Columbus Day: In Search of New Lands

By Ralsu

I swam northwest, leaving behind the modest fishing port of my origins. I made sure to look around for hostile marine life as the water swelled deeper and turned darker. I was truly swimming the ocean now!

Inside of five minutes, I had reached the shores of the island that caught my attention back on the pier. Tingles coursed down my neck and shoulders as I came up on the shore. The foliage was thicker here, and I was unsure what fauna made this island home.

I trepidly approached a the cottage that had loomed above me on the cliffs for the last minute of my swim It appeared deserted, but I didn't trust appearances. My instincts told me I was not supposed to be here. Still, I detected nothing from within, so I threw open the door...

And it turned out to be a city not yet populated for the beta I was testing. But the journey--the journey was incredible. For me, that exhilarating feeling of exploration that comes with any new MMO or expansion is an irreplaceable experience. As players, we see a mountain and want to climb it. We see a save and want to plumb its depths. We see an ocean and want to cross it. It's much like the feeling many early explorers must have shared.

October brings Columbus Day, a time when we remember the man who "discovered" the continent of North America. Without delving into the political debate that surrounds the man who "sailed the ocean blue" in 1492, I want to focus on what Columbus Day represents. I want to focus on the journey across a vast over world that gives you the sense of being part of something very big. I want to discuss the exploration of unfamiliar landmarks. I want to reminisce on the accidental discovery of something amazing.

Just yesterday, I discovered my journal from when I beta tested EverQuest Online Adventures (EQOA). Talk about hording old materials! The notes I'd scrawled in this journal were from November 2001! Finding that notebook took me on a reverent trip through memories of discovering everything new and fascinating. See, EQOA was my first MMO, as you'll note in my bio. I was familiar with EverQuest--how could I not be? Plain and simple, I was avoiding getting into MMOs because of the time sink and the upgrades I knew my computer would need. But EQOA lured me in by being on a console (the Playstation 2).

Since Sony had already given me a Network Adapter for beta testing it, I had the hardware I needed. I waited until EQOA was in Beta 3 (it's final phase), so that I could get a feel for what the finished product would be like. Oh, I remember well starting a Freeport wizard and exploring the desert of Ro. Each creature was new and exciting, from the mostly harmless spiderling just outside the city gates all the way to tainted mummies roaming the desert.

Vast Lands

The first thing I noticed in that beta was that Norrath was huge. I mean HUGE. I could pick a direction and start running. It would take me five minutes to cross a zone. Desert gave way to swamp as I journeyed south toward Grobb. The desert transitioned to hilly grasslands as I journeyed northwest toward Rivervale. To the west was rugged mountains that led to Highpass. The world in EQOA felt expansive and real. The use of different climates and terrains furthered the sense that Norrath was a complete and logical place--so long as gnomes and dwarves are considered part of your logical world!

Beckoning Horizons

Another fun thing in that EQOA beta was just picking a landmark on the horizon and going to see it up close. My dwarf from beta went to explore a volcano. My elf swam the lake around Fayspires and was even killed by the Lake Stalker, a creature I only found one other time once the game went live. That same elf ended up on the westing side of the continent, where he found an odd tower known as Jared's Blight. It looked ominous from a distance; it was surrounded by blackened and broken trees, and the land around it was parched and cracked. The foreboding looks didn't stop me from running over and meeting a swift end at the...er, hands (?) of a living construct. Even the creature was neat: It looked like a walking scarecrow with a jack-o-lantern head! Jared's Blight was just one of countless landmarks I explored in the 3 years I played EQOA,a nd it took all of my years of playing to see most of them. Some I've still never seen!

Serendipitous Discovery

I found the Lake Stalker as an elf in the EQOA beta because I was looking for arctic spiders by swimming to a northern patch of land I'd spotted from the city. That same elf stumbled upon Jared's Blight as part of a group of adventurers who were out "just seeing how far we could go." In that same area, I later discovered a cave full of vipers as I was searching for a path to the dwarven city of Moradhim. I never found out if that cave had some purpose as a quest location, but it was a great place to XP because the snakes were plentiful but not aggressive. Just north of the serpent cave, I discovered a series of tunnels filled with kobolds. While that's not unusual, what was unique is that these kobolds respawned instantly when looted. Boy that spot was a hotbed for trains and shouting level 30 characters until SOE wisely reduced the spawn rate. I like making accidental discoveries on the way to complete some other objective. It's fun.

When Big is Too Big

The subscriber base of EQOA has long since peaked and plateaued. The word I hear is that European servers have gone offline and only one of the six North American servers is thriving. Even on that server, players complain that it is next to impossible to make it through the low levels because so few new players are around. Because each of the EQOA races starts at least one zone away from any other starting area, people can sometimes have trouble getting together with friends in the early going.

Being too spread out is the biggest drawback of a huge gaming world. At launch, people need to feel that social connection that drives them to keep playing. As the game nears the end of its life style, a gigantic world can make people feel isolated. EQOA's progenitor, EverQuest, introduced the Plane of Knowledge as a way to help new low-level characters travel instantly to other cities and link with friends. That change is highly contested as part of the diminishing challenge of the game and what is "wrong" with new MMOs. SOE felt it was necessary to make the early game playable.

Parting Thoughts

I know what you must be saying: Why do you even bother playing DDO if you're such a big fan of vast over worlds? The simplest answer is that it's Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Also, Turbine gave me fair warning that I was purchasing a fully instanced game. Besides, most D&D campaigns work with "instances." The Dungeon Master (DM) seldom makes you role-play every step from towns to dungeons.

But I must confess that I miss those days of exploring. DDO works fine with Stormreach as a hub for players to get together and find quests, but I wish there were a little more exploration. I guess my final thought is that all MMOs should try to provide soemthing for the lone explorer--just a tidbit where he can feel like he's moving through uncharted waters. At the same time, games with a big world must think of a logical, lore-consistent method of travel across great distances so that players don't feel isolated. DDO is still the only MMO I play, but right now I envy those beta testers discovering new worlds in Lord of the Rings Online and Vanguard.

---