One of the last long-running MMORPGs to survive Blizzard’s near monopolization of the industry via World of Warcraft is Daybreak studios’ Everquest II. Daybreak recently announced on the official Everquest II forums their intention to implement what can be called a “prison” server.
According to the forum post, “players who are caught breaking our rules and disrupting EQ2 live server gameplay will be flagged for this server, and no others — ever. Characters on these accounts will be copied to Drunder (the ‘prison server’) and can never leave or transfer to another server.” And while Drunder is specifically for the rule-breakers and ne’er-do-wells, other players will be allowed to request a transfer into this special server.
Players interested in transferring over voluntarily should take heed, however. As stated in the forum post, “You won’t be able to move individual characters to this server, while maintaining characters from the same account on another server. This is a ONE-WAY trip for an entire account forever.”
Also stated was that accounts stuck in Drunder will not be able to utilize the customer support services offered by the company, technical or otherwise, and definitely will not be allowed to transfer off the server on that particular account ever.
In this context, however, “ever” may be a poor choice of words. According to Daybreak,
This is a server our Customer Service Game Masters have requested over the years in order to manage disruptive players. They will determine who goes there. As gamers, we recognize there are some players who like to step outside our rules…As [stated], this is an experiment. We wanted to see what happens given it’s not a very common option.
Note that the original text did not have that last sentence in bold, that was done for emphasis in this piece alone. The point is, none of this is set in stone forever, yet, nor might it ever be. This whole change is an experiment by Daybreak and it may turn out to be a poor decision that they withdraw in the end. Only time will tell.
If you’ve never played it or would like to return to the world of Everquest II, you can register here.