The Glade 4.0

Some big announcements regarding EQ today.

http://www.everquest.com/free

I'm pretty upset about the announcement that Al'kabor is shutting down. EQMac subscribers have been paying monthly for over 8 years to play BROKEN content (unfinished PoP expansion), and now they get a 2 month notice that the server is going offline forever and everything associated with it will be gone. What a kick in the teeth. The worst part is that SOE recently put Hobart back on fixing bugs for the server, and he literally fixed Plane of Fire like two days ago. Not to mention he created a new Intel client for Macs. The whole thing is bizarre.

I wondered when this would happen.

I have more than four characters on several servers. I wonder if this means they will be deleted? Or just not accessible unless I subscribe to the "Gold" membership ?

And holy crap... the bag and plat limitations for the free and silver are pretty significant, at least for established characters.

From the FAQ

- Character Slots: When you downgrade from Gold, all characters that are on the account will still be visible to you. Characters that were created before February 29, 2012 will be allowed to log in (regardless of if you are currently over the cap of characters or do not have their race or class unlocked). Characters that are created on or after February 29, will only be available for use if you have both the race and class unlocked. For character slots, only the most recently logged-on characters (up to the character slot cap for your membership level) will be available for play.

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ah jeez.. I totally missed that tab.. Thanks Crim!

heh, no Ranger for the Free version!

And I can't believe they picked gnome over WOOD ELVES!

WOOD ELVES RULE ! :p

Uh, duh. Who would pay to be a gnome?

You put the most boring races as the free ones, and the most basic classes -- one healer, one nuker, one melee dps, and one tank.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Well, since you put it that way!

I had forgotten gnome was even a playable race in EQ1 ...

Half of my EQ1 characters were gnomes =)

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Wow. It's kind of crazy to see this happen. Everquest was my first MMO and I even still go back to it sometimes. But, you could tell this was coming. Every time I go back, things are worse as far as population goes. It's had a very long run, though. It makes me wonder how EQNext(or whatever the **** it's called) will do or if it will even come out at all.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

This is likely to be a big boon for EQ, actually. F2P games are pretty profitable over the long run. EQ: Next is still in development but they're remaining tight-lipped.

I was thinking this might happen soon, given the recent switch with EQ2.

The silver limits, however, are really, really low. 1000 AAs? I'm over that on several chars. And 100plat per level? Hah.

So at this stage, it looks like if I ever wanted to play again I'd simply pay the same I was, but get a bonus 500 SC every month. At least I'd have lots of cool looking weapons :-p

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Yeah, Planetside 2 development is proceeding full-bore, and so the engine looks like it's solid and scaleable. My guess is the timing of moving EQ F2P indicates a big announcement about EQ: Next is on the horizon, to be followed by a ramp-up of info as it approaches beta later this year or something. It also wouldn't surprise me if they wanted to get EQ1 F2P (along with EQ2) so they can float and test feedback and response to certain microtransaction philosophies and/or tiering models, with the intention to launch EQN designed from the ground up around the stuff that gets favorable feedback and popular microsales.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'll have to poke around a bit for old times sake since I can for free.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I thought I heard something about eqNext being fpt as well. The idea that it would take HUGE amounts of money to make a quality rpg that could tank, or make a ftp one that fits the mmorpg model sony seems to use

That really is sad. I was on Stormhammer/Legends for a while back in the day, and I still get a bit choked up when I think back to the death of that community. SOE is like the George Lucas of the MMORPG world - they seem to take some special glee in destroying the very things that their most dedicated fans love.

I'm telling you guys, if you want the feeling of early EQ gave you, and combine that with awesome class balance, the best quest scrips I've ever seen, temendous dev interaction with the player base, excelent and challenging new content, high end raid game combined with zero instancing and enough content to make sure that you're never without something to do, try Shards of Dalaya.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

EQMac is not quite as dead as it may seem..

https://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley/status ... 6482680832

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Yup, official confirmation on the forums that the Mac Server will continue to live, and be completely free to play as well.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Good for Smedley.

The reports of the new client Hobart's been working on look nice too. With the increased performance of intel-based macs, I wonder how my Air would play EQ....

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

EQ plays about 10x better in OSX than it does in Windows. It's a damn shame that you can only connect to Al`Kabor.

Yeah, that's what it seems like. My desktop struggles to play EQ in Windows, but I'm seeing people easily 6-boxing with a G5 in EQmac.

New account registrations and the patcher download are supposed to be back up sometime today or tomorrow, I may give it a try. The old zones and running around killing time are what's really nostalgic to me about the game anyhow, I thought things started going downhill after about GoD/OOW era.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

EQMac is dead again. Someone was warping a level 1 toon into the Plane of Time during Temerity raids and apparently SOE thinks it'll cost too much to fix hacks.

Al`Kabor, 2003 - Nov. 18 2013. Rest in Peace

So they brought the server down? That's... asni... Oh wait. SOP at SOE.

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Holy shitsnacks!