Why is Warlock 'neutral' but Necro is 'evil' ?

Hi... I'm not being snarky... honest question.

I'm trying to pick a class right now, and as I'm looking everything over it strikes me as odd that you have this split:

• Necromancer: Master of death and decay. Dominates the undead. Channels disease and dark magic. Evil cities only! EVIL!!!
• Warlock: Masters of death and decay. Channel poison and disease. Calls upon void and darkness to horribly destroy their foes. Available to happy Frogloks in Kelethin! Loves kittens and macramé!
• Wizard: Summons fire balls and frost comets at things. Wears a pointy hat. Readily-available to angry elves with emotional disorders in Neriak.
• Conjuror: Summons fire elementals and water bubbles at things. Wears a pointy hat. NOT ACCEPTABLE IN EVIL CITIES! FAR TOO NOBLE! GO BACK TO HALAS!

I'm totally new to this game and its lore ... is there some in-story explanation for why Necros / Conjurors are considered very Evil / Good, while their non-pet-using analogues are totally neutral and welcome everywhere?

Usually in High Fantasy stuff I'd expect a Conjuror/Summoner to be totally neutral (like in most games) and a Warlock to be Evil-aligned. o.o??

Warlocks used to be Evil only a while back, so did a lot of the other classes who can now be used in both alignments. I dunno why this was changed but it does'nt really bother me tho as its totally up to me, and personally i would never make a Qeynos Warlock =)

Honestly they need to make them all neutral. A tree hugging ranger can be evil, a deadly assassin can be good, but a swashbuckling pirate who wants to be evil? Boulder dash!

either neutral classes or neutral deities :3

Look! Warlocks even have a spell called "Gift of Bertoxxulous" ... isn't that a totally Evil god?

Is this like some fudgey thing where it's like, "They use the power of evil... FOR GOOD!" ?

But in that case why wouldn't there be Neutral / Good Necromancers? Like you could have an HBO series starring reformed Necromancers using their powers as forensic investigators and coroners for the Qeynos police department.

ROOKIE: "Sir, this froglok was fished out of a sewer grate it was clogging up 3 hours ago. Time of death unclear."

NECRO: *waves fingers* "I have communed with death. This froglok died 12 hours ago."

ROOKIE: "But we still don't have a motive."

NECRO: *resurrects corpse* "Hello zombie froglok. Who killed you?"

FROGLOK ZOMBIE: "It was the butler. He's a Freeport spy-butler."

NECRO: "Thank you. Case closed. Rookie, let's go arrest that butler."

*Froglok Zombie expires and dies again*

ROOKIE: "Oh no! What happened?"

NECRO: "It looks like... " puts on sunglasses "... he croaked."

yyyyyyyyeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ♫

... ok anyway.

Like, I'm kind of tempted to make... say... a Qeynos Fae, in a pink floral dress, worshiping Rodcet Nife, the Prime Healer ... while running around covering everything in sight with horrifying poisons, acids, diseases, Bertoxxulian gifts, biomedical waste and other forms of terrible death, cancer, decay, suffering, and eternal darkness and damnation.

Oh my favortest topic of EQ2!

You can have a "good" necromancer if you pay SOE $25 to move the toon off your PvE server to the PvP server. Then betray to Qeynos and tell the NPC that you want to be a necro in Qeynos. Pay SOE another $25 and move the toon back to a PvE server. Still a necro, but now living in Qeynos on PvE!

I could write a few paragraphs (again) on how many times class-related lore has shifted over the past 10 years, but that's what the search feature is for.

Sounds like money well spent, Ruckus. (That is entirely sarcasm.)

Holy smokes, does that actually work??

Like if I rolled a Dark Elf Necro on Nagafen (stole my bike), betrayed to Qeynos, became a Conjuror, betrayed back to Neriak, and then Paid Transferred to AB ...

... I'd still be a Dark Elf Conjuror, now living in Neriak?

I assumed the transfer process would have some failsafe against that. But it actually works?

If I had a euro for every time this topic comes up...

Long story short? We don't have an answer. You are right, the logic is fuzzy and stretched, at best. I got no clue why it is, just that it is. There has been a push for making all character classes neutral, or at least sensible, for some time. So far, nada.

I love your sense of humor.

Yup, it works. I know of a good shadowknight that lives in Qeynos on Unrest. The character was created as a good SK on the PvP server, and then was moved to Unrest. Game still works and zero cares were given by anyone that this happened!

All classes are neutral on PvP. You can roll a dark elf conjy in Neriak already without having to run her to Qeynos. Just roll that DE conjy in Neriak, and pay SOE $25 and move her to AB. She'll still be a DE conjy in Neriak, but now on AB and you can mess with the thriving role playing community on AB with her. Unless they shun you, and then you are the RPing pariah of AB!

If server transfers were free, I would have done this by now and I would have had all of the evil aligned quests done on the only character that I've cared about since launch.

That.

Is.

AWESOME!

... the only problem being that on reflection, there actually aren't any Good-only classes I'm considering for my 1st char. But if there were, I would totally be a rebel about it, hahaha.

... ooh, maybe a Dark Elf Mystic ...

Cheaper thing to do would to just make a mystic in New Halas and buy a race change potion and turn that toon into a dark elf, because race change potions are cheaper than server transfer potions and less of a hassle (won't have to betray).

Halfling warlock representin'.

But you'd still be stuck having to live in Good cities, right?

Cuz I want to live in Neriak. Because it's awesome. And pretty. And good is dumb.™

What the should do is drop the whole Good City/Evil City thing. It didn't make much sense when the game launched [you could always group and guild together], and it's made less and less sense ever since [shared bank, inter-city mail, shared broker].

Just pull the flags off the cities, go with ARAC, and be done with it.

As a Loremonger...here's some basics for why.

Necromancer: Raises the dead, controls the undead, uses poison and disease based spells and sucks the life out of thier opponents to heal thier own injuries.

Warlock: uses poison and disease spells, as well as contact with the Void. but unlike the Necro, thier 'poison and disease' is less like 'here let me infect you with an STD for my amusement' and more a 'I'm going to age and atrophy your muscles so you can't swing your sword at me.' and they don't deal at all with dead things.

the warlock is neutral in that while they may be on a dark path...they are aware of it and seek to keep on the edge without jumping over into the abyss. the Necro not only jumps, but he's free falling without a parachute and loving every second of it. the warlock is a pragmatist that sees disease/poison spells as a necessary evil to the greater good, an ends justify the means kind of deal.

Necros just take a perverse pleasure in making you fight your own grandfather. or your mother. or the sister they just got through murdering. they don't see poison and disease as just a terrible, but effective means to a good end..they want to infect you with whatever makes you die the slowest and most painfully. especailly if it's contagious, so they cna reanimate your dead body and have you go and infect your used to be friends and family.

the 'last 8' of the alignment restrictions are mostly due to the methodology or extreme ideological differences.

like the swashy and the brigand. I often liken these to the Pirates movies as Jack Sparrow and Barbosa, respectively. if Jack acted like Barbosa...then he wouldn't be Jack. and vice versa. A swashy is a con man, a sweet talker, even though he's a thief and a cheat. for the Swash, violence is more a last resort ideal. it's what you do when all other options have failed. for a Brig...it's all about the violence. to quote barbosa: 'people are easy to search, when they're dead' if a swash acted like that..then he's not a swash, he's a brig. if a brig acted like a swash..then he's not a brig, he's a swash.

Paladin and shadowknight should never be neutral. ever. especially considering Lucan, Cristanos and Antonia as city leaders. Kane Bayle's actions, the Bloodsaber attempted coup (war of the plagues) is more then enough to not let them in. and Lucan's hatred of Paladins, especially marr followers, is well documented, and Cristanos feels the same way especailly about Tunarian paladins.

Conjy and Necro is historical. the War of the Plagues pretty much means no SK and Necro in Qeynos. (despite Bellengere's desires) as to say freeport and neriak...well..Cristanos is a firm supporter of Necromancy. the Spurned guild was pretty much dismantled after Naythanox's death, and he was the only support the conjies had in neriak. Freeport is the Foci's choice. Lucan demands strength over variety. he'd rather have an army with 2 types of fighters in it then 3, provided those two can outshine the third guy. Necromancy was considered the 'more powerful' of the summoner schools, and thus they booted the conjies out. they did the same with the Illusionists, until Opal lost her position as Foci. her replacement allows for illusionists, but still hasn't budged on the conjies. (in fact if you want to delve a bit more into it, you could say Opal kicked out the Illusionists so she'd be the only practioner of that art in Freeport. conversely, you could say the new Foci, who is a necro, is keeping out the conjies so there's less chance someone usurpers them.)

