The Inside Scoop on Gaming

For two months in the spring of 2000, I set out to discover for myself if traditional human-interaction roleplaying games really had anything to fear from the newest, gnarliest MMPOGs (Massively Multi-Player Online Games). My "emempog" of choice- EverQuest. Several of my gaming associates had experienced a phenomenon the rest of us called "The EverCrack Devolution," and I wanted to see what had sucked them down from the world of light and fresh air, keeping them in basements and stuffy little rooms for weeks at a time staring at their monitor screens.

For those who have never experienced it (or wanted to), EverQuest is a computer fantasy game with a first-person perspective, played in a continuous world inhabited by any number of other players across the globe. This is part of the appeal of any MMPOG- the ability to adventure in a colorful, three-dimensional fantasy world with characters played by other people, with all their quirks and foibles and bright ideas. If you log on to an EverQuest server and have your character drop a rusty sword in the shadow of a wooded hill, it's quite possible you can log on the next day and find it still there. It's also quite possible that some lout might steal it in the meantime. Ah, the human element.

To play EverQuest, one is required to purchase the game CD, available online or at almost any game retailer. The player's computer reads graphics, sound, and game statistics from the disk, and transmits only certain bits of information (where the player's character is in relation to others) back and forth with an EQ server. Each of these servers can handle more than a thousand players simultaneously. The one I eventually chose was called Saryrn.

I. To Boldly Go...

It took my girlfriend and I a mere three hours to install EverQuest, connect to a server, create an account, and receive confirmation. Our patience was somewhat tested, and we were close to giving up for the night when that confirmation finally beeped sweetly in my inbox.

EQ features a straight-out-of-Central-Casting fantasy setting ("Norrath") that will be immediately familiar to anyone who has ever read a book containing the words, "Roll 3d6 for each of the six attributes." Players may choose from thirteen races and fourteen character classes. All the old archetypes (fighter, ranger, wizard, cleric, rogue, and mixtures) are here in one form or another. Once a race and class are chosen, players may customize each stock racial body graphic with one of about half-a-dozen different faces.

Game statistics are vaguely explained, and every character is given a small pool of discretionary points to spend on them. More about this later.

II. A Newbie Comes to Norrath

Reckoning that the life of a fighter would be the simplest way to learn the ropes of EverQuest, I created a human female warrior named Gwenhyvar. Starting location in EQ is determined by race, and Gwnehyvar appeared in the seaside city of Qeynos. Her early life was not an auspicious one. While many newbies meet valiant deaths in the grassy, monster-haunted fields beyond the walls of Qeynos, Gwen's deadliest enemy was the city itself. In the process of my learning the basic controls, she fell to her death three times, drowned in a well, and was pummeled by an irate NPC shopkeeper (this last one was due to the fact that I hit the "kick" button by accident while trying to buy some food). EQ protects its shopkeepers and other merchants from mischievous players by making them about as powerful as your average red dragon. No, I'm not kidding. EQ NPCs are an unforgiving lot, and the penalty for a misplaced kick or sword thrust is often a swift death at the hands of a beggar with a left hook like a 747 in a crash dive.

Once Gwnehyvar had mastered the fine art of walking, it was time to take her out for a round of valiant deaths in the grassy, monster-haunted fields beyond the walls of Qeynos. This was the so-called "newbie zone," where clumsy little twits aplenty could be found chasing snakes and beetles with their little knives. The carnage was terrible on both sides, and corpses fairly littered the ground.

III. Enter Combat

The type and number of monsters seen vary greatly with location, but the process of attacking them is simple. Creatures will walk, slither, and fly around the landscape, going about their business until a player clicks on one with a mouse and selects an attack command. Monsters are rated by level, as are player-characters, though players cannot divine a monster's precise level. Rather, each monster's text description is highlighted in a different color- green if the monster should be easy pickings, yellow if it could be a real challenge, and red if it will kill the player's ancestors fifteen generations back with a single blow.

Monsters that are green relative to a PC will ignore that PC and go about their business like friendly little denizens of an A.A. Milne story. Monsters that are yellow or red to a PC will take notice if that PC enters their personal space, turn on a dime, and begin mauling. I should mention that every monster in EverQuest fights like a coked-up samurai with a raging death wish.

