This is highly confusing so let me try to break it down:
- EverQuest was released in 1999 and has a golden era that many consider to be initial release of the game and the two immediate expansions: Ruins of Kunark and Scars of Velious.
- Project 1999 is an emulated server for EverQuest ran by fans that has pegged the game to the above golden era with no further expansions. It attempts to recreate the old rule set.
- Project 1999 has multiple servers, one of these severs Project 1999 Green, was more recently released, and on this server is where the event occurred.
- In the expansion Scars of Velious The Sleeper is the end boss. It's an ancient all powerful dragon and its lair Sleeper's Tomb has NPCs that drop the best items in the game.
- You awaken The Sleeper by killing 4 minibosses called wardens. The problem is you can only awaken The Sleeper once, and once you do NPCs in Sleeper's Tomb no longer spawn with the best items in the game.
- There is then an unwritten code to kill 3 out of 4 wardens to NOT wake The Sleeper to ensure everyone continues to be able to farm and get the best items.
- The above social contract is what was violated.
This isn't that big of a deal. Back in the early 2000s many original EverQuest servers woke The Sleeper, and as mentioned, one server even managed to bug out and kill The Sleeper. It's mainly interesting because 1) There are people still interested and playing Everquest?! 2) Really just 1.
> - In the expansion Scars of Velious the Sleeper is the end boss. It's an ancient all powerful dragon and its lair Sleeper's Tomb has NPCs that drop the best items in the game.
Nitpick: the Sleeper is not an end boss, it's an end event: while the sleeper is technically killable, it was not designed to be killed (it's nigh spell-immune, one-shots most end-content Velious PCs, and has something like 2 orders of magnitude more the hit points of velious bosses) and it drops no loot at all.
> one even managed to bug out and kill The Sleeper.
Rallos didn't bug out anything, they designed a completely wonky strategy which worked: SOE didn't give the Sleeper AOE or mass kill abilities, so they zerg-rushed him with mass resurrection as it needed time to cycle between kills.
You might be confusing this with the first spawning of the Sleeper (bugged out at the time, it spawned as a giant human), by Conquest, almost certainly using an exploit (they were also accused of using an exploit to kill the 3rd warder, but there are relatively few solid facts around those events, and SOE didn't cover themselves in glory either).
It can only be awaken once and triggers an event where it rampages through different zones killing everything. After that the wardens no longer spawn if I recall correctly (there's nothing to guard!) and it's no longer visible in-game in the zone. masklinn has a much better memory than I do of events that happened 20 years ago and can correct me :)
The server isn't necessarily ruined, but if you're a min/max type of player you'd certainly be upset at not having the chance at some of the drops. On actual EverQuest servers this wasn't that big of a deal as the next expansion with better items came shortly after, on Project 1999 this is a much bigger problem.
> What happens if people don't kill The Sleeper? Does it go back to sleep? Is the server thus ruined to play on?
You can't normally kill the sleeper, that was never the intent.
The "normal" event is that it kills everyone in the zone, goes from the Sleeper's Tomb to Skyshrine killing everyone, kills Yelinak (the boss of Skyshrine), then it disappears forever (until a much later extension brought it back).
I think the only zone that's permanently changed is the Sleeper's Tomb: the warders don't spawn anymore, meaning their loot (which is the end-game loot of Velious) becomes unavailable. This is what makes waking the sleeper a dick move on Project 1999 servers: progression stops at Velious, so it locks all other players out of that gear (on "official" servers waking the sleeper after having farmed the warders might frustrate the second and third guilds for some time as they'd miss out on getting that gear while #1 would be working and farming Luclin).
It isn't about killing him, it's about waking him up. Killing him doesn't matter. If you wake him, he never gets reset, he never goes back to sleep, the warders you have to kill to wake him never spawn again, and they drop the best loot in the game, so by killing them and waking him up, you remove everyone's ability to grind for that loot, forever.
Killing him is a thing that you can only do by using a specific strategy, and doing so has no real effect on anything, he still is awake and you still lose the warders, and therefore the good loot. Since this server is pegged to this specific moment in time when the first two expansions were released, the subsequent content with the better loot will never happen, so now people on this server have lost the ability to get that loot, and they're salty about it.
I am shocked to learn EQ still gets expansions. Even in 2005 it felt basically dead to WoW and Runescape. It's somewhat endearing to know they can continue making content for ~50,000 users.
edit Damn, even EQ2 is still going with roughly half the user base.
We live in such a connected world that it sometimes feels like nothing matters unless it directly impacts billions of people, but the fortunate truth is that you only need a tiny fraction of that to have a vibrant and fulfilling community. A few thousand dedicated individuals is all it takes.
