Crafting with the Carpenters

An Interview with One of EverQuest 2's Premier Carpenters

by: Tony "RadarX" Jones

Ask anyone who knows me if I craft. Go ahead. You'll probably get "Radar? Ha!" or "Radar? Who is that? Oh, that Templar who keeps getting us killed?" I claim to know just enough about crafting to be destructive and hazardous. Crafting in my mind, is taking a rare harvest to the crafter, and waiting very impatiently for my Adept III spell.

Over the course of a few months, I've read post after post about Carpenter issues. Statements like, "Where are the Tier 6 recipes?", and "Why don't we get cooler furniture?", etc... I'll admit I was quick to judge them as complaints, but even recently I've still been in the dark about what was going on. Adeste was gracious and kind enough to enlighten me on what it's like to be a Carpenter, and what a few of their issues are.

Adeste, thanks again for answering a few questions about this. First, tell us a little bit about your MMO experience. What have you played?

I was first introduced to graphical MMO's when I started playing the original
EverQuest back in 2001, around the time of the Kunark expansion. Prior to that
I'd dabbled a bit in multiplayer text games via local BBS systems, but the
graphics of EverQuest brought a whole new dimension to MMO's for me and I
played it until EverQuest 2 was released.  I took a brief look at Star Wars
Galaxies and some others, but I work full time and don't have time to play more
than one MMO at once, so I've remained pretty loyal to the EverQuest genre.  I
have City of Villains sitting on my desk waiting to be installed though - at
the moment I'm enjoying EverQuest 2 too much to try it out, but if my interest
wanes, that will be the next in line.

EQ2's crafting system takes a special type of
patience according to most people. What is your motivation to craft?

I get a lot of enjoyment out of other people's enjoyment, if that makes sense.
It's something I have noticed since the original EverQuest - although so many
people like to say it's "just a computer game", it isn't.  The people on the
other end of the pixels are real people, and you can really touch their lives
with your actions.  A week from now, you won't remember who you grouped with; a
month from now, you won't remember the item you just looted from that named
monster; and a year from now, whatever money you've saved up so far will seem
completely trivial, if you remember at all.  But years after the fact, you'll
still remember a kind turn done for you by a complete stranger and the pleasure
that you got from someone doing something nice for you.  More than two years
after the fact (and over a year since I've even logged into the first
EverQuest) I've had a player that I thought was a total stranger, find out the
name of one of my EQ1 characters and suddenly start gushing in vivid detail about how
I met her young EQ1 druid in PoK one day and gave her some help and some
equipment.  I have no memory at all of the event, but I was floored what a huge
impact it apparently had on the player.  This is the real reward from the game
that we'll take away years from now, not the number of heritage quests or the
amount of platinum we have, but the real people's lives we've touched, and the
real people we've made smile.



So what's this got to do with my motivation to craft?  I craft because it's a
way of helping other people and improving their game experience.  As a
carpenter, I give away a lot of furniture for prizes in roleplay events, and I
donate furniture to houses set up as roleplay taverns, to encourage the
community on my server.  I give away beds to newbies arriving in my home
village, to welcome them to the village and sometimes to the game.  Playing my
jeweller, I always keep a few items I've made in my bags when I go out hunting,
and if I get in a pickup group, my groupmates get any upgrades they need.
Crafting just to make a profit is as mindlessly dull to me as farming a named
monster over and over.  Boring!  But crafting with the goal of helping someone
or doing something creative with the result is much more interesting, as you
keep your mind on the final outcome and know that it will be making someone
else's day, not just your own.

What drew you to this class? Why Carpentry over some of the more popular classes like Sage?

What drew me to carpentry is the tangible outcome of my work.  In all the other
tradeskill classes, you don't end up with something you can place and see and
touch and admire.  Nothing else results in a physical object added to the
world.  Classes that make consumables - like spells, poisons, and food - seem
very ephemeral to me.  Even classes that make equipment for others, such as
weapons and armour, aren't as satisfying.  An adventurer will wear the item for
10 levels, then sell it to a vendor, and it'll be gone as if it never existed.
But furniture is forever, and can be enjoyed by everyone who sees it, not just
the wearer.

EverQuest 2 does seem to have some interesting furniture. Do you think tradeskilling is done more for the money or the creative aspect?

