Last week, Sony ordered a mandatory evacuation for the Legends Service, aka Stormhammer, aka The Great Premium Server Experiment of 2002, effective February 1, 2006.

Kytherea, Sony CR Manager:

Dear Legends Subscriber,

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support of EverQuest and the EverQuest community and hope you have enjoyed our Legends service. As of February 1, 2006, however, we will be discontinuing the Legends service.

At this time we have not determined whether Stormhammer will become a standard server or if all current players will move to existing servers at no additional charge to you. We wanted to hear from you before we made a decision and we will be including the Stormhammer community in the upcoming decision making process so be sure to watch for more information on the forums or in-game via messages of the day, broadcasts, or in-game polls.

As a thank you to our loyal members, we are allowing all current Legends subscribers to maintain their seven Veteran Reward benefits regardless of length of subscription.

Effective immediately, your account billing will be labeled “pending status,” which will allow you to choose a new subscription plan. This can be done by logging into the Station Store at https://eqbl.station.sony.com/launchpad/subscription.jsp, and then choosing a new plan. Please be sure to do this prior to January 31, 2006 to ensure your subscription does not lapse.

Thank you for your cooperation with this matter and if you have any questions or concerns regarding your account subscription changes, please contact our accounts and billing department at: 858-537-0898 or go to the following link to chat live with Customer Support (available Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm PST): http://help.station.sony.com/cgi-bin/soe.cfg/php/enduser/live.php You can also visit http://www.station.sony.com/en/services/help/customer.jsp for more support options.

If you would like to submit feedback regarding your Legends experience, please feel free to email your comments to Legendsfeedback@soe.sony.com

Thank you

… and that money train rolls to a stop.

Let’s review for those that were absent.

February 2002, EQ Legends is announced. From a Google cache:

MEDIA ALERT- FEBRUARY 1, 2002

Sony Online Entertainment expands subscription offerings for EverQuest.

Sony Online Entertainment is pleased to announce EverQuest Legends, a new Premium service available for EverQuest subscribers. With over 400,000 monthly subscribers playing EverQuest, SOE is confident that the EverQuest Legends service will appeal to a select group of players who are looking for an incredible new take on the world of Norrath. Some revolutionary features include the ability to track your player’s history, items, and an amazing map of Norrath that allows you to keep track of your location and the location of guild mates. The EverQuest Legends server will be rich in quests, unique weapons and armors that are not available on any other server, hosted by a dedicated and exclusive assembly of GM’s.

For an exciting preview of this service head on over to the following link and reserve your chance to make history as a member of EverQuest Legends.

http://Legends.Everquest.com

This new service is currently priced at $35.99 a month.

Later named the Stormhammer server, the service opened with a bang: Marauder’s Mire, a keyed instance loot farm. Legends only! Haha, poor suckers that can’t afford $40 a month! Excerpted from Absor’s February 2002 newsletter:

The Legends Begin February 22, 2002!

… Stranded by his own evil arts on a small island after his defeat and death, Dulein calls his new home the Marauder’s Mire, where he now rules as a tortured god. However, a brash young pirate seeking the legendary plunder of the lost island has recently disturbed Dulein’s solitude. His anger has opened a permanent gateway to his Mire and unleashed a summons throughout the world so powerful that wherever a pirate has died in Norrath, their spirit would again find their corpse and rise to join Dulein in his new home, razing all that lay in their path.

These server-wide events, plus many more, will culminate in the opening of a brand new zone unique to the Legends Server. Called the Marauder’s Mire, this new land will challenge players of all levels, but they must first discover its location before they may begin seeking the untold pirate’s treasures hidden there!

The Legends events begin February 22, 2002. Get the full story from “Marauders of the Sea: A New History of Piracy in Norrath” and visit the Legends Service homepage to make your mark on EverQuest!

Marauders was later shuttered because it was a gravy train. Seriously, I think that was the reason: loot flowed like gravy. Heh, the real reason was that the named spawns repopped like regular mobs, ergo gravy train, and they never got around to fixing it. I, personally, wasn’t broken up about it because I had to pull the damn zone over and over and over, but those that got to sit on their ass back at camp mourned its passing.

Oh, didn’t I mention that I moved to Stormhammer when it opened? Ya. Two accounts, $40 a month per for almost two years = ALOT.

But lookit what I was getting. In theory. From Absor’s March 2002 newsletter:

EverQuest Legends – Final Registration Spots Open

You still have time to sign up and take part in the dynamic excitement of EverQuest Legends. This new service offers an exclusive and more dynamic EverQuest experience. With a dedicated team of Game Masters and Designers, great adventure awaits you across every zone.

As Legends subscriber, you will also get access to new web-based features, including:

* Your own Legends Character page where you can chronicle your character’s achievements
* A Calendar to keep you up-to-date on events occurring on your server
* An Interactive Atlas that will track the lands you’ve visited and the bind points of your characters
* A place to publish your own creative and heroic stories in the Tales of Adventure
* Brave adventurers are exploring deeper into the Marauder’s Mire, a brand new EverQuest adventure zone exclusive to the Legends server, Stormhammer. Others seek out the new dangers and new treasures of a revamped Temple of Cazic-Thule.

“Last Man Standing” tournaments are being waged in the Arena. The Gnomes of Ak`Anon and the Dwarves of Kaladim have begun butting heads over ancient differences. Undead pirates continue their attempts to invade coastal regions, and heroes of all races and classes strive forth to achieve their goals, making their mark on EverQuest.

Wow. Sounds good in e-print, eh? Reality:

Your own Legends Character page — worked for a few months, then not.

A Calendar to keep you up-to-date on events — worked for a few months, then not. Later, this was converted to a raid mob schedule to force a “Play Nice” system on the guilds. Guilds had to pass Tier Trials by killing test mobs in an arena, more advanced tiers required an actual kill of the raid mob.

Trials had to be scheduled with the GMs (bleh) PLUS, some of the test mobs were buggy and more difficult to kill than the real raid mob. (Fun.) To the GMs’ credit, they’d usually allow guilds to kill the real raid mob instead cuz that was fucked.

Ever the industrious ones, we invented other methods of screwing over rival guilds like reporting them for not killing their scheduled raid mobs within the allotted time frame (thereby knocking them down a tier and OFF THE SCHEDULE for a while — ha!) and killing trigger mobs “accidentally”.

An Interactive Atlas that will track the lands you’ve visited and the bind points of your characters — I don’t think that ever worked. Maps were put in for everyone eventually, even the poor people, so hardly matters.

A place to publish your own creative and heroic stories in the Tales of Adventure — this was renamed: Post that shit on your own blog or your own guild’s forums, kthxbye.

Brave adventurers are exploring deeper into the Marauder’s Mire, a brand new EverQuest adventure zone exclusive to the Legends server, Stormhammer. Others seek out the new dangers and new treasures of a revamped Temple of Cazic-Thule — wee, loot farms! Later, this was “revamped” to … the Stormhammer people can play with the new zones first before the poor people. Later still, this became … we’re tired of doing stuff for Stormhammer.

And all of that has become … we’re tired of Stormhammer, didn’t you notice that about three years ago?