Yesterday saw the launch of the EverQuest II Origins server Anashti Sul.  This is not just another cheap nostalgia tour through the old content using the modern mechanics however.  This is an attempt to get back to an earlier feel of EQII.  Not the original feel, not the chaos of 2004, nor the transitional era of 2005, but what I like to think of as the “rebirth” that really kicked off in 2006 with the Echoes of Faydwer expansion.

Welcome to the age of origins

To get to this level of “origins” the EQII had to fork the code base so they could do things for this server that they have not be able to do on past fresh start, time locked expansion servers.

Now, this is not a trivial task and something that no doubt kept Blizzard from rolling out WoW Classic sooner than it did, though now they have three branches going, retail, classic, and classic_era.  But they also have something like 5x as many people working on WoW as Darkpaw has working on EverQuest and EverQuest II combined.

So I am kind of surprised that the Norrath team went this hard to bring back a 2006 version of a game that because… and I have a lot of affection and a great deal of investment in EQII… it was the title that launched in November of 2004 that sent most of its initial audience back to EQ or onward to WoW.

WoW Classic was a rousing success because millions of people played WoW to the point that it defined the genre.  Likewise, EQ retro servers succeed because somewhat fewer millions… but still millions… of people played EQ to the point that it defined the genre until WoW came along.

Which isn’t to say that EQII doesn’t have its dedicated audience… but it is a much smaller audience.  And yet, this is where Darkpaw chose to invested their limited and valuable development time.  I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the gesture, but I do question it some as a smart business move.

Here’s to hoping I am just a pessimist.

Anyway, I ended up down the editorial sink hole because in forking the code there are some extra steps you have to take if you wish to play on the new server because it does not use the default client.  From the launch announcement:

• Open your LaunchPad and login.
• In the top-left corner, click the ‘Version’ link which will open the ‘Select Game Version’ panel.
• Choose ‘Origins’ in the drop-down menu, and then hit ‘Apply’ to begin patching.
• Hit ‘Play’ once patching has completed.

That sounds simple enough but I still managed to run past it because my copy of the launcher keeps me logged in, so when it said “login” I hit play and if you do that you’ll never find the server.  So I took a screen shot to make it a little easier for the two people this will probably matter to who hasn’t yet logged in.

Origins Server Launcher Settings

So click on that “version” in the upper left, click on “select game version” from the options displayed, select “Origins” from the drop down, and hit “apply” and you’ll be set to start downloading the new client.

But EQ and EQII have long had dynamic background downloading, so you can play pretty much right away.

And what does all this get you?  Here is what the server offers up to tempt you to experience the game once more:

• The Origins Server, Anashti Sul, launches today!
  • The initial launch of the Origins server will be Shattered Lands, with no expansions and without The Bloodline Chronicles, or The Splitpaw Saga active on the server.
  • To patch the Origins server, you just need to set the version on the launchpad to “Origins”.
• An Origins server is a server set into a specific timeframe with as much rolled back to that exact timeframe as possible. In the case of Anashti Sul, the timeframe that the game exists in is early 2006.
• Some specific points of note:
  • Class abilities are as they were in 2006.
  • Character racial traits have been restored to their 2006 versions.
  • Enemy tactics have been consolidated into the class training trees at level 16, 26, 32, and 38.
  • Tradeskills exist as they did just after the removal of sub-combines.
  • Attributes have restored secondary functionality. Agility will help avoid melee attacks, intelligence will increase ability potency, strength will increase auto-attack and melee ability damage, and wisdom will grant extra resistance.
  • There is a marketplace, but it is very limited.
  • Qeynos and Freeport are back to their uncombined glory, complete with suburbs and hoods.
  • Zones have hard lockouts again instead of persistent instancing.
  • Krono may not be consumed, brokered, or traded on an Origins server.
  • Auto-Attacks will not trigger while an ability is in the process of casting.
• Some specific things could not be restored:
  • Weight. Strongboxes specifically have a limitation that will slow players who attempt to use them as bags outside of city zones or house zones. Otherwise, weight does not exist.
  • Mitigation and resistances are still their consolidated versions. For example, there is a single Arcane resistance instead of Divine, Magic, and Mental resistances.
• The Marketplace on Origins is very limited and will not include things that overly impact progression such as spell research.
• Origins Marketplace will work on a seasonal basis, where appearance items such as mounts, houses, etc will cycle on or off of the marketplace over time. If you miss an item that cycled off, it will become available again once that season cycles around again.
• Familiars on an Origins server will be appearance only and grant no bonuses.
• Mounts on an Origins server will only grant ground mount speed. No flying, no leaping, no slithering, no floating, and no stat bonuses.

The part of 2006 they don’t mention in the patch notes, but are clear about elsewhere, is that a Daybreak all access subscription is required to play.  Subscriptions were everything back in 2006, so it is completely authentic in not offering any  sort of free to play.

There is also a brief launch trailer to get you in the mood.

Sounds great.  I should be juiced up to give it a try.  And, since I have had a Daybreak all access account active for most of 2024 so far, all the better to write about Norrath on this anniversary year, I got right in there and rolled up a character.  I even got my first name choice.

Then I got into the game and to the starting isle and… I really felt the weight of having walked these steps so very many times before.  I did a couple of quests and logged off, not really feeling it.

Now maybe I was just tired at the end of the work day.  Maybe the weekend will find me more enthused.  But after having played at launch for two expansions, then again at Echoes of Faydwer with new characters, and once more at the EQII Extended free to play launch with another fresh set of characters, and finally a couple more times on past retro servers… well, it just made me feel tired.  Maybe some things are better left as memories.

But don’t let me rain on your parade if you want to give 2006 a shot again.  It was a different world back then and I was a much younger gamer.

Related:

• Darkpaw – Anashti Sul is LIVE!
• Darkpaw – June 19th Update Notes
• Darkpaw – Tips for New Players
• Massively OP – EverQuest II’s Anashti Sul progression server is live with its 2006 throwback vibes
• Inventory Full – Welcome To Anashti Sul. Please Have Your Papers Ready
• Inventory Full – It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

Summer is Coming!

I live in California, so I don’t worry too much about winter as even when it is bad… storms and rain… that is generally good for us.  Summer though… it is going to be a hot one.  It was already up in the 90s this week and the first official day of summer, June 20th, hasn’t even arrived yet.

On the good news front, we got a heat pump central forced air system for the house, so after 17 years in our place we will have air conditioning in the summer.  We’ll be getting solar installed at last early next month so we’ll have the electricity to drive the heat pump which, while it is energy efficient, still draws power.

But that is neither here nor there for this post.  I wanted to list out some things coming up in June.  I know, isn’t that what the “Coming Up” section of my month in review post is for?  Sure, but I forgot some things, found out about some new things, and I’ll put pictures and links in this post.  So let’s go!

• WoW: The War Within Beta – June 5th

Yeah, that was Wednesday, but you’re not too late if you want to participate.  There is a whole page dedicated to the beta, what content will be available, and how to join here.

The War Within 30 minutes or it is free

The War Within is, of course, the next expansion due later this year for retail WoW.  Being somewhat divorced from retail since early in Shadowlands, I have some mild interest in the expansion, but going to retail these days is like going to a foreign country… they do all the same stuff as us… or classic… but it is all slightly different and awkward for a naive traveler like myself.  But I’ve been over all of that already, haven’t I?

But a beta… I haven’t done a retail WoW beta since Cataclysm, and we saw how that went.

• Valheim on MacOS – June 10th

2021’s huge indy survival success, Valheim, will be making the move to MacOS as the developers look for new markets to conquer.

Are there apples in Valhalla?

I guess it will be on Steam.  Does Microsoft Games even support MacOS?  Maybe?  I don’t know.

But Iron Gate assures us that it will support cross-play, so if you setup a server for you PC buddies and a friend with a Mac shows up, they can play too.  I don’t have a Mac anymore… I mean, technically there are at least three MacOS computers in the house as I write this, but I do not actively work or play on the Mac these days.

• EVE Online Equinox Expansion – June 11th

I suppose if I am listing things out I need to include this.  The big old Equinox expansion is coming on Tuesday.

Equinox – Seize Control – June 11, 2024

We shall see then who exactly is seizing control and whether or not null sec will be upended or if it is a great big nothing burger.  The ship SKINR should be neat, depending on how they plan to tax people to use it.

• EverQuest II Anashti Sul Origins Server – After June 13th

The jump back to a more authentic 2006 experience with the EverQuest II Anashti Sul Origins Server is slated to land this month.  The beta is slated to end on June 13th… so maybe the following Tuesday, the 18th?  Or maybe the 14th?  We’ll have to see.

Anashti Sul is a mystery in her way

It may seem a bit odd to go back 18 years for a 20th anniversary celebration, but the 2006 experience marks the settling point for the game, where it finally decided what it was for the moment and moved forward with content.  I wrote my views on this decision a while back, and plan to give it a peek when it shows up.

• Pax Dei Early Access – June 18th

Pax Dei is entering Early Access.  What does that mean?  All sorts of things I suppose and they have a whole post about it.

