f13.net

If an old-school UO emu gets a bloody thread then an official SOE-run progression server deserves one as well. : )

As per the thread title, SOE is launching another time-locked progression server for EQ. It's going to be named after the best suicidal gnoll NPC in the game, and it looks like SOE is actually trying a little this time - maybe they're annoyed with the P99 people 'stealing their players' or something. They're making a bunch of changes to try and revert as much as possible to old-school EQ (OOC-regen won't be unlocked until the relevant expansion, no beastlords or furries until Luclin, no scalies until Velious, no freebie newbie armour, jewellery/alchemy back to original skills, etc. etc.). So it's as close as SOE is ever going to get to a genuine P99-style retro-emu-server.

SOE is also trying to drag ex-players back: If you have an inactive EQ account (cancelled, not banned) - you've got free playtime until Februiary 21st.



(And I'm probably going to log in, go "Oh yeah, that's why I quit" and log out again. Just like the last progression server :awesome_for_real: )

They kinda lost me at the 'revamped zones will be in their current form' part.  If I could go back and screw around in the original Cazic Thule, Freeport, Plane of Hate - yes, with all its crazy bugginess - and especially the Plane of Mischief, they'd get some more money out of me, even if I didn't stick around for too long.  The last time I tried going back that's at least one of the reasons I got bored and quit again - I couldn't go back to some of the old places I really loved, cause they had been revamped.

Funny thing - as much as the revamp zones are graphically superior to the originals, I think they look far worse.  The original style at least is familiar and draws me in through nostalgia if nothing else, unlike the revamped appearance.

Only the zones with new geometry (Freeport) will be post-revamp. Everything that's just a "same zone, new mobs"-style revamp should have the original zone until the revamp is 'due'. That's what the "Alternate data" bit means. So new Freeport, but original CT, PoH/PoM, etc.

I wonder why.  I know for a fact that the geometry for the old zones still exists, as of last year, at least, if I remember right.  A friend managed to bind in old North Ro, and gating still took her there, and other than being inaccessible, the zone and all its creatures were still present.  Still, if Mischief is going to be old Mischief...maybe I'll need to go check it out after all.

Edit: Admittedly, the timing is pretty bad right now.  Especially with Dragon Age 2 coming up, I also want to check out Rift and see if I like it, etc.  Still, if once I'm done with DA2 the progression server hasn't advanced at an exceedingly fast pace or something, it might be worth checking out just to revisit Mischief and Hate and such, and maybe get some Rubicite and Manastones.   :grin:

You've ruined your progression, you'll not ruin mine.

Presumably the server stays up longer than Fippy did, right?   :awesome_for_real:

Wow, if I had nothing to do, this might be amusing to try, just for kicks.

As is...who has time for this anymore? :grin:

Also, no idea what class I would even play...rogue was impossible to solo with.

So it goes up the same day as OB Rift starts...hmmm.   

EQ Solo = Necro.

Necro, Druid, Mages and to a lesser extent Shadow Knights early on.   Wizards and Enchanters got pretty good at it, too.

Really, anything with plenty of ranged attacks seemed to do ok after those hellish 20s & 30s.

I am only moderately ashamed to admit that I will be taking a hit off this nostalgia pipe.

Mages (revamped pets) will be invincible, monks (revamped unarmed damage table) and necros (revamped pets) nearly so, and all other casters (revamped spells + spell-per-level progression + focus items) right behind.  

I'll be playing.  I actually co-led a major guild on one of the last two progression servers and continued once they were merged.  Getting back together with the same group to do it all over again, but honestly, if it wasn't for them I wouldn't do it.  I just know that it'll fit my playtime (reasonable) and preferences (no poopsocking) perfectly.

Where do you get the no poopsocking from?  While I haven't done a heap of research about whats in and out (I haven't played EQ since 2003, so I am very out of the loop for what is in these days), stuff like


Says to me that they're trying for the poopsock 1999 version, with staring at spellbooks and 5-10 minute downtime between fights.  What am I missing?

To the best of my knowledge, I've never had an EQ account (certainly never played it) but got the e-mail anyway.  Maybe it's just going out to everyone with an SoE account?

I got the email the other day, and decided to it a whirl for old times sake.   :awesome_for_real: :oh_i_see: :ye_gods:

Playing EQ for an hour, or two, really makes me appreciate WoW, Rifts, et all, and all the little quality-of-life things that they have added throughout the years since EQ.

It's funny, I went back to Project 1999 after playing WoW and Rift, and instead I realized how much I hate about the new school MMORPGs. 

