Reflections on 20 Years of Shattered Norrath as my EverQuest II Anniversary Arrives

The official anniversary of the launch of EverQuest II landed on Friday.  But I did not show up in the game until four days after launch, a tale I am sure I have written multiple times over the life of this blog.  Some day I should compare them all to see how my memory of events has changed over the years.

This is the Year of Darkpaw over at Daybreak, celebrating the 25th anniversary of EverQuest and the 20th anniversary of EverQuest II.  But, in an unintentional message, they hyped up the 25th back in March and there has been nary a peep about the 20th this past week.  March 16th was practically a high holy day and November 8th… was a Friday.  Not a sausage.  But there is a lesson in that as to how things haven shaken out for EQII over the years.

I am not even sure what I should say, 20 years into the game.  I guess I might as well run through some of the obligatory points, such as my first screen shot taken in the game.

And, of course, the founding of our guild, the Knights of the Cataclysm.

We all arrived on the Crushbone server the day it went live.  In following the pattern set back with EverQuest, SOE put up a few servers, let them get populated, then rolled out some more, with a plan to keep that going likely expecting that trend to last at least as long as it did back in 1999.

It did not, but things did start off looking like it might.  There was the now so familiar rush of new players… and then the wall of the game, of bad choices and incomplete ideas and last minute changes and… well… probably some more bad choices.  And then things tapered off.

We stuck around for more than a year, but many did not.  Many went back to EQ or off to WoW.

But there was something there.  Something to hold the right people.  Features with some depth to them.  It probably explains why I kept going back.  Above isn’t the only old guild I am in.  There is the “new” guild that we started with the EQII free to play experiment, a guild now not that far from being 14 years old.

There are people on the roster who haven’t been in game for at least 13 years.

In a way it was an MMORPG that experienced pretty much all the problems one could imagine, short of the database just exploding and losing all the player data.

Speaking of the database, they also don’t expire mail in your mail box.  It just sits there, waiting for you patiently.  I have a note from Bhagpuss from probably 2012 at the latest.

The game chased after fads, copied other games… and not just WoW, but sure, a lot of WoW… while pushing out annual expansions and raising the level cap and stats to the point of absurdity at times.

Stat inflation itself led to some absurd situations.  They had to get rid of weight as a thing because level cap strength was unaffected by anything while new players suffered if they picked up too much.  Even my the age of my account exceeds the actual age of the game, thanks to the idea of offering veteran rewards early if you bought an expansion.

We stopped getting those veteran rewards… though there was a tussle at one point where SOE decided they should only count the time you were subscribed… and then came EverQuest II: Extended and free to play and that was that.

It has been a title of problems and resurgences over the years.  Good ideas and bad.

Over the years and my many returns to the game… they are pretty good about setting things up so you can return with an expansion, including level boosts with the package and putting out the now expected crate of appropriate gear at the start of each new venture.

If I had to settle on one thing that does draw me back to the game from time to time, one thing that I think that the team did well on, even on day one, it would have to be player housing.

I know, this is the eternal argument.  Some cannot abide housing that isn’t in the physical world, that doesn’t take up space by itself, and EQII opted for instanced housing.  But instanced housing means scarcity and location aren’t factors the way they are in those titles where each house takes up a plot of land in the game world, the way houses do in the real world.

The instancing doesn’t bother me.  Or, maybe what was enabled inside the instanced housing overcomes any need to have it be otherwise.

The smartest thing the EQII team did was give players housing with the ability to place things free form and to allow trophies from various adventures to be displayed.  My house is overrun with such things.

And then there is the artwork collected from various expansions and events.

And, of course, the various items from holidays.  Behold my snow globe collection!

You will note that the picture hung over the window… a tacky choice, but I had to find space for it… if you look closely (click on the picture to enlarge it) is the one given out to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the game.

No such commemoration for 20 years… at least not handed out to me.

I will admit, like Daybreak, I have spent a good portion of the Year of Darkpaw remembering EverQuest, writing about starting points and the like.  For some reason that resonates more within me.  But over the last 20 years I have, without a doubt, spent much more time in the younger sibling.

And maybe when EQII turns 25 I will spend the time doing something similar for it, visiting old zones and the like.  But then EQ will be turning 30 and in March and will likely grab all the attention yet again.

So it goes for the middle child.

Past anniversary posts: