The Rising of the Trolls
by Loral on July 16, 2005
War rages across Norrath once again. With the memories of the battles of Firiona Vie not so far behind us, we once again find a game-wide event unfolding over the month of July.
Adventurers found themselves sent to battle dragons in Kunark or cutting down a new troll warlord named Warlord Bortar. A new two-group events has players defending strange high elves performing a ritual in Innothule. Dark elves march on the Eastern Commonlands. Neriak spies lurk in the shadows.
Then war found Greater Faydark. For three nights the elven armies and orcish hordes gathered in the woods. War Suppliers asked for armor and weapons. No one knows for sure how the turn-ins effected the war but some believe they increased the forces on one side or the other. Four or five sets of thirty or so elves faced an equal amount of orcish forces.
The serverwide.war channel fluttered like CNN. Reports came in of orcish attacks. Victors revealed powerful weapons dropped by slain Elvish commanders. On Quellious, a force of over one hundred adventures faced off against an untargetable orcish general named Warlord Mish. Unfortunately the battle did not find us yet and wouldn't until a day later when the orcs finally marched on the elves.
The war wasn't without problems. Elven generals initially dropped far better loot than the orcish generals. Many opportunistic players switched sides and killed the generals who carried the shiniest items. Elven enchanters often charmed or tashed orcs, causing players to quickly become the targets of vengeful elves when they accidently attacked the wrong orc. Many of these problems were fixed but not until well into the war. On Quellious, however, the elves were eventually successful in their defense against the orcs.
This battle was just the beginning, however. The plots continue throughout the month and a new troll warlord far more powerful than Warlord Bortar begins to build his army in Lavastorm, Nektulos, and the Foreign Quarter. Keep an eye out.
Over the past two weeks and probably continuing throughout July, I have written some in-character reports of these battles including the following:
Report 1: Descent of the Trolls, Ithiasor the Black
Report 3: Xon Quexill's Plot, The Creature of Innothule
Report 4: The War of Greater Faydark
Any such reports are almost always written after the event, however. The best way to participate in the war is to watch the EQLive forums for new topics on the war and to join the serverwide.war channel by typing "/join serverwide.war". That channel helps people share information about the war as it happens.
This past week SOE also released a minor patch. This patch mainly fixed a few outstanding bugs with the previous patch and added a few smaller features.
One feature of the patch that changed Everquest that I did not talk about is the new option to autoconsent your group, guild, and raid to drag your corpse. Like the game-wide invites, this is a smaller feature that has a huge impact. Many many times entire raids have been destroyed because players can't drag corpses of their friends until that friend zones and consents. This new feature makes groups and raids far more mobile even when faced with the death of a comrade. Just grab the bleeding corpse by the belt, heave it over one shoulder, and head for the hills!
Of course, like the NewPlayers channel, General channel, and game-wide
invites, these tools are only useful if people choose to use them. Many players apparently don't read the patch messages very carefully. One has to go to the Options menu (alt O) and select the autoconcent group, guild, and raid buttons.
There were a couple of interesting articles that had popped up last week including an IEEE Spectrum article called "Engineering Everquest" and another on "Virtual Sweatshops" in the Guardian.
The IEEE Spectrum article, Engineering Everquest, spent far more time talking about the game of Everquest than it did talking about the technology. Considering the heavy competition in the Massive Online Gaming field, companies like SOE probably want to hold their system architectures close rather than give away all of their best secrets in a technical journal. The article talks about the "Death Star" (I bet every gaming company has a server vault called the Death Star), a server farm containing over 500 servers in a 1500 server army spread across three buildings. The article also talks a little bit about a recent software architecture change called "Just-in-time computing" that dynamically shifts system resources to the areas that need it the most. It isn't clear from the article but I believe this is how instances work.
The Guardian article Virtual Sweatshops talks about the third-world shops that hire people to play EQ, EQ2, and World of Warcraft to earn in-game resources sold out-of-game. They take a detailed look at a fellow in Romania who works for ten hours a day in a backroom of a run down apartment where eleven employees keep accounts running for 24 hours straight.
The article does a good job of shattering its own title. Compared to the child labor sweatshops where ten year olds work in heavy labor unsafe jobs for barely enough money to eat, these "virtual sweatshops" don't even compare. Even the author admits that some people working at these outfits come in and play on their time off. I doubt any ten year old kid went in on his time off to make more Nike shoes.
The article doesn't spend much time to show that this business is illegitimate and I suppose that is a small point when you talk about the larger topic of out-of-game sales of virtual property. However, from within Everquest, such businesses harm the economy of the game. It devalues virtual property when it is tied to an out-of-game economy. If taken to the extreme, it would one day be so cheap to buy platinum that
most anyone would choose to save time and just pay for it.
Whenever I read an article like this one I am reminded of an excellent short story by Cory Doctorow called Anda's Game about a young girl who becomes a hitman in-game against competing virtual sweatshops. It's a great read.
Thus ends this week's news roundup. Keep an eye on the shadows and watch out for the rising of ancient powers.
