Well, exhibiting typical self-control, I caved in like a badly timed soufflé and got myself the currently available Everquest II expansion meal-deal – the original game, Desert of Flames, Kingdom of Sky and the new fellah, Echoes of Faydwer, all in one handy box. (Thanks for the heads-up, Zygwen!). SOE have always been prolific with expansions, far more so than any other online gaming company, and while this can be a good thing overall, it does present a bit of a barrier to entry for new folks further down the line: at new player starting EQ1 now, is going to be about twelve expansions behind, and even EQ2 is on it’s third one, not counting adventure packs, so this kind of bundle is a sort of mercy really, although it’s hard to see who is going to bother paying out for each one separately otherwise.
Desert of Flames and Kingdom of Sky were both quite disappointing to me really, but that’s to be expected. One is for Lv50-60 people and the other is for 60-70. I’m Lv36, so clearly have no business being in either, but was expecting this to be the case so wasn’t that miffed. These expansions seem to follow the typical old-school pattern of MMO expansion, in that they have only token, if any, content for anyone who hasn’t already ‘finished’ the basic game yet. Fair enough I suppose, although it’s this design philosophy, exhibited mostly by SOE in my EQ1 days, that put me off expansions altogether. I’d be pretty annoyed if I’d spent a full box price on either of these two – I know I was when I bought Scars of Vellious for EQ1, back in the day. To this day, I’ve *still* never gotten an EQ1 character to the point where I could actually *use* any of that stuff. Wasted! Kunark and Luclin on the other hand, were much better on that score – both had content for all levels, largely because a new player race started in each new land, requiring a full range of levelling opportunities, a much more modern way to do things. Echoes of Faydwer shares this variety, for the same reasons.
Receiving, as I have, all the combined upgrades since Desert of Flames in one hit, I’m a little overwhelmed by all the new stuff, but already I’m starting to see a whole new kind of EQII, and indeed, SOE.
The Common Sense Gamer: Is EQ2 becoming WoW?
I did have this eight page polemic about ‘World of EverquestCraft II Online’, etc, but the above article sums the thing up very well. It’s both entertaining and a little sad playing the ‘Spot the WoW Feature’ game in EQ2 at the moment. Achievements = Talents, Transmuting = Enchanting, Cloaks with Guild Logo on = Tabards, Tinkering = Engineering, Greater Faydark = Teldrassil, and so on. SOE seem to be playing catch-up to some extent, progressively ‘borrowing’ WoW features and shoe-horning them in.
It makes perfect sense, of course. In the face of the magic Seven Million Players press release, other games have three choices: Swallow your pride and become more like WoW, because WoW is what most people seem to want (EQ2), become so completely different to WoW that you have nothing to fear from it (EVE Online, Second Life, etc), or decide that you don’t really need players anyway. (Saga of Ryzom, Shadowbane, Horizons, Asheron’s Call 2, etc). In particular nowadays, when so many people seem to be exhibiting so much discontent with the WoW End-Game and Expansion Delays, providing a similar-but-fresh alternative, could reap huge player-defection rewards.
Still, that’s not to say WoW is all that innovative itself. I seem to recall ‘Talents’, of a fashion, showing up in the Shadowlands expansion for the now-faded Anarchy Online, as ‘Perks’, in 2003, and I’m almost certain Everquest 1 had something similar, in the form of ‘Alternative Advancement’ points. Tinkering, and Gnomes as ‘eccentric technologists’ were first seen in EQ1 also, although the concept extends back further to various trashy D&D style novels. Perhaps this isn’t plagiarism, but evolution. To SOEs credit, they rarely seem to just lift features and leave it at that – many of the new mechanics seem to be borrowed and crucially, improved from their WoW roots.
The Achievements, for example, are based on a new xp bar, gained for exploration, discovering new items for the first time, killing named bosses, and completing certain quests, rather than simply getting one extra point to spend per normal level. Novel, and good for me, the habitual explorer!
Transmuting, the Enchanting variant, also seems improved, in that the end product of an ‘Enchant’ is actually a one-charge ‘Adornment’ item, useable by anyone. This can then be sold via a broker (their Auction House) like any other crafting product, rather than as a service, freeing up the Transmuter from the incessant city-hugging trade-spam and price bickering.
The Broker system itself is better than the Auction House also – there are no recurring fees making the items fall off the exchange every 24 hours. It’s possible this lack of cash sink has a damaging long-term effect on the economy, but for people like me, who don’t necessarily play *every* 24 hours, it helps tremendously, and also means the market itself tends to have more variety and is less taken over by career ‘pro’ sellers who have nothing better to do than constantly monitor the stock prices and hover near the bank and AH with a number of multi-backpacked mules.
Of course there are turkeys also – the Desert of Flames Pocket Monster Arena Thing was totally empty when I went to have a look. I remember that being the big solution to the PvP Problem, back in the day – PvP by proxy. Clearly not a popular idea and now seemingly abandoned completely, and in the end they had to go with proper PvP afterall. Similarly, WoW’s world-PvP experiments in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands, attempts to get people out of the Battleground Farms, seem to be largely ignored and made unworkable by massive team imbalance. Not every idea is worth copying.
DarrenL points out the ‘Command & Conquer’ trap, that the above ‘concept tennis’ will result in a very samey and stagnant genre, but I can’t help but be fascinated with the seemingly organic process of natural selection going on in the nuts and bolts of ‘World of EverCraft II Online’ – the ongoing refinement and optimisation. Good ideas are copied, bad ones are forgotten; eventually, one, or both, of these titles, or an entirely different successor, (Vangard, Middle Earth Online, Warhammer, etc), will become The Perfect MMORPG.
Of course ultimately, it’s up to us to steer this process. WE are the ‘environment’ in this Darwinian struggle. It is our likes and dislikes which shape the direction the genre takes, and our approval or disapproval, registered most tellingly by subscriptions - by commercial success or failure, that define which ‘mutations’, are beneficial, and which aren’t. In short, if you don’t like the idea of all games in the future being identical to WoW, go subscribe to EVE! (I was going to say Ryzom there, but already we begin to see the winnowing process at work…)
Meanwhile, I’m quite enjoying Faydwer, partly for the reasons above, but mostly, for the nostalgia. More on that later…