 :roflcopter: :roll:

So wait, why don't they just call this a Masochist Nostalgia server? Because it sounds to me like slamming my nuts in a car door and thinking about that time a hot girl kicked me in the chao sack during high school.

True story:  I was playing EQ very causally in the beginning.   While my friends were out raiding the planes, I was happy to farm up spider silks and wisps from Kerra Isle.  When the patch hit that broke the boats, I was camped on Kerra Isle.  There were no translocators and I didn't know anyone to come get me.  It took four RL days for my petition to go through to move me from that zone.  Ahhh, the fond memories. 

Well, at least I know now not to play a Ranger...

Last I played EQ, our rangers were affectionately known as the corpse brigade. We had one fight (I think it was a dragon in Temple of Veeshan) where a ranger lived through the whole fight and it was cause for celebration.   I don't think this was uncommon for the class, either.

Uhm, was it Cazic-Thule?  The God who would death touch 1 person on the pull - so one person always died?  - We would always send in a particular ranger, because they were going to die anyway.

Who thought it was a good idea to be certain that 1 person out of your raid group would always die and spend 5-10 minutes watching everyone else have fun?

Uh, they didn't.  They immediately got ressed and rebuffed.  Any DT fight you usually had at least one cleric assigned to res/rebuff duty.  Well honestly on almost any fight you usually had at least one cleric assigned to res/rebuff duty, but especially on fights with death touch.  I, at least, never saw a raid that just let the death touch eater sit there dead for the entire fight.

I'm sure it wasn't CT, because I never did CT.  VT, Ssra Temple, Giants in the giant city, stuff in the caverns on Luclin and early planes are all I raided.  I stopped shortly before my guild went on to do that Paladin God.. Mith-Mar? Ro?  I had a coworker who was doing the Rathe Council at the time I was doing that stuff, though. 

The dragons in VT had some sort of wacky aggro thing with a ranged attack, from what I remember the rangers telling me.  Their bow attacks would get the dragons shooting something at them that would kill them. That was.. hm.. almost 8 years ago now so I'm probably forgetting specifics. Wow, time's flown.   

RANGER DOWN!

The Rangers I knew hated that :awesome_for_real:

The Fippy progression server is pointless. If you want the oldschool EQ experience, Project 1999 (http://www.project1999.org) delivers it including the old zones, working boats, the old UI, hell levels, workable player population and none of SOE's "we couldn't revert fully to oldschool" excuses.

That isn't a list of reasons why a progression server is pointless, it's a list of reasons why I'd never play on the Project 1999 server.


Because I choose not to, and so does the guild I co-led on Sleeper/Combine.  EQ can be fun without playing for 12+ hour stretches.  No, there won't be any staring at spellbooks, and when did you play EQ having to wait 5 - 10 minutes between fights?  I'm not happy about the no OOC regen thing, so I agree with you there; we had it on Sleeper/Combine and I liked it.  Improved spells, spell progressions, monk hand to hand damage, pet revamps, etc are all being kept along with changes to mitigation over time.  In fact, pcs even respawn with their gear rather than having to retrieve all of their stuff on corpse runs, thankfully.

The last time I played on a progression server we raided 2-3 times a week, usually for 2 hour stretches, or 3+ on the weekends if anything good was up, and in terms of the content we were tackling we were second only to the bleeding edge that lived online.

I remember getting vanish (or whatever the improved hide skill was) on my rogue...it was a great day, for I no longer had a good excuse to ever die in groups if I had a chance to fire it.

There was some raid, middling plane stuff perhaps. Some fight where if people start dying, hardcore skeletons start spawning from their corpses. We had a full 50+ person raid or whatever totally wipe...except for me. I got to stand there and stare at a stack of 50+ lvl 70 skeletons while everyone screamed for me to run away. They eventually de-popped, and I started dragging corpses.

Oh corpse runs...couldn't solo for shit, but at least I could almost always get a corpse back for someone.

I also loved the day that I figured out that running+strafing was slightly faster than just running, and could actually outrun mobs that way. Many a train was dragged to a zone line when that was figured out. Or that damn ice spider down in the caverns in Velious. Has a tank drop so we all started to run. I managed to drag everything back to the dwarf outpost, where I panicked and jumped up on some ledge...the only ledge, it turns out, that mobs cannot get to you. Shit ran in circles trying to get to me, until the guards worked them down.

Good times.

Shei Vinitras.  The mob that zergs you back, x4.  For each person that dies, 4 skeletons spawn.  This includes pets.  This includes swarm pets, when they had those in.  I think I went once when some mage or something clicked his swarm pet button.  It was an instant wipe.

1999 and 2000, quad-kiting Walruses in Velious or killing the Druids in Karanas.  Kill 4, you're OOM then the mana bar took about 5 mins to fill up.  Those were the pre-KEI days.

Oh, soloing...fuck that noise.  :awesome_for_real:

My wizard would quad spectres at the tower, then I'd go lift weights in the next room for a few reps while waiting on mana.  Rinse, repeat.  I actually worked out pretty well.  Best arms I've had in life were playing EQ... as odd as that is.

Ah, I see.  I never really solo'd much so my mileage definitely varied.

I survived an epic run on City of Mist when almost the entire rest of the raid wiped.

How?

I fell asleep while auto-following the enchanter. One of the only times pre PoP that I survived a raid the whole way through.

If my memory isn't playing tricks on me, I believe it took my Druid 16 minutes to go from 0 to full mana while quad kiting the dwarves in Butcherblock in the 40s.

I had the same kind of routine. Sometimes I'd change it up with smoking pot and playing guitar. Or reading a book. It had a certain zen quality to it, but it would drive me absolutely insane now that I'm used to actually playing games while I'm playing games.

My favorite raid was plane of hate, I made a 45 minute beer run and really didn't miss anything (had my buddy over playing his wizard at the pc next to mine who would move me if needed).

Tried out p99 last night, surprising amount of people around. After doing two corpse runs I promptly logged out for the night. I'll play again even with rose tinted glasses, there's just something about the game that pulls me back in. It hits some cord with me of a good group/community effort vs the harsh cruel world.

It took me 5mins to remember you had to "hail" NPC's  :oh_i_see:

p99 has a quite sizeable community. I have heard anecdotally that if your guild wants to progress on the server, you need to give the guy that runs it money (take that with a grain of salt). He is also rabidly anti-box to the point that you can only have one character logged in per IP address (can't play with your roomate if you NAT).



EZ Server is where it is at. Takes out the absolutely retarded mechanics of EQ that no one uses anymore (specifically level loss and having to go loot your own corpse). Also has some other major changes. But old school EQ progression it is not. Heh.

Unless a LOT has changed in the last 90 days or so, that's just not true. The raiding guilds bicker amongst each other sicne they all feel entitled to everything and the GMs get pissed at having to deal with drama they don't want to deal with, but no money is involved. As for no boxing, that is true but exceptions are made for people who prove to have multiple people playing from the same IP. For the most part the server is pretty good about not having a lot of people botting and abusing that rule, and if caught the privilege is supposedly removed.

Overall, P99 is a really good place. Small enough community to not be over populated and making pve suck ass due to lack of fights, but large enough to find groups/raids/etc and make it feel populated for now. Come RoK and SoV I don't know how that will work out, but during vanilla eq it has been good.

As for EZ server, those can be some fun. I like running 6 chars at once and tearing through some content from time to time. If only I had more than 1 comp/monitor/kb/mouse to make it a bit easier.

I actually find that post offensive, a bit like everything they added to EQ after Velious :)

Fippy is full, second server being brought up "tomorrow at the latest".

I logged into a regular server for a bit... lots of nostalgia... I'd play but there's no way I'm paying $15/month for EQ1. Their idiots for not making it F2P, and I don't mean like EQ2 extended (which is the worst piece of garbage I've ever seen) They should bring up a progression server and everything from the original EQ1 should be F2P... then charge for the expansions and new classes/zones. They'd make bank. But since SOE's business model has revolved around alienating as many customers as possible as often as possible, I doubt it will ever happen.

God I'd forgotten what a rats maze Neriak is. I thought they'd revamped the place but I guess it was just Nektulos.

Nope, they only revamped it for EQ2.   Neriak was pretty easy to get your mind around, it was Qeynos and the maze around Halla that always fucked me over.

Shit, I forgot that game didn't have maps.  No way in hell I'm doing games without maps ever again.

It's funny the things I've pushed aside in my memory. Like having a folder of maps printed out that I kept next to my computer to figure out where the hell I was going in EQ. Now I don't just want maps, I want maps with the EQ2Maps plugin so I know right where I'm going for quests. And the old school people can die in a giant testicle vise.

EQ nostalgia on a live server lasts about as long as this server's namesake.

It has maps.

I'm going to play. Love it or hate it, and a lot of times, dear God, I hated it, EverQuest dungeon runs seemed like the most intense affairs I've had in gaming. Unrest, in particular, has a lot of really great memories for me as far as being challenged in a MMO. Strange that a stupid lowbie dungeon would get that nod, but it was essentially PvP... you're fighting not only against monsters, but against everyone else's stupidity.

I don't know if I could ever get back into EQ again. I logged in and my old mains were still there on Cazic. Logged in my BL and ran around for a few minutes for the fun of it. Then logged back to the start screen, chose the new progression server, rolled up a DE mage, played for about an hour and managed to get halfway to level 2  :uhrr:. I kept waiting for a ding that wouldn't come. I just don't think I have the time and/or patience for EQ anymore. Not at $15 a month at any rate. As big a world as EQ is, I think they could stand to lessen the downtime and up the XP gain by a few factors without the fear of people blowing through content. It's just too fecking slow by today's standards. It was fun 10 years ago. It's not fun now.

It's funny what that Ding! will do to a person.  I'd wager that if they took the level cap from 50 to 1000 and scaled the stats up incrementally so that Ding! happened much more frequently but players were exactly as powerful at the respective level, they would retain more players. 

The power of the Ding! compels. 

EQ1 had the best ding sound ever. To this day, hearing it gives me the chills.

I'll agree with that.   I remember hearing it on some TV show years later where the character was playing an online game and still getting a little giddy.

Heh, it would always scare the crap out of me when it would go off and then I would become elated that I was now slightly more powerful. It was like someone jumping out of the shadows yelling 'BOO!' but then giving you a big warm hug and blowjob.

You should probably play on a normal server then.  :grin:
(The two progression servers have a slower xp curve and the out-of-combat mana/hp regen system disabled. Deliberately so, as it's supposed to be as close to '99-era EQ as possible).

Low-level XP is brutally slow, much slower than EQ originally was.  Apparently, they added some very low cap on xp per kill, but it's functionally waived for groups.  So if you try to level 1-5 beating up skeletons and froglok tads solo (like everyone did in 1999), you'll level much slower than you did in 99.  Hundreds of kills per level.  If you group and zerg the shit out of the noob zone, you level much faster.  Hell, my level 5 guy soloing the same mobs got more xp per kill when he was grouped with 4 boxed characters doing nothing at all than he did when killing them solo.

Anyway, I quit at level 7.  Made it to 60 last progression server, but just not feeling the love anymore. 

Ok, that makes sense. It seemed way slower than I remembered but I haven't played in forever so I figured it was just going from the Ferrari (WoW) to the Model T (EQ) that was making things seem so slow. :)

Fixed that for ya.

I did that for some time. These days, I can't believe that I did.

Both this and the UO shard thread are interesting insights into what was once considered fun.  :grin:

Learning about those changes to solo exp has really turned me off of playing this again even after I get the stuff that's got my immediate attention out of the way.

That Project 1999 server sounds like it would be fun except for that apparent restriction on multiboxing, too. 

Yes, those sound like contradictory complaints.  I like soloing when I want to zone out and grind some exp.  I like running around with two or three multiboxed characters when I want to challenge myself with something difficult to take down that simply can't be soloed for various reasons.  So Bard/Cleric/Tank (I've used a warrior, shadowknight and paladin at various times) is a nice combo for that sort of thing.  CoH shenanigans (before they nerfed it) were also fun when I could bring along a mage.  I was one of those people who had the login info for half of my friends, so I could access pretty much any class I needed.

And I still say that one of my favorite things about EQ was its slow combat pace, that allowed me to relax enough that a marathon session chainpulling mobs for hours and hours on end was kind of a zen experience where I'd just fall into a perfect pattern of clearing every mob within pull range to the point where I was pulling right as they respawned without even thinking about it too much. 

It's also kind of funny to me that people complained about bard twisting being rough, when most games today require more button presses per minute than playing a bard ever did.  In WoW some classes are expected to activate something once every GCD, which is 1.5 seconds (sometimes even less) while a bard had to press buttons every 3 to 3.5 seconds in order to keep up a 4-song twist.

We haven't even gotten into the loveliness of killstealing/ true ninja looting.

Nowadays people get all bitchy if you tag a mob they were moving towards, or looking at.. or considering killing.   In ye old EQ days, he who did the most damage won the loot.  What's that, you just got the rare 6 hour spawn with your quest item to pop?  Too bad me and my 3 friends are all DPS and you're by yourself.  Thanks for waiting around for it, though, and better luck with the next spawn.

Unlocked corpses = REAL ninja looting.  Oh hey, you're struggling to fight off those spawns that all came at once in that dungeon camp you've been at for the last 3 hours?  My stealthy rogue just happened to be walking by and saw all those corpses lying around with nobody looting them while your group was occupied. Thanks for the plat and the rare weapon drop!

