions. These weren't in the original game, true, but then neither was the Lucky Wolf Paw, a 17 % speed boost, charm slot item that the game virtually gives you in an attempt to lure you into taking up a tradeskill. Neither could you buy all your Expert crafting books from 1-10 from a vendor in the crafting hall when the game first began - or for a long time afterwards.

After swimming my wings lock in the downward position which makes me look like some kind of steampunk angel

The cloth of the supposedly "original" game is riddled with such holes in this unconvincing reproduction to the point where you wonder if it could possibly fool anybody. As for potions to improve the sluggardly rate of xp, excluding the large number of free ones veterans can claim might come across as more "authentic" if you couldn't just buy the very same potions in unlimited quantities from the Daybreak Cash Shop. Could there be some connection between those two facts? I wonder...

Oh well, they have to make money somehow. And I'm finding the leveling speed on Fallen gate just about right anyway. I looked at the xp potions for a minute or two before realizing that, no, it's not about the cost - I don't want to go any faster.

There are worse places to settle down.

So much for Adventure. When it comes to Crafting, as yet I still can't see any difference between tradeskilling on FG and the way it works on a Live server. The bald statement in the official FAQ that "Tradeskilling should look similar to the original EverQuest II launch" seems to be out-and-out nonsense. I'll persist a little just to see if that changes but I think it unlikely.

Apart from that I imagine I'm done with Fallen Gate for now. Or, rather, FG will become yet another server on which I have a character who I like but rarely play.

Perhaps the most useful thing about the whole exercise has been the discovery that I enjoy playing a Fae. Conjuror, I'm not so struck on but being a little floaty thing with butterfly wings? That works for me.

Might have to buy another character slot...

I'm On A Boat! : EQ2

In a surprise move, expected by absolutely no-one, the new EQ2 Timelocked Expansion servers, Deathtoll (PvP) and Stormhold (PvE) launched smoothly, slightly ahead of schedule and without issue today.

Oh, wait, no...that wasn't the surprise...well, yes it was, but...

THIS was the surprise :

Having spent years telling us it was impossible, it turns out the devs have been playing a game of Chinese whispers all along, telling each other the code for the Isle of Refuge had been knitted into socks and could never be unravelled. Finally one of them decided to go and have a look down the back of the sofa and lo and behold, what did he find? A fully working Isle of Refuge complete with all the original quests!

Actually I'm far from sure which "original" version this is. I know it was changed several times but beyond that it's gone all fuzzy. It was a long time ago. I do remember this version, where the wyvern drifts past, sets the ship on fire and incidentally frees the caged goblin but I could swear there was a version with a much longer fight.

One thing that definitely was there right from the start is the execrable voice acting. It really is some of the worst I have ever heard. What those accents are supposed to be Mel Gibson only knows. Whoever's playing Captain Varlos even gets a line reading totally wrong - the seafaring term "swinging the lead" is clearly new to him and presumably to the director. He pronounces "lead" as if it rhymes with "deed" not "dead".  Some sea captain he is. And why does the dwarf refer to himself as "me" all the time, like Superbaby in a 1960s Bob Haney script?

Never mind, they might be the least convincing jolly jack tars on Norrath but somehow they muddle through. My little ratonga shadowknight  is safely ashore, literally and metaphorically wet behind the ears, ready to be indoctrinated in the ways of Lord Lucan D'Lere and introduced to the "culture" of Freeport.

I wonder what the weather's like this time of year?