Once engaged in combat, a monster will fight or chase a PC until the PC dies, kills the monster, or leaves the current zone. This means that unfortunate PCs are often seen running over distant hills and roads, followed by a "train" of sociopathic woodland animals that will track the player relentlessly. My guess is that one of the AI designers at Verant Interactive was a Sicilian.

Gwenhyvar was blooded in the field of snakes and beetles, and there she gained several levels and learned the basics of corpse-looting. Almost every creature in the game leaves some sort of detritus (rat whiskers, snake skins, fangs, etc) that can be sold for money, given to an NPC, eaten, used as a spell component, or flung to the ground with a groan of, "What the hell..."

Gwen's haul for three hours of snake-slashing and falling off stairs was just enough copper to purchase... a cloth bracelet and a pair of cloth gloves. I decided to make a new character and enjoy the richness of my newfound wisdom.

IV. Enter Sandman

My next hero was a male human wizard named Madigan. Madigan died so swiftly and so often that I feel bile crawling up the back of my throat even now as I write the wastrel's name. In my estimation, a human wizard in EQ is good for nothing but fertilizing the grassy, monster-haunted fields beyond the walls of Qeynos.

I had Madigan ditch his few worldly possessions in a secluded spot, and then I logged on as a new character, Madigan's older warrior brother, Koros. Koros snatched Madigan's junk and hurried to the newbie zone, where every day is Snake-Whacking Day. In short order, Koros was a 5th level warrior, and I had amassed enough cast-off snake skins to truly understand the EQ economy.

Simply put- it's crazy. Several days of effort are required to outfit a newbie in armor of cloth and leather. The next big step, chain, is several levels of geometric progression beyond the price of more basic materials. It could take months of daily play for even a successful character to assemble a suit of cheap metal armor. Of course, this is what keeps players hitting the keyboard, day in and day out, for months at a time. The economy is balanced for a MMPOG, not a logical fantasy world.

Once Koros was attired in a fetching outfit made more or less entirely of burlap (every piece of equipment added or deducted shows up on the character's graphic persona, which is neat) I decided to explore beyond the confines of the newbie zone. For the first time, I ventured into the Qeynos Hills. The hills where I died. The horrible, horrible hills.

The Qeynos Hills were filled with wolves (which will kill you), bats (which might kill you), and bears, which (ha-HA!) will most certainly kill you. This zone featured the added attraction of a gnoll barrow, which is more or less another fine place for things to kill you. In Qeynos Hills, I learned the true core of Verant's game design philosophy- everyone must die. Up, down, left, right, wet, dry, messy, sticky, in the dark and by the bright light of day, the first duty of the EverQuest PC is to get slaughtered. To ensure that everyone receives their fair share of completely random escape-proof deaths, every single zone (save the cities) contains at least one roaming monster grotesquely overpowered in comparison to any character that can reasonably benefit from exploring and fighting there. In some zones, griffins and other flying critters patrolled the skies, swooping down on anyone that crossed their path. Again, I am not making this up, and thousands of bitter EQ veterans will sing the same song for you.

When an EQ character dies, they re-materialize at their home city (or a magically-created save point) and need to travel out to retrieve their corpse wherever it may be. A PC's corpse contains all of their equipment. The good news is that nobody save the resurrected PC (or a PC given specific permission by that PC) can loot their own fallen corpse. The bad news is that death often means a chance to brave the same monster-infested killing zone, without so much as the armor and weapons that were inadequate the first time. This, the design philosophy tells us, provides "challenge." And Bob's yer uncle, fanboy.

Needless to say, Koros dished out his share of damage, but he died and experienced resurrection more often than the Travelergame line. Caution cannot save an EQ character from death- it truly is inevitable. There is no such thing as a perfect game. Careful players will die less often, yet they too will eventually walk into a completely random monstrosity twenty levels more powerful than they, and do the mortal coil shuffle like the newest of the newbies.

Koros made it to 10th level (by comparison, the player cap at the time I played EQ was 60th level). Thanks to a gift from a vastly more experienced PC, Koros was outfitted in dashing leather with one or two pieces of chain, and he wielded a sword easily worth two months of playing time. Then during a confused melee in the depths of the gnoll barrow, Koros was knocked off a ledge as he died. His corpse sank into a deep, dark body of water, well beyond my powers of recovery. I said some naughty words and took a week-long break from adventuring in Norrath.