Coming to Early Access

As a title it has been kind of on my watch list… I subscribe to their Discord server news channel so updates there show up in the blog’s Discord server… you can join if you like here… but given all the other stuff I have on my list for June, I feel like Pax Dei might not make the cut… especially since they want $40 to be a founder.  I already have $40 unplayed games in Steam, I am not sure I need another.

Also, there will be pwipes.  I don’t have time for that.  Call me when it ships.

• Steam Summer Sale – June 20th

The first day of summer, the summer solstice, and Steam is usually pretty good about kicking off the Steam Summer Sale on that day.

Will I buy anything?  That is always the question.  As noted above, I have my share of unplayed titles already, and I bought a bunch over the Winter Sale… and then ended up playing Valheim.

My Steam Played Stats

You can see your own Steam stats over at SteamDB.

Also, as it came out last week, when you cannot pass on your Steam titles.  You die, your account is dead… unless your give your kids your password and have family sharing on or something.  I am sure there is a work around, but it is just a reminder that nothing “digital” you buy is actually yours.  (Word is GoG.com might let you pass things on to your heirs, but there is paperwork involved.)

You want to have access to something it needs a physical… though even that isn’t a guarantee.  Sonus loves to brick their older sound systems and Spotify is bricking their car player later this year… though you might get a refund after a lot of outrage at their “fuck you” attitude about the whole thing… and all sorts of “smart” home devices end up getting bricked by Google or whoever buys the company then discontinues them.

Anyway, side rant there.  But for our new heat pump I got a dumb Honeywell thermostat.  No Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, no other connectivity or ability to host Russian bot nets, and no way for Honeywell to shut it down without showing up at my doorstep.

• Tarisland Launch – June 21st

Tarisland, Tencent’s everybody-says-it-is-a-WoW-knockoff MMORPG title is set to go live on Windows, Android, and iOS on the second day of summer.

Coming soon and Free to Play

Tencent is promising all the things, diverse classes, challenging raids, a flexible talent system, excellent graphics, all in a free to play package with a cash shop that I am sure will have all the usual items in it.

Still, it is the first MMORPG from a big player to hit our market since maybe Lost Ark.

As with everything Tencent has a big post about joining in on the fun.  We’ll see if I can find the time for it come launch day.

• ICQ Shutting Down – June 26th

Children of the 90s… or maybe those of us who were young-ish adults of the 90s… hear me and weep.  What might have been the first instant messenger platform I ever used, ICQ, is going away on June 26th!

ICQ Logo Evolution

This was one of those one-two punch bits of news where I was saddened to find that ICQ was going away, but first I was surprised it was even still around.

What to say?  Way back in the day we used to use it to tell people to log in for a zone in TorilMUD.  I kept the login going well into the 2000s with Trillian.  Somewhere along the line I let it go, forgot the password, couldn’t remember my number, and basically moved on.

Still, it was quite a thing back in the day.  I told somebody I had a 5 digit ICQ number… but it might have been a 6 digit number.  This was like 25 years ago or more, right?  I had it before I had a Yahoo account, and they sent me a 25 year anniversary notice last year. (I noted the 24th anniversary message they sent me, but decided that didn’t have to be an EVERY year thing.)

Anyway, that was all I had for June.  Did I miss anything?  I mean, at least anything there is a chance I might play?  I am not really primed for things like the Elden Ring expansion of whatever is going on in FFXIV.

In this “Year of Darkpaw” and all things Norrath, I haven’t spent much time writing about EverQuest II, the younger sibling of the EverQuest duo.  But it is part of the year with its 20th anniversary landing in November.

As part of the celebration on the EQII side of the house, there has been a planned special server on the roadmap since the start of the year, with June as a launch target.  We got a bit more info about the server in the April Producer’s Letter, which said it was going to take us back to 2006.

Anashti Sul – We’ll get to her in a bit

And while just being told that doesn’t feel like much, it is actually kind of a big statement.  Also, you might note, 2006 isn’t “20 years ago” so they are jumping ahead a bit in the life of the game.  As I noted at the time on the post over at Massively OP, 2006 means no going back to the original crafting and some of the other ideas that did not pan out very well at launch.

I am sure there are still a few purists out there who will bemoan the fact that we won’t be going back to four level combines to produce finished items and having to get crafting materials from two or three other professions to get anything done.  Having lived through it, I know the highs and the lows of that system.  In the end though, the reason cooking was so popular was you didn’t need to depend on anybody else.  As like as not trying to go back to that with the current client would be prohibitively expensive… and for a very short term benefit.

This server will unlock expansions fast enough that the first two years out of a 20 year progression will go by fast and we’d be to the current crafting system in no time.  So best not to bother if it is going away in any case.

As Bhagpuss said at one point, we’re going back to the era when Scott Hartsman was directing the show and the game went from trying to have a split personality that both acknowledged the old game and pretended it had nothing to do with it as it tried to forge a completely independent lore path.  But with the 2006 Echoes of Faydwer expansion the game got back on board and embraced its Norrath identity and sought to build on it, returning to old locations time and again.

And it was good.  Echoes of Faydwer was a big freaking deal, a welcome change in direction for the game that helped it find its place in the SOE ecosystem and probably got some early players to come back and commit to it.  This blog is just old enough that I was writing about Echoes of Faydwer at launch.

Echoes of Faydwer

See, just that little tidbit of information got me going on about it as a choice even though we hadn’t been told anything about the server rules itself.  But last week we got some actual meat, including the server name, Anashti Sul, which hearkens back to the Desert of Flames, the first EQII expansion… that is her picture up at the top of the post… and one of those that sought to blaze a new trail on the lore front.

So what have we been told?  Here is what we have so far:

• There will be no spell research.
• Krono will not be able to be consumed, traded, or sold on an Origins server.
• There will be a 6-week Beta to ensure we cover a wide breadth of testing.
• Attributes have restored secondary functionality, agility will help avoid melee attacks, intelligence will increase ability potency, strength will increase melee damage, and wisdom will grant extra resistance.
• All bosses will be original stat/buff packages.
• No weight. It could not be restored.
• Unlocks have not been decided yet, however we do have new forums, and we will be able to poll and discuss unlocks before we launch.
• No holiday events.
• There will be a marketplace, but it will be very limited.
• It will not be free trade.
• This server is on its own design depot.
  • This is the first time for this type of separation for EverQuest II.
  • It cannot be affected by Live design updates, and vice versa.
  • Code and Art are still across all server types, for a variety of reasons. For example, connections to external or shared resources such as Database, Authentication, etc. have completely changed over the years.
• Freeport and Qeynos are back to old school, in both appearance and functionality.
  • Livable neighborhoods, and their quests, are back! With the scope of the changes, these will need a lot of testing.
• No persistent instances.
• No tradeskill subcombines.
  • The current build is right after subcombines for crafting were removed.

That this is an “origins” server, a new type of special server, seems to say that the team is committing to the special nostalgia server concept more so than previously.  It is quartered off in its own “design depot” so likely doesn’t have to get updates in lock step with the live servers.

That means that they can go back to some old stuff.  Yes, we had the Isle of Refuge previously, but now we’re going to get original, old school Qeynos and Freeport, complete with the racial neighborhood ghettos… though I still feel that barbarians and dwarves got the short end of the stick being lumped together in one generic area while gnomes got a sprocket theme park.

No free trade, so there will be bind on pickup items from bosses, no holiday events, which would probably break with the older version of the cities, and a limited marketplace, which is the Darkpaw term for the cash shop.  I will be interested to see what is in that cash shop.

Krono, the Norrathian PLEX substitute, won’t be available on the server either.  You will have to grind mobs for you copper like everybody else.

Which reminds me, did mobs drop coins by 2006?  At launch SOE was extremely paranoid about the economy and inflation so mobs dropped no coins, only things that you might sell to a vendor later.  Will we start past that?

It is interesting that they couldn’t restore item (and coin) weight to the game.  But, like the old crafting system, it has ceased to be relevant by 2006.  Every time a new expansion lands everybody got big stat increases from gear, so strength stopped being much of a gate.  I was carrying around storage crates at one point, something that would drag your mobility down to nearly nil at launch, by the time Kunark hit in EQII.  It became something that merely punished low level players without being at all a limit at level cap, so I am not sad to see it is being left out.

The one thing left out is what the expansion unlock cadence will be.  I am sure it will move lickety split when compared to WoW progression servers, which are four and a half years in and only three expansions have dropped.  But will they move too fast?  It is a hard balance.

It all sounds interesting.  I am just not sure at this point whether it will be something I can commit to.  The game was solo friendly by 2006… another thing about 2004 is that beyond a certain point overland zones were balanced around group play… but it could also be pretty grindy.  I might find some time to peek in and look at the old versions on Qeynos and Freeport.

Related:

• Darkpaw – April 2024 Producer’s Letter
• Darkpaw – Anashti Sul Beta Announcement
• Darkpaw – How to Participate in Beta
• Inventory Full – Anashti Sul or She Who Could Not Be Destroyed