I think it depends entirely on the player.  Tradeskilling CAN certainly be done
to make money, as can adventuring.  Tradeskilling can also be done for fun, as
can adventuring.  There does seem to be a perception out there among
adventurers that you make tons of money by tradeskilling, and maybe even that
you NEED to tradeskill to make money.  That's rubbish.  Nobody who actually
tradeskills to any extent would agree with that.  You can make money by
tradeskilling; you can make money by adventuring.  You can make money by doing
neither, and playing the market.  If you want to make money, you will, and you
don't need to tradeskill to do it.  Personally, I earn very little money from
tradeskilling and support my habit of giving furniture away with my non-
tradeskill income.   I tradeskill for the creative and social aspect.  But
that's a decision that's different for every player.

Carpenters have the unusual distinction of being the only crafting class that doesn't
affect adventuring. What niche do you feel your tradeskill fits?

What I like most about carpentry is that it is the one and only class that can
actually affect the physical environment of Norrath.  And that's pretty cool.
Carpenters, in our small way, actually add content to the game.  Perhaps it's
the aspiring game designer in me, but I find it very enjoyable to start with an
empty "zone" - ie, a bare room - and create content.  Through furniture items I
can entirely change the look of the room, I can create a cheerful or a dark or
a scary atmosphere, I can even add "mobs" to my "zone" with the use of house
pets and arena champions.  And whatever I create, others can enter and
appreciate, and be influenced by it.  I think that's an amazing ability for any
class to have, tradeskill or adventurer.  And there's nothing like decorating
someone's room while they're out, then watching them enter for the first time
and just stand there stunned, saying "holy $#!%!"  That's something no other
class can do, ever.



So no, carpentry doesn't affect adventuring directly, but it has the potential
to affect everybody, adventurer or not.  I feel carpentry has the potential to
enhance the immersion of the game, and to enhance the roleplay aspect of the
game also.  And that even goes as far as to help keep people in the game, when
they might otherwise have left.  There are some people whose rooms I've
decorated who barely play any more, but they still log in every now and then
and go pay their rent, just to spend some time in their rooms!  It's remarkable
what the perception of having a "home" means to people, and how it enhances
their enjoyment of the game and keeps them coming back.  It may seem odd to
those who aren't carpenters, but there is something very compelling about
having a little corner of Norrath that is yours alone, and customized to your
tastes.  It's the difference between EQ2 being "a game", and being "a home".
Even the least roleplay-interested players can be utterly blown away by a nice
home decoration and completely converted to being house-proud.  It's very hard
to quantify the value carpentry adds to the game environment, but I think it is
very important, and very underestimated.

What is the biggest outstanding issue you feel the Carpenters have right now?

Missing furniture.  Months and months ago - nearly a year now - NPC vendors
sold furniture.  There are still furniture stores in North Qeynos and East
Freeport, though they no longer sell much.  Many of their items looked
identical to carpenter-made items but were much cheaper than we could make
those items, so of course carpenters protested and asked that the identical
items be removed.  What actually happened though was that EVERY item they sold
was removed, whether or not carpenters could make it.  Some of those items were
then given to carpenters, but although it was Frizznik's intention to give us
all the recipes, many of the very nicest items were never added to our books.
These items are now unavailable in game, neither from NPCs nor from
carpenters.  They include items like bookcases with books on them, wardrobes,
stoves, urns, beds, and counters.  As a carpenter, the three most-requested
items that people ask from me are:  ornate counters, bookcases with books, and
chess boards.  And there is nothing at all I can give them for any of these.
Carpenters have been begging for these recipes for longer than I care to
remember, with no response.  It's very disheartening.



A more recent peeve, and a big one, is the fact that it's nearly half a year
since tier 6 was added and carpenters still don't have advanced crafting
books.  If it were any other crafting or adventuring class overlooked in this
way, all hell would have broken loose long ago.  Carpenters are a pretty mature
and realistic bunch, and realized that there were a lot of other more pressing
issues after the DoF release that needed fixing before advanced furniture
recipes.  However, half a year is definitely too long to keep any class waiting
for a fix, and the discontent levels in the carpentry forum are rapidly rising.


I have a compiled list of outstanding bugs and wish lists related to the class here.

How pleased are the Carpenters, in your opinion, with the craftable items in the game now before Kingdom of Sky?

I'd say it's a very mixed situation.  As mentioned above, the three items we're
asked for most, we can't make, so that's pretty discouraging.  We do have many
very nice items though, the rough linen rug and the halasian bearskin rug being
two of my favorites.  We have odd gaps in some areas though that really need
filling -- for example, there are no non-rare large dining tables that have a
nice polished surface, and no wardrobes at all.  Tier 6 furniture was a mix of
very nice items and really awful items, but didn't give us any new tables or
chairs at all, and most of it is too large to put in a 1-room home.  There is
an excellent post in the carpentry forum
( here) providing screenshots and suggested recipes for
many items that we would love to see in game.  I'm really hoping that someone
is listening and that many of these will show up in tier 7, and be added
retrospectively to some of the lower tier books too.  But at present, we're in
an odd situation where about 70% of our items we will almost never make, and
only 30% are actually desirable to most players.  So ... not very happy, is the
answer.  We're getting by, but there's a LOT of room for improvement.

What type of items are you hoping to see the Kingdom of Sky bring?

Ornate counters.  Bookcases with nice colourful books and objects built in.
Wardrobes.  Nice non-rare tables with a professional, polished wood look
texture, not the horrible crude rough greys of lower tiers.  Those sconces from
Stormhold that look like a flaming sword.  More carpets, preferably with more
intricate texture than the tier 6 ones (more like the tier 5 rough linen).
Wall hangings.  Chess boards.  Smaller items than the gigantic tier 6 ones --
items that will reasonably fit in a 1-room home.  Room divider screens, like
the ones in Maj'dul.  Nicer beds, like the ones in Poets Palace and Deathfist
Citadel.  Display cases and counters.  Pool tables, like the ones in Nektropos
Castle.  And, tier 6 rare recipes.  Basically, everything in this thread:
here.

Beghn has been on the job with revamping Tradeskills for only a few months. Has he made
progress? Do you think SOE is heading in the right direction?

It's hard for me to say that, because I don't have visibility of everything
that he has been working on.  I know he's been very busy fixing a number of the
bugs that were introduced with tier 6 tradeskills, and I know that people in
the affected tradeskills have been happy with his solutions, so that's good
work.  From a carpenter point of view, I have to say there hasn't been much
sign of progress in our craft, but Beghn is only one man covering a huge area --
  what I would really like to see is a whole team of tradeskill devs, not just
one.  It would be completely unrealistic to have just one dev handle all the
adventuring development -- I feel it's equally unrealistic to have just one dev
handling all the tradeskill development.  SOE will be heading in the right
direction when they hire more tradeskill devs to help Beghn, make some clear
vision statements clarifying where they want to see crafting going over the
next few years, and interact more with the crafting community for feedback into
that process.

I couldn't speak to the popularity of Adventuring versus Tradeskilling, but I can see your point. If you could be guaranteed a fix on one Carpenter bug what would you choose and
why?

Does missing furniture count as a bug?  If so, I want my missing furniture!
It's really challenging to decorate a room without access to some of the nicest
items in game, and it's really painful to see the few remaining leftovers from
the NPCs being sold on the broker for 10p and more because of their rarity.



If you mean an actual technical bug, I'd want to see the furniture placement
issues fixed.  Many of our bookcases are bugged so you can't actually place any
books in them.  The briarwood bookcase is the worst offender here, but most of
the bookcases have the same issue at least to some extent.  Given that we still
haven't been given the recipe for bookcases with books in them, it's rather
adding insult to injury that they haven't even fixed the empty bookcases we do
make so you can place quested books in them!

If you could change something about the Tradeskill system as a whole, what
would you change?

I would change the way that experience is earned across the crafting levels.
It doesn't make sense for crafters to level up so fast through teir 1 that they
can't even make half the items in their recipe books, yet have to make piles of
finished product to get through the upper levels.  There is a chronic shortage
of crafted stuff in tier 1-3, and a vast glut on the market in upper tiers,
because crafters have to make more and more of the products as they rise in
level.  Yet, when you look at the actual player market, there should logically
be the same number of tier 2 players that need a sword as there are tier 5
players -- if anything, there are more in tier 2.  It benefits no-one that the
crafters are forced to make hundreds of unwanted tier 5 swords just to gain
experience, when all the demand is in a lower tier.  I'd like to see crafters
level up slower in the lower tiers, and faster in the upper tiers, than
currently happens.  I'd also like to see higher level crafters still get some
kind of benefit from making the lower tier items - perhaps not full experience,
but why not the same type of experience as an adventurer would get by
mentoring?  Both of these changes would result in more items available in lower
tiers, and less of a market overload in the upper tiers.

The server merges cometh! How do you think the they will affect tradeskilling and the market?

A higher population on merged servers will mean both more crafters and more
customers.  It will probably put more life back into the crafting communities
on those servers, and give the economy a general boost overall.  The economy of
a well-populated server such as Antonia Bayle can probably be used as a rough
model for what other server economies will develop into, if they reach the same
population level.

Is there anything you'd like to add or say to SOE?

Carpenters are some of your most mature, understanding, and loyal customers,
and we also help keep people interested in the game and enhance the experience
for many players.  Please help us to do this, give us the missing recipes, and
add those recipes we are asking for!

Thanks so much again for your time and happy crafting. I hope the Carpenters can get some love.