Oh, speaking of rogues, here's another one.  EQ mobs originally decided their loot table when they spawned, not upon death.   Also, there was no alternate loot table for stealing, so rogue pick-pocketing took plat from the group or was able to go around stealing quest items off of mobs until they got flagged "no steal."  (This was a direct hold-over from the CIRCLE and ROM MUDs EQ stole much of its combat so heavily from.)   I recall many a rogue in my guilds chuckling about having stolen the Hill Giant heads and half the plat off of giants when others were camping them.

Permanently locked corpses is still one of the things that pisses me off to no end about newer games.  At least in EQ, if there's a drop someone you know wants and they aren't there, you can still call them over to get it since the corpses are only locked to their killers for a certain period of time (I think it was like 30 seconds originally, then upped some time later).  I don't know if WoW was the first to do it or not, but it seems like every game since then, if you weren't present at the moment the monster dies, you can never loot the item, and if there's a nodrop item on that corpse, too bad, it's rotting even if none of the people who can loot it want it. 

The other loot thing that EQ did right in my opinion, until they started trying to copy WoW's quest system, was that you didn't have to be 'on' a quest to get a quest drop.  I found more quests that way that I just kinda went along and completed because I killed a mob, it dropped a thing, and I had to figure out what to do with the thing.  For some things it makes sense.  You're not gonna cut the head off something you kill unless you know there's a bounty for it.  For other things the 'you have to be on the quest' method makes absolutely no sense.  Like for pretty much anything the guy you just killed is carrying.  You're telling me I skin rats for their pelts and collect the claws of the dodo birds I kill, but I didn't bother to go through that guy's pockets and find some object of significance just because nobody specifically told me to get it?

I think the rogue thing was changed pretty early on - not sure which expansion it was in, might've been pre-Kunark, or even as late as Velious - to have rogues pickpocket from a separate pool of cash and loot.  In a way I preferred the original method (and no, I never played a rogue past like level 5) cause it makes more sense.  99% of the time if you ask me whether to go with what makes sense or what's convenient for the player, I'll come down on the 'makes sense' side.

As for killstealing...ahh, yes.  In a way I miss that to a certain degree.  I remember a sort of epic fight that built up over Zordak Ragefire once that I was personally involved in.  This was during the Skyfire era, when it was a week long spawn, and I had been helping a cleric friend camp the spawn all week (most guilds pretty much respected that on our server, that if the cleric had been sitting there all week, it was pretty much her dragon - as long as she could form up a raid within like 15 minutes of it spawning, at least).  Some group wasn't respecting that though, and it spawned at an odd time when there weren't a lot of people online in either of our guilds, so it kinda turned into a race to see who felt ready to activate him first, and then they tried to outdamage us.  I still recall frantically logging on like six characters across my two computers, every high-DPS character I had access to, in order to get the kill.  And of course, the Velious Age of fighting over dragons that had First Brood Talismans sometimes came down to a DPS race on Klandicar or Zlandicar.

The competition of the Velious Age was something I loved at the time, too.  Don't know if I'd still feel the same way...part of me thinks I would.  Many an early morning patrolling the Western Wastes and Dragon Necropolis between 4-8 AM, waiting for Klandicar, Zlandicar, or Sontalak to pop so I could get on the phone and start calling people to get them out of bed so we could kill the damn dragon before the other high-end guild on the server did.

Ah, but then bards always had the best tools for both griefing and wreaking vengeance on others who griefed you.  In the Planar Age some group stole my group's miniboss in Bastion of Thunder, and I waited for the opportune time, then used Song of Highsun.  Gate him back to his spawn point, and a lot of the time NPC's would regen half their health or more during a gate (it was kind of unreliable, sometimes they'd gate and regain full health, other times it wouldn't regen them at all) and he did, and he also picked up a dozen or so friends and obliterated them with a train.  Those who were smart always knew enough never to fuck with a bard.  Although I was one of the nice ones, I rarely intentionally trained anyone that hadn't done something to me, first.  Then again, I distinctly remember de-leveling some guy that really pissed me off once, with how many times I killed him.  I don't remember what he did to anger me so, but I do remember he didn't get his corpse back by the time I had to log off.

Eh, I think the rogue pickpocketing from general loot was still active up through LDoN; I specifically remember skimming from the group's pull. I had 2 modded Steins of Moggok and offered to do all the loot selling to get the highest value. (Hey, I was poor as shit in that game)

Also, stealing DF belts as a lowbie was fun. :awesome_for_real:

DIKU, too.  "c 'locate object'"  <yoink>

I stole so much stuff with my thief.  Well, when I didn't just stomp on the mob.  Though a lot of gear loaded equipped so stealing it wasn't an option.  I kind of miss mobs using what they had.

