Game Moments #8 - EverQuest
Well, I could have a ton of stories and moments from EverQuest. Here's one.

Shortly after the first expansion for EverQuest came out - The Ruins of Kunark - I ended up linking up with some players from a brand-new guild called "The Order of Concord." They were hanging out by the Drolvarg temple in the Firiona Vie zone. I played a human rogue - one of the most USELESS classes prior to the expansion, but one that had been gradually rebalanced over the preceding six months since EQ had gone live.

Firiona Vie was a larger zone. New to the expansion was the fact that you had a small section of the zone that was "civilized" with shops and so forth. But beyond the gate, you had a dangerous mid-level zone for adventuring for characters of levels in the mid-20's to about 40. players in their high twentied through the thirties in level. Which was my level, and the level of the guys in the fledgeling Order of Concord. There was a "sister city" for evil players on the other side of the continent, which had a similar theme (civilized city, surrounded by the rest of the zone which was dangerous). Finally, there was a whole new race with a brand-new starting city.

One thing that was a common practice prior to the expansion, but which was exacerbated by the expansion was the fact that Druids in EverQuest could get around certain faction restrictions by changing into a wolf. As a wolf, they had neutral faction to EVERYONE, which allowed them to go to any of these new cities with impunity. Around the time of the expansion (I think it was about a week afterwards, but I can't remember), Sony put the kibosh on this practice by making druids-in-wolf-form (and Shamans-in-Bear-Form) automatically con hostile in these civilized territories. Since the guards and merchants of cities were of incredibly heroic and deadly power (why the guards stood guard instead of fighting monsters I'll never know...), this would prove immediately deadly to most druids.

Anyway, the thing that I liked about the Order of Concord folks was that they were a social guild. A really small bunch of folks who just played together because they liked being with each other, and even structured the guild around helping other players. I'd joined my current guild for social reasons, but had become inactive because it had become an "uberguild" - and I just didn't have the time and energy to put into constant raiding.

On the other hand, the group that hung out at the Drolvarg temple for those two weeks were a pretty mature bunch, and it was more like a chat session with deadly combats. Way more deadly than usual, as there was a bug during the first month of Kunark's release that caused creatures to "auto-pull" - newly respawned monsters remembered that you'd killed their predecessors, and would make a beeline towards your position if you were still in the zone --- dragging all their friends with them. So routinely we'd be sitting around, waiting for monsters to spawn, and then suddenly get surrounded by about eight Drolvargs. (Drolvargs were giant wolf-men type creatures).

We got pretty dang good at it. Sometimes we'd get slaughtered, and this was the type of group that would just laugh it off. "Woops, we're all dead, let's do it again!" No big deal. No stress, no blame, just having a good time and putting up with the occasional death and XP loss. We had a good time. And usually we'd come out of there with just AMAZING experience points, because more often than not we'd just BARELY survive and kill a TON of monsters during the evening.

One of the things that WORKED, amazingly, was that when it was clear we were in over our head, nobody ran --- but everyone told everyone ELSE to run. Nobody wanted to be the person to survive when everyone else died. So we'd shout for people to bolt, and then wait to "die for our buddies" so they could get a head start - but nobody would go. We'd fight until we had a sliver of health and no mana left, and yet amazingly survive. Then we'd desperately "med up," but only get a fraction back before we'd suddenly be ambushed by three to five more Drolvargs that "auto-pulled" on us. Unbelievably, we RARELY died from this. We'd work together really well and pull it off. Over and over again.

Then one night, we had a new guy show up to join the group. A druid. We explained to this guy how we played, how the auto-pull bug worked, and how deadly it got, and he said "No problem." Nice, friendly guy, and he did his job pretty well. Of course, he was always in wolf form (it gave the druid all kinds of bonuses). We killed a few Drolvargs, had a few laughs, and were settling ourselves in for another fine night of chatter and near-death experiences.

And then the going got tough. It was business as usual for the other five people in the group - we were down to low health, very low mana, and we were ambushed. One Drolvarg turned into two, two into four, four into six. In any other group, we'd have been bolting, trying to get as close to the city as possible before being killed one by one by the Drolvargs, so we'd have an easier time retrieving our equipment from our corpses. But this group - meh. We toughed it out.

When the dust cleared, there was one person dead. The druid. We looked around for his corpse, but couldn't find us. We asked him what happened.

He admitted he had gotten scared halfway into the fight, and had gated (teleported) out. Unfortunately, he was soul-bound in the city of Firiona Vie, right by the guards. Since he hadn't crossed the zone boundaries, he'd stayed in wolf form ... and the guards had killed him the instant he'd materialized.

The guys who stuck it out against hopeless odds? Another victory, in spite of losing the druid halfway through the fight.

It's funny how a little multiplayer game like "Evercrack" could teach you a thing or two about teamwork.

Labels: Game Moments, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:51 PM (Permalink)