[MUD-Dev] EQ in mainstream news again...

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

Camping in EQ makes it onto BBCNews online!

Dan

From:

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2129912.stm

--<cut>--

Cyber heroes forced to wait for glory 
Ragefire: The dragon people are queueing to kill
BY Mark Ward 
BBC News Online technology correspondent  
 
 
The life of a hero was not supposed to be like this. You can walk
the Planes of Power where gods do dwell and have stood fearless
before the mightiest creatures that call Everquest their home.

Your history is one of glorious deeds but now, to complete the epic
quest that will make your life as a priest complete, you have to
stand in line and wait like a peasant at the village pump.

Perhaps Everquest should be renamed Everqueue.


Waiting room

The huge popularity of the online adventure game Everquest is
causing problems for some players keen to complete key tasks for the
characters they control.

Characters in Everquest assume a profession while adventuring in the
online world. As they travel, complete tasks and defeat monsters
they accrue experience making them more skilled in their chosen
profession.

 
Players of Star Wars: Galaxies will be limited
 
Whether they choose to be a warrior, thief, wizard or priest, all
have the chance to complete an epic quest that rewards them with a
hugely powerful magical item.

The artefacts are coveted because they cannot be sold or passed on
to other players.

Completing the epic quest can soak up weeks of playing time as
characters and their fellow adventurers journey through the
continents and caves of Everquest completing all parts of the task.

But the epic quest of the game's clerics (priests and healers) is
causing big problems.

"I should see my shot at the epic in December sometime," said Lance
Berg, who runs a powerful cleric in Everquest.

Mr Berg is currently number 52 in the list of clerics queueing to
complete the epic task. Three months ago he was at number 67.

Many of the other Everquest servers that host replicas of the game
world have waiting lists just as long.


Red and dead

The bottleneck is caused by the need to kill a red dragon called
Ragefire.

Monsters rarely permanently die in Everquest, instead they respawn
some time after they have been killed.

Unfortunately the Ragefire dragon only respawns every few days and
the timer that triggers its re-appearance is re-started when the
Everquest servers are taken offline for maintenance.

 
Life in Everquest is a struggle
 
"Clerics are also one of the most common characters at the high-end
of the game," said player Jeremiah Kristal, "so you have a
significant percentage of the characters all competing for a single,
three to five day spawn."

On a few Everquest servers some players are spending days of real
time hanging around in the game world just for Ragefire to appear.

On some servers the appearance of Ragefire sparks a free-for-all
which sees player-controlled characters turn on each other.

"It's not uncommon to see 45 characters from 3 guilds sitting at
that spot all hoping to attack first," said Mr Kristal.

Another player James Grahame said Verant, the makers of Everquest,
have resisted suggestions that the red dragon should respawn more
often.

"Verant rightly sees the cleric epic as a very powerful item," he
said, "and in Everquest, power and rarity usually go hand-in-hand."

This problem of too many players and not enough for them to do could
strike other online game worlds.



Galactic hopes
Star Wars game explores the film world
 
One game that is trying to avoid the bottlenecks is Star Wars:
Galaxies which is due to launch later this year.

The game is set in the Universe laid out in the Star Wars films,
books and comics and takes place during the Galactic civil war after
the destruction of the first Death Star.

Although players of the game will not be able to take on the roles
of key personalities of Star Wars such as Luke Skywalker and Han
Solo, they will be able to play Jedi knights, star pilots and bounty
hunters.

Lucas Arts is working with EverQuest creators Sony on the Star Wars:
Galaxies game and is capping the number of players that can be on
any one server to limit population density.

Players will be able to buy or build their own homes on the various
cities and if too many people crowd into one location the
playability of the game could suffer.

The game's release is also likely to carried out in stages to ensure
a slow build up of players on the servers supporting the online
Universe.
--<cut>--
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev