My New Pet Peeve

[Scrya]

<p>I've had a small number of quirks over the years, changing with time, that irk me the wrong way with EQ2. This is, of course, expected, and happens with pretty much every game as you can't please everyone all of the time. This is something though I've noticed coming creeping up more and more, and with the portals event the time has come for me to say something.</p><p>Devs, please, PLEASE, stop breaking immersion by using netspeak or game mechanics in NPC speech instead of actually developing lore that makes sense. You have a HUGE playerbase, some of us (including me) that are actually students for game design and would have no problem whatsoever just developing the existing lore and making scripts for npcs. When I see a script for a cutscene with a gnome that says, "OMG train!" or "I was camping that mob!" I want to cry. Same goes for events that fracture the lore just to copy WoW or Twilight (day-walking vamps anyone?) or whatever is the 'in' craze at the moment. You have a beautiful loreset base and a wonderful RP playerbase-- USE US! Hell, slap me in the credits and I'll work for free.</p><p>Many of the playerbase that doesn't care about lore most likely won't notice the out-of-character references (or remember them if they do notice) anyway...please don't water down the storylines and keep the people who do like reading the quests and cutscenes loyal.</p>

[Iskandar]

<p>The portal NPCs are parodies of... us... EQ players, how we talk, what we do ingame -- while they're not "in character" for people from a medieval/fantasy-based world, they're completely "in character" because they are <strong><em>us</em></strong>, as we sit here pecking away at our keyboards pretending to be characters from a medieval/fantasy-based world. Personally, I found the dialogue quite appropriate, and <strong>very</strong> funny! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /></p><p>Ranger down! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/ed515dbff23a0ee3241dcc0a601c9ed6.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Cusashorn]

Just for the record, Twilight didn't invent the Day-walking vampire thing. That existed long before the story of Dracula, and it wasn't until much later that the whole "Sunlight kills" thing was created and added to the mythos. There has never been a clearly defined cookie-cutter mythos that defines what a vampire can and cannot be. Dracula brought in a large part to the mythos, but Dracula is only but one part of the whole. The only thing Twilight did was make an already existing concept visually sparkle. I can agree with you on a few things. The gnome in the hedge maze for Night of the Dead says the "OMG TRAIN" thing, and while the Train part was a funny joke, I could believe it from an ingame perspective of a looney gnome who's running for his life and not quite thinking straight. The chronoportals.. You can look at them two ways. You can think of it that character is being sent back in time to fight these legendary creatures, OR... You can think of it that your character is sent back in time so the PLAYER can relive how the original atmosphere and attitude of EverQuest originally was. This is what the Quillmane and the Ancient Cyclops encounters are. Reliving the Everquest game itself. Quillmane is, according to lore, the last existing Pegasus on Norrath. After you kill him, not only do a bunch of magicians show up complaining that you took their kill, but the ranger tells you that it took him 2 weeks of camping to get the Pegasus Feather Cloak. If Quillmane is the last of it's kind, how doe he keep coming back to give more updates for magicians and cloaks for everyone else? The Ancient Cyclops encounter... Would you really think that the people of Norrath would actually "Camp" a creature? Once it's dead, it's dead, so you can't really camp something that only exists once. During the encounter, you find people using L33t speak, saying "PP" for Platinum", asking guildmembers over /gu for advice on getting him to spawn, refering to the player's real life brother when saying how he got it to spawn by /dancing 500 times exactly at 3 AM to get it to spawn, and all that. This is a clear example that you were sent back in time to relive the moments of you playing the original Everquest, not for your character to simply cause a time paradox by being the first person ever to kill this creature, who himself only exists once. For an Anniversary event celebrating EverQuest's 12th birthday, these events have no impact on the lore of Norrath in EQ2. It's all just for fun. I admit it would be nice to actually play these scenarios out seriously, as if you were the first one to ever kill the named creature, and that there will never be another one of them, but it's all in fun. So far there hasn't been any major examples of out-of-character dialogue in the game except for tutorials and charity events. Even the Kerra in Sentinel's Fate who speaks like a LOLCAT has his "speech impediment" pointed out by the other NPCs, so that part is justified and believable.

[Opti]

<p>As someone who spent many, many hours camping mobs such as the Ancient Cyclops, I absolutely loved this event. However, the lore isn't really here to tell us a history of these mobs or whatever, it's here to remind us of the "glory days" of EQ. When you zoned into SRo or OoT in EQ1, you saw constant camp checks in ooc or shout from people hoping to camp the AC, or whatever else they wanted. In many zones (Karnor's Castle...UGH!) you would get people yelling "TRAIN!" all the time and leaving a pile of bodies at the zone entrance. When you killed a mob needed for an epic weapon drop, you would almost always have someone tell you that you shouldn't have killed it because they were camping it, at least in the earlier days of epics.</p><p>Maybe you're right in that not everyone will notice the references, but there are many who do. That's why generally within a few days of each expansion you have pages and pages of people discussing the easter eggs they have found. All the games do it, WoW does it a TON...although the rest of the story over there kinda sucks, imo. I just appreciated this event for what it was, reliving some memorable fights from the original EverQuest, complete with the same atmosphere you got back then <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Scrya]