V. Elves on the Other Side of the World

When I returned to the game, I resolved to put my experience to good use and play something much more in line with my usual tastes- an elven enchanter. Enchanters are a class of sorcerer that summon and control magical creatures to fight beside them. In EQ, these creatures are colloquially referred to as "pets." Pets are lifesavers, though I discovered that even they have their limits.

My elf, Sheldukher, appeared on the continent of Faydwer, on the other side of the globe. Non-magical travel from Queynos to the forests of Faydwer takes hours of playing time. The dark, atmospheric forest contained a torchlit city carved into a mountain, as well as a treetop community that resembled an Ewok village on steroids. Getting down from this village was so confusing at first that I wound up hurling Sheldukher to his death off one of the platforms, guessing (correctly) that he would resurrect on the ground.

The newbie zone near the elven cities was full of giant wasps and scuttling spiders, and Sheldukher hacked his merry way through their ranks, earning enough dead elven presidents to purchase a few spells (the standard spells for all of the spellcasting classes are sold in exclusive shops, and they're not cheap). With Sheldukher, the game finally began to come together for me. In part, this was experience, and in part it was because magic-users are infinitely more fascinating to me than sword-swingers. With magic as his ally, Sheldukher could travel farther and more easily than his predecessors. When he attained 8th level, I was able to purchase a spell of invisibility that shielded him from detection by the hostile drug-abusing monsters of the woodlands. Safely transparent, I was free to meditate on the more beautiful aspects of EverQuest. As Sheldukher was approaching 10th level, I realized that I was slowly losing my ability to enjoy the mouse-clicking mayhem of life in Norrath. I had seen enough.

VI. EverQuest in Summation: Good Points

EverQuest can be atmospheric. The mournful sound of the wind on a deserted road... the gentle slap of oars as I paddled a rowboat across a still, gray lake in the rain... night swimming near the Qeynos docks... all of these experiences captured in microcosm the feeling I get when I take a break from civilization and head to the woods and lakes of Northern Minnesota or Canada. Koros had an especially memorable encounter while moving carefully through a thick forest during a midnight lightning storm. Off in the distance, concealed by mist and falling rain, I could see great dark shapes silently moving between the trees. As I got closer (perilously closer) the intermittent flashes of lighting revealed them to be giant spiders. Despite the fact that I knew the fantasy ecology of Norrath was worse than any early TSR dungeon, I was genuinely uneasy. The long process of evasion, darting from tree to tree in the rain, ever watchful for the looming shadow of a deadly spider, was nightmarish and exhausting. That, and not endless random deaths, is what makes for a truly challenging game. The occasional interjection of genuine atmosphere was EQ's major strength as far as I was concerned.

EverQuest is addicting. The rewards of experience and corpse-looting are more insidious than any pellet dispenser on the wall of a laboratory rat's cage. For those who can be subsumed in the simple trap of this acquisition game, EQ will deliver hundreds if not thousands of hours of playing time.

EverQuest is well-populated. Those looking for a chance to interact with hundreds or thousands of gamers from across the globe will not be disappointed. Every PC encountered is a roll of the old dice, a chance for a new alliance, argument, diversion, or frustration.

EverQuest delivers unrepentant hack-and-slash action. Players looking for this will not be disappointed.

VII. EverQuest in Summation: Bad Points

EverQuest is not meant for solo adventuring beyond the initial few levels. At first, monster levels equate directly to player levels, but it soon becomes apparent that as the levels increase the monsters grow steadily more powerful than PCs of a similar numerical level. Monsters of twentieth level or higher are effectively unbeatable by a single PC of equivalent rank. Furthermore, PCs only gain experience from creatures within a few levels of their own. This means that players who want to advance to higher levels and explore much of the world are forced to team up with others. Supposedly, this encourages roleplaying and interaction.

As a confirmed roleplayer, I object to this. My few experiences as part of a team were confused and irritating affairs. As Koros, I joined a party of four and descended into the gnoll barrow. Since Koros was the strongest member of the group, I clearly explained that I would have him loot the corpses of our victims and carry any goods until we could split them equally in a place of safety. This made a great deal of sense, since Koros' capacity was far greater than anyone else's. However, after fighting cheerfully for almost an hour, I found myself suddenly abandoned by my party in a deep, dangerous area of the barrow. Abandoned on purpose... and taunted via the Out-Of-Character (OOC) chat channel. My crime? Hoarding all the looted goods. This despite the fact that my team-mates were all spellcasters, weak and easily encumbered. Nobody had understood my multiple explanations. Nobody had waited around for me to divide the loot as promised.

