OS X Everquest on the Mac shutting down - Nov 18, 2013

[SilentPanda]

Not that anybody here likely plays but... yeah...

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...macintosh-edition-sunset-announcement.204508/

After much review and consideration, we have made the decision to sunset EverQuest Mac (EQ Mac). EQ Mac was originally scheduled to sunset in early 2012, but we kept the game up and running following the passionate feedback received from the community. As we align development resources towards our upcoming slate of games, we cannot justify the resources required to continue to support EQ Mac. The remaining EverQuest titles (EverQuest, EverQuest II, EverQuest Next and EverQuest Next Landmark) will not be affected by this closure. We appreciate all of your contributions over the years and hope to see you in other EQ games.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is scheduled to sunset EverQuest: Macintosh Edition on November 18, 2013. No new accounts will be allowed to play EverQuest: Macintosh Edition as of October 18, 2013.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

This is very sad news. I wish they would keep it going. There are still people who play and love the old game as it once was. They may be a small group but it cannot cost much to run one server for them and for the most part it seems like they'd gladly return to a subscription basis to keep it open.

 

[ravenvii]

I wonder what it's like to be there at the "sunset" of a MMORPG. It is in many ways like being present at the end of the world. Do they usually end it with fanfare? Or is it just one moment you're running somewhere like always and the next you're looking at a "disconnected from server" dialog?

 

[SilentPanda]

Depends on the MMO. But some let the game masters be a little more liberal near the end and do silly things like summon a bunch of monsters in the center of town since you're not really impeding progress when the game server is in the last hours of life.

 

[Solomani]

I wonder what it's like to be there at the "sunset" of a MMORPG. It is in many ways like being present at the end of the world. Do they usually end it with fanfare? Or is it just one moment you're running somewhere like always and the next you're looking at a "disconnected from server" dialog?

Never stayed when a "sunset" happened. But I made many friends playing EQ1 (I played it on PC). I met a few of them (guild mates) in person (we had lunch, nothing fancy). I also had a few on my hate-list. Just like the real world, you end up meeting online people whom you like as well as those you loathe.

For those that did play long enough to be part of a community (e.g. a tight-knit guild, etc) then its obvious that the "sunset" would be a very sad thing.

Have any of you ever gone to college and actually had fun during your college/university years? You made lots of close friends? You were close to your roommates, etc. You did memorable events, occasions, and parties? And then one day, you all realize that it's "the end". It's graduation day. College is over (unless you opted to go to grad school). Time to move on to the next phase. Yes. It's sad in that way.

My sympathies to the EQ Mac players.

----------

This is very sad news. I wish they would keep it going. There are still people who play and love the old game as it once was. They may be a small group but it cannot cost much to run one server for them and for the most part it seems like they'd gladly return to a subscription basis to keep it open.

EQ1 is mostly a free-to-play game (with a bit of freemium content). There is little financial incentive for SOE to keep the servers operating.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

EQ1 is mostly a free-to-play game (with a bit of freemium content). There is little financial incentive for SOE to keep the servers operating.

Yes I know which was why I mentioned users being willing to pay for it with a monthly subscription vs. play for free. On the game's official forum people were offering to pay for it if SOE would just keep the server running and I believe there is just one single server involved here.

Unfortunately, that probably isn't enough and it is going away for real this time.

I'm having fun with WoW now but sometimes I still miss good old EQ. I spent a lot of years there on the PC side also.

I do feel very sorry for the folks who were playing EQ Mac. I read one post on the EQ Mac forum where a guy was talking about how his guild was progressing through Planes of Power content and pleading with them not to shut down the server. It takes a lot of people working together to raid that content in nothing but old school, probably Luclin gear. That has to really hurt to be cut off from doing that together for them.

I was around for the sunset of Asheron's Call 2 and that was a sad time. It was a really good game but it never took off sadly. Everyone at the time stuck with AC1 and not many new people came to AC2. Interestingly, they are now resurrecting AC2 and it is in beta, playable for free for those with AC1 subscriptions. The original Asheron's Call is still up and running after all this time. I think it is very cool they are bringing back AC2.

 

[Solomani]

I spent a good deal of money back in the 2000s paying monthly subscriptions to EQ1, then SWG, then WoW. I'm not mad about having to pay for the games. They were fun games, and I could have opted to quit any month when I was no longer having fun.

These days, the new MMOs are all "free to play", either ad-driven or coaxing you to buy freemium content. I'm skeptical about the viability or longevity of this new model. Not at all surprised that many of these free MMOs are closing down.

Longevity and continuity is a very important factor in these MMORPGs. These games are essentially "virtual worlds", where entire clans and guilds of people play and socialize together, complete with its own server economy, etc. It takes months to develop a sense of community, months until a player finally "fits in" and belongs to the game. If I were to join another one in the future, I would like to know that the MMO I'm joining will be a supported thriving community and server for many years to come.


P.S. never got my EQ1 epic. My guild was not uber, it was a casual guild rather than an elite "raiding guild". And I never had time to devote to being a full-time Planar raid player. They helped me acquire some nice quest-heavy essential items like my J-boots, but that's about it.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

This talk of EverQuest is making me want to install it and play again.

I remember getting J-boots for my alts. I'd camp them out in Ocean of Tears where the cyclops popped so they could pop in and loot up after my main or monk who was relatively high level also, would kill the rare one with the needed drop. I also did something similar for a Robe of the Oracle drop for my necro alt. I camped him where he needed to be for one drop. The rest which came from various places were tradable so I was able to just farm those with the main. One drop was from a PoP raid zone but my cleric could solo that at the time I was doing this for the necro. The thing was, you could (and I did) kill that raid mob a lot of times before you'd get the needed drop. It must've been very tough trying to do that robe quest back in the day for that reason alone, never mind the difficulty in getting all the other parts. No wonder The Robe of the Oracle was rare and special.

I love going back and revisiting old content. I used to love to farm named in Veksar with my cleric as well. It was a perfect hunting ground for a geared cleric because most of the zone was undead and a lot of times I'd have the place to myself.

By farming stuff and sometimes using the bazaar I acquired many of the iconic twink items and other special things for my EQ characters. I remember farming the mobs with death touch in Plane of Fear for an epic drop for my SK alt as well as to get the Amulet of Necropotence which you may recall allowed you to cast a buff on yourself that would give you a skeleton illusion. I think that thing typically went for 100k or more in the bazaar or maybe it was 300k. I forget now. I used to know the going prices for most things off the top of my head once upon a time. We used my monk against those guys because he had an AA that would allow him to eat at least one deathtouch without dying. So he'd tank it while everybody else was on DPS.

Another time I camped a very cool staff that proc's a root on the mob which I wanted for my beast lord since runners can be a problem for them until they get an AA to deal with them much later. I forget where the heck I got that but it was off a mob called the Herbalist and the staff was called the Herbalist's Spade, which looked like a shovel.

Over the years I think I got one way or another most of the cool twinkage you could get for the alt army. It was a lot of fun. I really should go back and play them. Each one is pretty well set for gear and weapons up to around level 70 or so I think and most of them are fairly low level except the Monk who is around 70 or so I think and the SK is around 50 I think. Everybody else is lower which is great because I love leveling and playing in the old zones.

I did rise with my cleric to be in the number one raid guild on his server and get both his epics, all the appropriate anguish augs he could use, a full set of Frostcrypt raid gear including its special augs and I forget what else. But then I retired to him to have fun with a family guild doing some of the things noted above and more. I also spent time with the alts then, especially the Iksar monk who I liked a lot. I did his epic 1.0 with help from a friend. I also got him a very cool pouch that makes throwing items endlessly. I camped for that doing a quest in a Luclin zone someplace. It is an extremely handy item for pulling mobs so you never need bother buying throwing stuff or running out of it.

I could go on and on. Can you tell? lol

I need to check and see if I could run EQ in a virtual machine with XP or not and have performance be okay. They have upgraded graphics over the years in newer zones and they look very nice too. So I'm not sure if the performance hit would be too much. I hate rebooting but it would be sweet if I could fire it up without needing to.

I also spent quite a lot of time in EverQuest 2 but probably only half as much as the original game if that, which is still quite a lot. Since then I've played and enjoyed to varying degrees DDO, LoTRO and most recently WoW. I've spent lesser amounts of time in other MMOs as well. In the end though, none of them has ever been the magic experience that EverQuest was for so many years. It will always be for me the best game I've ever played. I met and enjoyed spending time with a lot of great people in Norrath too.

 

[Solomani]

In the end though, none of them has ever been the magic experience that EverQuest was for so many years.

Yes. Of course the magical experience that was early-era Everquest cannot be reproduced. Why? Because for RPG nerds, especially those who were familiar with the D&D-type games in their childhood... EQ1 was the very first successful-to-market game that brought the closest multiplayer persistent "Dungeons and Dragons" experience to the gaming masses. And Sony managed to do it years before DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) became an official game.

I still remember early EQ1 when they implemented things like the character Alignments, directly copying from Dungeons and Dragons. Lawful Good paladins, Chaotic Evil dark elves, etc. Of course this was never enforceable (altho the RP servers tried) ... but it gave immense flavor and immersion to the game.

I actually liked the old Alignment system, and the fact that your Good-aligned Wood Elf Ranger character was forbidden from forming a group (adventuring party) with an Evil-aligned Gnome Necromancer or a Troll Warrior.

 

[Miharu]

At some point years ago I really really wanted to play this but I never could get into the game, there were always problems with my account or the game installation or something. Maybe the game was US only? Anyway now it's too late

 

[Huntn]

Where are the bootleg servers?

 

[vatter69]

There is an emulated server, currently goes up to Kunark. Velious is not far away. No 2 boxing allowed and during US prime time about 800 people online, so it's quite fun.

www.project1999.org

It's free - all you need to do is bring your Titanium client. Some/alot people from EQMac are moving over there. Can be played with MAC/Linux/Windows PC. Check out the technical section for help.

 

[MacLC]

Have any of you ever gone to college and actually had fun during your college/university years? You made lots of close friends? You were close to your roommates, etc. You did memorable events, occasions, and parties? And then one day, you all realize that it's "the end". It's graduation day. College is over (unless you opted to go to grad school). Time to move on to the next phase. Yes. It's sad in that way.

My sympathies to the EQ Mac players.

Thanks for putting it in perspective. I never realized how tight and fun some MMO communities could be. I played a few different games but they all seemed to be griefer-dominated, especially freemium games. I just got turned off from the genre altogether.

One question I do have though is, will Mac EQ accounts be transferable to Windows accounts? As in, if you currently play EQ on a Mac, could you use Windows on Bootcamp and continue playing? Or would you have to start over from the beginning? It would seem to make sense for Sony to offer incentives to Mac players to keep p(l)aying EQ one way or another.

 

[Solomani]

At some point years ago I really really wanted to play this but I never could get into the game, there were always problems with my account or the game installation or something. Maybe the game was US only? Anyway now it's too late

Never too late. They are working on EQ Next.... the next generation of Everquest (due possibly in 2014 or 2015). No yet sure if a Mac version is planned, but we can hope it will run fine on Bootcamp.

Addendum: there is a blog at http://eqnextonmac.blogspot.com and they are in official contact with the producers of EQNext. Basically, they are trying to assess how much interest there is in EQNext or OSX. That information, as well as future polling, is being relayed to the EQNext producers, who have said they are considering the Mac port. Head on over to the discussions if you want to add your voice.

http://eqnextonmac.blogspot.com/#!

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/eq-next-for-mac.5093/

 

[MacAlien]

EQMac was on its last leg. They'd originally planned to close the server a year or two ago but kept them opened due to the outcry from that community. And since then, the community there has been having really bad times from hackers exploiters galore. Yeah, it was fun when I played there many years ago for quite a while but things end. I do feel really bad for those who have put so much time into their characters and SOE isn't interested in even trying to help them transfer their characters to PCEQ. So much is broken and think their one Dev is casually part-time so not much gets fixed. It's time for it to be shut down imo.

Far as EQNext, they say they want to support Macs with it but I would not hold my breath too much.

 

[Sandman1969]

I haven't played EverQuest in AGES! I think I somewhere around 2004. Right when WoW came out.

I was there day one, after playing Meridian 59 for a couple years. It was such a magical time. I started as a wood elf (always lean towards elves). and the whole game was such an awesome experience. I remember a friend helping me over to the boat (sitting on the boat for like 20 minutes) to get me to the main laind and once I made it to the big city there I saw all these people casting spells it was so cool.

I played that game soooo much for those 5 years. Getting into the first raids of the old planes was such a rush. One person messing up and not staying against the wall.


After getting married I got my wife to play some, but it became such a time sink. Eventually, we moved onto WOW and had a lot of fun there. Could do more things by yourself.

But it never had the same magic EQ had. Not sure any game will have that again. It was such a new thing at the time.

We quite WOW a few years back and at times debate trying to play again, but so difficult finding the amount of time you need to play those games nowadays with kids and such.