hello gamers on everquest...
i've been playing everquest (erollisi marr server) since may 1999... a
friend playing a lvl 40 char on one of the older servers convinced me to
fork out $60 to buy an original game (why can't i buy a pirate version from
sim lim?) and join in the online fun... over a year later i joined my fourth
guild... and i also bought another copy of eq for my girlfriend (i forsaw eq
becoming the third party in our relationship... so instead of fighting over
how much time i spend on eq and how much time i spend with her, i get her to
spend time on eq with me, nice threesome worked wonders)... the first guild
(brothers of obsidian) i joined cos of another singaporean friend... that
guild sucked and the leader was really stupid, but that's another story...
well, not ashamed to say, i was kicked out of the guild by the leader (some
lvl 18 guy) without warning... like ermm, whatever... soon after i joined my
rl friends in my second guild (The Raenore) which was great... except for
the fact that they were always a lot higher lvl than me... i would go run
around with them, me being lvl 30 and them being lvl 50, it was fun but i
would never get exp... that didn't matter to me much, as i was having fun
looking at new things and exploring new places, mind you i ran solo and
explored a little from felwithe to halas when i was in my mid teens... i
hate camping and doing repetitive things like stand up, kill, sit down,
stand up, kill, sit down, stand up, kill, sit down, (six hours later same
spot) stand up, kill, sit down, stand up, kill, sit down... then quite a few
of them got bored and quit soon after kunark expansion came out (sold their
char for quite a bit on e-bay)... this was when i joined my girlfriend's
guild (Lions of Erollisi), singaporean orientated guild with members of all
lvls... nice being with ka ki lang... talk cock sing song... one night or
rather early morning while playing eq, decided i was hungry and i asked if
anyone wanted to meet up for roti prata in holland village... aeawen(druid
55 now i think) met eliza(ranger currently 52, my girlfriend) and
myself(paly 47) at holland village for some good roti prata stuff... since
then, we have had a guild gathering which eliza and myself attended and also
went out with aeawen a couple of times to sole luna in holland and velvet
underground for drinks (plural, heh alcoholic here)... recently, lions of
erollisi was disbanded, well mostly all of the guys decide to leave and join
other guilds... dunno what actually happened there... maybe some one else
might want to elaborate... most of the older members of lions and recently
myself have joined my fourth guild (Divine Grace) of which i think i might
be the lowest lvl there... when you do a "/w all 'divine grace" command you
will find that the average lvl is about 55 plus/minus and the list is cut
short becos there are too many players... as you can see the guild is big
and quite high lvl guys only... i recently spoke to one of the officer (lvl
60 i think) in the guild casually, cos i saw him outside karnor in
dreadlands... i felt belittled by him, he didn't say anything offensive, but
i generally got the idea that i'm not good enuff for him... it's like i
don't drive a ferrari and have elizabeth hurley for a girlfriend so look
down on me... damn this guy might be a 16 year old pubescent piss ant with a
bunch of zits for all we know and he's judging me??? how silly do i feel???
and it was then that i felt bad for one of our buddies from the old guild,
as he was what is known as "marked"... damn he pays his subscribtion like
the rest of us and i think he deserves a chance to have fun like the rest of
us have... afterall it's just a game... oh and i have some strong suspicions
about eliza losing her lupine dagger... one of us got her password, logged
in and took it (not pointing fingers here)... how low can we get... apart
from all that i have said, i'm sure you know the rest of the common flaws of
eq, from kill stealing to taking over other people's camps and the old speed
looting and telling the group "nothing on frenzied" trick =)... btw i don't
have a fbss... i have included below a fitting post of which the contents i
will not include up here, but want to say that is how i feel too... and i
hate the guild japanese guild "lallapallosa" or however way its spelt... "
what i just barged in to your camp with the whole guild and ks'ed you for
the last hour? what do you mean, i dun understand english..." i'm sure all
of us on erollisi marr knows this guild... oh and gm's are never around and
they don't ever do anything... eq is losing it's appeal...
i don't believe we should make eq a better place, but i believe that is
sony/verant's job... bloody hell we pay them good money for entertainment
fun not stress... what i've written is my opinion, you may have a different
one... so flaming me is unnecessary... i'm not claiming to know shit from
shinenola...
check out this very fitting post below which i grabed from eqcorner...
http://www.eqcorner.com/editorials/bulliesontheplayground.shtm if you want
to visit the site...
randall lee
aka psyberx
lvl 47 paladin, erollisi marr
Editorials - Bullies on the Playground by Skyrain of Rodcet Nife
11/19/00
This was posted on Sony's Official Boards but has been copied here for
prosperity since we all know that Verant deletes posts from time to time.
