That Everquest magic recaptured

Rygar · #1 11-02-2016, 08:50 AM

I haven't seen too many people comment on this, but during the Halloween event, it was more than just a cool, fun event. It helped to recapture for those short few hours the original magic of Everquest for me.

There was no wiki on what to do, people were helping each other, for a moment in time it seemed like raiding mattered to no one. That thrill, the comradery, and the excitement of the unknown reminded me of when I logged into this game for the very first time.

My most heart-felt appreciation to the entire staff that puts their time and effort into this game, thank you for this event and making me appreciate this game even more.

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My Halloween story (please share yours):
I was doing tradeskills in Freeport as I was waiting for my son to fall asleep before committing to any adventure. I kept seeing illusions run by, spectres, ghosts, werewolves... I kept thinking, "Man, this looks ridiculous!".

Son falls asleep and I join in, grab a port with a fellow guildie to NK to start the quest. Just a hoard of people at gypsy camp. I get there and there is this paladin with epic that is in some kind of hardcore werewolf form (Not Boon of the Garou, something else). I'm grabbing screenshots left and right, just loving the atmostphere.

Get my illusion and have some fun seeing my spectre illusion die when I FD (cool face plant animation!) then I get my book and start trying to figure out how the whole thing works. Get my BOO on with first mob and we are on our way to Lake Rathe. On the way a bard passes me with some group mates... WAIT! WAIT! Please let me join you! I plead. They stop and invite.... sweet bard speed! We scare our second mob, and to my complete serendipity one of the bards other group members is a druid... ports + speed?! The world was our oyster! The whole time guildies are linky juicy loots like Candy Corn, Rubicite, etc.... anticipation builds! We port back to NK and run to surefall glade (a zone I've never been in). Afterwards, we see a ton of people in everfrost, despite hearing from guildmates that TOFS was where to go, you just can't resist checking it out, maybe they missed something. We run around exploring (*gasp!*), and eventually give up to go to other mobs we hear are more certain.

At this point my son wakes up and I'm on baby duty, so need to camp for the night. I didn't do any hand ins and get any loot, but I found myself not caring... I had FUN! An aspect much of us have lost sight of in the thirst for pixels. Thank you for that devs, my hat is off to you.

Lhancelot · #2 11-02-2016, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I haven't seen too many people comment on this, but during the Halloween event, it was more than just a cool, fun event. It helped to recapture for those short few hours the original magic of Everquest for me.

There was no wiki on what to do, people were helping each other, for a moment in time it seemed like raiding mattered to no one. That thrill, the comradery, and the excitement of the unknown reminded me of when I logged into this game for the very first time.

My most heart-felt appreciation to the entire staff that puts their time and effort into this game, thank you for this event and making me appreciate this game even more.

--------------------------------------------------------

My Halloween story (please share yours):
I was doing tradeskills in Freeport as I was waiting for my son to fall asleep before committing to any adventure. I kept seeing illusions run by, spectres, ghosts, werewolves... I kept thinking, "Man, this looks ridiculous!".

Son falls asleep and I join in, grab a port with a fellow guildie to NK to start the quest. Just a hoard of people at gypsy camp. I get there and there is this paladin with epic that is in some kind of hardcore werewolf form (Not Boon of the Garou, something else). I'm grabbing screenshots left and right, just loving the atmostphere.

Get my illusion and have some fun seeing my spectre illusion die when I FD (cool face plant animation!) then I get my book and start trying to figure out how the whole thing works. Get my BOO on with first mob and we are on our way to Lake Rathe. On the way a bard passes me with some group mates... WAIT! WAIT! Please let me join you! I plead. They stop and invite.... sweet bard speed! We scare our second mob, and to my complete serendipity one of the bards other group members is a druid... ports + speed?! The world was our oyster! The whole time guildies are linky juicy loots like Candy Corn, Rubicite, etc.... anticipation builds! We port back to NK and run to surefall glade (a zone I've never been in). Afterwards, we see a ton of people in everfrost, despite hearing from guildmates that TOFS was where to go, you just can't resist checking it out, maybe they missed something. We run around exploring (*gasp!*), and eventually give up to go to other mobs we hear are more certain.

At this point my son wakes up and I'm on baby duty, so need to camp for the night. I didn't do any hand ins and get any loot, but I found myself not caring... I had FUN! An aspect much of us have lost sight of in the thirst for pixels. Thank you for that devs, my hat is off to you.

I had very limited time to play during the event due to RL stuff going on.

That being said, I agree, the event had a ton of work put into it, that was obvious. Was it perfect? No.

