A lot of old EverQuest players, myself included, look back at the first days of that MMO with a certain bit of nostalgia that blinds us to the flaws in the game. EQ wasn’t the only MMO or even the first MMO, but it was the MMO that set the template for what the genre would become.
Leveling was tough. It was nearly impossible to level without a group, finding a group could take hours, and each level could take days of grouping (and looking for group). People even used to make forum art for their characters that would include their level, as it changed so slowly that it’d be no problem to keep current. It took me a year to hit level 50 with a character, though I did change mains a few months in.
I’ve been playing Monsters & Memories and Pantheon, games which try to bring both the good and the bad of EverQuest to the modern day. And it has convinced me that I don’t like slow leveling, and I don’t like looking for group.
Erenshor, the single player MMO simulator, solved that first problem. It’s full of simulated players (SimPlayers) who are totally available and want to group with you (even going so far as to stalk you if you’re playing an alt). They want to go wherever you want to go.
But the grind. The grind was real. Leveling in EQ is slow, and so is slow in Erenshor, too. I really liked the game, but the thought of logging in and grinding some dungeon for hours without even getting a level or any decent loot didn’t appeal. I put it aside and played other games.
Since I last played, BurgeeMedia solved the problem with their new “Server Admin Panel”. This little handy collection of switches and sliders lets you make the game easier or harder to suit your tastes. Want a minimap? You got it. Want to know who has quests? You can see that now. Want to know the exact level of your target? Here it is. Want to remove the XP penalty on death? Right here. Want faster XP? Faster running? Modify the DPS or health of enemies? Want more rare drops? Faster respawns? You can do all of these things.
I’m not greedy. I just pushed up the XP modifier to 5.0, and the rare drops to the max. I kept the NPCs as challenging as they were.
It made all the difference. Now I could break a spawn in a dungeon somewhere and set the tank pulling and I could get a level in less than an hour. And the loot would be decent; I and my group would be well equipped. And if that weren’t enough, I had a whole new group slot for a fifth member.
The original game had four party slots; one for each of the four classes, Paladin, Duelist, Druid and Arcanist. The addition of the Stormcaller ranger class created a need for extra party room in order to accommodate it. Unfortunately, no NPCs have leveled Stormcaller enough to get to grouping level, so I have been running with double druids. No complaints.
I did roll up a Stormcaller, twinked with the best stuff I had on hand. When I play her, Sim Players demand I get back on Moon Unit. When I am on Moon Unit, they wonder when Nenya will come out to play. It is important that my characters are well-liked, because at some point, there will be a chance to make a guild and invite NPCs to abandon their guilds and join mine. I’m not sure what will change. Perhaps a guild bank that I can store gear in for them, and they can put their old gear in when they upgrade. That would be nice. Right now they demand upgrades all the time, even if they’ve just gotten one for that slot, even if it wouldn’t make sense for them (a druid weapon without wisdom or mana? Why would you want this?) It would be nice if they gave back the gear they upgraded.
These are just the updates that really had an impact on my playing. There’s many more — zone updates, new zones, loads of graphical changes and fixes, loads more interactions with the Sim Players. Also more levels, stuff to do once you get to max level, updates to the storyline… and with these changes, there’s a chance I’ll manage to see it all.
Ohh, it has been a while since I wandered into Erenshor, for the same reasons that you mention re: slow leveling (though I was doing a lot of AFK leveling when I did play last), neat solution to this issue, making the game as difficult or as simple as the user would like.
I love the concept of this game, I love the nostalgia it plays into, that I can no longer *actually* partake in because there just isn’t time like there used to be, and I am just not that person any more even though I like to think about it. Anyway. Looks like I’ve got my game for the weekend picked out! Thanks for the heads up about the changes.
AFK leveling still works! Once a camp is broken, the tank can handle the deets. You can even set the range from which the tank pulls so they don’t get too far away.
We were camping a named when I took the header screenshot and every so often I had to nudge the tank to pull the actual named instead of some giant skeleton he heard rumors of three zones away.
Did we ever really *like* slow leveling, though? I’ve been as guilty as anyone of claiming I did but if I really think about it, I’m pretty sure I never wanted things to go that slowly. For sure, I and just about everyone else used to throw ourselves at anything that promised more xp and faster leveling. I think it was more the shock of other games turning up where it all went so much faster that made a lot of people turtle up and claim they’d always enjoyed progressing at a snail’s pace.
Even if I ever did, I sure as heck don’t like slow leveling now, anyway. I don’t mind a lot of leveling, as in games that have a huge number of levels, but I do like each of those levels to come pretty quickly. The changes to Erenshor you’re describing make it sound even more appealing than it already did. I’ll get to it someday…
I remember a good night in EQ as being “got a yellow”. One fifth of a level. A week per level, a year to get to fifty if you played casually. Yeah. I do not have a year.
But the side effect of being slow meant you would definitely be returning to the same zone night after night, becoming an expert at that zone, plenty of chances to get a piece of gear that might just be best in slot for a very long time.
The uberguilds did power leveling, but they were playing an entirely different game from us casuals. And I resented that. And so I joined an uberguild — Divine Grace — and got to see everything.
These days, when I play a game, even an MMO, it is with the expectation that I will see everything. And that I won’t have to give up years of my life to do it. Eight years playing EverQuest… never again.
Erenshor is doing a decent job of cutting out the boring parts of EverQuest.