The Theory Of

Here you'll find discussion of all manner of topics relating to the theory of multiplayer games. As I see it, anyway. A note to commentors: if you stray off-topic or if your reply contains ad hominem attacks, your comment will be deleted.

Author: JB47394

If I recall correctly, the last time I was in Norrath was back in the summer of 2000.  I had originally started playing in March of 1999, took a break after a year, and then went back briefly.  I ultimately gave up on EverQuest because of the extreme grind and the "Super Chicken GM Event" as I refer to it.  Some of you may remember it.  Kolonel Kluck anyone?

Seven years later, here I am trying every free trial on an MMO that I can find, just to see what the state of the art is in gaming.  I won't play another level grinder, so nothing has called to me.  The closest I've gotten to being entertained by an MMO was Eve Online.  But because that's primarily about PvP and involves rather serious play, I decided that it shared too much with level grinders.  And by the way, I think that Lord of the Rings Online is just a beautiful game.  If only I could wander around in their version of Bree for real.

The latest free trial that I encountered was EverQuest.  Not the new one.  The original one.  The one I had picked up in March of 1999.  Although I cut my teeth on Ultima Online, I didn't stick with it.  EverQuest was where I set down roots.

Returning to EverQuest was very nostalgic.  Including the installation, which was slow, annoying and at times confusing.  Just like in the old days.  Gigabytes of downloading, much of it music that I ended up turning off.

The real fun came when I was able to load up my original character and trot him around Norrath.  A level 45 half-elf ranger.  One of about eight billion half-elf rangers in all of EverQuest.  Mind you, he looked a bit different seven years later.  Attempted face-lifts of various equipment (as well as his face, truth be told) had changed him, but he didn't reallly look a day older than when he took his first steps back in Surefall Glade.

The ranger started out where I had left him all those years ago, in Firiona Vie, which was a new zone back then.  Now it's deserted.  I didn't remember anything about it and ran around that wonderful featureless EverQuest landscape until I stumbled over a new feature in the game - maps.  They're simple line drawings, but they work.  I was able to get over to the dock area so that I could hop a boat back to the old world.

Unfortunately, I encountered the guards there.  They 'con' indifferent, but their indifference cost me about 10% of my progress to level 46.  Oh the happy memories of being stripped of hard-won experience.  And the joy of corpse runs.  Fortunately, my bind point turned out to be on the dock and I died in the water, so it was a quick and easy run of about 100 feet.  I might have forgotten to get killed and missed out on that particular bit of nostalgia.

Next, hop a boat.  Well, wait for one.  Hum da dee.  Waiting for the boat.  Boat's gonna get here any time now.  This is a dock.  Gotta be a boat.  No boat in sight.  There's no boat coming.  Where's the flippin' boat?

Hey, I'm a ranger.  I have levitate and run speed spells (remember the calls for SoW buffs?).  I'll just head south and zone manually.  That didn't work.  I ran into the zone boundary and just stopped.  So, back to the dock.  Hey, lookie here.  There's a little gnome with a name of Translocator Drabilt.  You know, that sounds a lot like a travel service kind of NPC.  Sure enough, it was the replacement for the boats.  They just didn't bother getting rid of the docks.

When all was said and done, I arrived back at the docks of Butcherblock Mountains.  This was why I had returned to EverQuest.  To see the low-quality, cheesy, glitchy graphics of EverQuest of old.  It was honey on my tongue, and music to my ears (even though I turned that particular annoyance off).  The textures are crude.  My ranger ran as if he badly needed to locate a rest room.  His jump animation was embarrassing in the extreme and he never put away his cutlery.  But the ranger had returned.  All hail the returning hero.

Nobody said a thing.  The zone was empty.  It was hugely nostalgic for me to walk along the silly little trails of the various zones and see this or that blocky little building, or a named NPC who had given me so much grief in the past.  But nobody was around.  I visited Butcherblock Mountains, Greater Faydark, Crushbone, Mistmoore, Lesser Faydark, Steamfont Mountains, the zones around Qeynos and Freeport, even Highpass Hold.  In all that time, I could locate perhaps a dozen people.  I spoke to the only two people who were actually playing their characters in sight of me in my travels.  More on this later.

The memories were many, of course.  The newness of everything was just incredible fun for me because it was my first serious MMO.  Killing those danged bandits up in the hills.  My first lightstone from a wisp.  The joy of finally breaking through Crushbone to kill Emperor Crush and the ambassador.  Trying to get that stupid chainmail shirt off the Emperor (which I happened to loot on my nostalgia tour).  Chasing aviaks around that weird eyrie.  Grinding beetles, rats and snakes outside of Qeynos.  And, of course, the piece de resistance, camping Highpass.

A disappointment about the nostalgia trip was that some of the zones and monsters had had their artwork updated.  I was so looking forward to seeing those foolish orcs waiting to jump down on me at Highpass.  But alas, the zone and the orcs had been redesigned.  Crushbone still had the original setup, including all the old camps that we fought so hard to get all those years ago, but those redesigned orcs were in place there too.

Freeport had been redesigned, but at least the boat worked, which was a considerable improvement over my first attempt when they originally implemented them.  Steamfont mountains had also gotten softened and cleaned up.  Robbed of more memories.

It doesn't come out here, but I was really getting misty-eyed over my little tour through Norrath.  I had spent a good year with newfound online friends, grinding away through countless monsters, sharing the trials and tribulations of hours of killing and being killed, corpse retrievals, crafting items for guildies and having items crafted for me as well.  My first crafted Trueshot bow.  Being chased out of Everfrost by ice giants.  Seeing my first dragon.  And many, many more experiences besides.

These days, of course, MMOs are a dime a dozen.  I've played many of them, and they all have their pros and cons.  But EverQuest was the game that so many of us played and where we learned about the genre.  It was our gaming coming of age, and you only get to do that once.

The saddest part of the entire experience was the empty zones.  In 1999, those old zones were packed with people slicing and dicing every monster in sight.  We were camping, kill stealing and doing everything we could to get that next in-demand piece of equipment.  It was a leveling orgy.

Now it's a ghost town.  I could practically see the scraps of paper blowing past with the breeze, the zones no longer of interest to anyone but us old timers who want our little trip down memory lane.  It's like driving past that great park where everyone in the neighborhood used to play, only to find that now it's covered over with weeds and nobody uses it anymore.

We had  a lot of fun all those years ago.  I wish that I could again play an MMO - for the first time.