Carry On Camping: WoW Classic, EverQuest

As I play WoW Classic I find myself comparing just about everything with how it would have been in EverQuest around the same time.  Based on not much more than memories, never to be trusted, it's probably not a very accurate comparison but it fascinates me.

Memory aside, direct comparisons with what we think of as classic EverQuest are misleading. During the period WoW Classic attempts to recreate, sometime around September 2006, EQ was a very long way from its own "classic" era. And I'd known many different iterations of Norrath by then.

A History Lesson

By September 2006 I had played EQ for nearly seven years, on and off but mostly on. I'd spent almost a year in Dark Age of Camelot, then returned. I'd moved to EverQuest II for about eight or nine months from the November 2004 launch until the following summer but came back to EverQuest at the end of the Dragons of Norrath expansion, staying for the start of Dungeons of Darkhollow.

Mrs. Bhagpuss and I barely touched DoN but we played quite a lot of DoD, leaving only when the Shroud debacle reached an unbearable nadir. I won't go into what happened. It's something best left forgotten. We then returned to EQII for maybe another nine months before switching back to EverQuest for The Serpent's Spine expansion at precisely the period Classic emulates, September 2006.

In a number of ways, The Serpent's Spine was a reboot for EQ, as can be seen from the launch day patch notes. The expansion not only added a new race and starting city but also a complete new leveling path to the raised cap of 75. Even now, more than a dozen years later, new players are funnelled into Crescent's Reach in the hope they'll follow the route set out for them more than a dozen years ago.

Among other things, racial xp penalties were removed, AAXP at low and middle levels was increased, the "con" system was revised to include a new xp step and most significantly by far, major changes were made to the way a character recovered health, mana and endurance after combat:

"*** Downtime ***

As EverQuest has grown over the years, the amount of downtime imposed upon players has grown as well and we'd rather players find challenge in the fights themselves than in the time between them. Toward that end, we've created a new system that is simple to use, but powerful and flexible enough to control downtime as the game continues to grow....

Once you have been out-of-combat for a sufficient amount of time, you can sit down (or be on a non-moving horse) and begin to rest. While resting, you enter an accelerated regeneration state that will quickly recover your mana, health, and endurance".

This was big. It meant that classes that had been unbearably slow to solo since launch, particularly those with no means of healing themselves, like Warriors and Rogues, could, at least theoretically, make some xp by soloing.

Soloing in EQ vs Classic. Now there's a case for comparison...

 These changes didn't come out of the blue and neither were they a direct response to the vastly more casual-friendly behemoth in the room. EQ had been tiptoeing towards greater accessibility for the more casual player for quite a while.

The infamous "lose your corpse and everything on it" death penalty, always an outlier in normal gameplay but nevertheless at the back of everyone's mind as they played, had been completely removed with the addition of Shadowrest in April 2004, long before WoW was in anyone's thoughts. The almost equally infamous lengthy travel times had been reduced a little with 2001's Shadows of Luclin and rendered almost trivial in the eyes of some veterans by Planes of Power the following year.

All of this is by way of saying that any parallels I attempt to draw between the two games likely to be both highly subjective and prone to temporal inconsistencies. Even so, there are some things that stand out as major divergences on what has otherwise been a surprisingly similar journey.

Camp Check!

One such is the concept of "camps" and "camping". In the EverQuest of 2006 this amounted to something akin to holy writ. Wikipedia, which has a lengthy entry on "Camping", much of which relates to first person shooters, where the term has a somewhat different meaning, has this to say about EQ:

"The MMORPG EverQuest, when first released, had advancement through the game painstakingly slow for most, requiring many hours of slaying NPCs to advance in level. As a result, players quickly realized that camping in one spot and having a single player, referred to as a "puller" because he or she would leave the group to "pull" a mob back to the group, was the most efficient way to gain experience. In fact, the prevalence of camping became so strong in EverQuest that some of the game's playerbase and critics jokingly refer to the game as "EverCamp".

Out of this practical solution to a percieved problem, a complex etiquette was born. Although there was no formal requirement to adhere to the norms of behavior players sought to establish, in the days when most people remained on a single server and reputation counted for plenty, social pressure to conform was immense.

On arriving in a zone, if you planned on settling in a particular spot, it was common practice to make a "camp check" in /ooc or /shout. You'd literally call out "Camp check?" and back would come the replies - "Ramp", "South Spires", "Three spawn" and so on. In some zones there could be a dozen or more recognized camps, all with nicknames you'd soon learn if you stayed there for a few levels.

This tower had a camp name (not that sort of camp!) but I can't remember what it was.

It was also polite, although less frequently done, to tell the zone when you were leaving a camp. "Ogres free" was all you needed to say. Someone would then call back "Taking ogres" and the wheel would turn.

In the most popular zones at busy times there would even be lists. You'd take a number from whoever was claiming a camp you particularly wanted and they'd tell you when a spot in the group opened up and it was your turn to take it. If it was a solo camp each player would pass on the name of the next in line to be invited to take over when they left.

This worked surprisingly well, in part because of the reputation issue but also because of the Play Nice policy. This was introduced some time around EQ's second expansion, Scars of Velious, and was somewhat controversial. It was also very successful in managing both expectations and behavior.

As well as laying down the kind of rules you might give to your eight year old before allowing them a birthday party, the Play Nice policy had a very effective way of enforcing good behavior. To quote Allakhazam, "Camping is not specifically endorsed by the EQ EULA, and in the case of GM arbitration, you may be ordered to share your 'camp' with someone else."

This meant that most disputes were settled in conversation between players because no-one wanted to risk the arbitrary ruling of a GM. And there were, in those days, plenty of GMs available to come and lay down the law.

No Camping Here!

I can't speak for Vanilla WoW itself, or indeed for other servers in Classic, but on the Hydraxian Waterlords RP server the concept of a "camp" is utterly unknown. I spent an hour or so in Westfall yesterday, completing quests I'd taken a few levels earlier, when they were much too high for me. I had, among others, fifteen Defias Headbands to collect and twenty Harvest Watchers to kill.

The zone was busy but not insanely so. Both Defiants and Watchers have been placed by some helpful designer in a number of discrete locations that I cannot think of as anything but "camps". Some, like the one in the illustration at the top of the post, are literally camps. With tents!

I feel sure that, coming from EverQuest as many of the original WoW devs did, this placement is no co-incidence. Vanilla WoW zones are laid out very much like EverQuest zones and I'd lay odds it was expected that players would approach them as EQ players had.

And maybe they did. I'd be interested to hear from someone who was there. However it was back in 2006, in Classsic it's a free for all. No-one calls camps, no-one respects camps. Camps do not exist.

I was lucky enough to have the pictured camp to myself for about half an hour, during which time I held it and also picked off Defias mobs from the much bigger camp behind me. I was able to keep my camp mostly to myself by managing the spawn so that there were rarely any mobs standing, waiting to be pulled.

I'm a tailor, not a fighter.

When players ran by there was usually nothing to see so they ran on. A few seconds later a Defias would spawn and I'd pull it, even if I hadn't quite downed my current victim. That way I almost replicated the EQ experience.

A few times, however, while I was engaged with one mob and missed I my rotation, a passing player would grab a freshs pawn from the camp and kill it. This is entirely acceptable in Classic. There then being nothing else fot them to kill, off they would run, presumably wondering why I was still standing there, staring at some empty tents.

All of this is not to say Classic players on my server are rude or inconsiderate. Far from it. Kill-stealing is as beyond the pale as it ever was in EQ. If there's an unfortunate confusion and two players attack the same mob, one will back off immediately.

I also received plenty of buffs as I stood vigil over my camp. A camp no-one else even seemed to notice existed as a specific location in its own right.

It's hardly surprising. A couple of days ago I grouped with another player to do the Gnoll Paw quest. We ran between multiple camps of gnolls and took whatever we could find. At least two other groups were doing the same. It all worked out well, largely because WoW players like to keep moving and spawns are realtively fast.

The only time anyone complained was when a mage arrived and began pulling four gnolls at once. My partner just said "Mages :( " and we moved on, while I got quad-kiting flashbacks from Velious-era EQ.

It's one difference between two cultures that look so similar from the outside yet so different from within. I've spotted many more. I may write them up but Classic is moving on apace. I find a dozen triggers for posts every time I play. And I'd rather be playing than documenting every last little thing I notice.

Time to go log in. Those wool bags aren't going to make themselves and neither are the two more levels my Warlock needs before the game will allow her to tailor them.

There's another thing - tradeskills tied to adventure level. I've got something to say about on that.

Another day.

I Say! That's Not Cricket!

There's something untoward going on in Star Wars: The Old Republic and Shintar and Ravalation both have something to say about it. I don't play SW:TOR but that hasn't stopped me chipping in with a couple of lengthy comments on Shintar's thread because the issue at hand is that universal bugbear of the genre - exploits.

The problem with pontificating on exploits in MMOs, as I rapidly found while arguing myself into a corner in the aforementioned comment thread, is that it's far too complex a topic to deal with meaningfully in anything short of a PhD thesis. Even that would be selling it short.

My attitude over the years has varied from "Ban 'Em All!" to "Who Bloody Cares?" Any time I stop and think about it my head starts to hurt so mostly I try not to think about it.

At root, an exploit depends upon the existence of a rule to break. If it isn't "not allowed" it can hardly be an exploit, can it? Except, of course, most MMOs don't have rules, or at least not in the parts where the kind of exploits I'm concerned with arise, namely the progression of your character.

There's the EULA, which we all click through and almost no-one reads. Actually, I did used to read them. I read the full EQ EULA before I decided to subscribe back in 1999. In those days and for several years I wouldn't make a character before reading the EULA in full but in those days EULAs were shorter.

The issue of the legality and enforceability of EULAs is another topic entirely. Suffice it to say that they are filled with catch-all clauses intended to provide fall-back positions for the game companies should they ever be needed. We have similar "Terms and Conditions" where I work but we are explicitly instructed not to apply some of them in normal day-to-day trading. They exist to be called upon in need, not to be rigidly followed regardless of commercial good sense.

MMOs exist in a strange hinterland between Product and Service. The game you buy and its updates are clearly Products, albeit digital ones, but the continued provision of servers on which to play them is clearly a Service. There are very different obligations on Producers and Service Providers and MMO developers need to maintain balance between them , especially when those needs conflict.

In the olden days, when the worlds were young, all players in a given MMO were obliged to share the same virtual space. Whole cultures arose within which players were socialized to varying norms. An EverQuest player would need to learn the etiquette expected - respecting camps, joining lists, refraining from kill-stealing.

When players stayed in one MMO that was manageable. It was never comfortable because, as in real life, people chafe against restraints even when those restraints are communally imposed. As the genre exploded and players moved from game to game, trailing their acquired and often conflicting social and cultural expectations behind them, however, it became harder to agree on what constituted acceptable conduct.

Over these many years, in numerous MMOs, I've observed more exploits than I could hope to remember. I can, however, very clearly remember those in which I have participated. There are two reasons for that: firstly, I very, very rarely indulge in "exploits" and secondly, when I do I always feel I've done something naughty and doing something naughty is always a memorable experience.

A strange thing has happened to me over time: I have become increasingly less likely to take advantage of a glitch in the game to accrue personal benefit at the same time as I have become less concerned about doing so. The less likely I am to do it myself, in other words, the less I care whether other people do it.

In part this derives from my increasingly convinced belief that, outside of formal PvP or organized PvE competitions, MMO design and MMO developers should in no way encourage or endorse any form of competitive activity between players. Competition and comparison with other players has and should have absolutely no role in the leveling aspect of the games, which I love so much.

With almost all character progression in almost all MMOs now being tied directly either to solo play or to group play that takes place in instances I can't see it as any valid concern of any other player what goes on in another player's or group of players' play sessions.

This, I appreciate, puts me in a minority position that derives from the solipsistic outlook on life I've had since my teens. I am, simply, not competitive at all in most aspects of my life. I don't benchmark my progress by the progress of others but by standards I set for myself. When it comes to leveling characters in MMOs it means any "Win" conditions are in my head and my head alone.

I began this piece by observing that the topic is far too extensive, nuanced and ruminative to fit a quick blog post so rather than even attempt to fit an ocean into a wine glass I'll leave things here, scarcely reviewed let alone resolved.

One thing I do know for sure. Exploits are going to be with us as long as we have MMOs and no consensus on how they should be handled is ever going to be reached.

Group Hug, Anyone? : GW2, FFXIV

In the zeitgeisty way of these things, a flurry of seemingly-related posts turned up in my Feedly over the last few days, echoing some recent personal experiences.

Ravious at KTR detailed how his GW2 server, Sanctum of Rall, is dealing with the issue of AFKers at the Tequatl event by finessing the Overflow system. Jeromai at Why I Game had a powerful response to that, which he rolled up with a series of observations on the impatience, elitism and downright bad manners so often seen in modern groups.

Jeromai counterpointed his bad PUG example with a good one but Stargrace at MMOQuests and Stabs at Stabbed Up were singing the praises of going into tough fights with people you really know, people you can trust to stick with the job 'til the job gets done.

Meanwhile, Mrs Bhagpuss has put FFXIV on the back burner in favor of building castles in Rift and I have drifted back to GW2 and other worlds, both our choices guided at least in part by the inevitable, unavoidable tyranny of the Duty Finder. A certain malaise is in the air.

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm just getting too old for all this. I had to rewrite my original comment to Ravious's post because my initial reaction seemed unreasonable even to me.  I know all this server-hopping, guesting and guilds pimping themselves out as mercs-for-hire isn't technically cheating or exploiting but it sure feels like it to me. In a way that's worse because it suggests that activities that would once have been deemed unacceptable either by game developers or players or both are now seen not just as tolerable but almost praiseworthy. 

Just the four of us? Are you sure that's right?

I remember very clearly the days when Pick Up Groups had etiquette and rules of behavior that were largely understood and usually followed. One that was particularly closely adhered to was your responsibility to find a replacement if you had to leave. I can remember many times searching LFG and sending tells or calling out in /shout to get another healer or tank to come replace me before I left. I'd begin doing it well before I actually needed to leave to make sure the group suffered the least possible inconvenience.

Of course, there never really was a Golden Age of Grouping. There were good groups and bad groups then just like there are now. The big difference was that then you had some hope of meeting people more than once, of building relationships through repeated, shared endeavour, of turning PUGmates into acquaintances and acquaintances into friends. There was a payoff to not behaving like an arse that went well beyond the simple satisfaction of not behaving like an arse. Although that should never be under-rated.

A combination of closed, instanced dungeons and automated, cross-server group-finding mechanisms put paid to all that. Now your arseness or lack thereof is of the most transitory value or concern, at least outside of your own sense of self-respect. If you behave like a spoilt toddler and play like one too, the moment the group dissolves it's as though it had never been. On the other hand, even if your PUG gels into the greatest group of adventurers ever, short of all changing servers there's no way you can repeat the experience. What happens in DF stays in DF, with all that entails. It's a very high price to pay for fast instance pops and you don't always even get those.

Hmm. If I could tame whatever made this print I'd never need to group again.

Not surprisingly playing with people you already know really well is increasingly seen as the only way to have not just an optimal time but any kind of good time at all. Bad behavior is expected of PUGs, players who could set examples choose to absent themselves, the prophecy self-fulfills. With the heaviest of ironies players, who only a year or two back were demanding more and better open grouping and wider social access, are now devising cunning schemes to subvert or avoid the very mechanics that were put in place to give them the gameplay they said they wanted. 

I would still like to down Tequatl and I'd be lying if I said the time will never come when I'll take whatever kill I can get. If I end up knocking that dragon back into the ocean anywhere other than Yak's Bend, though, the victory will be hollow, the achievement tarnished.

There's nothing new about all this, that's the sad thing, or perhaps it the saving grace. It was ever thus. Clearly right now the wind is in favor of harsher mechanics, sterner rules, less patience among players and a work ethic that borders on obsession. The all-too-brief sunrise of MMO as light-hearted entertainment is disappearing behind the thunderclouds of serious commitment. Buckle down, learn your class, pay your dues. Anyone that doesn't comply to the new orthodoxy must be a moron, a slacker, an afker. Leave them, they're not worth it.

As usual, Wilhelm at TAGN has the middle path that works. Have fun with friends and a different kind of fun with strangers. If necessary, to stay sane turn the whole thing into a meta-game. Have your fun with them while they're having theirs with you but never let your standards slip.

A time will come when you'll need those standards again. Buff them til they shine.