By Julie Whitefeather 

Time for my first full column. There will be other columns of course, at the holidays and such. I may also add another column during the week.  Here is the first of a series of columns you will see on these pages each Friday.  Read on…

Knocking about Norrath - travels with Gnomercee

This is my first Frostfell and what great fun it is! I have had the pleasure of participating in holiday celebrations in mmos before, but this holiday celebration tops them all! You have just got to love those Gigglegibber Goblins.  The Frostfell version of a Christmas carol was a great bit of fun. O.K. I will admit that the maze at the end of the quest was a bit frustrating. But the best part was the crafting!

What could be better from the standpoint of a beginning crafter? Do a few quick quests to shoot up to a level 10 crafter and than skip on over to Frostfell Village.  The nodes (presents) for gathering materials and the machines to craft them with are all in one place. I have had a great deal of fun furnishing my two homes for the holiday season - so much so, in fact, that I ran out of space to put all the holiday crafts. As you can see from the signature below, it gave me a bit of inspiration for a new persona for my gnome.

Have you had any travels of your own you would like to share? Let me know!

Great Moments in Gaming - go kill ten fairies

Like you, I am a resident of several virtual worlds. There are times in my travels that I stop amongst the gaming to appreciate a moment, whether that moment is to admire the view or laugh at a sense of humor.  Since this is the first column, I will share one of my favorite moments to date.

One of the great things I have found about Everquest is the developer’s sense of humor that shows through in the game. This is not uncommon of course. In another mmo, which shall remain nameless, it is not uncommon to find an NPC that laments over not having “taken the blue pill” - a reference to the movie”The Matrix” of course.

Sometimes the references developers put in games are a bit more obtuse, but no less funny if you get the reference.

Some of you may have seen the movie from 1977 called “Wizards”. In that movie, about two wizard brothers, the following dialogue takes place.

Max: Fritz! Fritz, get up for God’s sake! Get up! They’ve killed Fritz! They’ve killed Fritz! Those lousy stinking yellow fairies! Those horrible atrocity-filled vermin! Those despicable animal warmongers! They’ve killed Fritz! Take that! Take this! Take that, you green slime! You black hearted,short, bow-legged…

Fritz: Max! Max, I’m okay! I’m okay max. Just a scratch. Look I’m all right.

Max: Oh, Oh. There you go again, stepping on my lines, raining on my parade, costing me medals…

[Accidentally shoots Fritz]

Max: Oh. Oh, Fritz? Fritz, get up for God’s sake! Get up! They’ve killed Fritz! They’ve killed Fritz! Those lousy stinking yellow fairies! Those horrible atrocity-filled vermin! Take that! Take that! They killed Fritz!

Not long ago I decided to take my Arasi Necromancer to the Enchanted lands.  I had seen the name on the bell on the docks and it promised adventure that was…well…enchanting.

On the docks I encountered Gubbo Chaley. His quest? Go kill 10 fairies. One look at the picture will tell both the reason for the quest and the reference that the game dev was making. As in the movie, in this case it turned out that Fritz is very much alive and simply underneath the docks.

Gnomercee, no prisoners…

Time for the topic of the week where input is always welcome, good conversation appreciated, and inane banter easily ignored.

It was recently reported by massively.com (see links below) that a guild called “Unholy Trinity” was allowed to transfer from the test server to the live server where they became “unholy Triad”. Perhaps ‘allowed’ is the wrong word.  The words that are being tossed around are words like “collusion”, “exploit”, and “violation of the EULA.” This particular story started with an EQ2 Flames admin (and bear in mind that even EQ2 Flames gets flamed any more) and quickly jumped to the official EQ2 forum where it became the subject of what Massively has aptly dubbed “threadnaughts”.  The one I took a look at was an 84 page monster entitled “Any devs wanna explain test->live transfer.”

What a way to start on the new job…

With the loss of Scott Hartsman, who has moved on to other virtual worlds he tells us, we are graced with Mr. Bruce Ferguson.  Mr. Ferguson was a project manager (YAY! Project managers, that’s what I am. Not for SOE - I wish) for SOE who has been promoted to senior producer. Here is what SOE’s new Senior Producer had to say about the matter:

“There has been quite a bit of discussion recently about something we were doing to show kindness to some valued members of our testing community who have been working diligently to improve EverQuest II for the last three years.