Mystic and Defiler is in the same boat as swash/brig. thier powers and skills are similar, but it's the methodology that defines them. a mystic shows respect, they ask favors of the Truespirit and the Ancestors...they request and help them in return. it's a symbotic relationship. the defiler, well, defiles. they twist, torture, force the Truespirt and the ancestors to thier will. they don't care about the needs or wants of the spiritworld, they are simiply a source of power as far as a defiler is concerned. and it's that methodology that defines and differentiates them. a mystic twisting and torturing spirts isn't a mystic, he's a defiler. a defiler that 'turns over a new leaf' and starts being respectful and working with the spirits, he's not a defiler, he's a mystic.

The only diety that matters is neutral anyway

Would be cheaper to roll on a PvE server, betray and then transfer.

Hmmm OK, ~90% of that went completely over my head since I'm not very familiar with this game's story / lore.

But I think some points I'm able to gather are:

• Necromancy is slightly different than Warlock...ery...ology, because Warlocks only tear open holes to HP Lovecraft nightmare zones and spread horrible cancer and suffering to bad people and no one cares if bad people die of ebola, so Queen Shinythong can just look the other way.
• But Necromancy is actually outright religiously and morally offensive to the "good" alignments of Norrath because it involves directly defiling and recycling dead bodies, and Undeath is considered like... super-extra-unnatural and bad in this lore setting (if I'm getting the right vibe from skimming the Anashti Sul stuff on the wiki).
• Furthermore, Necromancy has a really bad history with "good" cultures since they've been plagued and warred upon by necromancers and their cousins (SKs) for generations.
• Even though the spells and AA lines blatantly indicate over and over that Warlocks are like... totally friends-with-benefits about Bertoxxulous to fuel their powers but uhm... LOOK, BEHIND YOU, AN EXPANSION PACK *dust cloud*
• As far as Conjurors and Evil cities, it sounds like there's no really good reason. It's just a side-effect of Necro being decisively Evil-aligned, because the gameplay system says: "If Necro is evil, it must have an opposite. Necro and Conjo are both pet-focused Mages. Therefore, Conjo must be Necro's opposite. Therefore, Necros that betray to Good must become Conjos. Therefore, Conjos can't be Evil."

So I think it comes down to one of those developer explanations of "It's just weird". Like, "We could open up Necromancers in Qeynos. But it would just feel weird."

Cuz it sounds like you could easily go, if you wanted to:

• "Okay we changed our minds, based on the observation we've been allowing filthy Wizards to practice elemental magic in our evil cities for like... ever, we will now accept Conjurors too. Please make sure to get your hand branded for re-entry when leaving Freeport."
• "Hi, we are a noble band of penitent Necromancers that wish to embrace the concepts in these pamphlets your Qeynos people left on our screen door. We will prove ourselves and use necromancy for Good and try to make amends for our long history of infesting your cities with Swine Flu." and Qeynos is like "OKAY, WE'LL TRY IT, BUT YOU BETTER OBEY YOUR CURFEW AND NO REANIMATED GRANDMAS OR YOU'RE GROUNDED."

I kinda get how Paladin / Shadow Knight is the one that would be really weird though, since those are the 2 super-iconic High Fantasy Good / Evil religious zealots.

Defiler / Mystic sounds kind of like the whole Warlock & Coercer thing... you could easily just go "Well, you're a horrible git who's tormenting the spirit world because you don't know how to say 'please', but hey, you mean well and killed 50 people with Freeport passports on their body, so go sit with the Warlocks."

Kind of like how the "methodology" difference between Illusionist and Coercer is pretty much right in line with your description of Mystic / Defiler ... I mean when you think about it, Coercers are just really creepy in a "No means no!" way. Like, if a Coercer's 'turning a new leaf' and going to be Good™ you'd think they'd stop with the whole "intense violation of personal boundaries" thing.

But maybe the answer again is "It's OK to do whatever questionable / lifetime-of-therapy-inducing things you want, as long as you do it to bad people". : p

Swashbuckler / Brigand sounds totally silly, though. I think that one's literally just because the devs sat down and said "EVERY ARCHETYPE WILL HAVE ONE GOOD / EVIL CLASS SPLIT" and Swash/Brig lost the dice roll. Since like you could also say:

• Dirges make people sad! We have no room for such sadness in Qeynos. EVIL ONLY.
• Assassins poison and murder people by stabbing them in the kidneys while they're sleeping. Sounds like a shining beacon of hope and nobility! No wait. EVIL ONLY.
• three bullet points looks nicer than 2, even though I've run out of Scout classes. EVIL ONLY.

But OK I'm mostly just having fun / slightly being a brat now, I do appreciate you taking the time to try to explain the lore reasons for the split. It really does make a little more sense now. =)