Twenty Years : EverQuest

2019 sees both the twentieth Anniversary of EverQuest and the fifteenth of EverQuest II. Anniversaries, especially when they end in zero or five, offer a significant opportunity for aging games to grab some much-needed publicity. Daybreak has a big opportunity in the year ahead.

For most companies, such opportunities are extremely limited. Just surviving isn't enough. Not anymore. According to the Wikipedia list (by no means exhaustive), close to a hundred still-active MMOs have been around for more then a decade. How many of those had tenth anniversaries that you heard about?

What's more, there are dozens more coming up right behind them. According to that Wikipedia list, 2019 will see ten anniversaries for games that debuted in 2009, including a few names you might recognize: Champions Online, Fallen Earth, Spiral Knights, Hello Kitty Online...

2019 isn't the best year to come of age - any age. World of Warcraft turns fifteen and the sound of those celebrations would have been likely to drown out everything else even had Blizzard not caved on Classic.

In EverQuest, DBG does at least have a name that retains some traction. It may not mean much outside the genre, but as we saw at both the dawn and demise of EQNext, invoking the EverQuest name can still get you headlines - and death threats.

Timing is also on Daybreak's side for once. Blizzard will suck all the oxygen out of the publicity ecosystem over the summer but EQ turns twenty in the spring. Just enough of a window to let in some publicity sunlight before the Azeroth Deathstar blots out the MMO news sky for months on end.

This view is from 2006. I doubt it's changed much. Or at all.

EQII, celebrating its fifteenth birthday in November, might  also, just conceivably, escape WoW's slipstream, which could be fading by then. Fifteen isn't twenty, though, and EQII isn't EverQuest, so I wouldn't count on it.

It's a very big year for Norrath in more than just numbers. Last year's much-discussed (at least by Wilhelm and myself) insider leak suggested 2019 will see the end of content-driven development for both the EverQuest titles.

The next couple of months should theoretically set the seal on that, one way or the other. I'm on the alert for any implications as the publicity rollout begins although I'm certain DBG will attempt to keep the bad news under wraps for as long as they can possibly get away with it.

This week saw the opening salvo. Executive Producer Holly "Windstalker" Longdale released a Producer's Letter setting out the stall for EverQuest's celebrations. As is always the way with these things it's a top-level overview without a great deal of hard detail but there was plenty to catch the interest of players both current and past.

Our anniversary events in game in March include a brand new land, raids, and rares with a story about preserving our past, and it’s free. 

That's mostly for the hardcore, I'd guess. And EQ has a substantial hardcore following, still. By some dark measures it's reckoned to be one of the company's best-populated titles, even now.

We’re working on pulling together an EQ fan event so we can hang out with you, our honored guests. Timing for that event is likely to be summer, but I’m hoping to announce more details on timing/location in March for those who want to plan ahead with your own family, guildies, and friends and join us!

Also for the committed but potentially quite significant. Cancelling the annual Fan Faire (later known as SOE Live) celebrations was one of the most unpopular decisions DBG made when they took over from Sony Online Entertainment. This may be a one-off but if it happens it will be interesting to see how well-received - and indeed how well-attended - it is.

If I was submitting a 15 second clip I might prefer it to be of someone who was actually there twenty years ago.
Well, nineteen anyway...

In keeping with previous anniversaries there's also a big focus on how EQ has touched players' lives outside of the game. The media, even the non-gaming media, has repeatedly been proven willing to fall for stories of gamer love matches, births, deaths and marriages, not necessarily in that order. With the big two-zero incoming, there's naturally a hearty push against that half-open door.

We’ve heard so many amazing stories of EQ bringing people together in love, marriage, and even into the joys of parenthood. We’ve also experienced the power of our game community during the hard times, softening the pain of illness and tragic deaths by participating with EQ families. We all have an EverQuest story to tell. 

We're looking for player stories to help us commemorate this crazy occasion. Please send us a 20-second or less video of how EQ changed YOUR life... You can also submit a 15-second clips featuring your main character on your most played server to become a part of our EQ 20th Yearbook album that will come to life on Facebook later this year.

I'm quite tempted, although I'm not sure just how much of a change-of-life tale I could cram into twenty seconds. I most likely will submit a fifteen-second video of someone. I wonder if they'll actually check that it's your "main character on your most played server". Or, indeed, how?

The part of the letter that interested me most, though, was this:

We are aiming at two new progression servers with two approaches – one hardcore and one ultra-casual. Rules will be coming soon as we sort them out over the coming weeks with both new servers launching around the anniversary on March 16.

There has been plenty of speculation over whether DBG would ever launch another Progression Server. The novelty has long worn off and there's more than a suspicion the nostalgia-well that fed this highly successful income stream in the past might have finally run dry.

