RustyCat's Guide to EverQuest

This website WAS a work-in-progress. Further development has now been terminated.

It started out as a repository for all sorts of newbie knowledge I accumulated while playing EQ.

Unfortunately, it has become increasingly apparent that SoE has lost it. They have repeatedly screwed over their customers. Not once mind you, but time and time again. In a pattern that is symptomatic of an overgrown giant concentrating on local optimum while sacrificing global priorities.

SoE pulled KEI for sub-46 characters. (KEI from 20-50 was the entire reason I returned back to Norrath after abandoning it back in 2002.)

Now granted, KEI did have some negative impacts upon the game when folks left groups to refresh it. But as a wizard, going from 20 to 46 now sucked something awful. Again. (As in 8 minutes of downtime to every 2 minutes of actual game time. Literally, 8 minutes of sitting on your arse watching the world go slowly by. Works best if you have a TV nearby. But who wants to pay $13/month to watch TV?)

I switched to Magicians, who were more active. Last month (12/2003) SoE removed the magician pet-canni capability. By my count, there were 18 AA points that go into making pet-canni work well. Pet-canni leaves magicians vulnerable while recovering mana. Magician have no agro-reduction capabilities. They can't sit to recover mana during combat. And their spells have a worse damage/mana ratio than other classes. All of which was compensated for by pet-canni. In short, pet-canni had been systematically balanced into the game for over 3 years.

SoE dropped pet-canni without batting an eye. They didn't even tell anyone in advance. The usual platitudes were muttered. They were going to "consider all options". Six weeks later, there's still no sign that they ever "considered" anything.

As you look over the class history of Magicians, you'll see they have been nerfed time and time again. Sometimes with cause. Lately without.

Balance. The game is entirely about balance. If one class it too strong, everyone will play it, and the game fails. If one class is too weak, they are not welcome in groups, guilds, raids, and become social lepers.

Yet for reasons unknown, classes with Healing, Slow, Haste, SoW, Snare, Root, Ports, bufs, etc now all outdamage the lowly Magician, who can do nothing other than damage. (Sure, Magicians get summon item spells. But, hey, everyone already has better permanent equipment.)

Now I could play another class. Necros and Bards are the current reigning kings of overpowered classes. But why bother? Based on SoE's current track record, they will simply screw me over again in a few months time. Or sooner... Their latest insult is to drop support for currently supported video cards. Please fork over another $100 to keep playing EQ for THIS month.

There are those who say, "It's just a game". They're right, of course. But hey. Did you ever go to a beach when you were a kid? Did you ever build a sand-castle? If a bully came along, and destroyed your hard work... Hey, it's just a sand-castle, right?

Some folks, myself included, have spent thousands of hours, in some cases tens of thousands of hours, carefully building and constructing their characters. That the equivalent of five years of work (at 40 hours/week). SoE came along and destroyed it all as casually and callously as you might swat a fly.

I cannot, in all good conscience, continue to fund such antisocial bullying behavior EVEN IF I COULD TOLERATE IT!

From what I understand, there are currently more than 60 MMORPGs out their, excluding SoE's products. From what I hear, Final Fantasy Online is outstanding. A great many folks, disillusioned with SoE, are migrating over there. (Over 1 million active characters already, and growing daily.(*)) Perhaps I'll see you over there too, someday soon.

-RustyCat.

(*) In contrast, when I played EQ, /who all showed less than half a dozen players around my level until I reached the end-game. Grouping, prior to the end-game, was never an option.

I preferred to play spellcasters. (I needed to be able to leave on short notice. Only spellcasters gain gate.) So this information is mostly, though not exclusively, geared towards them.

These are a few of the better web sites I've found along the way:

The Boilerplate: All text on this site is copyrighted. Copyrights are owned by the respective authors, which is, by and large, me. EverQuest, the game, is produced by Verant and, presumably, is a registered trademark of Verant or Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc or some other big multinational conglomerate that's trying to make a fast buck by increasing the tedium in our lives. This site does not represent official EQ policy. If you thought it did, I need to ask whether you're going to smoke that all by yourself, or whether you are going to pass it around. No guarantees are made about accuracy of anything on this site. In fact, we can pretty much guarantee at least some inaccuracies exist. Probably far more than anyone, particularly us, will ever realize. We therefore, as typical Americans, disclaim any and all warranties of any kind whatsoever, including any implied warranties. This knowledge is *strictly* for use at your own risk. If you use something found on this website, and you die, and you can't reach your corpse in time, and you lose all your uber-loot, and it causes you to become depressed, and in that depression you go on a psychotic killing spree, and you kill someone close to a major military leader, who then abuses his power to launch a nuclear missile, which triggers world war three and destroys the planet, making humanity extinct, WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE!

Final Update Jan, 2004.
Send comments, suggestions, and questions to rustycat3@yahoo.com