The banner image is from an old EverQuest lore quest. I mentioned before that EverQuest had stories, but the game wouldn’t just come out and tell them to you. You had to find the specific quests and follow them through. This one is from the “Plight of the Undead” quest, a quest so obscure that the only mention of it that I could find on the internet is from a blog post I made about it eleven years ago on Google Plus.
Google’s AI view told me, when I did the search for it, that I was mistaken, this was in fact a Neverwinter Foundry quest based on Befallen. Dude. That was me.
Anyway was just looking for an EQL picture I hadn’t already used in a post, couldn’t find one, need to take more, but I had this one in my back pocket. Enjoy. You will never see this anywhere else. (Though presumably the quest still exists in present-day EverQuest).
But hey. We’re talking about the expected lifespan of a game that launched less than a month ago.
And where are we in that month? Well, I’m 46 on my main combo and just about 30 on my secondary (DE WAR/DRU/BER). Just cleaned out the newly revamped Mistmoore Castle with that one. I could be 50, but Kanad restarted with a combo he preferred, so I’m waiting for him to get to 46 so we can do the Planes together. Especially good since group XP has been fixed.
Most everyone else got to 50, cleared out the planes of Fear and Hate several times, did the Sky quests, and are starting new combos. According to stuff I’ve read, some people are on their third already.
If the game is so easy that people have completed it multiple times in three weeks, you’ve got a problem.
The original, classic EverQuest was punishingly hard. Experience was slow to come and quick to lose. Death was a catastrophe. And memorable — you remembered each one. They started filing off the edges in EverQuest, and today the live game has barely any penalty at all. You can summon your corpse to the guild hall and use an AA to get a 100% XP rez, once a day.
EverQuest Legends just has no penalty at all, aside from having to rebuff and head back in. It might cost you some time. It makes zerging in to a crowded space, killing what you can, dying and running back in to give it another shot, a legitimate strategy.
Mistmoore Castle released today, as I mentioned. It’s an excellent place to go once Crushbone and Befallen stop giving great experience, and the place is just as creepy and train-filled as ever. I’ll definitely stop by next time I need to get through the upper 20s; it’s better xp than the Temple of Cazic-Thule, a dungeon in that same level range.
But Mistmoore Castle won’t keep me. The lure of unlocking new races and primary classes won’t, either. I unlocked Dark Elf because it was easy. I unlocked Gnome because I will need tinkering for the Warrior epic. I didn’t unlock Halfling because it requires killing 2000 wolves and doing a few days solid of foraging. Why would I do that? Yes, they want to sell me race unlock tokens, but I don’t really see the need. I have Enchanter as part of my main combo. I can illusion myself as any player race and quite a few nonhuman races.
Half the players I see are running around with glowing swords, multiples, and riding fast horses. This is three weeks in.
An entirely new zone, Rujarkian Hills, I believe, is coming, and Kunark is coming toward the end of the year. Now Kunark dungeons are amazing, and I am totally there for them. But people will be 60 and have their class epics for their primary in a couple of days, then the epics for all their other combos soon after that.
The only possible way to slow people down is to require people to at least have to raid with other people. Maybe. Maybe that would just be so opposite to the EQL promise of being able to solo everything that it can’t happen.
We’re all excited to experience EverQuest again, at our own pace and without having to depend upon anyone. But how long can that last? And is EQL attracting many people who didn’t play it back in the day?
I dunno. I’m sure the folks at Game Jawn have given this a lot of thought. But this time next year, who’s going to still be here? Sure, there’s hundreds of different class combos, but once you’ve got that screenshot of you soloing Trakanon, what more is there? We don’t even have a place to go to show off our glowy weapons.
(I have no glowy weapons yet).
