I've decided to dip my toe into the launch of a TLP sever for Everquest.
This is part of my series of posts for that journey. My first post is my notes on differences in How Classic is Classic. Look for the tag "EQ TLP" if you want to find the rest of my posts in this series.
Everquest is wholly owned by Daybreak and Fippy Darkpaw games with whom I have no fiduciary affiliation. All trademarks of the game and server are theirs.
NOTE: I have never claimed to be an expert in anything other than being me. My information here is slanted to my own perceptions and/or biases.Creating a Character (or two)
So, I'm a roleplayer. Not the "thees and thous", never drop character, "prissy" type of roleplayer, but one who plays a character in the world. I also think that because the mechanics of the game is part of the way the world works, that, of course, my character is aware of them and doesn't intentionally hamstring their abilities or other such just in the name of "RP" (said with a holier-than-thou intonation as some stuffy RPers seem to do).
As a roleplayer, I usually create characters will some semblance of a backstory, their personal history before becoming an adventurer or even that continues in the background while they adventure. Sometimes I develop the backstory while creating the character, sometimes with a notion before I start character creation, or a combination of both. There is often some little thing that sparks my little grey cells to begin weaving a tale. Rarely do I create a character without at least a seed of backstory, though some have deeper roots earlier than others. And, I don't always write the backstories down or express them directly while playing. They're for me, for my way to differentiate my "toons" and make them characters. And, I rarely entwine my various alt character's backstories together, i.e. I don't really make "families" of characters, though I have lightly entwined a few beyond just them knowing each other.
Oakwynd will be starting with Truebox which means only one account can be logged on per computer. However, if you have more than one computer, you can have additional accounts logged in at the same location, using the same internet connection for either others in the household to be able to play at the same time or to allow one player to play more than one character. I have two All Access accounts (and one currently F2P) and a few computers in the house for various others reasons (my 'day job' is software testing on routers), so I am intending to have characters on two computers when I am on my own "soloing". I generally don't "box" in groups but I will have two different characters to help fill group roles.
Which comes first?
Which comes first to you to spark a character idea? name, race, class, deity, starting city, or something else?
Name
Some have told me they needed to pivot to a different name when their "usual name" for a character of a class was taken.
I don't know if it's a roleplayer thing or a me thing, but I have only successfully re-used names a couple times and only in variations (for example, Rijacki is my gnome alchemist wizard in EQ2. an Arasai was named for her but without "i"s, so she could be controlled, R'jack, and the control failed and the Arasai is salty she was named for a gnome no matter how 'famous' she was at the time. In Rijacki's backstory, she was named for the bard who saved her brother's life in the calamity. In EQ, I later created a bard named Rijac who will, in her future, be that bard to save Rijacki's brother's life.) Other attempts to use the same or a variation of name ended up with a flat character I eventually abandoned.
But, this time I am starting with a name! I was creating a quickie character to do an item transfer on FV in the Mines and used a name partly created from the random name generator, shortened to 4 characters and modified a little. The name rang in my head, but my attempts to create an actual character with the name just wasn't jelling. Then came the announcement for Oakwynd and my subsequent considering joining the server at launch. That name is the genesis of the first of the two characters, though I might be modifying it slightly from the original inception of the name, as in adding another letter, maybe. I'm still batting that around mentally.
Class and Race
My first thought for a character was a gnome enchanter until I was chatting on Discord with those who could potentially be my guildmates in a month and started to rethink and also started to consider 2-boxing. One of those in the conversation mentioned wanting to eventually have a character of every class on the server because of the Legacy ruleset. That got me to thinking about Legacy, too, and maybe having my characters related this time... I also had started to think about bard instead of enchanter because I really do like playing bard and it seems there are a lot of enchanters intended for TLP launch (with most of them intended to exploit the FTE and other such). With a bard, a wizard or druid would be handy for travel, but I do not relish playing a wizard so much and a druid is a bit of healing, too. Thus.. bard and druid, but what race then? Oh my ghods I am actually considering Human?? I play a human in real life, I generally don't like to play human in games. But, humans cover nearly all the classes for a Legacy family.
There are 14 classes with classic with 2 additional classes added later and more class options for a few races added later as well. Class also governs the type of armor the character can wear: plate, chain, leather, or cloth/silk. Not all races can be all classes, not even in non-TLP. There are 12 player races with classic with 4 more added later.
In Classic:
- Barbarians (extra large humans): Rogue, Warrior, Shaman,
- Dark Elf or Teir'dal: Cleric, Enchanter, Magician, Necromancer, Rogue, Shadow knight, Warrior, and Wizard
- Dwarf: Cleric, Paladin, Rogue, and Warrior
- Erudite: Cleric, Enchant/er, Magician, Necromancer, Rogue, Shadow knight, and Wizard
- Gnome: Cleric, Enchanter, Magician, Necromancer, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard
- Half-elf or Ayr'dal: Bard, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, and Warrior
- Halfling: Cleric, Druid, Rogue, and Warrior
- High Elf or Koada'dal: Bard, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue,and Warrior
- Humans (most versatile): Bard, Cleric, Druid, Enchanter, Magician, Monk, Necromancer, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Shadow knight, Warrior, and Wizard (all classes in Classic except Shaman)
- Ogre: Shadow knight, Shaman, and Warrior
- Troll: Shadow knight, Shaman, and Warrior
- Wood Elf or Feir'dal: Bard, Druid, Ranger, Rogue, and Warrior
Starting City, Deity, Alignment, and Faction
For some races, there is only one city and one alignment. For other races, there is an alignment choice based on deity, even starting in the same city. Humans and half-elves have the most options for starting city which is linked to Deity and Alignment choice. Since TLP characters all start in the original cities for the races and travel is a lot more.. complicated without the Knowledge portals, if you're making characters to start together, having them start close to each other is pretty important. Druids and Wizards start getting group travel spells at 25 for easier passage over the mountains.
There are three continents: Odus, Antonica, and Faydwer.
- The human cities, Qeynos and Freeport, are both on the content of Antonica with Freeport having better travel options for getting to other parts of the continent and to the Faydwer continent. The continent between Qeynos and Freeport is divided by a mountain range with only overland travel through higher level zones. Qeynos is linked by boat to Odus.
- Kelethin (Wood Elves), Ak'anon (Gnomes), Kaladim (Dwarves), and Felwithe (High Elves) are on Faydwer.
- Erudin and Paineel (both Erudite) are on Odus.
- Neriak (Dark Elves), Halas (Barbarians), Rivervale (Halflings), Grobb (Trolls), and Oggok (Ogres) are on Antonica.
Humans can start in one of the Qeynos or Freeport zones for most of the classes with some deity choices for only one of the cities. Human rangers and druids are the exception with both starting in Surefall Glade which is close to Qeynos.
Half elves also have more variety for starting city some of which are predicated as well on deity choice: Qeynos, Freeport, Surefall Glade, Kelethin, and Felwithe all support new half-elf characters.
All other classes have a single city for their starting point.
Legacy
Oakwynd has a Legacy feature for a 10% XP bonus per max level character on the account. This doesn't require the characters be related, just on the same account. However, for a bit of a different roleplay aspect than I have done before, I decided to have most (or all) of my characters be related in some way.
A family of characters: Lore-wise Half-elves are generally human and some variant of elf most commonly wood elf. Lore-wise barbarians were enhanced by Mithaniel Marr from humans.
My Characters
So, where does that leave me in my thinking? To start with, a human bard and human druid, cousins with strawberry blond hair. The bard starting in Qeynos is close enouth to the druid starting in Surefall Glade that it's just a jog for one or the other. Until the druid gets Bind Affinity, there is a soulbinder in Qeynos by the bank but none in Surefall that I have found.
While Qeynos Hills (the zone between them) has bats, rats, gnolls, skellies, beatles, wolves, and bears, there aren't any spiders for silk. I am considering hopping them to Odus to hunt in Toxullia Forest 'cause there are spiders there, but then there are other tradeskill drop critters missing.
I've been doing a bit of trial run on Yelniak mostly to remind myself how to play in pre-PoP and if I can 2-box even marginally. I've also started to build their backstory and relationship 'cause.. I am an RPer. 😋
Later on, I'll likely have a other cousins and family members including a shaman that would be born in Halas.