John L'Otter was truly as restless as Don L'Républicain. As a result, he started swimming and/or drifting for a free MMO to sate his thirst/hunger/both. Of course, he could have settled for Neverwinter. But after what happened for 5 years in a row, that'd be going back to square one. After all, there's a reason why John bailed out on stuff like TERA, Rift, League Of Angels 3, and Path Of Exile (seriously, that one had to be the most insane MMO John ever played). Going back to any of these would be no different from going back to Neverwinter. Simply put, maybe, JUST maybe, John would find it easier to rein himself in if it's a brand new game since the pressure to continue from where he last left off wouldn't be there. Seriously, John was truly as wrong as the Don.
So why the post title? Long story short, John decided to try out Everquest. Not Everquest but Everquest 2. Quite obviously, this had nothing to do with the Daybreakers. Otherwise, John would have already tried Star Trek Online since it's done by the same studio responsible for Neverwinter.
Funnily enough, the first time John came across Everquest was during an era where the internet was being owned by noisy modems and 3rd world connectivity by today's standards. If John recalls it correctly, that was at a Popular bookstore. You'd imagine seeing only books there. Today, we're seeing this.
The reality for John more than 10 years ago, however, was this.
Yes, this is the theme of Sol Badass aka the Freddy Mercury of Japanese anime.
To learn, one must die
Funnily enough, the first time John came across Everquest was during an era where the internet was being owned by noisy modems and 3rd world connectivity by today's standards. If John recalls it correctly, that was at a Popular bookstore. You'd imagine seeing only books there. Today, we're seeing this.
The reality for John more than 10 years ago, however, was this.
When Everquest came out, it was 1999. When John L'Otter saw elven cleavage, Everquest 2 had yet to say hi. Because John didn't want to spend N hours trying to work things out by dying N times while satisfying his inner fantasy geek (must have been caused by the Singaporean education system), he felt that the first game featuring a set of elven boobs wasn't for him. The feedback he got was that you'll have to be as hardcore as the protagonist of Full Metal Melayu to weather all the challenging stuff there. Because John had to decline the role of Rahmat Rempit, the next best option would be the second game featuring... well, the same set of things. Apologies to every Rahmat, Bin Rahmat, and Binte Rahmat for the Rahmat Rempit joke. If you're not a Malay, then you don't have to know who is Mat Rempit.
How Daybreak makes its $$$
Before John gets started on Everquest 2, allow him to analyse how Daybreak makes its USD apart from converting the Russian ruble to American greenback. Seriously, 2016 was truly a political supernova in ways more than one.
If there's anything John noticed about both DC Universe Online and Everquest 2, it'd be that they're running on a similar revenue model. Now it must be noted that before the Daybreakers made another DC universe (seriously, you think only Marvel and Nasu Kinoko were good at doing a multiverse?), Everquest 1 and 2 were already done and released. Not by the Daybreakers but SONE. Unrelated to a SONE, SONE refers to Sony Online Entertainment. However, as of 2015, SONE no longer existed. This was due to those big kahunas at Sony Interactive Entertainment deciding to sell the studio. Apparently, they prefer Tifa to an unnamed elven mage.
Okay, the history lesson is over and now back to the present. When it comes to making $$$ in the F2P industry, unpleasant decisions may have to be made. And when John said unpleasant, he's not referring to this because this is called an act of stupid behaviour, not unpleasant. Neither is he referring to this because this is called an act of criminal behaviour. When John said unpleasant, it means making decisions that could risk either angering the fans or making people questioning whether the big kahunas upstairs were smoking weed during meetings. While you can say it's a Trumpish hyperbole, the fact remains that the Daybreakers pulled off a risky move that could have ended like Jeff Hardy throwing himself onto a table. That actually happened a lot whenever the Dudley Boyz or Edge and Christian were involved in the fight.
The intuitive approach would be giving the gamers the freedom to choose whether and how much to spend. The Daybreakers chose to go the other direction. Namely, choosing between whether or how much. In DCUO, the rule is very simple: If you want to get more gameplay content, pay. Otherwise, you can only play like half of the content available. For Everquest 2, the law was more lenient as in paid content comes in the form of bonus aspects of the gameplay rather than the content itself. Stuff like pets/familiars and mercenaries are now under the paid category. Visual customisation is also paid content. Arguably the greatest bummer of them all? Transfer of characters from one server to another. This is very notable because unless your characters are on the same server, they can't share bank slots. Either that, the same starting city, or both. Given what John deduced from the Daybreakers' aggressive revenue model, he wouldn't be surprised if bank sharing is certified paid content.
