The One and the Many

The Killing of Kerafyrm the Sleeper

Disclaimer: I wasn't present at these events, and the information I have is primarily from old forum posts.

My purpose in writing this post is to give credit to the Taiwanese/Chinese players who first killed The Sleeper. Usual accounts mention the guilds on the North American server Rallos Zek as being the first, and that seems unfair.

Background

I used to play EverQuest. During the Velious expansion there was a famous boss encounter called The Sleeper, also known as Kerafyrm. In the game's lore, Kerafyrm was a prismatic dragon, a child of a forbidden union between two dragonflights. He was very powerful and had gone mad, so the other dragons sealed him away in a dungeon. Four dragons kept him asleep and guarded him. Killing these four dragon keepers woke him up, and he was not happy.

The encounter was famous for a few reasons:

Most servers ended up waking him up and seeing him go on his rampage, and that was that. However a small number kept him asleep. He was still asleep on at least two North American servers: Rallos Zek, a PVP server, and Al'Kabor, a server for Mac users.

Videos showing the dungeon Sleeper's Tomb and Sleeper: one, two.

Attempts on his life

The first attempt that showed he could be killed was on a Taiwanese/Chinese server by the guild Peace of Formosa [2] [4] [5]. (Formosa is an old name for Taiwan). They released a video showing Kerafyrm reaching 15% HP, at which point the warders respawned and they wiped. They conjectured that a GM intervened to stop them, as these dragons should not have respawned so quickly. Apparently they were not offered a second attempt like the later North American players were.

The next serious attempt on Sleeper was by the group of guilds on Rallos Zek. They got Kerafyrm to 26% HP when he despawned. They pointed fingers at GMs trying to maintain Sleeper being unkillable, or possible bugs. After players complained, SOE apologized and respawned Sleeper in his sleeping state.

The first Sleeper kill was by the guild Silent Oracle on the Taiwanese/Chinese server King of Thieves [4] [5] [12] [13]. The proof of this is a post in the thread [5] linking to Chinese forums and a screenshot, and a thread about it on a Chinese forum [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]. These posts are all before the Rallos Zek kill.

The second Sleeper kill was by the same group of guilds on Rallos Zek. After the GMs respawned Sleeper for them, they used the same tactics to finish the job. Screenshot. This one is widely considered to be the first Sleeper kill, but that is incorrect.

I think Peace of Formosa deserves a lot of credit. Normally in MMORPGs the only thing that matters is the first people who successfully do something. Almost doesn't cut it. In the case of The Sleeper though I think that the first near kill was crucial and a major achievement.

Everyone had long ago accepted the idea that The Sleeper was an unkillable killing machine and there was no point even seriously fighting him. No other server had made any progress in denting him. Then along comes Peace of Formosa who showed the world that they could do the impossible.

It's quite likely Peace of Formosa triggered both the Silent Oracle and Rallos Zek kills. Evidence for this: You can find forum posts about Peace of Formosa, along with their video, before the Rallos Zek players ever made their first attempt. It is also interesting that Peace of Formosa originally played on Rallos Zek, so the details of their success likely reached Rallos Zek that way as well.

Controversial aspects of the Taiwanese/Chinese fights

There is some controversy even if you accept that these Taiwanese/Chinese players had the first Sleeper kill.

Condensed timeline

Peace of Formosa video

In the video there are 3 subtitles present:

References

Excerpts from the references

Many of these links will probably go away over time. We've already lost a lot. Here I'll excerpt parts I feel especially relevant from my references.

"I have a friends in my guild that know a lot of the people on this little event. The Avatars spawned and the raid wiped. 15%... uggg... hence the adds later. very real.

Another thing, The video does not show it, but they were fighting Sleeper for better than an hour, i dont know exact time, but it was a very long drawn out event." [2]

"I am not on the traditional Chinese server nor was I at the fight but I can read Chinese so here are some background info. The server is only enabled up to Velious, there are no AAs and 60+ spells, lv60 is still the limit. The advantages they did have were Veksar, revamped Droga, and other revamped zones with all the gears. A lot of the players used to play English EQ so there were no shortage of experienced players. Another thing that may have helped them was the resist change. After the change I think some mobs that were unslowable previously can be slowed, i.e. Emperior Ssra. The guild in question, Peace of Formosa managed to land slow on Sleeper, from that point on they pretty much rez zerged Sleeper down to 15% then server GMs repoped the 4 warders and wiped everyone out." [2]

"The guild in question, Peace of Formosa managed to land slow on Sleeper, from that point on they pretty much rez zerged Sleeper down to 15% then server GMs repoped the 4 warders and wiped everyone out." [2]

"http://www.gamania.com.hk/everquest/event031106.asp

Gamania is the company that runs traditional Chinese servers. The above link is their promotion for Shadow of Luclin. The release date is 11/25/2003 and they are accepting pre-order now." [2]

"OK, I saw the screen shots and read the whole thread about it. It was indeed been done in a Chinese server on Chinese time November 17th (US time November 16th so that is a bit earlier than here) and there were only 60 players from one guild in the raid. The method they used was just using clerics to rezz from afar. A lot of people died 5 times or more -- some were killed by single hits of 20k each. The sleeper was indeed weaker than US/EU servers.

After the event, in 4 Chinese servers, 2 are now updated to the 'awaken' status since the sleepers have been awaken (there was one attempt 2 months ago from another server which failed with the sleeper at 94% hp), the other two are still in the original status.

There are rumours that Taiwan would have been the first to kill the sleeper but a GM summoned a dragon when the sleeper had been downed to 15% and wiped out the whole team. (F !!!!)" [4]

"It happened in a server in Taiwan just 2 days ago. A guild named Peace of Formosa try to wake up Sleeper. They didn't plan to kill sleeper , but ready to be killed by it However, they found that Sleeper could be slowed , so they decided to try killing it. They didn't use MTT , all cle abandon heal , only crazy rez and buff, they found it worked ! People number always remained at 60+ . After 1 hr fight, Sleeper's HP down to 15% , and 4 warders reborned at that moment , so they wiped...

Yon can watch the wmv filme below." [5]

"Yes , there are 2 EQ servers in Taiwan. 1 sleeper has been awaken by PoF in 1 server There is a Sleeper which sleeps in another server, since they know 4 warders will pop when Sleeper 15% HP, they get another chance to try again in another server.." [5]

"SAN DIEGO, CA and SEOUL, KOREA - January 23, 2002 - Sony Online Entertainment Inc., a worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online gaming, and NCsoft™ Corp., the world's largest independent online game company, announced today a strategic partnership to bring EverQuest® to the burgeoning Asian market. As part of the agreement, NCsoft will host EverQuest on its game servers in Korea, maintain a robust customer service department and work with SOE on marketing initiatives focused on the Korean market. The two companies expect the game to be available during the summer of 2002 and plan to bring the service to other Asian territories including Taiwan and Hong Kong in the future. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. " [5]

"Well , the situation was not like Sunar1 said. They kill 4 warders to make Sleeper spawn, bcz they want to fight it legally , so they called GM to watch this fight from the beginning to the end. If Sunar1 were correct , 4 warder woulden't pop at the same time and place where raid force was when sleeper 13% hp.

But I agree , there must be something wrong with this TW Sleeper , might be mob bug or nerf something.." [5]

"EQ server in China killed Sleeper

pofbbs.ematch.com.tw/bbs/...12&ID=3472 www.eqzone.com.cn/bbs/att...stid=40715

well, it's hard to say sleeper is unkillable, isn't it ? " [5]

"On September 10, 2007, Rashere confirmed on the official Everquest forums that Kerafyrm was bugged at the time of his kill.

I can confirm the sleeper's regen one. Whether by pure coincidence or great planning, the zek attack on the Sleeper took place after a patch that broke NPC regen, causing them to regen at a far lower rate than they would normally. The sleeper's normal regen makes him essentially unkillable." [6]

"oh and def a RZ fan, Hidden power, Peace of Formosa... and there was one other level 20's PK guild I cant remember the name of..." [7]

"There was one guild that tried before the Rallos Zek event. "Conquest" I'm sure you'll remember the mass hysteria that ensued." [8]

"Before the awakening of Kerafyrm (the Sleeper) in EQ, a guild named Conquest made an attempt on the final warder hoping to awaken the Sleeper. Unfortunately, by all accounts they used some exploitation of the z-axis, the difference between being on land and being in water, and the affects that those have on monster summoning to deal a majority of damage and/or develop huge amounts of aggro on the MT without ever taking damage in return.I'm not sure the details of it were ever really cleared up, but the guild was dissolved, all members were suspended, and IIRC a few were banned.

The kicker to the story is that a GM showed up in the middle of the exploit and tried to stop it but inadvertantly set off the awakening of the Sleeper script. Unfortunately for Verant, the script hadn't yet been finished. So instead of a Prismatic dragon, out pops this giant human model that starts rampaging around the zone. The Sleeper script triggers effects in several different zones when it is working correctly. But in this instance it only half-ass triggered some of the effects and ended up being a black eye for Verant. Pretty much proving that they were releasing expansions that were nowhere near complete.

It was quite the talk of the EQ community for awhile." [9]

"The Sleeper was originally freed by a relatively small force from the guild Fires of Heaven on the Veeshan server, at which point the script did not work and the world-event did not occur. In reaction, the zone was revamped for difficulty and content and it was some time before the Sleeper event was again defeated." [11]

"The guild Blood of the Spider on The Rathe server was the first guild system-wide to kill the revamped Ventani (the fourth warder) on July 28, 2001, and therefore wake the sleeper. The event caused a stir on the server when Kerafyrm went into multiple zones, including Skyshrine, killing everyone and everything in his path." [11]

"Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2003 10:44 am

Kerafyrm, the first story many people get told while stepping into Everquest, the sum of all dreams to the Norrath, the lore of invincibility, now meet its Epilogue.

One group of Honor dared to enter his tomb and challenge his holding power. the Silent Oracle, Raiding with theme at the forefront.

We fought long, we fought hard. We were choosed and blessed to meet the very end.

Kerafrym down, by Silent Oracle, Vel Gear. Everquest China. King of thieves Server." [16]

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