Guild awakens 22-year-old dragon in an MMORPG – upsets the entire server

On May 14, 2022By Garmin Philip

On a private server for the MMORPG Everquest, a guild has made a momentous decision: they have awakened a dragon. But that is frowned upon, because it changes the whole MMORPG and takes content out of the game forever.

What kind of server is this?

On the 3 year old fan server, “Project 1999 Green”, an Everquest is played as the MMORPG was in 2000. Everything on the server should be “hardcore”, you can’t buy anything with microtransactions – the tough rules of the past apply.
Instead of the 28 current expansions to Everquest, there are only the first two expansions on Project Green – these were only installed after the release of the server, which was in October 2019. The second Everquest expansion “Scars of Velious” was only released in July 2021 and brought the ominous dragon Kerafyrm.
Incidentally, the 1st expansion “Ruins of Kunark” is considered one of the best MMO expansions of all time.

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A sleeper who must not be awakened or he is gone forever

What kind of dragon is that? The early Everquest is different than MMORPGs are thought of today: Today MMORPGs should be as fair and accessible as possible. Everyone should be able to enjoy the same gaming experience. Therefore, MMORPGs are strictly regulated and standardized: like portioned packages.

That wasn’t the case then. Back then, MMORPG were adventures in which somehow everything seemed possible:

In December 2000, the expansion EverQuest: The Scars of Velious was released, which was supposed to bring extremely strong monsters into the MMORPG, which is known for its extremely strong monsters.
The hardest dungeon in the expansion was Sleeper’s Tomb, a level 60-75 dungeon.
The idea was that there were 4 guardians in the dungeon keeping a giant dragon “the sleeper” in its sleep. Players could regularly kill the 4 guardians for their loot. They respawn after a strict timer, as was common in Everquest back then.

This dragon “Kerafyrm” is said to be the most powerful being in Norrath at all. It was created from the mating of two dragons of different elemental species, which is actually strictly forbidden.

Despite his godlike power, Kerafrym is also completely insane, slaying other dragons that stand in his way. Yes, he is such an abomination that the other dragons decided he needed to be kept under control.

Since it is strictly forbidden among dragons to kill other dragons, after a huge battle he was put into a permanent sleep: 4 guardians watch over his sleep.

Only when the Guardians are defeated does Kerafyrm awaken (via wiki.project1999). But you really want to avoid that.

After WoW Classic you now play the MMORPG Everquest as it was in 1999

What’s so bad about that? The problem is, once the sleeper is awakened, a one-time event kicks in that irreversibly changes the server:

The dragon runs amok because he’s totally insane. He kills everything in his path. In the history of Everquest, only once has it been possible to stop the dragon and kill it.
After that, the sleeper disappears forever.
The 4 guards who were supposed to keep him asleep never appear again afterwards – their coveted loot has disappeared from the game.

That’s why it’s always been frowned upon in Everquest to be selfish and kill the dragon.

Decision to wake the dragon splits guild and server

This was the discussion on the server: As reported by the PC Gamer site, a hardcore guild had control over the spawns of the Guardians on the server for a long time: they had a monopoly on the dragons (via pcgamer.com).

But another guild competed with them and also started farming the dragons.

Apparently a discussion broke out internally in the dominant guild as to whether this should be ended now to wake up the sleeper. The guild was also divided over the decision:

Some wanted to wake the sleeper right away. Also, so that you can do something else again than just concentrating on the loot of the guards
Others wanted to let the dragon sleep forever, seeing no reason to wake it up and piss off the whole server. Because waking them up would deprive everyone else of the chance to kill the guards. One or the other may also have been missing an item from the guards.

Eventually some of the guild members got fed up and took matters into their own hands and organized a raid to end the dragon thing once and for all.

This was stopped at the last minute by the guild leadership by changing passwords and intervening harshly.

Nevertheless, after this action it was clear that the dragon would be awakened. Either planned or unplanned. So the guild took a vote on whether or not to wake the dragon and decided to do it in a one-time event.

According to PC Gamer, more than 100 players got together and went into battle in mid-April 2022, joking and celebrating. They made a big event out of it and woke the dragon:

Rest of server sabotages kill of sleeper

What happened then? Well, the dragon went berserk, ran amok, and killed everyone in his path.

The guild asked the whole server to gather to kill the dragon. But the other guilds didn’t even think about how PC Gamer writes. On the contrary: Out of sheer anger at the selfish guild, they even actively worked to ensure that the sleeper survived and escaped.

So an attempt to stop the dragon was thwarted. If you look at the video, it was quite a lag fest, with dead bodies everywhere. But the streamer “LevelUpLarry” had his fun: