Today I received this handy bit of information regarding the upcoming merger of my EQ2 server:
Greetings from Norrath!
Hail, Adventurer!
On or around February 14th, 2011 at 12:00 AM (PST), EverQuest® II will begin the process of merging the Lucan D’Lere server to the Crushbone server, with the goal
of providing an even better gameplay experience for everyone. Please check EverQuest2.com periodically for any further updates on this scheduled server merge.
Preserve your Legacy!
As a result of the merge, some character names may be duplicated. Players who have logged in within the past sixty (60) days will be given priority in keeping their character’s name (see below for more details).
As you may have additional concerns related to this event, we are providing the following information (and have additionally posted an FAQ page on our Knowledge Base) in an effort to answer as many commonly asked questions as we can.
Server Merge Rules
Character Names
In the event of duplicate character names as a result of this server merge, priority will be given to the character who has logged in to the game within the past sixty (60) days; if both characters have logged in within the past sixty (60) days, then the character which has accrued the most gameplay time overall will retain its name. Other characters will have an “x” added to their names until a unique name has been determined.
Players with a character whose name has been affected by the server merge can type “/rename” in their in-game chat window and receive a one-time complimentary name change.
Guilds
Guilds will be transferred intact.
Priority for guild names will be given to the guild with the earliest guild creation date, with such guild keeping its name and the other guild having an “x” added to its name.
Guilds whose names have been affected by the server merge that wish to change their guild’s name will need to use the in-game “/petition†command.
In Your Home
All items in characters’ homes will be inherited by the home’s owner during the merge. If you have alts that own any items, have designated any trustees to your character’s home or if you are a trustee in another character’s home, please arrange for the appropriate owner to retrieve its items before the server merge begins.
After the merge any vendor items in your transferred character’s house will need to be re-placed in your character’s new home.
You can use the house vault of the character which is being transferred for storage. The items in your transferred character’s house vault will remain associated with that character during the server merge.
Vendors
Vendor Events (i.e. the logs of what was sold, to whom, when, etc.) will not transfer as part of the server merge.
Until your transferred character concludes a sale on the newly merged server, that character’s Total Coin Gain will display 0. After that character makes a sale, it will display the sum of the total amount of coin that such character has gained on both servers.
Please keep this information in mind as you prepare for the upcoming merge.
Affected Servers
Lucan D’Lere merged to Crushbone
I’m generally fairly irritated with EQ2 at the moment, for a fairly wide range of reasons, most of which involve the ever-diminishing portion of the game that paying a subscription will gain you access to. Still, I’ll be logging Maltheas and his pals in over the the next few weeks to give them a fighting chance of keeping their names.
The problem with Lucan d’Lere merging with Crushbone is that one is a Roleplaying Server, and one is not. How that’s going to work out in the long run is impossible to know, but I doubt it’s going to make spontaneous RP any easier. The only other Roleplaying server is Antonia Bayle, which is packed to the gills, and unsuitable for Lucan to merge with. Lucan is certainly seriously underpopulated, and has been for a very long time.
The thing is, players from both Antonia and Lucan have been crying out for Antonia players to be able to move to Lucan for years. Had that been allowed, Lucan would be in a much healthier state, and Antonia would not be so horribly overcrowded.
To add insult to injury, Lucan players who want to remain on an RP server can move to Antonia, but only if they are willing to pay for the privilege. That doesn’t seem right to me. Either the server is too full or it isn’t. If it isn’t then players should be given the choice of going to Antonia or Crushbone, at no cost. Server merges should not be a source of income, where players have to pay extra to end up on a server of the same ruleset as the one they signed up for.
Update: The merger has been rescheduled for the 16th of February.
Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” monologue never fails to move me. A single pixel breaks down the barriers between all the family of man, making us realise how very few we are, and how alike, when compared with the rest of the universe that is not us.
I often think about that when I read gaming blogs and forums, and Martin Luther King day seems an appropriate time to talk about it. As gamers, we divide and subdivide ourselves, into evermore insular tribes, contemptuous of all outside OUR group. Hardcore, Casual, PvPers, non-PvPers, people younger or older than ourselves. Those who play different games to us, or who play the same game but are less experienced, or play in a way that we don’t personally approve of. People who speak other languages, or who show less perfection than ourselves in their typed English. We have special labels for the people outside our own tribe. “Noobs”, “Carebears”, and a great many that I am not comfortable writing down. We have a derogatory term for every occasion.
Just as an extraterrestrial visitor would consider the differences between the different sorts of human to be trivial, an outside observer would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the different tribes of gaming, and could be forgiven for concluding that gamers are the worst people in the universe, based on our own opinions. Gamers are sometimes demonised by the general media, or by politicians, but it tends to be nothing compared with how we talk about ourselves.
Bashing one group of players in order to appeal to another’s sense of superiority, or even just to stir up controversy, is a technique used across the whole range of gaming journalism, from the scrappiest little blog to the large sites and print media. It is an unworthy deed, and it infuriates and saddens me whenever I see it. It drains my will to be part of this gaming society, though where could I go? We just reflect humanity’s own obsession with dividing itself, but in microcosm.
We should not be in the business of “otherising” our fellow gamers. We are too few as it is, and the universe so very large.
(Update: As of the 19th of January, the website seems to have returned to life. I guess someone finally remembered to pay their domain registration fee!)
This won’t come as any great surprise to those who followed my posts on Lordcraft:
To recap, it was an Evony-clone (I believe by the same people who make Evony) that “borrowed” liberally from World of Warcraft. I strongly recommend reading those old posts to see quite how hilariously shameless the entire business was. I’ll just repost the original trailer, mostly so that the title of this article doesn’t look quite so random! Continue reading World of Lordcraft Shuts Down – An UNPRECEDENTED Epic Cockup?
I’m still alive! Just not feeling very opinionated at the moment. I’m working on a couple of little bits and bobs that might come to light at some point, and, of course, the Rift Beta will be heading into phase 5 on the 25th of January and I’ll be there to tell of what I encounter in another episode of my Beta liveblog.
In between all that, I work on my Scatman John impersonations. Bingbiddabingbinddabingadongadong. No, really, I do. He was a fellow with some mighty lyrics, a wonderful hat, a fellow stutterer, and a genuinely good soul. I’d like to be him when I grow up. Here’s my very favourite bit of his work:
Update: This is the biggest decision I’m planning on making today.
Tinned Sausage Decisions. Tony the Tiger looks on with interest.
I just took that pic to show a friend, but while taking it, I noticed something bizarre. It’s the same sausage in both pictures!!! Did they carefully pick the baked beans off it, and then artistically drape it with spaghetti rings, or was it Photoshopped? I have to know!
I’ve picked Outfitting, as it’ll allow Osgard to make armour for himself. He gave up the foraging skill to make room for it, as I’m hoping that herbs and wood won’t play too much of a part in it.
Right away, the trainer has three recipes to sell me. Cloth shoes, leather shoes, and the ability to turn burlap cloth, which I’ve been looting from fallen enemies, into “Bolts of Burlap” which will be a crafting ingredient.
Osgard also got a skill for salvaging cloth and leather armour, and the outfitting button itself, which brings up this window:
Rift's Outfitting Window
The Outfitting trainer offers a couple of quests. One requires me to bring him 4 bolts of burlap and 4 soft leather. The leather flumoxes me briefly, as there is no tailor recipe for that, but I discover that it is a butchery recipe that I can bring up using my til now neglected butchery button. Continue reading The Rift Beta Bonanza – Part 8
Beta 4 has come with a fairly beefy set of patch notes. I’ll try to mention any important changes I see as I play through in this phase.
The big changes for this round are an increase in the levelcap to 27, and the turning on of the PvP Warfronts. While I doubt I’ll be getting to 27 this weekend, I will try to check Warfronts out to cut through the chatter and get the skinny from the horse’s mouth, ideally before it tramples me into the ground!
9:12 am GMT, 8th of January
Off we go, somewhat later than intended. I managed to lose all desire to play any MMO at all last night, in between some bad news coming from EQ2, and reading some Rift posts which are so gushing with hyperbole that they are indistinguishable from a press-release. Watching the Rift-specific websites compete to see which of them is going to be Trion’s very special favourite is getting to be a bit embarrassing to watch. This always happens before any new MMO release, but it always leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about MMO-blogging.
A good snooze fixed me right up though, and we’ve had a hotfix while I napped!:
GENERAL GAMEPLAY
Soul Acquisition quests that were not progressing have been fixed.
Fixed a bug with Soul Points when changing roles while an ability is queued.
