We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

Can’t believe I missed this one. Back in June, SOE released a documentary detailing the history and production behind Everquest, one of the “first generation” of MMORPGs and perhaps the most nostalgic for me, to celebrate it’s 10th anniversary. They showed it at the Fan Faire in Las Vegas and it looks fun and very interesting but unfortunately I haven’t been able to see it as I can’t find it anywhere. It’s available on DVD as part of the Everquest 2 Sentinel’s Fate Collector’s Edition which, to me anyway, actually makes it quite an attractive purchase. I haven’t found anywhere in the UK that’s selling the Collector’s Edition yet so we’ll just need to wait and see how it pans out come February.

Anyway, here’s the trailer from YouTube.

P.S. The official Evercracked site which was down yesterday now redirects to IGN Video showing the first 10 minutes of the documentary.

There’s been a bunch of rumours floating around about a possible Everquest 3 game but personally I don’t think SOE will release another high profile, fully fledged MMORPG in the same vein as EQ2. Instead, what I think – or rather what I hope - is that we’ll see a more lateral shift with the franchise. What I’m trying to say is that I’d really, really love to see a port of the original Everquest to an Internet browser based game.

I’m not sure if the technology even exists for this yet but considering we’ve now got Quake Live, I’m sure it won’t be long before we can see MMORPGs played entirely through the browser. And I’m not talking about lightweight Flash based ones either but rather proper games and proper ports. Again, I urge any doubters to check out Quake Live and I dare you to not be impressed by it.

I know Everquest is no Quake but considering it’s 10 years old it’s not like I’m asking for a modern day game to suddenly and magically appear in Firefox as an add-on. I’m realistic in my expectations and understand that any port would come with reduced content, basic graphics, and a whole lot of headaches for the developers. For one, it would have to be a totally separate version to the current Everquest and be sold as more of an alternative rather than a substitute (perhaps funded by microtransactions?).

Still, it’s a dream. I’m leaning more and more towards accessible gaming and I can’t think of anything more accessible than firing up a browser during my lunch break at work or in an Internet café and playing a quick bout of my favourite MMO. I’m tired of having to having to have the best, top of the range PC with dozen of GBs of HD space and high speed Internet connections just so I can indulge in my hobby. Maybe one day we’ll even see full, decent MMORPGs on handheld devices or phones (but that’s another blog post).

Something like a browser based version of Everquest could also be a good move for SOE. It would allow them to re-release a timeless classic, update it’s content and repackage it to appeal to the casual gamer, and yet still keep the Everquest franchise alive without risking any harm to their current player base. It’s unlikely that hardcore players would switch over but I’d bet that it would certainly appeal to a lot of older MMO veterans or newer casual players.

Sometimes I wish I could make my thoughts a reality because in my head, this browser based version of Everquest is awesome and we’re all having a ball playing it. Here’s another thought to keep your mouth watering whilst we’re at it. Ultima. Online. In your browser.

Strange how the interweb works sometimes. I was reading West Karana and then followed a link to MMOQuests were I found some info about the arrival of Kurn’s Tower to Everquest 2 in GU #52. Naturally, being a huge fan of the zone in Everquest, I was pumped right away. You can find the offical info page from SOE here.

I resubscribed to EQ2 a few days ago but haven’t really gotten back into the game yet. It’s been ages since I’ve played it seriously and it’s always strange returning to an old game after a long period away. Also, all of my buddies (the ones who are still playing) have betrayed the light side and switched over to Freeport. Being on a PvP server (Nagafen) this means I either have two choices: betray over and join them, getting all my combat arts reset to Apprentice I in the process OR let them relentlessly destroy me every time I log on. Yeah, they really are that classy.

I was considering just getting Mantooth to level 80 (he’s about 40% exp away) and then starting a new character on the FP side. However, my discovery of Kurn’s Tower coming along changes all of that ’cause now I really want to do the zone as the preview of it looks pretty sweet. My only disappointment is that it’s not an open zone but an instance (there’s also a x2 raid instance). Guess I’ll have to save up my pennies, bite the bullet and betray anyway.

Anyway, I found some screenshots of the original Kurn’s Tower through Google. Enjoy the nostalgia fest.

Kurn's Tower Enterance

Kurn's Tower Outside

So a few days ago Everquest hit the big ol’ number 10. Ding! Grats! I’m exceptionally happy that it’s still going because I spent way too many hours of my youth playing it and, sadly enough, I still feel a strong connection to the game. Even looking at some of the screenshots now fills me with nostalgia and the desire to log… back… in…

Anyway, SOE made this little video to celebrate EQ’s 10th anniversary. /dance and be happy.

A character’s appearance in a MMO usually dictates two things: what they are and how powerful they are.

Originally, older MMOs didn’t really have a lot of variety in clothing and, if you look at Everquest, it only served to define what type of character you were. Obviously armour and clothing could grant a vast array of stats, bonuses and abilities but there wasn’t much of a way to tell a level 50 character apart from a level 40 one. EQ eventually started to buck that trend though by introducing more and more elaborate looking weapons, visually rewarding the player as well as statistically.

Now, flash forward to today, and MMOs use appearance for more than defining what class you are, they use it as a milestone for character development and achievement. Compare a level 1 Priest in World of Warcraft to a level 80 one and you’ll see a huge difference. The low level character will be wearing bland, uninteresting clothing whilst the level 80 will have far more interesting garb. And of course raiding and PvP plays a part… the more you play your character and the more you take part in activities, the more you are rewarded with an aesthetically pleasing appearance. A player who raids in WoW will likely be wearing huge, glittering and glowing shoulder pads the size of small cars whilst a non-raider will look decidedly more bland. Appearance is more than just a collection of items with useful stats, it’s a status symbol.

No doubt MMORPG developers are keen to show off new graphic engines with complex and attractive visuals but they’ve also discovered that appearance is another carrot they can dangle in front of players. It’s become a tool to reward people and indulge their egos – “the more you play, the cooler you’ll look!”. I don’t have a problem with the principle of that but sometimes it gets frustrating.

Age of Conan is a perfect example of badly done appearance scaling (note: I haven’t played in 6 months so it have changed). I remember wearing the same tunic from level 14 until 50 just because it looked so much cooler. Also, trying to get a full set of decent looking gear was a grind at best – I must have done the Sanctum of the Burning Souls several dozen times with my Assassin just to get some decent looking, matching gear. It wasn’t fun and, upon reflection, not remotely worth it because I out-leveled the armour soon after.

I guess my feelings towards appearance is that I don’t mind the raiders and the PvPers having the best looking gear and I quite like the idea of appearance actually ’scaling’ as I level but ultimately I still want to look half decent and reasonably cool without having to sell my virtual soul to the Gods of Hardcore. Plus, not only do I want to look good when I hit the max level, I also want to look good as I level. Call me vain but appearance matters. It’s how you get with the ladies.

I played Everquest for approximately 5 years starting just after it was released in 1999. In that time I did exactly 3 quests (OK, fine, if you include the “fetch me 6 fire beetle eyes” and the “hand in 20 bone chips for Kunark faction” quests then it’s probably about 5). The 3 quests I did are listed below:

• Stein of Moggok
• Enchanter: Iksar Illusion
• Rogue Epic

3 quests. 5 years. Everquest. Irony central to the max.

Thing is, Everquest wasn’t about questing. It was about grouping, grinding and struggling all the way to the top. When it first came out it there was no such thing as quest journals, large, yellow exclamation marks hanging over NPC’s heads or quest location indicators on maps. Heck, there wasn’t even any such thing as maps (I used to have to keep a folder full of print outs from the EQAtlas website). Undertaking a quest resulted in having to research it on the Internet, print out 15 pages of information, spend 2 hours travelling and then a further 18 hours camping mobs only to accidentally hand in the components to the NPC in the wrong order and lose everything. Ah, the good ol’ days.

The next few batches of MMOs didn’t really do much to improve questing or change the way we look at it. Even second generation games like SWG and EQ2 initially didn’t bother much with questing. However change was just around the corner in the form a pencil-necked geek called Warcraft, World of Warcraft.

WoW was packed with quests and it revolutionised everything. It made EQ2 look half finished in comparison and practically killed it off even though it had only been released two weeks before WoW and had a large, loyal fan base. Everything had changed and now people wanted soloable quest content.

While other games, like EQ2, fought hard to keep up and add new content, WoW grew like a juicy maggot. It changed the MMO experience from being a time consuming group orientated one to a slick and easy solo one. Now people could log in, spend 30 minutes doing a few quests, and log off a happy camper.

The result of all of this is now that every MMO has to come briming with quests or it’s considered ‘empty’ and lacking depth and content even if the core game is good (Age of Conan is a perfect example of this). 5 years ago these games would have thrived but now people just want to quest grind alone and only group occasionally until they hit the level cap.

Seems like questing is a double edged sword. On one hand it’s introduced a more user-friendly style of gameplay with greater allowances for storytelling and immersion. On the other hand it’s removed a lot of the social experiences we used to take for granted. There’s a fine line between enjoying doing quests and just ‘quest grinding’ mindlessly to level up quickly which I feel is where we’re heading now in a lot of MMOs.

Ultimately, I want the best of both worlds. I want to quest but I don’t want it just being another tool for grinding, a metric that people use to determine if a game has ‘depth’ or not. Questing should mean something and be an intricate part of the game and it’s evolution certainly shouldn’t result in the extinction of grouping or sociability. I eagerly await the same revolutionary focus being applied to the group experience that was applied to the solo quest one four years ago.

I don’t know about Ultima Online but Everquest was one of the original MMOs and it certainly had a fair amount of humour in it, often little nods towards obscure geeky references designed to give us a smirk if we noticed. You can find a full list of them here.

Everquest 2 was a lot more serious and I remember reading an interview with a developer a few years ago who talked about how they they felt humour and Easter eggs removed people from the immersive world and made it feel like too much of a ‘game’. The EQ2 team seemed to have lightened up over the years though and now have a few in-game jokes, none more obvious than a legendary scythe called ‘Dawnfear, the Reaper’ (\aITEM -1115320850 1219695296:Dawnfear, the Reaper\/a ) which drops in the Plane of Fear. It even procs an effect called ‘Bos Bovis Carillon’ – carillon being a musical instrument, bovis sounding similar to bovine and bos… well, I have no idea what that means but it sounds German.

World of Warcraft on the other hand is absolutely ripe with humour so obvious you just can’t miss it. In the Draenei starting lands alone there is the opportunity to meet Laando and do a delivery run in under 30 minutes for a chap called Kessel. And if you have no idea what those are about then please go punch yourself in the face.

Blizzard are even so much into their in-game humour that they can manage to pack two, count ‘em, two geek references into a single quest. Chasing A-Me 01 not only references the film of the same name but also Congo. My favourite comedy quest however has to be the one in Honour Hold in Hellfire Peninsula were you help a priest called Barada perform an exorcism. The power of Christ compels you!

The power of the Light compels you!

You can find a full listing of WoW Easter eggs here… all 12 pages of them.

So it seems some people dislike the idea of humour and Easter eggs in their MMOs but I’m not one of them. I love the jokes in WoW and personally I think it makes the game seem more personal and vibrant. I can’t see the argument for it breaking immersion and role play because, lets face it, no one bothers to RP in it anway. Now, I’m just waiting to bump into an NPC with a huge chin who goes by the name Druce Dampbell (you can have that one for free, Blizzard, but the next one will cost ya). BOOM.