Take The Cash: EQ, EQII

Back when Sony was running the show, someone there came up with the less-than-stellar idea of holding frequent double Station Cash sales. Towards the end of that age of decadence SOE even threw a few triple SC beanos. For a weekend or even longer you could get two or three times the imaginary money for the same price. There was even an insane moment when you could buy expansions and pay your subscription with it.

I imagine it brought in a useful chunk of revenue at a convenient time for someone. Shifted a few needles on some dials in a direction they needed to go. In terms of the long-term health of the game, though, it was a kind of slow suicide.

The moment the company changed hands that was the end of any such nonsense but the damage had already been done. Even I, who never really bothered much with the cash shop, hadn't been able to resist the lure of seeing dollars go on sale for not much more than thirty cents apiece. What with a few weekends like that plus the dripfeed of five hundred a month that came with the sub, by the time Daybreak took over I already had close to twenty thousand DBC stashed away on each of my two main accounts.

The problem was finding something to spend it on. I'm terrible at buying things in cash shops. They never seem to have anything I want.

Housing was good for an occasional splurge. I bought a couple of Prestige homes. The problem with that was, once I'd bought them I needed to do something with them, and that takes time and effort. Not to mention that I already had more than enough imaginary homes already. I'm not going to be buying any more in a hurry.

I can't remember what else I bought. I know I have a couple of thousand less than I did at the start of the year (I can see the figures in screenshots) but I have no recollection of what I spent the money on.

Whatever it was, it was about time. In recent years I've rarely managed to get through my monthly 500DBC stipend before the next rolled in. I'm guessing that's a common problem because a while ago Daybreak started offering heavily marked-down mercenary and familiar crates as an alternative. I took one, once, but generally I prefer the cash, even if I don't end up using it.

About the only thing I spend DBC on regularly are the scrolls that give any class the ability to track mobs for five hours. Those come in stacks of five for 50DB and as a Member I get a ten per cent discount on that. At 45DB for twenty-five online hours of tracking I rarely get through a single stack in a calendar month so that's not making much of a dent.

When we got the Overseer system earlier this year I finally found something to spend my imaginary money on. Not in EverQuest II, where the feature plugs along perfectly without any intervention from my wallet, but in the original EverQuest, which until that point I wasn't playing any more and which I honestly never expected to play seriously again.

Whereas EQII's Overseer is good for gear, EQ's is fantastic for levelling. I've added ten levels to my Magician since it started, something that would have taken me years if I'd tried to solo it the regular way. Not only have I been logging in every day, in the last week or so I've actually started to go out and kill things again!

To get the best out of the Overseer feature in EQ is a trickier proposition than it is in EQII. Not only is it a deeper mini-game in its own right, requiring closer attention when setting the missions, but the timers it uses are significantly less forgiving.

You're allowed ten missions a day but only five at any one time. All missions run for a multiple of six hours. I've seen six, twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six and forty-eight hour missions so far.

Here I am, jumping on Meldrath's bed. I owe it all to Overseer quests!

The ones that work best for me are the twelve-hours. If I remember to set my first quintet after breakfast I have time to collect the rewards and set the next five before I close my computer down for the evening. If, that is, I don't forget.

But sometimes I do forget. It's half an hour after the time I meant to stop for the evening and I'm logging out of My Time At Portia or Elder Scrolls Online and I suddenly remember I haven't set my Overseer missions in EQ.

On the face of it, that's easily solved. Log in quickly, grab the rewards, take five or ten minutes to get the next set rolling, log off, job done. Except all that does is push the problem into tomorrow.

Next day, when I log in at the usual time, instead of last night's missions sitting there finished, waiting to be cashed out, they'll still have an hour or more to run. I could just wait, but then the next lot won't be ready until later in the evening than I want to be playing. And if I make another mistake and forget again I'll be into some kind of fail cascade I can only fix by skipping a set altogether.

Luckily there's a very simple solution. Daybreak, who love to monetize every possible interaction in the game, much to the chagrin of those players who haven't noticed the world moving on since 1999, have implemented a handy Finish Now! button. Press that and all your time-shifting problems are over.

Yeah, sure. When I first saw that button I assumed the cost would be eye-watering. It certainly is if you want to buy more Agents to send on Missions, which seem to be priced to catch whales. Dim whales at that, since you get more Agents for free in game than you're ever going to be able to use. It costs nothing to look, though, so I pressed it and prepared to be outraged.

I know there are people who can work themslves into a state of righteous hysteria over a misplaced apostrophe in a pizza delivery flyer but I challenge anyone to get up a head of steam over this one. To complete a twelve-hour mission that has an hour or so left to run costs around four Daybreak coins. It varies a little according to the quality of the mission. I think I payed as much as seven, once.

The current rate of exchange, at its least favorable, is one cent to one DB. Four cents definitely counts as a genuine microtransaction in my book. Most of my missions are the regular sort so for my monthly 500DB I could clear over a hundred mistimed quests. If I messed up my timing that often I'd deserve to pay a penalty charge.

As I've mentioned before, despite having a perfectly good All Access subscription, in good standing and fully paid in advance for a year, on which I play EQII, I'm not playing EverQuest on it. Don't ask. It's too tedious to explain.

That might be an issue - or at least it might mean spending a little real-life money - if it wasn't for the situation I outlined at the start of the post. This account, the one I'm using for EQ, is Silver (grandfathered-in slightly better than F2P) but it used to be my main account, back when SOE was in charge (Hah! Irony! "In charge"!). My pockets there are stuffed with barrel-loads of double and triple sale SC from when that was a thing, not to mention all the years of unused monthly pocket-money.

At time of writing I have fifteen thousand two hundred and twenty DB on that account. I think I've spent a few  hundred correcting timers since this whole thing started. Some days I did shift more than just the odd hour. I seem to remember paying about 24DB one time. Crazy, I know!

My magician is Level 103 now. She makes about 10% of a level most days. A lot more when there's a server bonus like last weekend. I fully expect her to hit the current level cap before the end of the year, provided I remain sufficiently interested in getting there. At the rate I'm going I'd have enough Daybreak cash to last me more than a year and a half, even if I messed up my timing every single day.

Since I have no intention of levelling any other characters the same way, that's way more than I need. I would seem to be well set. And in practice I make my timers most days, anyway. I probably only buy my way out of trouble a couple of times a week.

Looks like I'm going to have find something else to spend my imaginary money on.

Travel Across Norrath Fast And For Free! (Conditions May Apply) : EQ2

All MMORPGs are fiendishly complicated. Even the newest and freshest can be confusing and overwhelming but once you're a few years in and a few expansions up you don't just need an instruction manual - you need an encyclopedia.

Fortunately, most MMOs that generate even the smallest degree of traction with an audience soon develop just that: a wiki. Wikis are great. I rely on them. They have one big shortcoming though: you can only look something up on the wiki if you know - or at least suspect - it exists.

As the responses to my post about GW2's LFG tool demonstrated, you can be a very experienced and knowledgeable player with high level characters and hundreds, if not thousands, of hours played yet  still be unaware of significant mechanics and systems in the MMO you're playing. I seem to find some new thing I didn't know about, but which has apparently been around for months or even years, every week or two.

My latest revelation comes from EQ2 and since I know there are a few people reading this blog who play I thought I'd share it. It was a big surprise to me and it's something that's going to come in very handy indeed.

With EQ2 Wire going into retirement and the Zam network having mothballed its EQ2 site, one of the few news sources still up and running is Niami Denmother's venerable and invaluable EQ2 Traders. It's always been the go-to for information and news on everything to do with tradeskills and decorating but it often pops up nuggets of more general interest.

One such is yesterday's post on Fast Travel. Now, I did know that EQ2 has a form of fast travel that's almost identical to GW2's waypoint system but I'm guessing that even that may be a surprise to some regular players. For a while now, since 2013 I believe, it's been possible to open your map, click an icon on the map and be transported there instantly - or as instantly as loading times allow, anyway.

Even though it's the exact same system I use every day in Tyria I've never used it in Norrath for one simple reason: it costs Station Cash each time. Not much SC, just a smidge, but still. It's always seemed like a bit of a waste, although given that I acquire SC far faster than I ever spend it I'm not quite sure in what context it would be "wasteful" to use it even on such a minor convenience.

Well, as of this evening, when I read the EQ2 Traders post, that concern is flipped on its head. It seems that unlimited, free use of the Fast Travel system has for some time been one of the perks of  All Access membership. Which I have.

I just logged in to try it and it works just fine. Simply open the map and click the rightmost icon at the top of the screen, the odd thing that looks a bit like a feathered head-dress but which reveals itself on mouseover as "Quick Access Teleport". From there you get another map to select the zone you want.

Next the zone map appears with the same orange feather thing marking every available travel point - bells, spires, druid rings and so on. Click the location you desire and confirm you really want to travel and off you go!

Couldn't be simpler. Except apparently it could, because according to EQ2 Traders there's a command you can macro. Only I tried it and I can't get it to work. And even if I could, then I'd probably need to explain how to make Macros in EQ2, which is a whole other post entirely...

Anyway, there it is for what it's worth: free Fast Travel for subscribers Members. No more using my Anchor of Wanderer's Dock to get to a bell, then using that bell to go Dropship Landing in Moors of Ykesha if the final destination is somewhere you can only get to by Spire or Ring.

Wish I'd known that before I did all nine of Yun Zi's quests!

The Broken Mirror - Now Available For Bottle Caps : EverQuest

I was just logging in to EverQuest this morning, planning on letting my Magician soak up some MGBs in the background while I worked on a blog post, when I spotted the above. On click-through the detail is precise.

As Wilhelm has chronicled over the years, SOE's poor decision-making over what to offer for funny money at times came close to giving away the farm but  selling expansions for SC/DBC seems to straddle the common-sense fence.

Expansions are a big earning opportunity for any MMO company so allowing customers to claim them by cashing in credit seems like a bad idea. On the other hand, there are supposedly some difficult accounting issues wrapped up in all that unspent Daybreak Cash - and there's got to be a lot of it out there. I have over 30,000DBC accrued across various accounts, for example. Almost enough to buy ten copies of The Broken Mirror (Standard Edition of course).

I doubt I'll be be taking DBG up on their generous offer all the same.

With my highest character still trudging towards 92, more than a dozen levels shy of the cap, there's not much appeal right now in seven zones where I wouldn't even dare to set foot. If they scaled, the way the Raids in TBM scale, now that would be a major selling point, but they don't. And the single quality of life sweetener, a "keyring" to store Illusions, is something I might pay 500DBC for at most.

I am curious as to what the target market for this change might be. It's obviously not meant for potterers like myself. It was only yesterday that I took my first, nervous steps into The Underfoot, EQ's sixteenth expansion, released in 2009.

Welcome to The Underfoot

Although I have already visited a couple of later expansions, House of Thule and Veil of Alaris, that was no more than a quick shuffle round the opening zone of HoT and a shopping trip to the safe city in VoA. There are three expansions between those and The Broken Mirror that I have never even looked at - Rein of Fear, Call of the Forsaken and The Darkened Sea.

Who, I wonder, has characters capable of progressing through the max-level content of last November's expansion and yet hasn't yet bothered to buy it? That sounds like a very specific demographic - people with a lot of time to play, plenty of friends to group with, but insufficient disposable income to come up with a spare $30 over six  months.

Under the prevailing plan, each new expansion lifts the velvet rope on the expansion two boxes back, so The Broken Mirror won't join the F2P offer until the release of the 2017 expansion - assuming there is one. At current rate of play I would expect to begin to get interested in TBM somewhere around 2021.

I think I'll be keeping my DBC in my wallet for this one. All the same, it's nice to have the option and I suppose I'll have to spend it sometime, on something...

Addendum: This just in from EQ2 Wire. I do thoroughly recommend Terrors of Thalumbra for anyone with an interest in playing EQ2 at the top end. I thought the solo content was worth the admission price and it will be even more so for some old Station/Daybreak Cash you might have lying around.

Here's hoping this is in preparation for an announcement of details of this year's expansions for both games.

Second Addendum: Now they're all at it! FFXIV? You're up next. Anyone would think there was a WoW expansion about to appear or something...

That Ain't Hay! : EQ2

So, EQ2 makes 25% of its revenue from ponies. Alright, not just ponies. Tigers, wolves, rhinos, pegasi (no, wait, those are ponies), hover discs, clouds, dinosaurs... open up that little SC tab in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and out they tumble. Who knew there were so many?

Well, I didn't. I can't remember the last time I opened the Mount tab in the Station Store and I've never bought a mount in my life. Not for Station Cash, anyway, nor for any other convertible imaginary currency. I'm not against it in principle you understand, but really why would I want to? It's not like there aren't already a bazillion mounts I could get for free. I mean, look at this list! 

Wanna see my 360?

And anyway, how many mounts does a person need? I was somewhat taken aback to find that my most fully-rounded character already has thirteen. That's eight or nine more than he ever uses. Most of the time he rides his zippy gnomish disc (for the looks and the bootleg turns). He's got a flying griffin under the hood for, uh... flying, and a Leaper in reserve for the rare no-fly zone where he might need to get to some inaccessible ledge. Like that happens every day!

That's the utilitarian view, though. Stand around the South Freeport bank for a few minutes, and you'll soon gather that utility is the last thing on some folks' minds. Posing about on a pink unicorn or a 12-foot tall armored warthog, getting in everyone's way seems to be the fashion. It's the Norrathian equivalent of the paseo. See and be seen. Although if anyone really wanted to express some genuine original thought they'd do better to stroll into the bank on foot.

Wait just a minute, Madam. I think I have a stepladder under here somewhere.

I guess it's easy enough to see how someone looking at all this posturing and preening might decide to cut to the chase and just buy a pony. And once you've opened that door, well, you can never have too many shoes, right? It's all a long way from where we started, that's for sure.

I remember my first Everquest mount. It was 2002 (I was late to Luclin) and it was a horse. It took me a good while to save up the thousands of platinum it cost and handing it over hurt. It was the most expensive purchase I'd ever made in EQ and I felt it in my imaginary pocket a lot more than I'd ever have noticed spending $20 out of my real one.

How is she doing that?

I got a horse, of course. It wasn't like I had a choice. Well, that's not entirely fair. I could have had a brown one or a slightly more brown one. Or a slightly less brown one, come to that. White or black? Dream on! I didn't have that kind of money. But never mind, I had a horse!

Yes, he lumbered around like a spavined seaside donkey. Yes he took what seemed like half an hour to get up to a canter (and even longer to come to a complete standstill so I could actually cast a spell). Yes, it was probably faster to get SoW and run somewhere than it was to ride. But when you rode you were sitting down. And when you were sitting down you were medding. For a priest or a caster, that trumped everything.

It's a rental.

After Luclin you never saw a cleric or a wizard on foot ever again. Which is pretty much the norm in every game now, only it's every class and it starts from day one. Of course, we all regenerate mana (or power or whatever it happens to be called today) in seconds these days but everyone still wants a mount, for two reasons: speed and status.

No-one wants to walk anywhere. Walking's for noobs. Read general chat in any starter area, any modern MMO and someone will be asking "Where do I get a mount?". Oh, and those ponies? The sparkly ones are for girls and the plain ones are for roleplayers!  We want real mounts! Motorcycles, Elephants, 12-seater Dragons...

Or how about a "Classic Ford Car" ? (thanks to Carson for that tip).

Has it all gone too far? Probably. I used to feel my blood pressure rise when I saw a flying carpet cruising the mean streets of East Freeport. I got over that but I'm not sure I could recover if a retro Ford car passed me heading south on Justice Road. There's giving the customer what he wants and then there's saving him from himself. If there was ever a shark to jump, I think MMOs jumped it a decade ago, but even so, there has to be a line somewhere and wherever that line is drawn a Ford car's going to be on the far side of it.