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The Game Archaeologist: Classic servers and you
Sometimes players don't want progress into the future; they want to regress into nostalgia. I've always seen this undercurrent of desire for classic servers run through the MMO community, manifesting in lengthy discussions about how cool it'd be to play a game the way it was "way back when." I also imagine developers reading those discussions with a combination of shared nostalgia and anxiety over the work required for such a project. I can understand this desire. We form attachments to MMOs based on several factors, not the least of which are when we started playing the game and what we remember most from it. While we generally applaud the change brought about by content updates, bug fixes, expansions, and the like, there's always a part of us that won't let go of the past. That's where classic servers come into play. Here and there, studios have recognized and responded to this desire for gaming the way it used to be by creating servers that deliberately call back to the past. It might seem to fly in the face of common sense, but I don't think it's that strange when you look at the larger video game community and how strong nostalgia gaming has taken root there as well. So what do classic servers have to offer you and where can you find them?
The Game Archaeologist and the NeverEnding Quest: Your journeys
I have to say, this month's been everything I'd hoped it would be for EverQuest. As with many of these older MMOs, my working knowledge of EQ was spotty and anecdotal at best, and I'm personally glad to rectify that. EverQuest's always felt like a "You had to have been there" club to me, one that stopped accepting members a long, long time ago. It's great, therefore, to see that there's a thriving community, a rich history and an uplifting future in store for the game. Above everything else, I've come to realize just how crucial EverQuest was -- for better or worse, depending on your perspective -- to the development of the MMO genre for the past decade or so. If SOE never created EQ, just how different would our games be today? It's incredibly hard to imagine. As we continue our EQ month here at The Game Archaeologist, we have two things on the immediate agenda. The first is to share a few of your personal journeys that you emailed my way, and the second is a look at how you can plug in with EverQuest if you've never done so in the past. It turns out, quite fortuitously, that this is looking to be one of the best times to do so. Read on, courageous gamer!
The voice of the people: New EverQuest progression server named
Many current and soon-to-be-returning EverQuest fans are diligently keeping tabs on the new progression server. This unique server will allow players to travel back in time (in a way) to experience EQ from its humble beginnings through all of its expansion packs as they are rolled out at a measured pace. Now these fans have a name to put with the server: Fippy Darkpaw. This server name was the result of a one-week poll in which SOE offered six potential names for the new shard. According to EverQuest's website, "In the end, nothing could stop the raging juggernaut that was Fippy Darkpaw." Fippy is a well-known NPC with the suicidal tendency to attack Qeynos all by his lonesome. This new progression server is scheduled to open its doors in March. In the meantime, why not check out our recent interview with EQ Producer Thom Terrazas for more Norrathian news.
The Daily Grind: Would you play on a progression server?
EverQuest fans have been abuzz ever since SOE announced that a new progression server will come to the game this March. A progression server is kind of like a "way back" machine, resetting an MMO to the core game with expansions rolled out at a steady pace thereafter. It basically allows one to experience a sped-up version of how the MMO initially developed while forcing the players to stay together within certain boundaries. Even if your memory is long and clear enough to know that the good old days weren't always good, nostalgia has a way of sucking you in, prompting cries for a "classic shard" to try to duplicate that original experience. And that doesn't always necessitate some shadowy underground emulator (which we can't talk about on Massively anyway, so don't do it!). Sometimes the companies themselves try to cash in on the nostalgia. Gamers coming to a long-established MMO years after launch often feel behind the curve as the bulk of the playerbase is already at max level, yet progression servers put everyone on equal footing -- at least initially. So would you play on a progression server if your MMO offered one? What would it be like to go back to old vanilla World of Warcraft or Ultima Online's era of a free-for-all frontier? Or would it be an unnecessary nostalgia trip that would fail to recapture that unique initial experience? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Create-a-Server
In this day and age, it seems as though servers have checked their creativity at the doors. PvE, PvP, RP, RP-PvP come as standard as red, green, blue and yellow in a Crayon four-pack. Hey, if it ain't broke, right? These four server rulesets do their job admirably, and for most people, that's good enough. It's almost easy to forget that devs have the ability to create rulesets that strike out in different directions, such as permadeath servers (oh yes, I went there) and progression servers (where a server resets to the core game, with expansions added at a steady pace). Of course, on rare occasion you do see a game experiment with unusual rulesets, such as EverQuest's 51/50 server. More recently, Realtime Worlds announced that they're contemplating a slew of unique rulesets for APB, including newbie, Chaos and pure skill. So the potential is there for servers to branch out -- it's just that, for various reasons, the risk is seen as not worth the potential reward. But this is The Daily Grind, a place to unleash your imagination and engage the "What if?" in its full glory. So if you could create a unique ruleset server for your game, what would it entail?
