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EverQuest Mercenaries
By Cameron Sorden | August 16, 2008
A few days ago I got an e-mail about the latest EverQuest expansion, Seeds of Destruction. While EverQuest will always be a favorite game, I haven’t played it in months and haven’t really dug into a new expansion since LDoN. When I do get on, I mostly just revisit old haunts and try to play the game I remember instead of the game that’s there. I did the same thing I usually do with new expansion announcements for EQ: mentally add 5-10 levels to the cap and hit the “archive” button on my Gmail.
While reading blogs this morning though, I noticed something interesting in Tipa’s post: EQ is adding mercenaries that you can hire in place of players, a la Guild Wars. Tipa’s skeptical of how good they’ll be:
They are adding Guild wars-style hirelings in case you need someone for your group. This can work out one of two ways. Either the hirelings are awesome, removing the need to find a real human for their spot and removing the need for clerics outside of raids entirely; or they are weaker than players and useless. Guild Wars does it th first way. I expect EQ will be going with the second/ Shrouded characters are far weaker than the equivalent player; I expect the same for hirelings.
That would be disappointing if they were weaker than equivalent players, considering that the odds of walking into a zone and finding anyone to group with you (let alone a full group) in EQ is close to nil.
One thing I find myself wondering is how effective they’ll be even at full power. The mercenary they show in the video at the website is a healer, which I imagine functions a lot like the veteran AA servant that follows you and heals. But how well can a mercenary tank or enchanter perform their job? How do you tell a wizard when to AoE and when to direct nuke? How does a shaman know when to switch from DoTs to heals? EverQuest is a fairly complex game with no built-in player AI system.
It will be interesting to see how they pull this off.
Topics: Massively Multiplayer |
August 16th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
EQ’s pop isn’t THAT bad…
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:21 pm
The new mercs are INCREDIBLE. You must try them.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Interesting. I might have to sometime.