<p><cite>Cusashorn wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>. The only thing Twilight did was make an already existing concept visually sparkle. .</blockquote><p>Technically Twilight didn't take an 'existing concept', since the writer actually admits to doing no research on vampire lore. She basically just made up a monster and stuck 'vampire' on it...but that's another topic for another forum. The reasoning for bringing it up wasn't to point out the daywalking per se, but the timing of it-- it was obviously brought on by the recent vampire craze and the need to lorewise justify player vampires without the players bursting into flame every 12 hours, so to speak.</p><p>My complaint is actually what you mention...I didn't mind the LOLCAT in SF. It was believable. Netspeak, however, isn't. No one in Norrath would ever say "OMG", and I'll give it the same distain as I would a real live person saying OMG instead of 'oh my god'. And yes, it is a fun event...but events like that are goldmines to the RP community. The portals could have been used to take us back to those places and give us some glimmer of old EQ lore of past that is otherwise unavailable in EQ2, giving the newer people that never played it a glimpse of the former's glory.</p><p>Of all the glorious things about EQ, are you telling me the only thing worth writing dialogue about was the immense spawncamps?</p><p>Over the life of this game much of immersion slowly whittles away, understandably so, reflecting the majority of the playerbase. People can bamf all over the map now in an instant, negating most of the old travel that many older players remember. Low level questing has taken a backseat to powerleveling, quests have been eliminated or changed to streamline. These changes? They reflected the playerbase's want for easier adventuring. I was just hoping that the story and lore of the game could remain in some way sacred as the 'soul' of the world.</p>

[Kamimura]

<p><cite>Cusashorn wrote:</cite></p><blockquote> For an Anniversary event celebrating EverQuest's 12th birthday, these events have no impact on the lore of Norrath in EQ2. It's all just for fun. </blockquote><p>I agree. Usually the out of character dialogue bothers me, but it didn't at all for this particular event. It wasn't just about revisiting some of the lore from EQ, but also about revisiting the actual player memories of the game. (And yes, of course camping plays into that - especially the more epic camps like the Ancient Cyclops. All the crazy theories and time spent in the zone? Very memorable.) So looking at it from that point of view, I think those zones fit in very well with the event as a whole, and were pretty amusing for those who played EQ1. There were portals that were more "in-character" as well... so, /shrug, something for everyone?</p>

[Amnerys]

<p>Please note this comment we specifically included, for this reason, <a href="http://everquest2.com/news/read/current/3899" target="_blank">in the article about this event</a>:</p><p><em>The EQII Team has created this fun event as an homage to EverQuest in honor of the momentous occasion, and although the lore doesn't exactly fit the current story of EQII, they decided to make it extra enjoyable for those who were around for the first iteration of Norrath. Adventurers who take part in this journey through time will find some silly nods to EQ and moments of nostalgia as we reminisce about our heritage. </em></p><p>Smokejumper wanted that called out so that you all knew it was just for fun and wasn't meant to be a canon part of lore. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Blambil]

<p>It was a blast, and enjoyed by most, if not all.. it's been fun to bring a new guidie into one of the zones who hasn't seen it yet, and listen to them on Vent...</p><p>please bring those back again, ANY TIME...</p>

[Finora]

<p><cite>Blambil@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It was a blast, and enjoyed by most, if not all.. it's been fun to bring a new guidie into one of the zones who hasn't seen it yet, and listen to them on Vent...</p><p>please bring those back again, ANY TIME...</p></blockquote><p>I agree! I would love to see these portals again or different ones.</p><p>The portals weren't about lore, they were about paying homage to the player's memories of 'the old days'. And they did a fantastic job of that =). I was the ranger that was down back in those days.</p><p>My guildies and I have been playing Eq1/eq2 together for a long time now and these portal events were great. They brought back so many memories and more than one of us commented that they made us want to crank up the old eq accounts to tool around there a bit.</p>

[GussJr]

<p>I hope they bring them back. Me and my other guild leaders want to get a pick up raid together, or something, and go and hit Holly Windstalkers bear again...just to see if we can beat her. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Meirril]

<p>Breaking game immersion can be done as part of entertainment, which is essentially what EQ2 is. And just like other forms of entertainment not every quest or zone of the game is going to appeal to every EQ2 player.</p><p>If you don't like the chronoportals, you might not like Unrest either. As you get down to the basement Garanel breaks the 4th wall. He isn't threatning your character, he is threatning you. I always thought that was brillant and very well done. Does it make RP sense? no. It does make for game sense and as something unique is incredibly enjoyable. If a whole line of quests started doing it...that would get old fast.</p><p>For a special event, some special exceptions can be made, especially for an event that celebrates another game. (Though, wouldn't it be great to celebrate a few other SoE games in EQ2? Planetside appearance armor, Lightsaber, Superman's cloak)</p>

[NViDiaFReaK]

<cite>Scrya wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I've had a small number of quirks over the years, changing with time, that irk me the wrong way with EQ2. This is, of course, expected, and happens with pretty much every game as you can't please everyone all of the time. This is something though I've noticed coming creeping up more and more, and with the portals event the time has come for me to say something.</p><p> </p><p>Devs, please, PLEASE, stop breaking immersion by using netspeak or game mechanics in NPC speech instead of actually developing lore that makes sense. You have a HUGE playerbase, some of us (including me) that are actually students for game design and would have no problem whatsoever just developing the existing lore and making scripts for npcs. When I see a script for a cutscene with a gnome that says, "OMG train!" or "I was camping that mob!" I want to cry. Same goes for events that fracture the lore just to copy WoW or Twilight (day-walking vamps anyone?) or whatever is the 'in' craze at the moment. You have a beautiful loreset base and a wonderful RP playerbase-- USE US! Hell, slap me in the credits and I'll work for free.</p><p>Many of the playerbase that doesn't care about lore most likely won't notice the out-of-character references (or remember them if they do notice) anyway...please don't water down the storylines and keep the people who do like reading the quests and cutscenes loyal.</p></blockquote> I could say tl;dr but I actually did read it.. so instead ill phara phrase : OMG less QQ more Pew Pew. Stop whining about something that was ment to be fun and pay homage to EQ1. Seriously did you just have 15 minutes of life to waste and thought you'd break out the grill and cook up some BBQ!