Part One: Bullies on the Playground
This is the first in a series of posts, prompted, but not entirely limited
to, a phenomenon that has appeared on the Rodcet Nife server, (and other
servers, if the posts on the boards are any indication). EQ is by no means
the only place we can observe the behavior, but by its very nature it is a
perfect breeding ground for it. To this writer it is only the most recent
example of fundamental flaws in EQ and how Verant chooses to address or
ignore them.
Who am I? Three weeks ago I played a 52 ranger on Rodcet named Skyrain
Dreamweaver. Now I don't. The fun is gone. There had been a number of issues
that had blunted the fun over the past months, but it is the following that
finally made me realize the stress level was higher than the fun level, and
for the present anyway it looks like that will remain. Here's what has
happened:
EQ is at its core a very simple game with very simple scoring. Players are
judged by their levels and the loot they've acquired. There is nothing else.
There are no real-world rewards offered in the design of course (Ebay is a
whole other discussion), just these measurements of status in the game world
much as salaries and Porsches are used to measure status in real life.
Verant tell us there are others ways to play the game, and other reasons.
This point of view is seemingly blind to the reality of how the game is
played by the majority of the player base. We'll explore why this has
happened in Part Four: Verant's Adventure in Wonderland.
Verant is faced with a virtual baby boom of high level players. This has
caught them off guard. They expected it to take much longer for people to
reach high levels. They thought there would be enough new players coming in
to smooth the demographics. This hasn't happened. There are now hundreds of
46+ players on Rodcet, and more achieving that level every day. Their
response has been three-fold.
1) They added an extra ten levels.
2) The have added higher-level content from individual quests to new zones
to the Kunark expansion pack (and Vellious is now right around the corner).
3) Lastly, they have done everything they can apparently think of to make
achievement in the game harder and harder. Gordon Wrinn has more than once
expressed the Verant philosophy:
"I do think that players should and can trust that we'll do what we can in
order to ensure that EverQuest remains a game that people want to play.
Afterall, it's been shown that people do no like to play games that are too
easy and where there is no challenge in playing. It's been shown that there
is no feeling of accomplishment that comes, for instance, in obtaining an
item that "everyone" else has, or has relatively unrestricted access to."
The fact is that the challenge seems to be simply increasing the amount of
experience points needed to level, or forcing players to wait for hours on
end to get a chance at a rare drop. Remember: levels and loot, that's all
there is.
There had been earlier instances of the phenomenon I call "bullies on the
playground," but it was possible for other players to find different corners
of the playground to play in. With the demographic bulge of players at the
top of the xp ladder, this has now changed.
On Rodcet we have a couple dozen guilds at least who are capable of doing
planes raids, and taking down some of the most powerful mobs on their own.
It was crowded, but apart from the isolated incident, most guilds were
getting their chances at the uber-mobs and the planes because those that got
there first had moved on.
The most recent attempt to add higher level content has been the addition of
the epic quests. Because completion of many (most? all?) of them required
loot from uber-mobs and the planes, players who had their complete sets of
planes armor and uber-weapons needed to return there for the quests. Now the
over-crowding has reached the stage that famous psych experiment in
over-population reached decades ago. The mice are beginning to eat each
other. It used to be individuals screaming over a stolen kill, or the
pre-emption of someone's camp. Now entire groups of people are up in arms.
Take a look at the message boards. Listen in game.
What has happened is this: the bullies have taken over playground. In my
next post I'll describe how this is manifesting itself.
Part Two: Am I My Brother's Keeper? (Long)
The guild system in EQ was never implemented quite the way the designers
have intended. More than one has listed publicly some of the additional
things they wanted to do. But in fact guilds have prospered. In the
beginning it was individual hunters who grouped together, found some whom
they liked grouping with more than others, and eventually formalized these
relationships in guilds. This was by design. It helped foster community, a
necessity for the survival of any persistent world.
For a long time there were very few guilds. You could do a /who all on a
zone, find 35 people (overcrowding as defined in those days!), only one or
two had guild tags. GMs met in game with guild leaders to finalize each one.
Now the situation is reversed. Most players, even low levels who didn't need
to be in a guild in the past, now carry guild tags. In fact it's somewhat of
a stigma for high-level players not to have one. They are suspect. Maybe
they kill steal. maybe they can't play their characters well enough for
anyone to want them.
As the mobs became harder and harder, guilds increased in importance.
Consolidations and takeovers occurred, much like corporations, to increase
guild strength to the point where the highest mobs could finally be
conquered. The uber-guilds were born. These were made up for the most part
of those players who recognized the only signs of status in the game were
levels and loot, and a few others who wanted the greater strategic and
tactical challenges taking down a high-level mob offered.
And as long as there was enough loot to go around there were few problems.
But the players leveled and multiplied, and soon it was relatively easy for
the uber-guilds to take down a dragon or a god. And they were doing it so
much those people newly arrived at the higher levels weren't getting their
shot. Verant responded by the level cap on those who could fight dragons.
Did it work? That's another discussion. But there was a recognition at least
that something was "unfair" and needed to be addressed by Verant. Important
point to keep in mind: a precedent was set.
The number of higher-level players continued to increase. Squabbling over
the planes and uber-mobs increased as well. Verant looked at their options
for satisfying players, and rightly surmised that more content was needed.
But here is where they made their newest mistake. They made it necessary for
everybody, even those who had killed the biggest mobs enough times to feed
the biggest great white hunter's ego, to kill them even more times. To make
the quests "harder" they made the drops less frequent. So the mobs had to be
killed even more often. I have heard it said that Verant may actually limit
the number of epic weapons that can be obtained on any server. True or not,
result? People feel an even greater need to kill those few poor mobs, and
kill them now.
And in the rush to compete with all the other higher level guilds, toes are
getting stepped on. More and more. Impassioned and bitter arguments have
sprung up when two groups have collided in their attempt to hunt the same
mob or plane at the same time.
Some guilds are trying to work through diplomacy to settle disagreements.
Two casual "notification" systems have been attempted: posts in the EQ Vault
Rodcet Nife Forum (a forum that otherwise resembles the magic marker scrawls
on restroom stalls) and a calendar.
Both are of limited success because the bullies, emboldened by Verant's
hands off policy ("You can't reserve the planes."), simply ignore them. They
have stated that they are going to kill anything they want, when they want,
because they can. Alliances have been formed. Uber alliances of uber guilds
routinely race to kill uber mobs before anyone else has a chance.
The two systems collide. More alliances are formed in opposition. (Check the
box your game came in. Was any of this listed on the cover? "Have large
groups of roving strangers trample on your good time!" "Try and create a new
reservation system that others will respect!")
More hard feelings grow. The diplomacy at times mirrors the playground as
well. The bullies push people around, demanding they be asked first before
others can attempt the greatest prizes. You want to play on the swings? You
wait until we're done. If enough kids band together maybe they can beat the
bullies to the swings, and their larger numbers as a group may help protect
them!
The bullies have a response to the complaints about them monopolizing the
few high-level hunts: "Why can't we share?" Next we'll examine the
playground concept of sharing.
Part Three: A Child's Guide to Sharing (Long)
There are two common answers from the playground bullies on Rodcet when
these issues are raised. First we have impassioned defenses for their right
to have fun. They are big and strong. Why should they wait around for lesser
guilds to get their acts together? Why should they stand and wait, not
having fun, while others have fun? Interesting philosophy. I'd be curious to
see how it would play out at Disney World. Oh wait, it couldn't. Disney
governs who goes on which rides when. Even has rules of conduct for the
millions who visit every year. Nevermind, doesn't apply to EQ I guess.
The other common answer from the bullies is that since there are so many
planes-capable guilds, and so few planes, the only solution is "sharing."
Interesting use of the word. It is of course an attempt to claim some
reasonably high moral ground. "But we want to share! What do you have
against sharing?" But what is it really? It is another bully tactic. And
here is how it works.
Ashley has been playing with her favorite doll. Her friend Brittany wants to
play with it, but Ashley got there first. Brittany is older than Ashley, so
she takes the doll, promising to share after she's had her turn. The fact is
that what Brittany has done is not sharing, but coercion. Ashley has two
choices: to wait her "turn," or to plead her case to a higher authority,
someone "bigger" than Ashley: an adult. But the damage has been done.
Because Brittany could take the doll, she did.
We see this behavior in children all the time. What do we call them? Ah yes:
Brats.