Nothing is perfect though, and considering Braknar never ran it live to really know how it would all work out, till it actually went live, it was quite impressive how smoothly it did go.

I wish more events or even new quests could be added to the game on P99, with the same high quality this event had.

We have some people on the forums that actually write extremely well, too bad some of their imagination and technical writing skills could not be fused with technical coding and writing of Braknar... Imagine what they could come up with!

Perhaps with the success and overall enjoyment of this past event, we will see more in the future.

I just have one request if that happens. Please lengthen the duration of the next event so more people have a chance to complete it. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Rygar · #3 11-02-2016, 09:28 AM

Yea I hear you with regards to the duration. One of the things WoW did great was having holiday events happen for about a 10 day stretch leading up to the actual holiday. The bad part is they were easy to farm in instances and felt like a handout.

I see a lot of pros and cons to this... A one day event may prevent people from grinding the event to farm items for their alts. With tier 5 loot as a reward I would think you need to have a limited scope. However, I'm against having events on actual holidays (should be for family, not encouraging EQ time). A non-poopsock type event that you can complete over a few days would be fun!

I don't know the perfect solution, but this event was a great time, can't take anything away from that!

Expediency · #4 11-02-2016, 10:04 AM

I really liked it. I couldnt be ready at the start time, so I got started about an hour late, but still scared 13/16 mobs and got a rubicite helmet before I had to go to bed. My only suggestion for improvement is to hold the event next year either the day before or the day after halloween; 8pm est start time is rough for those who have families.

Lhancelot · #5 11-02-2016, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rygar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

A one day event may prevent people from grinding the event to farm items for their alts.

Funny you mention this, I don't know if it's true, but a pal of mine said his guildie ran this event 3 times... is that possible?

Anyway, it's hard to stop farmers and people who can invest a solid 7 straight hours non-stop from milking an event for all it has to offer. You can't stop that.

Instead of trying to eliminate this, I think it's best to give the event a longer duration so more people have a true opportunity to really enjoy it.

Afterall, so much time and effort went into this event, creating it. I feel it's a shame many people could not see it to the end.

It's like painting a Picasso, then showing it to someone for 3 seconds before pulling it away, depriving the viewer of it's intricacies.

SamwiseRed · #6 11-02-2016, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lhancelot [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's like painting a Picasso, then showing it to someone for 3 seconds before pulling it away, depriving the viewer of it's intricacies.

drugs?

jarlerop · #7 11-02-2016, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Expediency [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I really liked it. I couldnt be ready at the start time, so I got started about an hour late, but still scared 13/16 mobs and got a rubicite helmet before I had to go to bed. My only suggestion for improvement is to hold the event next year either the day before or the day after halloween; 8pm est start time is rough for those who have families.

Yea, try 2 am with a family [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

thufir · #8 11-02-2016, 02:57 PM

I don't normally play these events, but if I'm still playing this game next year I'm gonna check it out. It sounds like Braknar did a great job in making the event both fun and rewarding. Normally I look at GM events as a chance to get some dungeon to ourselves but this time I clearly missed out. +1 to GMs for this one.

Also, don't award more loot! I am pretty sure you had no intention of doing so but there was some amazing stuff being given away as t5 loots that doesn't have any place flooding the server. Everybody wants some, but we can't have it all.

Jazzy · #9 11-02-2016, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SamwiseRed [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

drugs?

lol, love spotting other red players droppin bombs on blue forums

how u doin sammy?

Braknar · #10 11-02-2016, 04:49 PM

This year, the event ran 7-8 hours, which I think was a great stretch and roughly what I had planned (last year I think it was 3 hours or so). The give and take here is with really good rewards, we want to only have it live for a smaller slice of time to mitigate some of the farming that has been mentioned. So if we did a longer lasting event, the rewards would of course have to be lessened dramatically.

On the note of getting some of the community to help with events, sadly, we really can't have that for much the same reason SOE/DBG can't use their community to come up with events. If we work with a player on something, there's always that chance they will tell their friends, or even innocently let some detail slip then giving an advantage to people. For this event I told no one anything. The ONLY staff that even knew anything about this was Sirken, Nilbog, Rogean and myself. Not even the guides knew much more about it other than what you all knew.

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the clues, it took me an absurd amount of time to just come up with the clues, mob locations, dialog, etc (and I still had some lore mistakes in there, sorry!). I put in a LOT more time this year than last and it looks like it was well worth the effort. Hell, I put in 1.5 weeks just in testing the thing. I started working on this event on Sept 1st.

I can't say when/if we'll have more events, only that this experience has definitely got me thinking more about what other events I could write up. Likely less massive/server wide affairs, but some smaller, special, level specific events.