Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

It Was A Dark and Stormy Night…
Virtual Memories, Part IV

By Merriandra Eldaronde

It was a dark and stormy night on the Plains of Karana when the mighty wizard Al`Kabor made his appearance in a flash of lightening, demanding assistance from the humans, elves, and barbarians who cowered at his feet. Well, the humans, elves, and barbarians didn't cower. Not really. In fact, one of the dark elves taunted Al`Kabor. And the best you can do with the weather in Karana is an occasional, gentle rain storm. Still, the zone-wide emotes helped to set the mood for the historical quest… didn't they?

If there was one thing I loved more than genuinely being able to assist someone as a Guide in Everquest, it was the ability to amaze and entertain players through persistent characters and quests. In the early years of Everquest, historical quests were completed by the GM and guides on the servers, and persistent characters, along with minor (non-historical) quests were also part of a Guide's duties. I was a Guide for more than two years, and while the occasional triage on the petition queue after a server went "kerplunk" also brought an adrenalin rush, akin to being in the emergency room of a busy hospital after a sixteen-car pileup, the skill needed to become your character instead of just reciting the lines brought a far greater adrenaline rush, if only for me. These quests were fun, even if, in their performance, you ended up feeling like you were in a high-school play, and not everybody could follow their cues or appear at just the right moment.

When the Quest Troupe became a separate entity from the Guide Program, I considered making the leap. At first, I decided that I was needed more to train other Guides and tackle the petitions and keep the server on an even keel, since we were the server with an almost terrifying rate of GM turnover, something like 5 GMs in 6 months. Apparently, we scared them away. Finally, after a GM came to the server and stayed for two months, I made the decision that I wasn't happy just dealing with the administrative aspects of the game. So I joined the Quest Troupe and returned to the aspect of the game that I loved the most: the mystery, the storyline, and the involvement of Joe Druid in the way the world was about to change.

Sometimes it was difficult to gather an audience of players who were interested in history-changing events, and harder still if my interaction didn't involve handing out Uber-Whatsits as a quest reward. There were days, and servers, when I wondered whether it was worth my time. There were other days, and other servers, when I could see and hear the engagement of the entire server community in the quest. In one instance, Firiona Vie and her traveling companions were ambushed outside of Felwithe. It's hard to make everything look fresh and unrehearsed, harder still when you have more than 150 players in zone, all clustered around the entrance to Felwithe. Yet somehow we managed to elicit offers of help, cries of distress, tears, and anger, all in the same 30 minute quest.

Al`Kabor glowered as he led the small party through the tunnel into the Western Wastes. It was with no small measure of satisfaction that the powerful wizard allowed invisibility to drop away from the group only long enough so that the red dragon was able to grasp the dark elf in her jaws and crush his body until it was lifeless. "That," he intoned, "Should teach the young fool to keep his mouth shut when in my presence." A short time later, as the intrepid adventurers clustered near the ridge of a mountain, the wizard considered the fate of the Tier`Dal who had mocked him. With a wave of one finger, effortlessly, Al`Kabor brought the dark elf back to life and summoned him to the group.

Everquest is not the only game where events relating to the development of the storyline have brought players to witness their unfolding, or have sent them running for cover. Asheron's Call provided new content through NPC-driven events on at least a monthly basis: the most memorable of the changes in Dereth, at least for me, was the landing of the spires. Other games, like Dark Ages of Camelot and Anarchy Online, allowed their storyline to be heavily influenced by the actions of the players. For example, in DAoC, control of forts, frontiers, and relics could influence individual statistics, and these battles were decided by each realm's PvP skills.

EQ, however, provides perhaps the most complete evidence of the types of events that players will participate in, and the reasons why they choose to gather: to understand the history of the virtual world, to be able to say, years from now, "I was there", in hope of advancement, in hope of loot, in hope of notoriety, or because they were in the right place at the right time.

Those who attend GM or Guide-driven events because they want to understand the history of the world would seem, on the surface, to be the ideal players to participate. However, sometimes these are also the same players who might point out typographical errors (hey, sometimes it's unavoidable!), or who might feel slighted if they are not chosen for a title or some other, ultimate reward. No, the ideal person to attend an event is the player who is a combination of all the other types: they want to see, they want to participate, and maybe, deep down, they are hoping that they might get a little something out of it. If they don't get coin, or an item, or a title, they won't try to kill the quest NPC, and if they only learn a little bit about the advancing storyline they won't petition that they were cheated out of information by the obstreperous, milling crowd.

I remember the quests that went well, some of them lasting for hours as we absorbed the players into the rituals or urged the throng forward, deep into a dungeon. I never did get to participate from a player's point of view, but I wouldn't have missed knowing that the death of Lord Tephys on the eve of the Battle of Bloody Kithicor would represent a turning of the tide. Were you there for Bloody Kithicor? Did you witness Firiona Vie coming into her own in Norrath? How about Dereth's ever-changing face? Did you ever battle for a keep in the frozen tundra of Midgard? Did you follow the news of Rubi Ka? Whatever realm you played within, and whatever path you chose, it is likely that some dynamic event, or some far-reaching battle, had an impact on your interaction with the virtual world. Close your eyes, think back. Was it once upon a time? Long ago, and far away? Was it a dark and stormy night?