Seriously. It's called Project 1999. Nobody multiboxed at that time. And if you need that to experience fun on an otherwise retro server, you don't understand anything at all.

The whole fun of EQ was trying to game the system. Seems like it's not koyasaha that doesn't understand.

I've been playing the progression server since the second one opened. It has a 3 month lockout for expansions (If I am not incorrect) and there are already level 50's on the server. Barring that, it's not a bad place to be, stinks of old world EQ where banded armor went for 2131212PP a pop, and blackburrow was still a hot spot.

It's also terribly amusing to watch the nuEQ players bitch, moan, and complain about how it's hard to play with an untwinked (insert class here).

Pic from a friend in Project 1999 - see the realisation dawn on player Zarix that it doesn't hold your hand like nuEQ/WoW ...

(http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/9533/gfaychat.jpg)

Tale:

I giggled a little.

Okay, I lied.

I giggled a lot.

The whiny ones never cease.

Oh man, that's awesome. I need to fire up the 'doze machine and get back into the old girl just fir the lulz.

Prancing, Ceridon, Tiemas, Dagnabit are why EQ is a good game. 

Playing project 1999 is a welcome relief from playing WoW simply because it has a community and everyone isn't perfectly self-sustainable.  I like being able to log in, /who all zone, and be able to recognize half of the people in the zone.  WoW LFD with a non-stop stream of random douchebags is less enjoyable than camping a room with good, fun players you've grouped with before.  Of course, this is lower level when there is less catassery going on, but hey, don't kill my buzz man.

Amen to that whole thing. You get a gold star.

So when's a bat country starting on project 1999  :why_so_serious:

Now that I'll agree to.  One of the most fun things ever was giving loot to your pet and watching it rip things to shreds.

  I had an enchanter friend in the early days of Luclin who had entirely too much money.  (Probably because she and her husband 4-boxed almost 19 hours a day)   She used to give those longswords that were the big upgrade for normal people at the time to her pets, because they'd get 3-4 a day.  Those pets turned into little death machines.  I'd just sit there soaking up xp in their group, occasionally tossing a heal on the pet or her husband's warrior or nuking.  (Their group was Enchanter, Warrior, Bard, Shaman)

I played a Magician for the longest time so I'm the poor sap who had to keep up Dragon faction for CoH. The best pet related incident was an Enchanter friend asking for a full set of pet items (swords/armor/belt) while he was in Crushbone. Ended up charming Dvinn and wandering around for an hour after handing him all the set items. He forgot about the items when he let Dvinn charm go and zoned.

That poor camp in throne room, it was a blood bath.

Oooh, yeah buffs on NPCs.  I remember many a story of folks charming then giving items to Sergent Slate, buffing him to hell and back and then letting him go at the tunnel.

I really wish I could recapture the feel of early EQ. I remember being up in the Throne Room in CB, having the pull go wrong and needing to run away...so I jumped out the window and made my way to the tunnel successfully.

As harsh as the game was...there were parts that I loved and wish I could relive. Like a buddy and me trying to go through Kithicor as newbs, not knowing that the zone turns nasty at night. We started seeing badass skeletons, so we hid in a house as stuff wandered about outside until dawn. Good Times.  :awesome_for_real:

... while your train chased you to the zoneline along its path, then walked back to its area along the same path after you zoned, aggroing on all the other people fighting lesser orcs along the way, causing mass death in the zone. Jumping out the throne room window and zoning was the classic way to cause a mass naked lineup at the zoneline. Fleeing for your life like that was a thrill though!

A friend i met in the original EQ talked me into trying this.  I made an iksar monk since the lizards were the only race that didn't look laughable.  I did three levels of angry birds in the time it took my lvl 1 monk to kill one rat.  Uninstalled.

Hey, at least I called my trains!  :grin:

Could be worse, could be KC.

Never delved all that deep into KC, so I don't have much experience with trains there. :why_so_serious:

Buffing every guard in Nektulos Forest with See Invis was fun with my little dark elf enchanter.  People would run through there invis a lot to get to Lavastorm, but after I did a round of see invis buffing I'd always see a few more corpses on the ground.

Various other 'buff the NPC' shenanigans were fun too, especially in zones where I had good faction but most people didn't, like the live side of Lower Guk.  Having unusual factions was one of my favorite things.  I remember being incredibly careful in Halls of Honor to never, ever take a faction hit there on one character.  I don't remember if there were any hostile mobs in the zone if you'd never taken a faction hit.  I do clearly remember that in the raid zone where you kill Mithaniel Marr, none of the NPC's were hostile because of that.

Factions are something I'd like to see more of in games.  I had all kinds of crazy factions maxed in SWG, and Fallen Earth is the only other game I can think of than these two which had them in the last decade.

Karnor's was one of those dungeons that had two zone points, one on the left and one on the right. The one on the right was supposed to be used as an entrance and the left as an exit. And if you had to make a bee-line for the zone you were expected to use the left (and of course call train). There'd always be somebody though who would train the zone to the right so that groups who were either zoning in or getting their shit together would get their faces eaten off before they knew what happened. I think one of the Planes had a similar setup (PoJ maybe?). Always made for some interesting times.

It was PoJ. You could always tell the noobs in KC because their corpses were strewn about the left. Or outside as drolvarg fodder.

Man, if it wasn't for the regular nutkicking, I'd love to play EQ again.

You know, I'm still tempted. I have no idea why. Goddamned nostalgia.

I played a little bit on it a year or two ago. Only problem was there weren't many low levels to group with (or I was never on when everyone else was). I'd be up for it I can remember my login info. I remember I had to change it at one point as the main EQEmu site got hacked and everyone's account info was compromised. Might just have to re-register anyways as I doubt they've kept my account around.

Me too. I liked that Velious thing where the giant/dwarf/dragon cities could either be scary dungeons or friendly quest hubs/banking areas depending on which factions you raised.

Yeah, proper factions - not the pale shadow that more recent games have - is something I really would like to see again.  Even EQ moved generally away from such a stance from Planes of Power onward.  Velious was the best done example of factions I've ever seen, and Luclin would have been great except for the whole thing where it wound up being redone halfway through development.  But in Planes of Power they started making clear delineations of 'these are the friendly NPCs that you can't hurt, and those are the enemies' and there was no crossover.  The Halls of Honor comments I made earlier?  While you could maintain good faction with Mithaniel Marr by never killing anything in HoH, there was nothing you could DO with that faction.

I think any modern MMO could easily implement factions in a fun and comprehensive manner, so it strikes me as odd that no one has ever even tried, as far as I know.  I'm not even sure what Vanguard's history with that is, since when I tried to play I never really got the feel for it and never got out of the newbie zone.

Velious's main issue was poor endgame balance though.  There was no giant version of NToV or Sleeper's Tomb - if you wanted the most uber endgame zones, you had to screw up your dragon faction (or go through ridiculous shenanigans to keep it, like I did).

Man, I remember that. After working really hard at getting max dragon faction and enjoying walking through TOV unmolested, the guild said, "hey! we're gonna start raiding TOV! Time to kill some dragons!"

Going back and forth between Veeshan and Kael and doing random cons.... those were the days.

Rolled a monk named Mujin and a necro named Caviglia on p1999. Not sure I'll be able to overcome the arcane interface, the primitive graphics don't bother me much, though. The sounds are hilarious, it's funny how deeply rooted in the brain sounds become. Just casting my necro shield spell or hearing the cackle of a skeleton brought back so many memories.

But the UI, ye gods how did we ever put up with that mess? 6 abilities on-screen? Hah.

Hilarious to see the string of corpses through Qeynos.

A lot of those were likely mine... I forgot about being a necro and some NPCs not liking that much. 

Either that or they were bards who forgot to turn one of their songs off (forget which one it was but it was an aoe spell that if it hit the guards...well, you better hope you had a sow.)

A good half of them were erudite, and one was still wearing a blue or purple robe. I just go dark elf with my necro, so at least I'm loved in my hometown. Also, dark elves rulez! My highest level guy in EQ was a dark elf necro, loved the class until I became a mana cleric. Our old trio was wizard/druid/necro.

Bards have no need of SoW!  Selo's FTW!

Shit.. the idea of playing a Bard might just get me to try this out.  Damnit.

The thread's definitely tugging on some nostalgia strings, but then I recall sitting on my ass for hours waiting on quest mobs to spawn and the shame and regret burn away all the nostalgia.

I only seriously played rogues, so... :oh_i_see:

I don't enjoy the thought of having nowhere else to really go at one point but the orc hills in HHP, and the goblins under HHK. Or at one point having to find groups to hunt City of Mist, for lack of better hunting grounds. :uhrr:

yeah, seriously. Sitting waiting for my monk's health to regen at level two...that's enough nostalgia for me.

hmmmm all the nostalgia.

My last attempt to return to EQ was a gnome necro.   I got him to lvl 18 or so then managed to die in a really stupid spot.   After umpteen attempts to recover my corpse I logged and forgot about the game.  2 weeks or so later I logged in and my corpse was gone (had forgotten about that part).  Petitioned a GM to get my corpse back, and was told too bad so sad, but here is some lvl 5 starter crap.

I had bought gold (yes yes shame on me) so that my little guy could be Ubar! and all of that stuff was now gone for good.  /uninstal   

My fault for letting it rot, but that was enough nostalgia for me.  For every great memory of EQ1 I have there is another horrid memory of say begging for someone to bind you in Freeport and dying before that happened (ganked by a high lvl dark elf)... then *poof* back in Quenos with a long long run ahead of me  :heartbreak:  /shudder.

I started playing P1999 the other day and quickly remembered just how much original EQ sucked and why I never went back after finally quitting.  I gave the EZmode server at EQEMU a try instead. It's still a horrible interface with stuff that makes me want to scream in frustration, but being level 19 after only 2 hours of playing AND having a 1.0 Epic and armor drops off of lowbie monsters made it much more entertaining.   Lets you get the nostalgia trip of running around in old zones with none of the "Oh shit, I'm going to die and lose everything" pain.

But I never did die and lose everything. Neither did anyone else who played the game better than the people who died and lost everything. It's like a PvP mentality - some people like the challenge of survival with a cruel extra threat level, other people hate it. Each to their own.

Re the interface - I find SOE's modern EQ1 interface nightmarish. I can't even get used to the revamped spell gems. But there are links in the P1999 setup thread to put everything back the way it was in say, Velious era 2001 (the days when people were using TKing's mods etc). Obviously it's not going to work like WoW, but if you were accustomed to it back then, it's quite workable now.

In other news, they launched Kunark in P1999, with some fairly well-handled GM events to celebrate. I don't think they care what anyone thinks - those devs just have a passion for doing everything as it used to be. However, inflation on the server is out of control and there's a RMT black market. On their messageboard, they ban any trading except in plat, but it's clearly being converted to cash by some of the people on the board. The downside of emulating EQ as it used to be is that everyone knows the farming exploits and the RMT demand in advance...

I probably should have done that when I did my trip down Nostalgia Blvd.

But then again, maybe it's better I did p1999 and had my nostalgia utterly crushed. Closure is a good thing.

same with me for p1999.  I was playing it a fair amount, even with my old Prima Guides.  But it's too much.

I had similar nostalgia a year back for EQ, even fully remembering that it sucked ass (but oh the hilarious shenanigans you guys talked about.  Like giving items to pets, buffing guards, trains, etc.  Oh, and getting raped by Kithicor forest at night).  I played a random Emu server where they started you out with full epic armor and other buffs (like fast mana regen).  After getting over the horrific interface, it was fun to go back and explore the world again, blasting my way through zones and leveling up very very fast.  Thats how you guys should do it.  Its fun to go back and see area's you never had a chance to because you were to low level, or your groups could never make it past a certain point in a dungeon because they kept getting wiped by stupid shit.

The server went down though, and I lost my progress at about level 25, so I stopped.  Might try it again though to see if I can explore more.  I suggest making a druid, since you can teleport around, nuke things fast, and use sow.

I think my favorite memory from EQ was when Ysheka (sp?) opened. I remember being one of the first to find the Stonebrunt Mountains. Made the mad SoW dash through the kobold tunnels madly trying to evade trains of mobs and actually to my surprise finding the zone line alive. I then spent the next 10-15 levels out there with my druid. I'd bring back blue wicker armor presents for my guild mates and friends. Loved that zone, kiting apes, snakes, pandas and a few elites. And when I was big and bad enough, I'd rape the kobolds for their bevies and the guild would drink for free. And there was that one strange cave in the zone that looked like it should have eventually led to something (had two boulders that you had to squeeze between) but I don't think was ever used. EQ had a bunch of weird little areas that looked like something cool should have happened there but nothing was ever used. Remember that one little underground throne room near the Iksar city and arena? Had a dragon themed throne and looked like something big and badass should have been down there but AFAIK it was always just an empty curiosity. I remember creeping down those stairs with great trepidation thinking something surely was going to eat my face. Nada.

If it made sense that once people knew this rogue's had a really hard time finding groups then I guess that's ok. It was changed really early though, way before rogues got the dps and agro avoidance they had in Kunark and they weren't much use to a group anyway but the cash they could steal was seriously noticeable and when people were poor like most were in those early days, rogues just looked like a complete loss as a group mate. As you may have noticed, they didn't solo worth a crap which meant they were pretty well fucked.

As it was the damage was already done and it took quite a while for people to catch on that rogues couldn't steal money from their group anymore and they started to get groups again.

The last line in that chat is what we've most lost since EQ1 imo. Later games the offers to help are very few and far between. If he'd done that in Wow all he'd get would be mocking derision. Oh, and called a noob.

sow plz