On a plane sharing means two things: incredible lag, and the larger guild
gets the most pulls. They can recover faster, get more statics, more loot,
etc.
Is there a higher authority in Everquest? No, not really. To their credit
Verant polices certain social aspects of the game: harassment, racism, and a
few others. Of course, if they didn't, they'd risk legal action. But what
about something like disputes over the facilities, the activities, the fun
stuff in the game? The policy is explicitly to NOT get involved. But wait,
didn't we mention they nerfed the level limits on dragons? Wasn't that a
precedent?
Sharing has been institutionalized for adults, because believe it or not
there are adults how never learned all their social lessons properly. At a
tennis club for example you do indeed reserve courts for a set period of
time. And if someone steps on someone else's reservation, they risk
penalties imposed on them. If they refuse to accept the penalties, they can
get kicked out of the club. Even public courts post rules, but there is an
important distinction. Public courts are for the most part free. Tennis
clubs charge dues. You pay for your fun. And part of the responsibility of
the club is to do everything it can to guarantee the fun for all members.
Everquest is not free. We pay for our fun. You'd think we'd have a right to
expect those who govern Everquest to take the responsibility to do
everything they can to ensure we have it. What has gone wrong?
Part Four: Verant's Adventures in Wonderland (Long)
The fact is there is a great difference between the game originally
envisioned by the designers, the game I think they truly believe they -have-
designed, and the game their player base is actually playing.
They have trouble coming up with solutions because they don't -seem- to see
the problems. It's no wonder communication between players and Verant can at
times resemble the Mad Hatter's tea party.
1. In answer to players' complaints about long camps, we're told that's only
one way to play the game. Players will be disappointed if that's all they
do.
But it's the -only- way to get the best items in the game. Even the epic
quests are simply longer strings of FedEx shipments and camps. And as was
pointed out in my first post there are only two ways to measure success in
the game: levels and loot. High-level players are judged as much by what
they are wearing than any skill they might have at playing their characters.
"Is that a complete suit of thorny vine?! You rock, bro!"
GM "events" like Halloween where nothing really happens except every low
level in the zone gets slaughtered until an uber guild moves in and reaps
the drops. I was intrigued by Absor's admission that he likes being a
victim. Bill Troost's defense of the player as victim as part of the
"story-telling was equally illuminating. There's a word for people who like
to be victims. It's called masochism.
You REALLY think people are paying you their money to be VICTIMS? Not
heroes? But VICTIMS? Ignoring Joe Campbell, Tolkien, every action/adventure
film ever made, all tabletop RPGs and MUDs, Psychology 101, and god knows
what else, simply to try and defend an event structure that had not improved
one iota on the Halloween "event" from a year before? I guess you can't
really learn from mistakes, if you don't see you've made any.
3. The recent comments in response to casual players is a perfect example of
how they fail to recognize the importance of the other game scoring device:
leveling.
I've talked with a great many game designers. To a one all understand that
"waiting" as a game dynamic is a terrible thing to design into your game.
Yet it is at the core of the "challenge" in Everquest. Enforced boredom (You
want that Testament of Veneer? You wait.) brought on by static camps from
the lowest "quest" item to the highest uber-mob is a fundamental aspect of
the design of the game.
How can casual gamers possibly hope to compete for these drops. And who is
Verant to suggest that they're playing the game wrong if they even expect
to?
Yes, EQ HAS turned its back on casual gamers. Of course it has. And of
course they're penalized by the narrowness of what it means to "advance."
The designers have been mesmerized by the hard core gamers, and their
demands for more and more. The baby boomers want their toys. And EQ has no
more ways to respond than make more items available, make more camps and
longer ones.
What the epic quests would do to competition among the higher levels for the
few resources should have been obvious. Gordon Wrinn should not have been
allowed to announce publicly how all the quests were working, and the long
time it took to design each one. How do these things happen? Here's one
possibility:
How many "designers" does Verant have working on Everquest? At times they
seem to outnumber Q&A.
I'm reminded of a cartoon an artist friend had posted above his desk. It
showed a classically stereotypical artist complete with pointy beard, beret,
smock, palette and brush, poised before a blank canvas on a tripod. He is
standing at the end of a long table lined with men in suits. The caption
was: Art by Committee. Now, whether EQ is art or not is not the issue. But
the fact is that committees rarely manage to make ANYTHING great or
enduring. The Porsche was not designed by a committee. "Hamlet" was not
written by a committee. Neither was "MULE" for that matter.