Creatures in EQ are so deadly that players working in a team often have a hair-fine margin of error. The role of each party member (cleric, warrior, etc) is fixed in a widely-known routine, and the inexperienced, I discovered, are thrown out of groups and taunted with little consideration or understanding. My crime was not that I was an ineffective fighter- quite the contrary. My crime was that I deviated from EverQuest custom, even though that deviation was logical. When I log onto a MMPOG, I do not want to be bound in my exploration by the need to search out and join a party. I do not want my game experience to be limited to the whims and courtesies (or extraordinary lack thereof) of strangers. In my experience, parties of players would communicate tersely, in strange acronyms and abbreviations. When fighting the monsters of EverQuest, there is little time for roleplaying. As a paying customer, I wish to be free to explore a game on my own terms and in my own time. Knowing with utter certainty that my solo effectiveness would eventually reach an absolute plateau was a major factor in my disenchantment with the game.

EverQuest replaces real challenge with the threat of random, frustrating death. There are two ways to make a computer game more challenging for a human player- you can create a more versatile computer intelligence, or you can allow the computer to cheat. The second way is faster, cheaper, and easier, and it's the path EQ's designers have chosen. Once a player has purchased a CD and paid for their ongoing EQ service, they are not likely to abandon the game to this frustration. They will suffer it time and time again, but I question their need to suffer it. There is challenge enough in the world of EQ without the wandering instant-death monsters, that's for damn sure.

To add insult to injury, wandering monsters in wilderness zones will walk right through walls and buildings to attack characters. These structures stop PC movement, but are cosmetic as far as creatures are concerned. This point was first brought home to me when Koros took a rest stop in an abandoned hut. He closed the door and settled down- at which point a grizzly bear materialized through a solid wall and mauled him to death. This was not a bug or a fluke- it happened all the time, and is an extension of the philosophy of creating a challenge by killing characters at every opportunity.

EverQuest does not take full advantage of its system of character attributes. The advantage of computerized attribute calculation is that every numerical change can have an effect on the game, no matter how minuscule. Instead, EQ's attributes have increased or decreased effects only at certain plateaus. Furthermore, they do not increase through play, meaning that characters are forever stuck with the efficiency or inefficiency of their initial attribute spread. Frankly, if the attributes have so little apparent effect on character progress, why bother with them at all? Most of EQ's character effectiveness comes from skills, which are improved via practice.

Lastly, EverQuest arranges its zones so that it is effectively impossible for a character of reasonably competent level (10th-20th) to wander outside of clearly-delineated boundaries and move between centers of civilization, unless they beg teleportation from a generous wizard of advanced level. For instance, to walk from Qeynos on one end of the continent of Antonica to the city of Freeport on the other, a character must pass through a convoluted series of zones, some of which are narrow and filled with deadly, invisible creatures meant to defeat parties of characters at 40th level or higher. I wonder what the game's designers had against a little honest exploration- was it too much to presume that some of us would want to take a break from hacking and slashing, and explore the lush world the designers had created?

Not the Future, But Something Close to it...

Is EverQuest the future of roleplaying? Gods forbid. EverQuest is an evolutionary step, not a revolutionary step. EQ does some things better than its MMPOG predecessors (most notably Ultima Online) and some things so poorly I hardly want to touch another MMPOG again. The EQ experience for me was more frustrating than addictive- at its best, it was like gazing into a bright new world through a tiny window rather than an open door. At its (all too common) worst, it was like a bad night with a gamemaster and a group of players whose style and manners were the exact opposite of my own. In part, I realize that my personal preferences leak through into my opinion of the game. Still, there is vast room for improvement, and I believe it will be several generations down the line before a game like EverQuest, firmly aware of the limitations of its ancestors, can appeal to traditional pen-and-paper roleplayers as well as it appeals to other gaming demographics.

Do I really regret the time I spent playing EverQuest? No. The rainy evening in the forest of the giant spiders alone was almost worth the price of admission. For now, though, give me a human GM and some dice any time. EverQuest is something for gamers to do while waiting for someone to create its better.