Back when AOL was my internet provider, the first game I got seriously hooked on was a MUD called Gemstone III. I check back in on it every once in awhile, and people are still paying to play it, new content is being released, etc.
I believe it's been one continuous world, so all the old OP equipment and magic items are still out there being hoarded.
I wonder about the original developers who were working on it in the 80s. Did they have any idea that people would still be inhabiting the worlds they built almost 40 years later?
The changes they have made over the years have made it quite a different game from what you remember if you were a player from the old days who hasn't been back. Here's something I wrote a few years ago when EverQuest came up (with minor edits to fix some mistakes I just noticed and the addition of a big thing I left out):
EverQuest today is worth a look if (1) you used to play and want some nostalgia, or (2) you never played but would like to see what one of the classic MMORPGs was about, or (3) if you would like an interesting game, good for grouping or solo play, that has a massive amount of content even if you are playing free.
There were several big changes on the "live" servers (which are distinct from the "progression" servers, which I will describe later) that made the game a lot more friendly for casual and solo play.
First, a few years ago they added in-game NPC mercenaries that you could hire (one mercenary at a time per character). You can hire a tank, healer, melee damage dealer, or ranged damage dealer, and the AI for the mercenaries is pretty good. They "understand" group play.
With mercenaries, a whole lot of formerly full group only content can be taken reasonably by a couple players each with a mercenary, and even a lot of it can be done with one player with a mercenary at least up to level 60ish if you are playing free and up to at least mid 90s if you are paying [1].
Second, they introduced a new line of armor and weapons, Defiant Armor and Defiant Weapons. These things drop from a lot of normal encounters, but the stats on this stuff is comparable to top raid gear from a few expansions earlier. With Defiant, you don't have to dedicate your life to equipping your character to be able to handle the top content from an older expansion. It's only the people who are chasing the leading edge that have to make EverQuest a second career, unlike the old days.
Third, on the role playing server, Firiona Vie (FV), there is a big experience bonus and very very items are marked NO DROP. So if you do need gear better than Defiant gear, you can trade for it or buy it from other players. Mana and healing rates are also higher than older players will remember.
Play on FV if you don't have some specific reason to play elsewhere.
Fourth, there are some new great quests. You start out with a book called the Tome of the Heroes Journey in your inventory. When you open it, it tells you several zones that would be good at your level. If you open when you are in one of those zones, it suggest several NPCs who have task, quests, and problems you might help with. Just following the Heroes Journey will give you plenty of fun stuff to do, and that is only the tip of the iceberg.
Fifth, there is a tutorial zone that you'll start in unless you elect to skip it. The tutorial zone has a series of quests that will take you through all the basics of the game, and get you to level 10 and decently equipped.
Sixth, if you have access to an old account, there is also a thing called "Veteran Rewards". For each year of your account, you get certain bonuses. One big one, which will almost certainly be on your old account, is a free resurrection. Once a week real time, you can go to an NPC healer in certain zones and ask them for a resurrection, and they will summon all your corpses and then give you a 100% XP resurrection.
Other Veteran Rewards include a 15 minute resist, stats, and run speed boost, usable once every 20 hours, a health/mana/endurance complete restoration usable every 3 days, 30 minutes of double XP usable once every 20 hours, one that summons a banker to your location and one that summons a merchant (both usable every 20 hours), and a few more.
With a mercenary and a free account on FV, you've got an excellent solo game for a long time. Even better for a group of friends.
For those who played before, and are nostalgic for the old days, they have "progression" servers. There are several, but the overall theme is the same. A progression server starts with some old version of EQ, and then progresses through the expansions. Progression servers do not have mercenaries, or Defiant armor. Heck, they are even missing later UI features when they start, such as the wonderful multiple target tracking system that the live servers have.
Progression servers have other rules, varying depending on server, to try to recreate the classic EQ experience that server's players want. For example, one of them is a "true box" server. That means you can only play one account per computer at a time. If you are one of those people who wants to play N characters at once on the same server, you have to have N physical computers if you are on a true box server. (To be clear, you can have more than one character on a "true box" server without having more than one computer. You just can't have more than one character logged in on the same server at the same time unless they on different computers).
They also differ in when expansions become available. Some do it on a fixed time schedule. Some do it when the endgame content of the previous expansion is defeated. Some do it by vote. They also differ in how far they go. For example, Agnarr unlocks expansions on a schedule, but will stop at Planes of Power plus the two smaller expansions that followed that. Many consider that the best era of EQ, and Agnarr will be frozen in that era.
Progression servers are not available to free players.
So for those who want a shot of nostalgia, or who never played and want to check out the classic game, the best thing to do is watch for the next progression server launch, and subscribe. A new progression server is always a high population server, with population density comparable to the old days.
System requirements are quite modest by today's standards. My ancient PC (Asus P5Q, Core 2 Duo e8400, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 460) has no trouble running two instances of EQ at once. It could probably do 3.
[1] The difference is mercenaries. There are apprentice mercenaries, with 5 skill levels (tier I to tier V) and journeymen mercenaries (tier I to V). Free players can only hire apprentices. Around mid 50s a tier V apprentice starts to struggle.
> First, a few years ago they added in-game NPC mercenaries that you could hire (one mercenary at a time per character). You can hire a tank, healer, melee damage dealer, or ranged damage dealer, and the AI for the mercenaries is pretty good. They "understand" group play.
Meanwhile WoW still refuses to do this and the DPS players are stuck with 10 to 40 minute queues. Sigh.
Pretty crazy story. That dragon mechanic which brought up a 20 year old serverwide honor code of not ruining the game by defeating the final boss. Quite a few questions unanswered, so do people restart a new server fresh? Are their characters 20 years old? I can't imagine having to play a server for 20 years and have it reset.
That is correct. On the official servers the event ran way back then (the extension was released in December 2000, the first Sleeper was freed in summer 2001).
Only one official server never released the sleeper.
Interestingly, one server managed to kill the sleeper.
For creating a one-time event. I mean if they blame other players taking out this one time event for sure they should also blame whoever created it, no?
TLDR: People with different agendas organized within a powerful structire to do something selfish at the expense of the rest of the community.
In a way race to world first works like this if thst is the level you aim for. If you play for loot, game is done once you are BiS. Now people cannot get BiS anymore. I'm not sure if its a good design decision. Its a bald one, for sure. It ruins everyone's 'fun'. Though it would seem this type of grind isn't fun, hence why its botted and regarded as second job.
I'd argue this kind of event doesn't ruin anything. Maybe on this very specific server where they are deliberately playing without any future, but in the game it self if you know that you are going to release more expansions having this kind of epic send off is cool as hell.
Think of World of Warcraft. Sure there is the "race to world first", but how much cooler would it be if there was one boss that could only be killed once? Yeah, maybe that wouldn't make much sense now when people actually make a living off of playing the game, so that would push out most people from even attempting to get the rare kill, but at least it would have consequences in the game instead of just waiting until next week to kill the same big-bad-guy again.
WoW is a theme park MMO, and exclusive content for hardcore players exists as long as 1) it does not take too much time to develop 2) it is inclusive enough 3) it is minor.
So Yog + 0, Sinestra and Ra-den worked, for example, and a highest difficulty also works but having raiding as a whole exclusive before a massive grind is no longer acceptable. And usually the mythic only mechanics are an after thought.
There is no way I as working human being can compete with MMORPG players who have no life. But I sure as hell am not going to finance them with my sub.
But Blizz and I have different goals anyway. They want me to stay subbed. I want to complete certain content on a certain difficulty (one below the highest) and then quit, doing something novel/fun/useful instead of doing the same shit over and over and over again (or die trying). Because ever since they removed lockout on gear (start of M+ dungeons) the game has become too no-life-friendly. I cannot compete with such.
The comparison is moot though. Cannot defeat the Lich King? You can see the cinematic at the very least. But that is the only result. The one where a boss can only be defeated once would increase realm community perhaps. But even the top 100 guilds per faction achievement did not pan out to improve faction balance.
> So Yog + 0, Sinestra and Ra-den worked, for example, and a highest difficulty also works but having raiding as a whole exclusive before a massive grind is no longer acceptable.
You're quite right it's not acceptable but that doesn't stop Blizzard from stubbornly insisting on time-gated mechanics, over and over again.
I tried my best to get into Shadowlands' end-game. Got extremely bored around Korthia and then Zereth Mortis and couldn't even finish their story lines; I almost fell asleep on the keyboard about a month ago and I figured "eff this, not doing it" and just left. This was my first time playing for more than a month ever since mid-Legion (I usually visit each expansion briefly ever since Pandaria but the game just doesn't appeal to me anymore, and hasn't done so for a long time).
> But I sure as hell am not going to finance them with my sub.
Same thought. I played on and off for 3 months, renewed it for 2 more months but I barely even get in now (just grinding rested bonus leveling all my alts 2 times a week, and that turned out to be hugely more interesting and fun). I'll just let the sub lapse. The next expansion doesn't look at all enticing either.
> But Blizz and I have different goals anyway. They want me to stay subbed. I want to complete certain content on a certain difficulty (one below the highest) and then quit
The funny thing is, me and many others have zero problems paying for WoW like it's cable TV and do so forever. But they have mercilessly and meticulously removed anything and everything I found fun in the game and made it tailored to no-lifers and streamers that actually make money out of playing. As you said, I can't compete with them -- but even if I had the time and energy I am still 99% sure I wouldn't have the desire to do so.
So yeah, it's not about the money, it's about sending a message, as the Joker said in "The Black Knight". I can buy 2 years of subscription right now and won't feel it in my monthly balance. But... I'll let my sub lapse to signal that the current state of the game is not okay with me.
> an epic last stand to try to kill the invincible dragon, something that had only been done once before and was itself a legendary piece of MMO history.
From a story linked below it sounds like the sleeper has been killed many times. The article seems to incorrectly state this 2022 attempt would be the second kill ever…
>> players of Rallos Zek, who were congratulated by SOE and given official confirmation of a game-first accomplishment. The Sleeper would be killed many times after this, but never quite as memorably.
It's confusing because they are 2 different events. How the event works is there are 4 warder dragons in the raid dungeon (sleepers tomb) if you kill all 4 it awakens "the sleeper" a giant crystal dragon. There is then a event where this dragon goes on a rampage and kills everything then despawns. Its designed not to be player killable, and this event only happens once per server, once the sleeper has been awakened it never comes back. This is what the guild has done recently, 2022 on the p1999 green server, they didnt kill the sleeper just awakened it. In the rallos zek server event, they killed all 4 warders, and then killed the "unkillable" sleeper dragon, a much harder thing to do, and i believe it hasnt been repeated.
Sounds like actual Role-Playing to me! The history is also interesting, as in every guild / group that awakened Kerafyrm against the wishes of others is to this day known, even if long disbanded.
I like those stories created by MMO players. Eve Online in particular seems to have some incredibly wicked tragedies playing out unbeknownst to me. Is there any good news source for those kind of things?
Re. EVE you'll find the epics retold in many places. For more regular happenings there are (were?) a few dedicated news sites: Crossing Zebras, Eve News 24, The Scope. No promises any of those are still alive, and in any case i recommend against digging too much if you don't play or aren't somewhat aware of the political scene IG. You'll mostly find petty or obscure events.
This just seems like bad game design. At least if there is any expectation for continued existence of the game. And it is kinda cool there is these one time events, but on other hand unless they support majority of server population and go for sufficiently long time for everyone to see an participate they feel just stupid.
That’s a fun story! Asherons Call had something along those lines, https://massivelyop.com/2018/01/30/re-examining-the-signific... though it only really got interesting on one server. Sadly getting a repeat on todays emulators seems unlikely to be possible.
Game worlds with actual consequences are the key for me. Feeling like my actions could have impact on others makes my participation feel much more worthwhile.
Translation: "I can influence other players' fun" is worthwhile to you.
Yeah I don't know about that, can easily be read as griefing, you know. Like those a-holes in WoW that show up in a remote base and kill all NPCs so the players leveling in the zone get stuck for a little time.
> It was one of the first big, scripted events in an MMO ever, with repercussions almost unthinkably dramatic in a game today. Imagine players in WoW or Final Fantasy 14 being able to permanently kill a boss, making their loot forever unobtainable for the rest of their server.
Players can't do it, but the WoW developers feel free to permanently kill bosses and make their loot unobtainable.
> Hundreds of players from other guilds, furious at Seal Team's actions, killed Yelinak before the battle could begin in earnest. Then Kerafyrm killed everyone and disappeared forever.
- EverQuest was released in 1999 and has a golden era that many consider to be initial release of the game and the two immediate expansions: Ruins of Kunark and Scars of Velious.
- Project 1999 is an emulated server for EverQuest ran by fans that has pegged the game to the above golden era with no further expansions. It attempts to recreate the old rule set.
- Project 1999 has multiple servers, one of these severs Project 1999 Green, was more recently released, and on this server is where the event occurred.
- In the expansion Scars of Velious The Sleeper is the end boss. It's an ancient all powerful dragon and its lair Sleeper's Tomb has NPCs that drop the best items in the game.
- You awaken The Sleeper by killing 4 minibosses called wardens. The problem is you can only awaken The Sleeper once, and once you do NPCs in Sleeper's Tomb no longer spawn with the best items in the game.
- There is then an unwritten code to kill 3 out of 4 wardens to NOT wake The Sleeper to ensure everyone continues to be able to farm and get the best items.
- The above social contract is what was violated.
This isn't that big of a deal. Back in the early 2000s many original EverQuest servers woke The Sleeper, and as mentioned, one server even managed to bug out and kill The Sleeper. It's mainly interesting because 1) There are people still interested and playing Everquest?! 2) Really just 1.