The Daybreakers were nothing short of counter-intuitive. Instead of assuming casual gamers willing to pay to play, it's possible they assumed the other way around. Namely, gamers beyond the casual category are the ones who pay to play. It's not that difficult to understand this logic once you realise people paid to play Final Fantasy 7 for a reason. If you're a casual gamer, chances were that you're not going to spend time and money watching Aerith die. If you want to see the most shocking moment of the game, there's the internet. And then there's also YouTube. But if you're a gamer beyond the casual category, you don't need to be a hardcore gamer to play this.
Of course, it must be pointed out that those guilty gears at Grinding Gear never gave a damn to casual gamers dying in order to learn. Talk about forcing casual gamers to fight like a Sol Badass.
Yes, this is the theme of Sol Badass aka the Freddy Mercury of Japanese anime.
To learn, one must die
Thankfully, the reality in Norrath was that death merely means a literal respawn. This isn't a Deadpool joke. Try interacting with an NPC on the relevant info and you'll see. This info may or may not be available at New Halas, though. John is currently running two characters for the sake of bank sharing. Turned out that only a female Human Berserker resembling a wee bit like Emilia Clarke as in her Daenerys look was given the info. This was at Queen's Colony fyi btw. The Half-elf Fury wasn't that lucky. Then again, the info was most likely for show unless you want to know something about XP debt and revival sickness.
Learning stuff in Everquest 2 is never about relying on dummy proof tutorials. 15 years ago when this game came out, the developers most likely never believed in childproof and padded learning. This is NOT to say modern day MMOs are for idiots. Rather, times change and people change. Ever wonder why a hero could become a jailbird?
If you want to know how gamers find ways to get past fights, quests, and bosses to get the best possible loot 15 years ago, you have no choice but to play their own game(s). Expecting them to play your game(s) 15 years later from 2004 means you're most likely going to be laughed at. In the comedian Brad Upton's own logic, they played with guns, knives, and fireworks while the dumb ones didn't make it. In fact, it's unbelievable that Everquest 2 is still surviving since 2004. Not surprisingly, Everquest 2 (and Everquest 1) had to make certain tweaks in order to stay relevant. Originally going by the paid subscription format, one could say that World of Warcraft changed the MMO industry in ways more than one. Who'd have imagined during 2004 that the F2P industry would end up playing the upstart?
If you want to know how gamers find ways to get past fights, quests, and bosses to get the best possible loot 15 years ago, you have no choice but to play their own game(s). Expecting them to play your game(s) 15 years later from 2004 means you're most likely going to be laughed at. In the comedian Brad Upton's own logic, they played with guns, knives, and fireworks while the dumb ones didn't make it. In fact, it's unbelievable that Everquest 2 is still surviving since 2004. Not surprisingly, Everquest 2 (and Everquest 1) had to make certain tweaks in order to stay relevant. Originally going by the paid subscription format, one could say that World of Warcraft changed the MMO industry in ways more than one. Who'd have imagined during 2004 that the F2P industry would end up playing the upstart?
To lower your frequency of #respawnlol, you must know what you're doing. You can't just do a half-baked move set and expect to have a decently easy time. Know what your moves can do for the next step, be it healing, buffing, controlling, and attacking. If one whole row of moves can confuse you, then settle for a two-move strategy where you can have something stable to work from. A classic example of this would be the Berserker, Emilia Clarke or no Emilia Clarke. But if you think John's main is female Human Berserker resembling a real-life Khaleesi, you're wrong. Using a Fury can be an enjoyable learning experience, if not sometimes a frustrating one.
If you're running as a fighter build, mana drain isn't much of an issue. In fact, it's quite likely that power cooldown for fighters tends to be longer than the caster type. This would explain why using a Fury felt very different from using a Berserker. But hey, that's how we learn both in real life and gaming. No one likes making mistakes unless said mistake is no mistake at all. The second part happened to be a very common argument made by lawyers, politicians, and everyone else in the world by the way. We always make mistakes. no matter what, how, when, and where. In Everquest 2, making mistakes can easily result in debt, sickness, and damaged gear. If this isn't an incentive for people to start learning via hard knocks, John doesn't know what else is.
Slot in the wrong move? Then die>respawn>restart.
High mana usage frequency in battle? Then die>respawn>restart
Not defensively good enough? That depends.
Not wanting/learning to use your Heroic Opportunity? Seriously, you really have to. It took a bit of messing around with a Berserker alt to realise this. Thankfully, fighters are the most robust ones in any battle, Khaleesi or no Khaleesi. John wouldn't have said this had he not create an alt for fun and bank sharing.
Sounds good, but will it work?
Thankfully, there's nothing much for John to focus on for DCUO. This means there's a chance of him doing DCUO dailies/weeklies twice per week with Everquest being played twice a day as well. At the very most, three days per game. And besides, there's a need to clear the tier 1 crafting stuff.
P.S: Gonna try a stunt to see whether it's possible to... well, you can watch this space. John really needs to say something about Heroic Opportunities. And it's really very important.
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