RIP Everquest Travel and other mechanics

Plane of Knowledge books caused some amount of upset back in the day. There was a substantial amount of discussion of how the plane of knowledge ruined travel in Everquest, making a defining role of wizards and druids obsolete. People didn't like how it shrunk the world, and made factions pointless.Travel in EQ, along with corpse runs, gave the game actual risk vs reward. Dying as an iksar in unrest without having binded. Needing to ask for rezes. Having to know where the merchants are that sell to you. Invisibility and spirit of the wolf being significant spells for travel. Bards and Rangers actually roleplaying guides and running people across the world or showing people around.

Over the years, there has been a slow erasure of these out of combat game design mechanics that are more socially driven.

For the example of corpse runs. Before shadowrest or the guild lobby summoner, that Iksar that dies in Unrest might:
1. Get a spirit of the wolf and invis from a shaman at the bind point outside of Cabilis (you know, because there are players there still) so you can run to the EJ druid rings so that you can...
2. Meet a druid that ports for donations you added to your friends list for this exact reason.
3. Have the necromancer in your group summon your corpse from the basement to the zone / rogue pull the corpse
4. Be pleasantly surprised when a high level cleric comes around and rezes you.

That is potentially four other people you get to meet outside of purely grouping for experience or a raid. The alternative being the hour+ wait on a boat/run back. So it seems obvious that for a game with a diminishing population, eventually these player-driven mechanics are replaced or removed.

A bazaar like function is better game design than just letting players trade in /auction, but there is a certain community that is created when people gather in the commonlands to trade/buff/port/etc. That to me is a uniquely Everquest experience, and a lot of it is because of something you could argue is a lack of or bad game design.

One of the most memorable experiences I had in early EQ was a player showing me around Qeynos. As a brand new player I had died to attacking my guildmaster and had no idea how to get back; kept died to rats outside the city because I was a wizard but I didn't use any spells. This person showed me around the city, how to bind, where the different npcs were. Had there been a map or any sort of guide or tutorial, this wouldn't have happened or have been so useful.

So is fast travel (in EQ, Plane of Knowledge) more convenient than player driven travel (porting)? Very much so, but is there something that seems uniquely "original Everquest" lost? I think yes.

Anyway, that is the game design hill I am still dying on.

Basically my request to Daybreak:
Porting has very much been a part of every early TLP. My friend earns enough plat to buy krono from porting every tlp we have played. Inadvertently persona + origin makes porting a pointless mechanic. It would be a simple fix, either don't let persona be a thing on TLP until a later expansion, change how the bind point is shared, or maybe even origin cooldown is shared. I know that probably wasn't the intention, and it probably isn't going to change, but it is just, in my opinion, another classic Everquest-defining mechanic outmoded.

So goodbye the last amount of usefulness ports added.

I really only say this because I was thinking of rolling a wizard this last time, with the intention of porting, but I guess not.

I think you might be overestimating the amount of people that are going to buy or utilize the persona system to travel around.

I understand wanting to maintain things you feel make EQ unique but I doubt they want to limit potential sales of the persona feature because it COULD be used to slightly mitigate how many ports people need to get.

Problem is that its 2024 and MMOs overall have changed. EQ is more of a traditional MMO these days, especially in the later expansions versus the DND it used to feel like. Things are just faster now and the knowledge is deeper. The player base are all vets, not noobs like we all used to be.

For how vast and aged EQ is, the only way to probably replicate what you're referencing is to find a way to have a Krono-free server that is segregated and populated with people that have never played the game.

The only people that compain about the evolution of EQ travel are those that profited from ports. I never played a porting class and love being able to travel anywhere in the world in a reasonable amount of time whenever I want.

I understand that the nostalgia of playing back in 1999 was a one time thing in some ways. I'm glad I got to experience it myself.

Everquest is one of the slowest evolving games I've ever seen, while still having a player base that didn't completely evaporate. I feel more confident than ever things are moving in the right direction this past year. It's like some money people finally realized there is more potential here if they do it right.

You can do things on your own to expand little experiences. I like to play a bard and avoid ports sometimes, unless I'm in a hurry. I just like running around with my little legs going like a blender. I like getting a port service sometimes, too. The social aspects seem to be decently preserved in many ways in my eyes, but I'm a mischief/teek enjoyer so I love the blend of old and new stuff.

You can always try the pXX servers run by gamers. Some good stuff there if that's your thing. If not being able to earn as many krono from your yearly tlp print service is the problem, I don't know what to tell you.

It would be nice if they could remove the travel benefit aspect of personas. The other benefits should be enough to incentivize the sales anyway.

Having to be in a starting city or non combat zone to swap personas already limits it to a degree.

Ports are still needed, the sky is not falling

This is why I'm only going to keep playing EQ until Pantheon come out!

They could always just make it more like logging in an alt and make it so you port to the last logout position of the persona you switch to when you do switch. That would solve all the travel issues, I believe. The real benefit of personas is keeping the same name and the sharing of keying, imho. And then on no-trade servers you also get the benefit of only having to acquire certain no-trade items once.

I really just don't even know what to think about Personas, but I'm happy to see it. It's just opens up so many closed doors to options on staying married to your character etc.

FF11 with the Job System was the best ever. I only played FF14 to 50 (quit right before exp raised cap) but I think ff14 has the same thing where all characters can be all jobs.

This is great. -- Hopefully they make the persona system even better. -- So when I say I don't know what to think, I'm talking about someone who is already overwhelmed on what class to play on new top, or what 3 boxing, or what order of raising the classes, early travel and race selection, and of course guild stuff...
...so I'm like "This Persona thing. Not sure I'll use it much, but once I'm caught with all else there is to do, it'll be cool having a guy who can be all classes, don't have to divorce my "old main" because I fell out of love with him or he is no longer pertinent to that raid/expansion.

If I really wanted to overwhelm myself with theory crafting, I'd be thinking about which 2-6 accounts I want to have which jobs, so that no matter what, I always have perfect setup for myself or my friends. Like do I want a Tank account, a Healing account, Caster account, etc?


I'm rambling on, but I guess the point of this thread for me is "Personas, Yay or Nay" -- talking about teleports until PoK, is just so minor and little to me. Like we got around just fine back then, and we paid for ports, and people still will, and it's only going to be a bit before PoK is out anyway. So more on point, not trying to tell you your concerns and all that is stupid, but more like Bobby Bick said, I think it's going to have much less an impact (on travel/ports) than you think.

That sounds like it would make it harder to use with no real gain. I don't think that being able to origin/port to another starting city/non combat zone is that big of a deal and it can make it easier for people to play with the groups that they want to.

I've been playing with personas on Vaniki, to get the achievements for when Teek opens up. It hadn't even crossed my mind once to use one for travel, even though one of them is a wizard. Too much distance between where I want to actually go and a place I can swap personas, to be worthwhile, though that may be a product of my limited travels on that server.

No idea how this would make it harder to use than using an alt.

I never said anything about alts, I was only referring to the persona system and that the suggestion would require the player to camp out likely return in a different zone.

I don't think personas will have as large of an impact as you fear. One major issue is that you can't delete personas. I personally am already worried about using one of my three persona slots just to have a kunark port (or old world port for my iksar monk). I'm trying to think of a good combo to make a persona that I might at least use one day, but really i'm more of an alt person. I still don't like locking down a slot permanently for a cabilis or freeport port. Persona slots are expensive and I don't plan on buying extra.

So I don't think most people are just going to have a persona in every city of the world in order to just port around willy-nilly. Its a waste of precious few slots for a quick convenience that only matters until luclin/PoP anyway.

The thing is, the "travel mechanics" were only great if you were a wizard or a druid. Otherwise it was literally a tax on players. Either sit around trying to fnid a ride, or spend a ton of time not really playing but just traveling.

I don't think EQ has another 40-60 years left in it, mate.

I will def be using them for travel, to get to vox for sure

I also think personas will have a marginal effect on porting. Per reasons already brought up. Also since you can't delete/remake personas, people aren't gonna waste all their slots on travel bots.

This is really it, right here.

EverQuest is one of my all time favorite games. It is second only to Star Wars Galaxies on my list of all time favorite MMO's, and probably a top 10 all timer for all games period, depending on how you want to count my top 10. The original experience I had with EverQuest was absolutely redefining for me in how I looked at video games, and what they could be and what they should be.

I think even if you made a near EQ clone, with all of the elements that made it so memorable in 1999, that it *still* wouldn't recapture the same emotions, because simply put, it's not new.

A world like EQ's was so new for the realm of video games in 1999. There was simply put nothing else like it. No, it wasn't the first MMO by any means, but the first 3D, open, living world in its capacity, it was definitely the first one that many of us experienced. It truly felt like I was living in a new world.

However, in 2024, those sorts of worlds are a dime a dozen. They've been done so many times that no matter how good a world you make, it's just not all that impressive anymore. What was once new and innovative is now just standard.

I feel the same way about my favorite games of all time, Bethesda games. Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Starfield. When I first played Morrowind, it was new and innovative. A huge world like that, I hadn't seen anything like that other than EverQuest, and for my own preferences, Morrowind excelled in many areas where I felt EverQuest was lacking. Morrowind was another standard setter for me in what games could be and should be. As time has gone on, I still absolutely love Bethesda games, but the whole open living world thing... Starfield is my 6th one from Bethesda. And that's not counting other similar games like Cyberpunk, Outer Worlds, Elden Ring, or other open world RPG's, or also other MMO's like Star Wars Galaxies, Warhammer Online, City of Heroes, Elder Scrolls Online, and other open world MMO's that have all made living, open worlds into a standard and a routine.

The original EverQuest experience will never be recaptured, because it simply can't be. Expectations are different nowadays. For most of us here, that experience happened with EverQuest. For a whole other group of people, that experience happened with WoW. So much time has passed since then, with so many games in between, and we've all now had those experiences.

There's also a bit of a double edged sword with much of what we wax poetic about in regards to the EQ glory days. Those experiences definitely added meaning to our experiences in the game, but much of it was also just being tedious and even overly punishing. Those consequences made me afraid to do literally anything in the game, because so much work could be wasted with the simplest of mistakes. I didn't enjoy losing hours worth of XP, or having to do a long run back to get a corpse, or risk losing everything. So much gametime was spent just recovering from consequences, rather than just enjoying the game. I did appreciate that porting abilities gave certain classes a huge purpose, and that fast traveling everywhere does make the world feel smaller and less meaningful. Some of my favorite memories of EQ are the Qeynos to Freeport run, and I've done that run multiple times during my returns in recent years just because of how much I loved it back in the day. However, a lot of that just makes the game more tedious. I 100% enjoy the journey of this game, and my experiences with 1999 - 2001 EverQuest are some of my favorite memories in gaming, but also so much of my time in game was spent recovering from consequences or tediously traveling, rather than enjoying the content of the game.

I would say that at the end of the day, I do still prefer 1999 EverQuest to 2024 EverQuest, and I do think that all things considered, I'd take that experience even with the harsh consequence and loads of tedium over today's streamlined experience. That being said, I don't think that the current streamlined experience is inherently bad, and I still love EverQuest, even in its current state.

I'm not even entirely sure what personas are or how they work, but 25 years later, I think there comes a point where we just have to accept that it's not gonna be the same experience anymore. We're chasing the dragon, but it's never gonna happen. 1999 was a long time ago. We had our one shot with it, and it was wonderful. But we can't experience it for the first time ever again.