EverQuest II

It’s probably intentional that the latest EverQuest 2 server, Anashti Sul, is named after a deity once known as the “Lifegiver”, but now more known for bringing life to the dead.

I’ve been blogging for 25 years. Here’s the things I was blogging about on the first day of August in 1998-ish, 2006, 2008, 2012, and 2020. Enjoy!

I don’t play every MMO that comes out – not by a longshot. But, I follow a lot of gamers, streamers, and game developers, and between me and them, I see a lot of discussion about the new MMOs that come down the pike. Crowfall was released a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly, everyone was talking about it. And then, suddenly everyone was not. What did it all mean? I asked Google Trends to help me analyze searches for a dozen or so MMOs to help understand what all was going on with MMOs today. ...

My time in EverQuest’s latest timelocked progression server, Aradune, didn’t go anywhere this summer. I still felt nostalgic for the older days of MMOs, though, and eventually I started reminiscing about those good old EverQuest II days. EQ2 doesn’t get a lot of love. According to the latest news from Darkpaw’s new corporate overlords, the original EverQuest brings in more revenue and has more players. What was supposed to be a graphical revolution in MMOs, in 2020 pales in comparison to newer MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV. ...

Yesterday, “Kingdoms of Amalur: The Re-Reckoning”, an update of 2012’s “Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning” was released. It’s a refresh of a game that seemed groundbreaking at the time, being a single-player experience that would familiarize its players with the world of the MMO at that time known as Project Copernicus. The story of Project Copernicus and its developers, 38 Studios, would fill books. Its failure left Kingdoms of Amalur in a weird spot: An MMO-ish single player RPG set in an MMO world that would never exist. While playing KoA, it’s easy to imagine other people crafting at the quest hubs, teaming up for the dungeons, and bringing the world to life. As a single player game, it plays like an MMO just after the servers come up. ...

This is going to be a little Twitter-heavy, and I apologize for that. The @PantheonCrafter account, posted a survey today about crafting: Would you prefer the crafting mechanics for @PantheonMMO to be turn-based (like Vanguard or FFXIV), real-time (like EQ2), or Click-to-Craft (like WoW)? Feel free to reply and say more! #mmocrafting — Pantheon Crafters (@PantheonCrafter) August 18, 2020 I just had to question the whole idea of crafting. It’s become a checkbox item – does your MMO have… [x] crafting? [ ] fishing? [ ] dance emotes? ...

I’ve been running around in an EverQuest Time-Limited Progression (TLP) server the past couple of days. Is there even such a thing as a new EverQuest player anymore?

Before you start objecting to having an MMO up this far, I’m just going to present my bona fides: There’s a TON of games in the EverQuest series, and I’ve played most of them. EverQuest itself, obviously. EverQuest Online Adventures for the PS2? I have it. Champions of Norrath and its sequel, Champions: Return to Arms (which admittedly, did away with the EverQuest branding on its packaging)? I have them. Lords of Norrath, the RTS? Have it, played it. EverQuest pencil-and-paper RPG? Have it, ran a campaign in it as DM. EverQuest 2? Please. Landmark? Paid the hundred bucks, played it. ...

Since I barely did anything to help with the guild hall, compared with Stargrace, Kasul and Ecor, I feel kinda embarrassed to be the first to blog about it, but there ya go. If you’d been following Twitter yesterday, you’d have seen the drama as Nostalgia worked crafting writs so the guild could reach level 30 and be allowed to buy the smallest, cheapest guild hall. Even the smallest, cheapest guild hall is pretty expensive and perhaps 5-6x larger than the largest house you can buy. There is nothing small about any guild hall. They really are, large, stupid large, and omg wtf I need a map large. ...

In either this latest game update, GU49, or the previous one, SOE added new recipes for tailors so that cloth-wearing classes, the ones whose clothing choices have previously been limited pretty much to all-covering burkas, can have a little more flexibility with their look. Last night I stood in front of a loom and looked at some of these new options. Some of the new outfits are ungodly ugly, at least on halflings. But a couple really stuck out. I must point out, though, that the claim in the GU48 patch notes that all outfits would be complete doesn’t seem to be the case. If you could previously only make four pieces of a particular suit, you should now be able to make all of them. This wasn’t the case with the tier 1 Tranquil sets, below. Both were missing boots and bracers, and neither the hat nor the shoulder pieces had a graphic. ...