Loral Ciriclight
17 July 2005
loral@loralciriclight.com
Comment Posted by: on July 17, 2005 04:20 PM
The 'Liv' events do seem a bit arbitrary - playing on Euro time I have to say I've not seen anything remotely fun or particapative. I have on the other hand been ganked a few times by scouts and by a static train left standing around GFay PoK books.
0/10 from me on the events so far though I daresay players in a different timezone, Qvic+ geared with 500 or so AA's might have a different impression.
Comment Posted by: wormy on July 17, 2005 04:45 PM
Events are US-only!
Aliens where never meant to be part of the game *gg*
everything those events bring to foreign customers are: unplayable zones, removed mobs, removed drops, and anything negative you could think of.
They should stop doing events at all - it worked that way for 6 years already *eg*
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on July 17, 2005 06:44 PM
Events are great if you know their on. Which is the biggest problem, usually the first you hear of an event is after it's finished. With this war it would be nice to see some sort of recruitment messages (depending on faction) when you log in, that an event is in progress or will be starting soon.
Otherwise a lot of people get annoyed because they have missed out.
Comment Posted by: on July 17, 2005 09:45 PM
You all expected more from SOE?? A leopard does not change his spots any more then Sony listens to their customers, including the ones that have left for the competition.
Comment Posted by: Loral on July 17, 2005 10:38 PM
The war is still going on. Many of the events including various tasks and quests are around the clock. The orc war went on for two straight days.
Go hunt around and keep an eye out, there's a lot going on.
Comment Posted by: annonnon on July 18, 2005 01:35 AM
Little bit depressing to see people zone into Faydark and start whining they've missed out on the events. Then given the choice to help out on the next part of the quests, they can't be bothered...
At this time, I'm loving this war, most amazing thing thats happening to Norrath since the game began. Running around seeing the world changing is pretty amazing. The serverwide.war channel is constantly being updated with the events scattered across the servers. Amazing stuff.
Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on July 18, 2005 02:13 AM
Th Gfay battle the other night was fun. I got nothing accomplished as far as character advancement, but that was the whole point. It was fun to just get together with that many players and just P-L-A-Y !
On fennin we had over 200 players sitting in Gfay around Kelehtin and CB and the battle was crazy. People screaming and bodies falling like rain. I had a good time!
Comment Posted by: on July 18, 2005 03:34 AM
The comments on this an other sites seem to be similar.
I think this comment is a little unfair:
'Little bit depressing to see people zone into Faydark and start whining they've missed out on the events. Then given the choice to help out on the next part of the quests, they can't be bothered...'
The pattern with recent live EQ events is that they have all been pitched to well progressed players - there is not a lot on offer for anyone under 70 without the equipment and aa and a well organised guild.
The problem is compounded because the events take place in zones open to people of any level. The situation is akin to dangling a carrot to newer players and saying 'you can not have this..'
The sentiment about running dynamic game change events for a limited period of time is fine. There will be repeated complaints until they are more inclusionary.
Right now, those excluded seem to outnumber those given the opportunity to get involved and SoE is just alienating people by making them feel left out and left behind.
Final point - it seems very short-sighted to roll out a new 'fresh-blood' and low level game, and then roll out multiple teams of 22 'Newb' killers in the very first zones that the new players will be zonging into. In terms of decision making, this one is a howler.
Comment Posted by: annonnon on July 18, 2005 10:47 AM
I'm going to stand by my comment. This war script is amazing, biggest thing to happen to EQ, but so many people are ONLY after the phat lewtz (see the slaughter of the Elven side as thats the side that had the loot). This isn't too bad considering the game I suppose and the quality of the loot, it's only to be expected. What is a little upsetting is that not many people seem interested in the WHY this is all happening. They're only seeing the loot side. There's a very small band of people working hard to progress things further, it's just a shame that they're getting little support from others, only comments are 'yell when the loot starts dropping'.
I'm still having a blast of a time following events though.
Comment Posted by: Tallarain on July 18, 2005 03:39 PM
Events....schmeeevents
I could care less about participating in these events, in 5 years of playing I have participated ina few GM events to my total displeasure. I have not experienced one event where I could follow the story line all the way through without going LD at least once and messing the event up tatally for me...tho I do appreciate the writeups about them...they give a better idea about where the Norrath story line is going.
I now know what zones to stay clear of...and which zones are still available to hunt in, in the old woirld...otoh those that want to, will participate in these events, I choose to watch and consider what is happening in the bigger picture.
Comment Posted by: . on July 18, 2005 07:45 PM
It's amazing to see how much effort they put into staging a weekday event for the 5% of players who can monitor serverwide.war all day long and yet they don't have time to address the Class Top Ten lists compiled a year ago.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on July 18, 2005 09:17 PM
Did it occur to you that's probably not the same people's time?
Comment Posted by: . on July 19, 2005 03:35 AM
Did it occur to you that Sony should listen to their customers?
Comment Posted by: on July 19, 2005 12:10 PM
Anda's Game ==> Great story, thanks for the link Loral.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on July 19, 2005 12:36 PM
"Did it occur to you that Sony should listen to their customers?"
Yes. That's why they do.