What we did was take a group of characters from the test server, scrub them by hand of all test gear, and any ‘privileged’ equipment, titles, etc, and grant their wish to continue to play as a group of friends, on a live server. Had we been aware that being a little extra kind to these folks would cause such an uproar, there is no doubt we would not have taken this step. However, due to the current situation, I find myself apologizing to you for allowing this situation to occur.

We are in the process now of removing the characters that we copied to the live servers. Obviously, we overstepped the bounds of kindness in attempting to thank these people for their efforts in testing, and we are working to rectify this situation before the end of the day today.

Thank you,
Bruce ‘Froech’ Ferguson
Senior Producer, EverQuest II”

There’s no drama like NO DRAMA…

Despite the fact that I have a BFA in theater, the only place I like to see drama is on the stage or screen - and I don’t mean the computer screen.  Nothing will make me hit “quit guild” key on a computer faster than guild drama and this is one step up from that; albeit not a very large step. 

Did someone at SOE transfer a guild from the test server to the live server? Well yes, that is obvious isn’t it? Was it done surreptitiously by a single SOE employee and “covered up” by management? We will never know, and what is more it doesn’t matter..

What did she just say?

That’s right, I said it doesn’t matter. First, my friends consider the words of Mr. Ferguson on the matter:

“…we were doing to show kindness to some valued members of our testing community who have been working diligently to improve EverQuest II for the last three years.”

The way the industry sits right now, an open beta test is often little more than a tool to bring in more players to the game once it hits the shelves. What about close beta, or ongoing test servers? Ask yourselves, and be honest now, how many people that participate in a “test server” actually test the game? How often do people take the time to fill out bug reports? I will be the first to admit that I was not around in the early days of EQ2. However, my understanding from everything that I read is that it was one hellacious thing to play. If half of what I read about the “early days” of eq2 are true, it had more bugs than a melted popsicle dropped on a hot sidewalk in the August sun for a day and a half. What about now? I don’t know how it is from your gateway to Norrath but from my end it’s nothing but “smooth sailing” as grandma used to say. The only problems I had were fixed by a GM almost immediately. Now that may be just good luck on my part. After all, as they say, good things happen to good people. But I tend to put it off to good management instead. So what helped EQ2 to run as smoothly as it does now? Good devs? Crackerjack programing? Sure that’s part of it.  But there is another part of the equation. That part is a little thing called “Testing”.

Does the transfer violate the EULA? Maybe so, but it is subject to change and there is well known principle of tort law…

No, not the “golden rule” - whoever has the gold makes the rules.  Another rule is what I refer to.

You can’t sue the sovereign unless the sovereign wants to be sued. 

In other words, SOE wrote the EULA. They can change it if they feel like it. So, if SOE has found a band of players who are actually willing to go out and test the game, and they choose to reward those players I say bravo!

Think about it for a moment…

Barring the fact that the transfer was promptly undone by SOE, who did it hurt really? They weren’t transferred to a PVP server. That would have given them an unfair advantage. Thats why mmos do not generally allow transfers from PVE to PVP servers. No, they were transferred to Unrest, a PVE server.  All the extra experience points they earned from the test server means is that means is that they will be able to reach the level cap and exhaust the content a bit faster! (cue sarcastic comment) Oh no! Be still my impatient heart!

Did it help anyone?

Sure. If what Bruce Ferguson tells us is true, these players were dedicated testers. They helped make the game run smoothly. Might that not be true? Sure, but at the moment I can believe a few disgruntled players or the senior producer for EQ2.

Did the transfer hurt anyone at all?

Well, yes. It hurt the overblown egos of few players with an axe to grind.

Links:

Related Report at Massively.com

Related Report at Massively.com

Coming Up…

Coming up next time (amongst other things) “Getting in good with the bad guys” and a guide to getting your own pet baby gorilla.

Until Next time…

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather