Azeroth Needs Gods

Lately as you all know I have been playing an excessive amount of The Elder Scrolls Online, and in doing so it has made me realize one of the things that has always bugged me about World of Warcraft and more importantly the cosmology of Azeroth. There are not actual gods. There are beings that they place in the same position as gods but those largely serve the role of large monsters that we will eventually take down in a raid. This morning I am going to try and explain the difference from my perspective, or at least my particular point of view.

Over my years on this planet there have been a number of games that I have played with baked in pantheons of worship. Likely the first of these was when I got my hands on a copy of Deities and Demigods it seemed both really cool and also extremely natural. I had been studying mythology and the fact that I was also catholic… which sort of has its own pantheon of saints… it all made sense in my tiny brain. I personally was super engaged with the Norse mythology and my deity of choice has almost always been Tyr the Even-Handed. In part because it was really fucking cool that he sacrificed his arm in order to bind Fenrir and in essence stop Ragnarok from happening. It is only as an adult that I tend to feel more for Fenrir in this scenario.

The key characteristic of the gods in a good RPG is that they don’t actually have the ability to directly influence the mortal plane. They can occasionally manifest themselves in the form of an avatar, but for the most part they wage a proxy war for control of territory and the hearts and minds of people. As such various cults spring up that worship a specific deity and generally speaking the only difference between these and the accepted religion of a people is whether or not it actually aligns to their collective morals. As I moved into online games, I found Norrath to be a very believable and vibrant setting in part because it had so many deities vying for power over the world.

In Norrath we had a core pantheon of gods with various alignments and realms of influence:

  • Good Aligned
    • Mithaniel Marr
    • Quellious
    • Rodcent Nife
    • Tunare
  • Neutral
    • Brell Serilis
    • Bristlebane
    • Karana
    • Solusek Ro
    • The Tribunal
  • Evil Aligned
    • Bertoxxulous
    • Cazic-Thule
    • Innoruuk
    • Rallos Zek
    • Anashti Sul

In addition to these there were a whole slew of other minor deities and demigods and general forces of nature that were in various states of activity an influence on the mortal plane. So many of the best storylines in Everquest involve the gods working against each other and attempting to exert influence on one part of the world or group of people. This also ends up creating interesting dualities as different races within the world view the same god in vastly different ways. Brell Serilis for example is the creator of the Dwarves and the Gnomes, but also is referred by the Goblins of the Runny Eye clan as their deity as well along with all of the neutral earthen elemental forces. The gods also work in concert with others for example Cazic-Thule, Ralos Zek and Innoruuk have an unsteady alliance because they all collectively hate Mithaniel and Erollisi Marr and actively seek to do harm to them through their followers.

Elder Scrolls similarly has an extremely rich pantheon of gods and demigods that vie to influence Mundus aka the physical world. In later games this coalesces around an imperially mandated pantheon of the nine divines but there are so many other pantheons present and active in the world. Not the least of these are the Daedric Princes which have a wildly varying number of approaches to their worshipers and motivations. Ultimately what separates a Divine and a Daedra seems to largely be the favor of the government as many of the Daedra themselves took up roles in older Pantheons within the races of Nirn.

Similar to Everquest a large number of the questlines that you find yourself on involve one or more “Gods” moving against each other or trying to exert their influence in a specific sphere of power. The core storyline of the base game of Elder Scrolls Online centers around a plot by Molag Bal the Daedric Prince of Domination and Enslavement attempting to merge his realm of Coldharbour with Tamriel effectively giving him power over both. Meridia another Daedra who is associated with the energies of living beings is aligned against Molag Bal and often times offers assistance to the players in order to fight back against this aggression.

Other deities like Nocturnal are closely tied with specific organizations within Nirn, more specifically the Nightingales are her sworn servants but there has often been a rumored connection between her and the Night Mother revered by the members of the Dark Brotherhood. The keys to both Everquest and Elder Scrolls and honestly Dungeons and Dragons before it is that the gods are alive and well and actively trying to influence the populace. I contend that there doesn’t really seem to be an equivalent of this sort of interaction happening within World of Warcraft.

Roughly five years ago from the time of writing this, Blizzard released a book called World of Warcraft: Chronicles Volume 1 that attempted to take the wildly disparate lore of the World of Warcraft and condense it into a unified world view. This was effectively the equivalent of an ecumenical council and attempted to sift through the various lore and discard the bits that didn’t quite fit while modifying some in order to fit into this neat cosmology. I was fully in support of this notion because Warcraft lore was a complete mess. However what came out of this as well was the fact that this larger world view didn’t have room for dieties really.

In the early days of Warcraft however I thought there was effectively a pantheon of good deities aligned against a pantheon of bad deities. The good represented by the Titans and the bad represented by the Old Gods and this nebulous concept we kept hearing known as the Void Lords. The longer the game has run however it is very clear that the Titans are effectively just a different sort of race of beings birthed out of the core of a world and not really immortal gods. Similarly the things that keep being referred to as “Old Gods” are just sort of this race of elder beings that defy logic and reason but also can absolutely be killed as we have done this to several of them.

The closest thing that we really have to a proper pantheon of deities comes in the form of the Loa that the Trolls worship. However apart from Bwonsamdi and Hakkar we really don’t see a lot of interaction between these individuals and the races of Azeroth apart from the Trolls consistently figuring out ways to “eat” their gods and drain their power. As a result these are also very mortal beings that maybe exist in a different manner but cannot really be thought of eternal forces quite in the same way as a Quellious or a Dibella. The absence of this clear pantheon of power aligned with and against the players has always ended up making the world of Azeroth feel every so slightly hollow. There was always something missing that I never could quite put my finger on until I started to think about it more recently.

Up until this point I could still sort of lean on the Wild Gods of Azeroth as being this eternal force that impacts the world. However Shadowlands even closed the loop there and taught us that what we think of as the Wild Gods are just beings with a different life cycle where they travel to Azeroth, live a cycle there and then return to the shadowlands to regenerate before manifesting again. This makes me not really consider them to be a true pantheon of gods either. There is this new Pantheon of death that we have been introduced to, but they also are very much killable which again makes me question if they represent gods either.

I think the truth is more that World of Warcraft exists largely to create powerful figures and then allow the players to kill those powerful figures. A major force cannot exist for very long without it eventually turning into a raid encounter. Maybe this comes from early frustrations of the folks who shaped the raid content of World of Warcraft being long time Everquest raiders and travelling to the seats of those gods powers… and only ever killing an Avatar and never being able to actually slay the god themselves. I think the storytelling potential of a game is weaker however if you don’t have all powerful beings with their own motivations pulling the strings of “mere-mortals”. World of Warcraft plays at this, but in every case those forces eventually end up on the chopping block as the players end those threats permanently.

I think I like the concept of having endless beings that we can momentarily defeat, but never quite go away and never forget the actions we have taken against them in the past. Everquest has managed to churn out so many expansions in part because they keep relying upon familiar enemies to invent new schemes to take over the mortal plane of existence. Instead World of Warcraft feels more akin to Dragon Ball Z or Bleach where they keep having to invent more extreme versions of cardboard cutout villains for us to eventually knock down in the end. The end result is also a lot of retroactive changes to storylines as new forces and shoehorned into existing events.

That neat cosmology chart that I posted earlier from World of Warcraft Chronicles has already been mostly nullified by the expansion we are going through in Shadowlands. Without a reoccurring cast of Gods, new and more extreme versions of evil need to be invented in order for us to keep prevailing over them.

Bag Bloat

Overflowing

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Last night I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about MMORPGs and she mentioned that she had logged into a game recently and had a visceral reaction.  Upon logging in she saw what a state of disarray her bags were, and when she tried to go to the bank to simply just stuff it all in there… was confronted with the same thing going on there.  She ultimately just logged out and went on to play something else.  This exact sequence has happened to me time and time again and is the biggest obstacle for me playing certain games.  A big game on that list is Rift.  Right now every single corner of my bank is full, and most of my bags as well.  Every so often I have the desire to play the game, but when I log in and see a few hours worth of sorting ahead of me to get my bags into a state where I can feel comfortable playing…  I just log back out frustrated.  In my case the bags are full of non-critical items like dimension stuff and crafting materials…  but it isn’t stuff I am willing to part with either.  So instead of playing the game like I originally wanted, I just lament how I don’t have a good solution to fix the problem.