Comment Posted by: Loral on July 19, 2005 02:48 PM
I've heard the "SOE doesn't listen to their customers" argument for years now. If you can't get SOE to listen to you, you're not trying hard enough. Getting them to listen and getting them to agree with you is not always easy. Getting them to listen to you, agree with you, and make a change you want is even harder.
Most often the problem isn't whether or not SOE listens, it's whether or not you can get them to change something. You can, but you better have a good compelling argument for doing so. Things like "all my ranger friends want bow epics" won't cut it.
Comment Posted by: Maeven on July 19, 2005 03:03 PM
What bothers me are the preventable bugs/issues...like the NPC chanters charming and AOE tashing. Why didn't the Devs test these events? If they had, it's likely they would have gotten tashed by an ally or had one of their orcs charmed out from under them, and then realized that this would be a BAD THING.
The factions are broken, the War Suppliers are supposed to give 4 faction hits, 2+ and 2-, but only give one, the faction hits must be miniscule as well because conning the elves in Gfay (I'm a High Elf) , I can't see ANY change...Also, do they think handing 100s of items in to an NPC - one at a time - and forced to wait 30-40 secs per hand in - is FUN?! When after a short time you no longer get the random potions anymore but only faction that never seems to go up?
And FFS, why didn't they realize that a bunch of high level, KOS, invisable Dark Elves roaming about the Commonlands killing newbs would drive away the new players they are trying to attract to the game?
Loral, I was there with you in Gfay and it was a fiasco, especially after they reset the zone(without making an announcement about why they did so and the fact that it would delay the start of the war even more).
Comment Posted by: Omarosa on July 19, 2005 08:19 PM
Woohoo! A Great War in Faydark with phat lewt drops!! Let's stage it on 2 weekdays when the majority of customers are hard at work!!! That's the SOE way!!!!
Comment Posted by: xsi on July 19, 2005 09:00 PM
I got ganked in GFay (by an elven enchanter for attacking her orc... after the patch... yay!), and ran around aimlessly with a group that couldn't do much of anything except try to cheat the game mechanics (wait for orcs to engage elves, and then pour damage on the battle leader to try to get the kill (and loot) credit) for about two hours before the GFay war ended.
I encountered the 'brutal troll' in Lavastorm killing troll challengers. Everything conned indifferent, but he then turned around and quadded me for 2k+ a hit when I got close enough. I died.
And yeah, I donated about 100 pieces of DoN cultural tailoring in FP... getting only one of the two factions, negligible xp (no ticks in aa at 67), and nothing else to show for it... no loot, no sign from the supplier that there was any point to the process, etc. (And wtf is up with the 30 second delay between hand-ins? Yeah, THAT makes sense..)
I guess you could say I've participated in some of the events so far, but, despite the scripted nature, it seems very much like every other GM event, where large guilds of high level, well-geared players are the only ones to truly benefit.
I don't know... I have found this whole event so far to be a colossal screwup.
Comment Posted by: BigFoot on July 19, 2005 11:07 PM
Just for fun, try this. Send a real letter to Sony. Use your printer, an envelop and a stamp.
Write about the subject of your choice.
See what Sony does with your letter.
Use the address in the EULA.
If you want to spend 37 cents to amuse yourself.
Comment Posted by: meow on July 20, 2005 01:07 AM
Hee hee, this was the greatest EQ event ever. I spent several hours ninja looting Captains during the war. It was an all-out uncontrolled kill and steal fest. I ended up with a decent mana preserv range item and a haste belt that wasn't usable by my class. Someone started spamming me with hate /tells so I ninja looted the belt from under his nose...since it was lore I had to destroy the one I was already carrying LOL. Truly great fun!
Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on July 21, 2005 11:53 PM
I died four times in GFAy and got nothing for it. I still had a blast with my friends. It was a fun break from the norm and if I dont want to take part I can steer clear of these areas til its over. I participated and now I've gone back to my regularly scheduled exp grind. If I sound more upbeat then I usually do I might be wtiting from a bias as I am still soaking in the glow of my new Epic! woot... Had a great weekend.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on July 22, 2005 04:02 AM
Meow Wrote: I spent several hours ninja looting Captains during the war.
..
I hope you go back to worlds of warcraft soon :P
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on July 23, 2005 04:57 AM
Well, *I* liked it, but I'm a fanboi who gushes praise for SoE at every opportunity. Or so I'm told.
Comment Posted by: on July 26, 2005 05:10 PM
"Meow Wrote: I spent several hours ninja looting Captains during the war.
..
I hope you go back to worlds of warcraft soon :P"
If you want to Ninja loot you have to play EQ. The other games learned how to fix a simple problem but apparently it is too hard for the EQ devs to work out a solution.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on July 29, 2005 07:38 AM
"Brannoc> *Loral* With this expansion do you plan to stop hating the poor working-class proletariat who struggles every day for a simple cloth cap?
Zorillius> Yes, and I'm really glad you brought that up. We've been working with Absor on this and instead of being full of hate, he's just plain grumpy now."
Loral, remind me to give you 2 coppers the next time I see you P)
Comment Posted by: Loral on July 29, 2005 07:16 PM
And you guys call me a fanboi.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Email Mike at mike@mikeshea.net for more questions or comments.