Another anniversary in Norrath has come. 14 years ago I was coming home from Fry’s with the game, only to install it and be captured by it.
That seems like a lifetime ago, so much has happened in my life and the world since that day in 1999. But the game still stand, still runs, is still alive.
Banners in the Plane of Knowledge
A year ago, EverQuest became a teenager, an time of change in most lives. For EQ it meant a change to the free to play model.
This year, things are a bit more subdued. There were a few changes to what was free. SOE no longer charges for races and classes, though I am not sure how much of a difference that will make. Races don’t have the burdens associated with them that they did back at launch, and I have to wonder, if SOE is making them free was anybody paying for them? You don’t give away a best seller. Bag slots and shared bank slots though, that seems like something you could sell quite well. Here was what they said:
- We are opening up ALL CLASSES.*
- We are opening up ALL RACES. **
- All bag slots are unlocked.
- All players can now use the shared bank slots.
- The quest journal restrictions are lifted entirely. Quest away!
- Additionally, EverQuest is allowing all players to send delivery parcels!
That will make it easier when people go back to visit.
As for visiting, nobody in our last guild on the Vox server has been on in nearly a year besides myself. But there are so many other games to play these days.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
In celebration of the relaxing of the restrictions I made a new ratonga shadowknight on EQ2 today. When it came to choosing a server I noticed that all servers were at “Light” load.
Now, that was at about 11 am my time, which makes it something like 6am on the U.S. East Coast and 3am on the West, but even so I’m pretty sure that a year or two back at least Ant Bayle and Freeport would have been a bit busier than that.
On the other hand, in the hour or so I was playing I saw half a dozen other newbies exploring the shores of Timorous Deep and when I logged into Stromm in EQ1 a few days ago at around the same time of day there were plenty of people in POK and The Bazaar.
Obviously no older game can compete with its own heyday but there’s life in many of them still. Whether there really will be enough demand for three Everquest MMOs running simultaneously, though….
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I missed the original Everquest. At that time MMO’s did not feature in my gaming lineup. It wasn’t until WoW was released that I started playing MMO’s. I did try the Everquest II (from memory it was set on an island?) trial but at the time had too many other games competing for my attention. It seemed like a very deep MMO from the little I tried.
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I am glad they lifted the restrictions. It quite possibly seemed like a good idea at some point, but it was far too restricting. Often, I found myself think “Man, I should roll an XY … oh wait, those are restricted. I guess I should won’t play.”
It sucks for those who did buy though!
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@Tyler
I don’t follow why it would suck for those that paid. Hollywood makes some new blockbuster movie. Some people pay and go watch it. A while later it’s on TV. Sucks for those that paid?
Back to games If you paid $10 for some feature and then got 2 or 3 evenings worth of entertainment out of it, that’s pretty cheap entertainment.
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It was not only an annoying restriction for yourself as a player, I can’t think that it was a good choice for the game “ecosystem”. You always want to attract new players to replace the old-timers that stop playing. Most new players will probably start with a F2P account and therefore be funneled into a small subset of races and classes. Once those players decided to stay for good, they probably grew attached to their character, so you’d end up with certain classes much more often, which is rarely a good thing.
Of course, powerleveling (at least in EQ2) made that less of a problem. You find a group of people, you roll another alt, you spend all of one afternoon, and are close to the level cap. Which, of course, is stupid in different ways.
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@Gavin – You are comparing very different experience, watching a movie in a theater and seeing a movie with commercials on TV. That is not even close to being a parallel with what he is saying.
If you bought the Wood Elf race a few weeks back and now, suddenly, it is free, you must admit that you would feel a little out of sorts, right?
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Wilhelm The Slayer of Analogies, lol…
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@HZ – Well, the next analogy that I run into that changes the mind of somebody who has the opposing view will be the first.
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I know how much you love them, so I couldn’t resist poking fun. (-: I agree that they don’t change minds – maybe people forget they are used to teach/explain, rather than convince/argue.
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