One person can have a vision certainly. Two? Of course: Sid Meir and Bruce
Shelley. But every time you add another pair of eyes the vision starts to
blur. Without a guiding hand to hold all of the threads, and tie up all of
the loose ends, visions unravel. And what started out to be a sweater looks
more like an ever-growing expanse of patchwork.
The epic quests? Each one done by a different individual who apparently had
lost the telephone extension and email of all the others.
One final chapter will plant a signpost at the beginning of a route out of
Wonderland.
Part Five: Are we having fun yet? (Long)
Is addiction fun? Only part of the time.
What could Verant do about the fundamental problems of EQ, if they could
wake up one morning to a satori, and discover there ARE problems?
Well, they could take the road they have in the past. Deny there's a
problem, then scurry to address it in the next expansion (Trying in Kunark
to reduce those static spawns that are "only one way" to play the game for
example.) Then address it by adding more of the same. Higher mobs, higher
weapons, the need for 50 people to kill one thing instead of forty,
increasing rarity of drops. It is a game after all of levels and loot,
remember? If there were anything else to EQ, their solutions would address
it, wouldn't they?
I repeat: there is a great difference between the game originally envisioned
by the designers, the game I think they truly believe they -have- designed,
and the game their player base is playing.
Until some recognition of that occurs, don't expect anything approaching a
legitimate solution.
Wonder why they demographics are so skewed to the high end? The mantra we
hear chanted in the halls of Verant most often in the face of criticism is
that now there are over 300,000 registered players of EQ. More than AC or
UO, yes. But it's such a drop in the bucket of internet users, even internet
gamers, I'd be embarrassed. And remember how long ago they announced that
first 200,000? And how long it took to get half of that this time? Do a
graph. Would you buy that stock?
The fact is that even the hardcore are getting restless, and there are
promising competitors emerging on the horizon.
So what are we left with in the meanwhile? More and more loot? More and more
waiting? And at the end a higher end game where the players are forced to
govern themselves like some teeming crucible of democracy disguised as
entertainment.
What about that signpost to a solution? There are two parts:
First, stop being defensive. As hard as that might be. Stop it. Stop blaming
your player base. Gordon Wrinn:
"It's a bit depressing. On one hand we have a ton of players asking for more
GM interaction within the game, more quests, better stories, etc., and on
the other we have the hecklers who scream any time we make an attempt to
drag them away from their 4 hour stop-watch campfest that they complain
constantly about.
.There are many dynamic quests, and contrary to popular belief they usually
entail something beyond GMs just running out and killing everyone. If people
would take a second before nuking the central character, maybe they'll find
out what it is all about."
There was also a sad quote from one of the "designers" at the recent launch
party. I wish I could find it now, but basically he was insisting there was
a full, rich storyline in Everquest, and that people were simply failing to
uncover it. This is such a page from the amateur writer's scrapbook, it
needs to be mentioned. Successful writing is 1) inspiration and talent and
2) the ability to present the work to the audience so that it can experience
it. If you fail at number two, one is meaningless. Stop blaming your
audience if they don't get it!
People are simply playing the game you designed. If it isn't the one you
wanted to design, or thought you designed, then change it.
If you truly feel that the calendars and scheduling conflicts are immersing
players even more in the world of Norrath; if you truly feel the bullies
have a right to their fun more than others simply because they are bigger
and stronger; if you truly feel the uber-guilds should have fun at Halloween
events while lower level characters get to play victims; if this truly -is-
the vision, then sit back, and let the good times roll.
But if you suspect there may be serious problems, and you can get beyond
blaming your customers, start accepting responsibility. Re-examine the
design openly. Trust your players a bit more. If you play black box
management of your player base ("Epic quests are all working." "No problems
with rangers."), when you finally do try to improve something, you shouldn't
be surprised you get more backlash than thanks.
And govern the world you have created. Everquest is not a free public
playground. People pay money to play here. It is not their responsibility to
ensure that all players in the playground have fun. It is yours.
Believe it or not there is much that I find fine and entertaining and
beautiful about Everquest. I would have not spent the past three weeks
researching and writing this, if I didn't mourn what EQ could have been.
Might be. But it is a flawed gem, and it is fracturing along the fault
lines.
Is Everquest fun?
Not anymore. Not for Skyrain. Not at level 52. So he asked me to write this
to try and express his frustration and sadness. I hope I have in some small
way done him justice.