I love progression servers. What I don’t love is how they immediately become a place for bots and armies of bots. I don’t mind if people box one or two characters, but when you’re botting (ie: using 3rd party programs to play the characters for you and to synchronize casting / attacks) 10+ characters it becomes a bit crazy for other players, especially when you’re on a progression server trying to recapture the essence of how the game was 15 years ago. I know there’s a difference between boxing and botting, and it’s mostly botting that becomes a hindrance, but regardless, Daybreak has decided to try to thwart these issues by releasing a “true box progression server“. They’re not going to prevent you from boxing if you really want to do it, but you will have to use a different setup than normal. You’ll only be able to play on one EverQuest account from your computer.
Other changes will also be implemented on this server including raid instancing, and content that unlocks every 90 days rather than by a vote. Daybreak’s goal is to encourage people to make friends, form groups, and to join guilds – this was all key back when EverQuest was first starting out (back in the days before mercenary and bot armies).
Will I be playing? I’m not sure. I have wanted to game but haven’t been able to settle down lately, which is proving to be an annoyance. I have a lot of ‘stuff’ going on in real life which I’m sure is the reason that I haven’t been doing a lot of gaming and I haven’t managed to settle down with a single game for years now. I miss those days and have even thought about challenging myself to stick with just one MMO for X number of months (single player don’t count) but I doubt very much I could manage.
When does this new progression server release? The server should go live December 9th – and you do have to have an All Access Membership in order to play on Phinigel as it’s being called. I believe my all access goes until July, so who knows, maybe you’ll find me there after all.