It seems not, or at least it seems DBG think there could be a few drops left in the pipe. And I think they could be right. While these servers do inevitably split the existing playerbase and cause problems for active guilds on both regular ruleset and pre-existing prog servers, they do still cause a buzz that makes the game feel more alive - for a while.

From the first Fabled event, all the way back in 2004.

The coming of WoW Classic means that the MMO zeitgeist this year should be particularly sensitive to this kind of trigger and in "hardcore" and "ultra casual" DBG may just have found the buzz-words they need.

Before this Producer's Letter appeared I would have said I'd completely lost interest in re-starting on an EQ progression server ever again. I played on the first and on several subsequent versions and much though I love the early levels I might have sated that particular appetite by now.

But... ultra-casual. Hmmm.... That sounds very appealing. I would want to see the small print, but a Progression server with accelerated leveling rates, relaxed penalties and fast unlocking of expansions, now that could be interesting. If it meant a server that could take you to current cap in no more than a couple of years then I'd very much be on board for that.

Whatever Daybreak's plans for the future might be - and as we saw with Trion last year, it all comes down to money in the end, not just the strength of your games or the loyalty of your fans - this is going to be a gala year.

March is so close, too. It's going to be upon before we know. I hope we're ready for it.

Jam Today : SOE Live

Anyone following SOE Live in the hope of hearing something substantive about EQNext might be looking in the wrong place. Azuriel, reporting from a panel at GenCon, quotes EQN lore writer Maxwell Drake as estimating development has another two years to run.

I think we all got overexcited this time last year, what with supposed gameplay footage and "something playable" just around the corner. A 2016 launch would bring things back on track with my own original guesstimate. If that's confirmed at SOE Live then we can all officially forget about Next for the time being until we start getting excited all over again when the alpha packs go on sale sometime in 2015.

We should be getting the hang of this new, hyper-extended, "open" development cycle after Landmark, which looks precious little nearer any form of "launch" than it was six months ago.  Massively has an interview with Terry Michaels and Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson, in advance of any panels, in which they out August 27th as the day combat comes to the not-yet-a-game game.

It's an instructive read, stating as plainly as I've yet seen it laid out that Landmark is not going to be "just a building game". As Smokejumper says, "The reason Landmark right now revolves around the building tools is because we had to have the building tools or we couldn't build anything." What he doesn't emphasize is that combat systems are another massive chunk of development time. If we're seeing the initial alpha implementation in late August then any kind of official launch of a "finished" game surely can't be expected this year.

Nothing yet on H1Z1 that I've seen. Maybe that'll be the new SOE game that bucks the trend and finds a launch window sometime this year. Sod's law says it is since it's the one that doesn't really interest me.

Much, much better news comes from the Keynotes and follow-ups for the games SOE actually has up and running. The forthcoming EQ2 expansion, Altar of Malice, looks like an absolute corker. Not counting the "Features" expansion, Age of Discord, which I personally loved but about which most EQ2 fans were considerably less enthusiastic, the last time I read a contents list that sounded as exciting must have been Rise of Kunark back in 2007.

Dinosaurs! New playable race! Luclin! (ok, a crash-landed chunk of Luclin but it's still Luclin!) Islands! Storylines that I'm interested in! (we might finally get to find out something about why the Far Seas Trading Company closed the Isle of Refuge and even who the heck they actually are). Not to mention the reportedly amazing new graphics that, to quote Feldon from EQ2Wire, "Holy crap. Doesn't even look like EQ2".

The various quality of life and systems improvements due in the pre and post expansion updates sound excellent too. EQ2 Wire has the full details and the panel transcripts but frankly they had me with the return of the Isle of Refuge, which we get back twice, once as a playable area and again as the 10th Anniversary Veteran Reward. I suppose I 'd better go play through Tears of Veeshan before AOM arrives, so conveniently close to my birthday, in November. Now if I can just pry Mrs Bhagpuss away from GW2 for a bit...

The Everquest expansion, The Darkened Sea, sounds pretty spiffy too but frankly level 100-105 content is notional to me. I may well still buy it because it will come with the previous-expansion-but-one rolled in and that's the one that gives access to the Bazaar and the Barter system from anywhere in the game. I've already nearly bought that expansion several times just for that convenience alone.

I'm very curious that the upcoming expansions for the two games share settings, themes and protagonists. I can't recall that happening before. Both take place in the seas off Antonica, both feature dinosaurs and Lanys T'Vyl has her hands in the plot of each. She's a goddess (or a demi-goddess - I forget) so I imagine a mere 500 year time lapse won't offer much of an impediment.

All in all it's been a great news day for longtime EQ and EQ2 players. Not so good for those who've moved on. It may be a long wait until Landmark and Next are real games but this will do me fine until then.