I am in a similar place right now with World of Warcraft.  My bags, bank, and void storage are completely full with cosmetic gear for transmogrification.  I know that with Legion they are putting in a system that will allow me to save the graphic and not have to keep the item.  However in the mean time I am stuck juggling all of this loot with no real end in sight.  Sure I could get marginally larger bags, but that would only buy me a few slots worth of reprieve rather than being a permanent solution.  So with World of Warcraft, I honestly doubt I will be seriously playing that game until the pre-legion patch launches… that hopefully gives us the transmog solution.  This is a situation I am very familiar with because I have struggled with it for years in Everquest II, but in that case it is simply because the inventory maintenance systems they have are pretty horrible and I can’t remember what half of the items I have looted actually do.  I wish games would have tool tips that clearly identified what an item is used for, because in the past I have accidentally sold that one important item that I could never get back to complete a quest, and I am in constant paralysis when it comes to potentially doing the same thing again.

Bulk Storage

Since Rift is the king of adding in new and interesting systems to solve problems.  I would like to humbly suggest two more be added to the pile.  Basically for me personally I need bulk storage for Dimension items and Crafting materials.  So what I propose is an account wide bulk storage system.  For the dimensions some sort of toolbox that you can dump items into and then place them directly from a panel that collects and shows you how many of each item you have.  In order to remove items from the economy and not allow players to just horde items that they might later sell, I would suggest that adding a dimension item binds it to you so that it can only be used in dimensions attached to your account.  There would probably need to be a limit to the number of a single item you are storing, but in theory it just goes into the void and then is summoned inside of your dimension via the toolbox panel.  This solves a bunch of problems other than storage, namely that the toolbox interface would allow you to see just what you had to place, and even more so what you were lacking so you could go off and acquire those items in particular.  Wildstar has a system very similar to this, and it works amazingly well.  Having something in place similar would allow me at least to tame my bag bloat.

From the crafting side of the equation I suggest a similar system.  When you dump your crafting materials into bulk storage they again go into the void and are only extracted through crafting.  Once again this keeps players from stockpiling materials that could then be used to flood the market at a later date.  Putting them into bulk storage would essentially remove them from the economy.  Once again it would be best to have this system be account wide, so that you could farm materials on any of your characters and share them for the purpose of crafting.  I would absolutely love something like this because I obsessively harvest nodes…  but often times have nothing I really need to do with them.  I simply stockpile them for that moment I will eventually need them.  If I were smart I would simply sell them on the open market, knowing that I could buy them once more if I actually needed them for a project.  Instead I dump them in my bank and they take up space.  What I envision for an interface is a pretty minimal on, with just each of the crafting materials listed out by category… and a number beside each indicating how many you have in bulk storage.  Guild Wars 2 has a similar system that works amazingly well, and seeing something like that in Rift would make my day.  Basically having these two systems, combined with the “appearance saving” systems that Rift and Wildstar already have… and World of Warcraft is about to get… would fix almost all of my bag woes.

Fixing Everquest 2

Tale of Two Games

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Last week we had the somewhat bittersweet news that Everquest Next was officially being cancelled.  For those who were utterly confused about what Landmark,  Next and the rest of the EQ games actually are… here is a quick rundown.  Everquest of course is the granddaddy of the big hit MMOs.  Then mere days before the launch of World of Warcraft…. Everquest II came out as an attempt at rebooting the world.  Everything in that setting happened after a huge calamity that saw Luclin the moon shattering and sending shards to earth.  The world was changed, the land fractured, and in many ways it allowed for a much larger scale game world than the original.  Everquest Next was the concept for what was ultimately going to be the third Everquest MMO… so in truth you can just think of it as Everquest III.  Landmark on the other hand is ultimately the tool that they were using to build the world of Everquest Next.  After playing around with it the folks decided that this was actually a really fun thing to play with in itself, in the Minecraft style.  Landmark was really never a fully fleshed out game, but more of a sandbox toy that players could fiddle with.  Since its launch they have made it more “game-like” but it still is missing a lot of the core features folks expect in an MMO.

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Now in the above paragraph I mentioned a key fact… that Everquest II launched on November 8th of 2004… and then was completely overshadowed by the launch of World of Warcraft on November 24th of that same year.  The two games took significantly different paths, and produced really different results.  Everquest II was this rich tapestry of cultures and game systems that provided a really deep game play experience that worked on so many levels.  World of Warcraft was a much more streamlined experience that asked less of the player, but ultimately became easier to pick up and play without an excessive amount of research.  We all know how the tales goes… that WoW becomes the juggernaut of MMO gaming and EQ2 becomes this sheltered garden with an excellent community and lots of great content…  but always treated as a second tier experience.  Right now Everquest II feels extremely dated, like an artifact of a different era whereas World of Warcraft feels somewhat evergreen.  The major difference there is that each time WoW releases an expansion they do significant systems overhauls that cause some sweeping changes to not only the fidelity of the game client itself, but also the back end systems.  Everquest II on the other hand has been this “Weasley House” of MMOs with content constantly being tacked on top of the older foundation.  The new content feels like modern content, but you experience a sort of whiplash as you shift between the different layers of the content and see just how drastic and inequitable the improvements have been.

Renovation Is Due

EQ2Orcs

The above image has been floating around for a few weeks now and represents some work that the Everquest II team is doing to update the orc model.  It seems that the newest expansion content that they are working on heavily focus on orcs, and as a result they are just updating the base model to bring them up to modern standards.  Seeing this however made me realize just how bad the old models look.  I mean it has always been one of those things in the back of my mind, but when you see what the team is capable of producing today… placed against something that has existed since 2004 it is staggering.  Now that Everquest Next is no longer a thing… I would love to see them pour some of those resources into producing a graphical upgrade to Everquest II.  The big problem with the game are just how dated the models and the animations look, and going back there is always an adjustment period and largely just hand waving off a bunch of details that get under my skin because the content itself is so amazingly rich.  I realize this is a massive undertaking, and it is the sort of thing that could be rolled in over time.  If you remember the original Everquest went through the same problems and with the release of Luclin they released new and updated character models.  Unfortunately in the case of EQ2… we need a lot more than just characters.  I would love to see this great game get a second life, because for so many of my friends that I have tried to get to play this game…  the ugliness of the assets was a barrier they simply could not get past.

EQ2Hotbars

Now fixing the graphics isn’t going to fix the game entirely… but it would go a long way into making it feel more playable.  Next up however we really need to talk about the user interface, that has always felt a bit cludgy.  I’ve not played the game in the last decade without first installing some sort of third party addon user interface.  For years I played with Fetish Nightfall, and within the last six years or so I switched over to being a Drums UI guy.  With these UI extensions the game becomes rather good, but the whole process of acquiring a UI and keeping it updated… feels needlessly arcane in a manner I have not experience in any other game save for maybe Dark Age of Camelot where they had no official support for addons.  So the entire User Interface could use a bit of a facelift.  Finally we have to talk about the way combat works in this game.  I feel like this is the step that would actually cause rioting in the streets by diehard Everquest II fans…  but I also feel like it is the point that is the most needed.  The game really really needs to simplify combat in a way that does not require me to use 30+ abilities in a combat rotation.  The above picture is of my Shadowknight, and at least 30 of this abilities are ones that I pretty much used in every single round of combat.  It was even worse on my Dirge and I had these super complex patterns memorized… that even today I can sit down at the keyboard and automatically cycle through them.

EverQuest2 2015-08-12 06-27-32-39

The problem is…  it doesn’t really feel fun.  I feel like I am playing some sort of a musical instrument instead of actually experience reactive combat in a video game.  Now I am not saying water it down to the level that single hotbar games have done… or simplify it to the point of an action MMO.  I just would love to be able to have one primary hotbar of abilities that get used every round… and then a bunch of optional abilities that throw in for flavor or when special conditions are met.  The cooldown of EQ2 abilities is so long that you need something… anything… to fill in the gaps so you quite often are simply mashing the next button that is off cool down.  Please understand that I am a huge fan of Everquest II… but every time I leave it is the cludgy combat system that eventually drives me away.  For several months I can overlook it and just blend back into the rich and vast game world… but I always reach this point where I need to play combat that simply “works better”.  I think maybe this is a ship that has already sailed, and after doing several combat passes early in the game…  I am not sure if they have the intestinal fortitude to attempt another.  All of this aid… simply making the game look better would go a long way into making this a more attractive experience to new players, but in doing this post I am talking about all of the things that I wish were different.  Combat will always be a huge part of that.

MMOs Worth Playing – Everquest II

Perforated Week

mmosworthplayingThis week was a strange one, because it essentially consisted of two Mondays and two Fridays since I was off Wednesday due to Veterans day.  This week also pretty much was completely lost to Fallout 4.  So I contemplated just doing another post about that and skipping the MWP feature for a week.  That said I decided to fall back on an “oldie but goodie” that I could write about without much prep work.  Once again the MMOs Worth Playing section by intent is to highlight some of the awesome games out there, that maybe don’t get as much love as I feel they should.  This has been the pattern other than last week when I did a special BlizzCon edition, and this week we are continuing that pattern with some talk about Everquest 2.

Launching Against a Juggernaut

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When it comes to underdog games… it would be near impossible to find one that more fits that title than Everquest II.  Back in 2004 there were two games vying for everyone’s attention… the sequel of sorts to the wildly popular Everquest and the newcomer with a strong pedigree World of Warcraft.  By the time we got to November of that year… there was quite literally one game on everyone’s minds…  and it wasn’t the return to a calamity stricken Norrath.  EQ2 had the misfortunate of launching sixteen days before the game that would for the most part change the landscape of MMOs.  I was pretty torn as to which game I would end up playing, and I even pre-ordered Everquest II and spent a good deal of time in the alpha and beta processes.  However when it came time to launch…  there were a few people from my EQ1 days that were going to be playing… but the vast majority of my friends were simply waiting for World of Warcraft.  So since money was very much a thing back then… I simply didn’t pick up my EQ2 pre-order and waited for the coming of Azeroth.

Roughly six months into that experience however I got a patch of wanderlust like I always do and drug a group of friends over into Norrath and found that I really liked the game.  Just as I know eventually I will be playing World of Warcraft again, I will also be doing the same for Everquest II.  The sort of experience it provides is just different than you would find in most games.  For me at least the magic is the setting.  Norrath is world I am deeply nostalgic of, and with it comes little references to the good times I had in Everquest.  I realize for many at launch this was a huge problem… because instead of continuing where Everquest left off they chose to reboot the world of sorts and bringing the players in after the moon Luclin had exploded raining down shards around the world.  This event sundered the world causing it to break apart into small islands, and much of the theme of Everquest 2 has been one of exploration and rediscovery.

Unearthing Greatness

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The players are helping to recover the lost grandeur of the past, and with that we are uncovering locations that I remember extremely well in the original Everquest.  The big thing that spoke to me about the game however was the epic scale.  These zones are huge… so huge that often times they are made up of several distinct sub zones that all exist together in one seamless area.  What makes them work so well is the fact that they are really content dense, with all sorts of hidden treasures and events stowed in between what would normally be something you simply rode past.  One of the things that made EQ interesting was their construct called a “Ring Event”, which involved fighting certain mobs… which would spawn other mobs… which would ultimately culminate in a boss.  So as you wander the world, you never quite know what thing you are killing might lead to something far more interesting spawning.  I remember one of these particular in Nektulos Forest, that ultimately lead to a rare named boss that was used for a quest.

Another aspect of the game that I have always loved that follows this exploration and recovery feeling, is the Heritage quest.  These are truly epic quest chains that tend to require twenty or so discreet steps to complete and often involve you spending a considerably about of time crawling through dungeons and catacombs to find bits.  Each of them represents the attempt to uncover an item of fabled power from the old world, and as a former Everquest player…  I know almost every single item referenced by heart.  What makes them even cooler is that they function dual fold when you complete one.  For starters you get a really nice piece of gear that at the level you can get it serves to be some of quite literally the best gear you can get.  However when you out level it, you can turn it into a trophy item that you can then put in your player housing to remember your journey.  So it feels really cool to walk into your house and see all of these past accomplishments displayed in physical form.  Each item you hang on your wall or stash on a shelf is a memory of an event that you did in game, which makes the whole thing feel more important than simply earning points or titles.

Rich Systems

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Everquest II is this impossible game, because quite literally I don’t think it could have ever been created in today’s climate.  So much time was spent on systems that feel casual and exploratory gameplay, that enrich the player…  but don’t really make up much of an “endgame” in the traditional sense.  I just mentioned housing and that is absolutely a crucial one.  Dark Age of Camelot was the first time I had experienced player housing, and I knew that I was absolutely hooked.  The problem there is it took up large tracts of physical real estate in the world.  That meant a limited number of players could ever have housing, because there were a limited number of deeds available.  EQ2 went in a completely different direction, and at first I was not terribly certain of it…  and later I have come to realize it was a stroke of genius.  Instead of making housing exclusive… they simply made it part of the base gameplay experience by giving you an Inn Room that serves as your first house while going through the early levels.  From there the player gets used to the notion of checking into their room periodically and quests giving them items that they might want to display there.

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As you progress you can keep getting cooler homes with significantly more expensive weekly upkeep costs.  While player housing is awesome… where the game really shines is the introduction of Guild Housing.  In each guild I have been in, the house became a hub of activity for its members.  Due to the ability to place crafting machines, bankers and brokers all in the hall… it means that there will be a constant flow of players coming in and out as they do their business around the game world.  While it might seem silly… because we already have an always on guild chat… but seeing players in their physical avatar form just feels different and almost magical.  There are tons of people in the game world that I might talk to on a nightly basis… but it could be weeks before I actually cross paths with their characters in game.  Having this nexus meant that the guilds were actually more communicative that they might have been were it just left to text only conversation.  There was also always the added benefit of having some shared goal that the guild as a whole could work towards.  I remember doing all sorts of things that could grant “status” in the guild, which then could be spent as a currency to help pay the expenses of owning the guild hall.  Contributing status made it feel like I was helping… even though what I was actually earning was just a drip in the bucket comparatively.

Overwhelming Content

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I could literally write one of these posts a week, for the next few months and not have scratched the surface of talking about everything in this game.  The game is nearing the launch of expansion number Twelve Terrors of Thalumbra.   In the same time World of Warcraft has had six expansions, and this is not counting the mini adventure packs, which I believe there have been four or five of at this point.  The amount of content of all types that is available is just completely mind boggling, and at any given level you usually have multiple paths that you can take to get to your goal.  My favorite part about the game is that they still have public dungeons.  This is the aspect that made the original Everquest feel so vibrant to me, was that you could go into these super dangerous areas with your friends… that were huge NPC warrens that felt like working areas.  If you went into the kitchen, then you found a chef… if you went into the dungeon… then you found a jailer or a warden.  It felt like we were actually raiding bases, rather than taking a theme park ride where at the end we got loot for our trouble.

These big public dungeons were places you could just go and hang out with your friends… where the difficulty level was enough to make bringing friends along for the fun worth while.  All of which made it all the more enjoyable when you finally reached a level of gear where you could actually go into these places and survive by yourself.  I remember the amazement the first time I saw a friend soloing Sebilis for example in Everquest… and then was shocked when I reached the point where I could solo tough mobs like the Sand Giants in the Oasis of Marr.  Everquest even in its more modern version is really good at setting up these goals that you want to go back and achieve later.  If you can’t take on this monster now… then you will likely go back later and get revenge on it when you can.  I’ve talked before about how fear is missing from games… and wandering these public dungeons brought it back.  That if you were able to keep up with the spawn rate, you could stay in there in a tentative state of safety… however if one thing went wrong…  you were running back in after a death.  That era in games seems to be all but extinct at this point.

Dated But Good

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At this point Everquest 2 is feeling its age, and with recent Daybreak mess… it is unlikely that this is going to change at any point in the near future.  The engine is old, and has not had the benefit of having frequent face lifts in the same fashion that World of Warcraft has.  As a result the model detail is a little off, and the world building itself can feel a little cludgy in the early zones.  There however is an amazing artistry as each time they release an expansion they push this old engine beyond its limits and find new ways to keep this game interesting.  This is absolutely a game that I would suggest everyone play at least once, but in doing so you have to go into it knowing that you are essentially playing an artifact of a bygone era.  They simply do not make games like this one any more, and to some extent I am regretful of this fact.  The amount of detail that can be found between its cracks is enough to drive you completely mad if you try and assimilate it all.  If you do start an new character I highly suggest you either roll in the Neriak/Darklight Woods starting zone or Kelethin/Greater Faydark… because as the game went on they got significantly better at doing the starter experience.  If you do end up trying the game, I would love to hear your own impressions.