EQ1 Progression server launches June 28

[raydeen]

Got my newbie mage to level 6 between 3:30a and 11. So far just soloing. Damn it all, EQ is still fun at least in the lower levels and when there's at least 70-90 folks all in the same area. It's fun for me just watching everyone run around madly trying to level. YMMV. What really made me chortle though was checking out Blackburrow for the first time on this server. Bodies. Every. Where. I think most people have forgotten what it's like to be this low and with no twinkage.:D

I will admit I almost quit in disgust about 3 seconds from spawning the first time. The mix of class and deity plopped me somewhere in the Qeynos Catacombs. I had just enough time to say 'Catabombs? Why am I here?". Then 'Uh oh, skeleton after that guy that ran by me'. Then 'Uh oh, skelie saw me'. Then 'Loading. Please Wait...'. I probably blew about 45 minutes trying find my way back to the initial guildmaster (unsuccessful) and finally said fuck it and re-rolled for the upstairs mage position.

[shiznitz]

A guildie posted the following about his first night on The Sleeper server:

Sheesh. What a madhouse. 

I logged on when I got home from work and created Conrath, dark elf enchanter. There are eight to ten of us (family and friends) that are going to try to make a go of this, and I drew the support role this time. I wanted to try something different anyway, as I'm usually a tank or DPS class of some sort, so this works.

Conrath enters the world to discover 62 people in Neriak Commons, almost all of them standing around in the caster guild hall. I turned in my newbie note and got told to go find some enchanter NPC I couldn't find. Hmmm. Logged off until after I got the girls into bed.

Back in-game at around 8:30pmish EST. Still over 50 people in Neriak Commons, so I guess I'll go peek into Nektulos Forest. Neraik Foreign Quarter isn't nearly as crowded - just shy of 40 people - but my graphics card reached out of my case and smacked me when I zoned out into NF. 256 people all running around trying to kill things.

Life, I quickly discover, is brutal. There will be no help. If I got into trouble with a mob, nobody healed me. Nobody stepped in and helped. A half-dozen people did, however, stand around and wait for me to die so they could poach the half-dead mob that just whacked me. It's all very funny. I consider myself somewhat fortunate, though, as a friend and former guildmate tells me there are ~450 people crowded in Greater Faydark and ~300 in Butcherblock Mountains. Eventually I make level 2. Woohoo! 48 more to go! I'm growing up so fast!

My brothers get on - a dark elf magician and a human paladin - so the magician and I head to Freeport. It's a little better here. There are 300ish people in East Commonlands, but only 150 or so in the Freeport newbie yard. We adopt a nearest-taget/nuke hotkey approach and claw our way up to level 3. My bag is full, though, and my dark elf can't sell in Freeport, so I jog back to Neriak. A cracked staff sells for more than 1 whole platinum and I'm on my way to buy new spells. Since it's right around 11:00, I decide to call it a night. Just over two hours to get through the first two levels. Competition for mobs is cutthroat. This could be a long haul.

I cannot deny that I was filled with nostalgia.

[damijin]

I reactivated my account for the Discord server a year or two ago. It was really cool.

I would not reactivate for this, however :o

No PvP on these old-school servers right?

[hal]

It was a lot of fun last night. Just some random thoughts as much has been obsevered allready. I do not remember rubber banding in EQ1. I rubber-ed banded last night like no other game, worse than shadowbane. Greater faydark was totally camped as in every bloody square inch of greater feydark was camped. Yes, compaired to EQ2 or WOW the character poly counts are low. But you know what? There isn't anything wrong with the game play. It's still a fun game. I know to some extent its like playing country music backwards ( You get your wife back, you get your truck back, your dog comes back) but for the moment its entertaining and thats enough for me.

[WayAbvPar]

A guildie posted the following about his first night on The Sleeper server:

Sheesh. What a madhouse. 

I logged on when I got home from work and created Conrath, dark elf enchanter. There are eight to ten of us (family and friends) that are going to try to make a go of this, and I drew the support role this time. I wanted to try something different anyway, as I'm usually a tank or DPS class of some sort, so this works.

Conrath enters the world to discover 62 people in Neriak Commons, almost all of them standing around in the caster guild hall. I turned in my newbie note and got told to go find some enchanter NPC I couldn't find. Hmmm. Logged off until after I got the girls into bed.

Back in-game at around 8:30pmish EST. Still over 50 people in Neriak Commons, so I guess I'll go peek into Nektulos Forest. Neraik Foreign Quarter isn't nearly as crowded - just shy of 40 people - but my graphics card reached out of my case and smacked me when I zoned out into NF. 256 people all running around trying to kill things.

Life, I quickly discover, is brutal. There will be no help. If I got into trouble with a mob, nobody healed me. Nobody stepped in and helped. A half-dozen people did, however, stand around and wait for me to die so they could poach the half-dead mob that just whacked me. It's all very funny. I consider myself somewhat fortunate, though, as a friend and former guildmate tells me there are ~450 people crowded in Greater Faydark and ~300 in Butcherblock Mountains. Eventually I make level 2. Woohoo! 48 more to go! I'm growing up so fast!

My brothers get on - a dark elf magician and a human paladin - so the magician and I head to Freeport. It's a little better here. There are 300ish people in East Commonlands, but only 150 or so in the Freeport newbie yard. We adopt a nearest-taget/nuke hotkey approach and claw our way up to level 3. My bag is full, though, and my dark elf can't sell in Freeport, so I jog back to Neriak. A cracked staff sells for more than 1 whole platinum and I'm on my way to buy new spells. Since it's right around 11:00, I decide to call it a night. Just over two hours to get through the first two levels. Competition for mobs is cutthroat. This could be a long haul.

I cannot deny that I was filled with nostalgia.

Fuck that noise.

[raydeen]

Blackburrow was near to crashing on Combine. I think I was the straw that broke the camel's back. I died and when I came back in to retrieve my stuff, the frame rate had dropped to about 1 FPS. So the group packed up for the Karanas. Good fun there. Died out in NK and had to run all the way from Qeynos. You take for granted just how forgiving newer games are.

[Tale]

Agree with all of the above on this page of the thread - I've been having good fun on The Combine server. EQ has no qualms about making a player character REALLY WEAK compared with the environment, so you have the sense of achievement from overcoming that challenge and being above the lowest common denominator.

Funny thing - I zoned into Highpass Hold to get the level 7 enchanter pet spell, and the way was being cleared by a Fires of Heaven group, the highest level people on the server :)

[raydeen]

The progression servers are FoH's wet dream. Careful where you step. Mind the spooge.

[shiznitz]

What is frightening is that even though I stopped playing EQ1 in 2001, I still know both upper and lower Guk like my own home. Hell, I bet I could still pull Kedge Keep with all its fucked up z-axis nightmares or get through the Cazic maze without a map. The game is THAT ingrained in my long-term memory. 

[Surlyboi]

You're not the only one. I just ran through City of Mist with my eyes closed. God how I used to dread that place and yet want to be there for that damned poker I needed to loot for my epics.

[WayAbvPar]

I only made it to level 29 or so, but I have the escape route from the Sarnak Fortress in LOIO to the zone line embedded in my DNA. Never did make it to the really fun train places like Guk or Unrest, although I did lead a giant train of orcs to the Kelethin lift as a n00b. My roommate was playing in the other room and says to this day it was the most impressive train he has ever seen. I wish I had a screenshot of it.

Of course, I died at the feet of the useless guards, but them's the breaks when you are a n00b.

[vex]

I'm on the Sleeper server and having an okay time of it though they should really up the spawn rate.  My account has a month trial on it for some reason so I'll play until that wears out at least.

What I don't get is all the people turning in the books to the PoD and going red.  Doesn't this make them pretty useless?

[Nebu]

I have the most obvious question: Has anyone died playing yet? 

I wish I was joking.

[Merusk]

What I don't get is all the people turning in the books to the PoD and going red.  Doesn't this make them pretty useless?

Yes, completly.  So either these are people just fooling around on the server to check it out, or newer players who had the EQ tutorial to help them through their noobdom and don't understand the soul-crushing experience that the "oldschool" EQ was.  I don't think the tutorial ever explained the POD to anyone, much less gave them the book.  They probably think it's some kind of newbie quest, like the trainer note.


I bet I could run around Kelthin and through Befallen and Mistmoore without even thinking about it.  Damn that's scary, but I almost want to reinstall and lvel a druid for a bit.

Wait, no, that was just the tumor.

[Surlyboi]

I have the most obvious question: Has anyone died playing yet? 

I wish I was joking.

Not that I know of, but does it count that I die a little inside watching all the WoW catasses that think their shit is half as hard as this was?

[Tale]

I don't think the tutorial ever explained the POD to anyone, much less gave them the book.  They probably think it's some kind of newbie quest, like the trainer note.

There is a surprisingly high noob factor and I think some are people whose first MMOG was WoW, trying to find out what shaped their ex-EQ peers. WoW has a very pro-PvP population, so they probably go red because they think it's like playing battlegrounds. I was asked whether there was any way to speed up mana/health regeneration by eating/drinking. I explained that it was done with buffs that didn't exist at low levels and EQ regen was slow by design. If I was a WoW person, I would abandon my EQ experiment at that point and go back to WoW, but he was fine with it.

There's also a lot of people faking oldschool cred in public chat: they were there in the old days playing a Beastlord (not introduced until Luclin) or remember when their enchanter got Breeze (not introduced until Kunark or Velious, can't remember which).

[vex]

What I don't get is all the people turning in the books to the PoD and going red.  Doesn't this make them pretty useless?

Yes, completly.  So either these are people just fooling around on the server to check it out, or newer players who had the EQ tutorial to help them through their noobdom and don't understand the soul-crushing experience that the "oldschool" EQ was.

I think a lot of them are guilded Prophets of Sullon Zek so that would explain it.  I might be mistaken but I think if you go red you really can't even group within anyone who's not or you are unable to heal them, something to that effect.  It's been a while. 

[Merusk]

IF you're red you can't be healed, buffed or otherwise affected by the non-flagged people, to prevent invulnerable healers.   This means that those guys are hosed if they're serious about anything.  The 'usual' guild drama WILL sunder them and there's no recovering and joining a new guild if you're flagged.

[Numtini]

Anyone remember the UO - PKs telling everyone that nobody in EQ would turn their PK switch off?

I was a radical carebear and thought maybe as much as 50% would go non-PK

[Tale]

Most disappointing thing I've seen - apparently boats have not worked in EQ for several years, and everyone just accepts it as the way things are. Supposedly they tried to fix the boat code and failed, so they just abandoned boats and put translocator NPCs in. Obviously there will be hardass powergamers who say "good, i never liked sitting on a boat anyway" but as far as I'm concerned that detracts from the sense of being in a world (which I definitely have in EQ). The place is supposed to have boats, so fuck you if you don't like them :)

[Trippy]

Most disappointing thing I've seen - apparently boats have not worked in EQ for several years, and everyone just accepts it as the way things are. Supposedly they tried to fix the boat code and failed, so they just abandoned boats and put translocator NPCs in. Obviously there will be hardass powergamers who say "good, i never liked sitting on a boat anyway" but as far as I'm concerned that detracts from the sense of being in a world (which I definitely have in EQ). The place is supposed to have boats, so fuck you if you don't like them :)

Umm...Jboots? Or will they teleport you to that island?

[Tale]

Umm...Jboots? Or will they teleport you to that island?

Presume they teleport you.

I zoned into Befallen and it looked like this (exaggerated version of how every noob zone looks atm).



Just like old times:



There was a large guild called "Dinvinus Vox". Don't they mean Divinus Vox? They didn't know or care.



Engrish grouping skills: "it die need go"



Just like old times II:



Wonderful irony:



The new user experience still leaves something to be desired ...

[jpark]

Most disappointing thing I've seen - apparently boats have not worked in EQ for several years, and everyone just accepts it as the way things are. Supposedly they tried to fix the boat code and failed, so they just abandoned boats and put translocator NPCs in. Obviously there will be hardass powergamers who say "good, i never liked sitting on a boat anyway" but as far as I'm concerned that detracts from the sense of being in a world (which I definitely have in EQ). The place is supposed to have boats, so fuck you if you don't like them :)

I completely agree.  I really felt that insta travel eroded the atmosphere of the game.  To be consistent - EQ devs never learn - so used the insta travel bells in EQII.  Ya that was immersive.

Waiting on the doc really added social interaction.  You're in a world after all.  I do hate waiting for groups or not being able to solo - but I do accept that travel takes time in a "world".

Question:  so this server will grow to include other zones overtime as they are unlocked?  If so - what's the point -  the server will only lose all differentiation over time from other servers?

[Trippy]

Dangit you guys are making me all nostalgic!

[raydeen]

I'll never understand why the boat code worked for at least 2 years and then mysteriously broke. I remember the first time it broke (after Kunark I believe), they put the translocaters in for about a month, then supposedly fixed the code, then it magically broke again. I'll miss never being able to ever again ride that HUGE ship from BB to FV. That thing was a almost a zone in it's own right. Two of our guild members were married on it. :)

[Merusk]

I'm fairly certain I remember reading that the boats always  -just barely- worked.  Then they added-in the Kunark shuttles screwing things around.   It's probably some wacky thing that broke in all the lines of code that have been added in all the expansions and character crap since it first released.  The boats are really just dummy characters you stand on.  Remember they could be killed, slowed or hastened before it was hacked-in to make them non-targatable and non-affectable.

[Deyth]

The server is called The Combine right?  I thought that was a joke, then I read a bit more and I think it's real.  How ironic.  I'll skip this one. 

You know, the Combine Empire, from Norrath lore? I can see the irony tho if you're one of those poor gits like me who got Smithing up to 200 before stacking.

Unfortunately, in a disgusting bit of irony, the Combine was also the name of one of the biggest collection of cockmongers on the planet at release, the Combine guild on the Karana server. Said guild also broke up when it was discovered that the leader was ebaying the guild's loot back before Kunark.

We never broke up, I never ebayed the guild's loot, none of it.  You need to get off my dick already Haemish, you've been riding it raw for years.  If we oppressed you and the rest of the server that you hate us still, GOOD.  That's skill.  Bitch.

[Trippy]

Unfortunately, in a disgusting bit of irony, the Combine was also the name of one of the biggest collection of cockmongers on the planet at release, the Combine guild on the Karana server. Said guild also broke up when it was discovered that the leader was ebaying the guild's loot back before Kunark.

We never broke up, I never ebayed the guild's loot, none of it.  You need to get off my dick already Haemish, you've been riding it raw for years.  If we oppressed you and the rest of the server that you hate us still, GOOD.  That's skill.  Bitch.

Oh this is going to be good.

[Cheddar]

Drama, intrigue; Holy shit this is rad!  I am glad F13 is finally getting some notice!

[WindupAtheist]

Words cannot describe my apathy towards stories about who shrunk whose e-peen in Everquest years ago.  Old stories from Shadowbane are more interesting.  Stories about who could PK the most miners in old UO are more interesting.  But Everquest?  Come on, it invented literally everything people here hate about the genre.  Or at least stole it all from the MUD world.

[Nebu]

Words cannot describe my apathy towards stories about who shrunk whose e-peen in Everquest years ago.  Old stories from Shadowbane are more interesting.  Stories about who could PK the most miners in old UO are more interesting.  But Everquest?  Come on, it invented literally everything people here hate about the genre.  Or at least stole it all from the MUD world.

How do you feel about WoW?

[WindupAtheist]

It's EQ minus some of the suck, plus Blizzard production values.  I get the urge to play it once in a while, but never seem to last more than a month.  /shrug

[Phred]

I'm fairly certain I remember reading that the boats always  -just barely- worked.  Then they added-in the Kunark shuttles screwing things around.   It's probably some wacky thing that broke in all the lines of code that have been added in all the expansions and character crap since it first released.  The boats are really just dummy characters you stand on.  Remember they could be killed, slowed or hastened before it was hacked-in to make them non-targatable and non-affectable.

I can attest that the boat code was pretty fucked up even back in open beta, when the boat for Erudin dumped me in the water after zoning, which was a common occurance at release as well. I think they totally screwed the boat code in Kunark some time after people figured out you could snare the boats and root them and crash the zone to get the fish dragon to respawn for the druid epic. After they fixed that bug the boats just got flakier and flakier.

For me boat rides were one of those things that it was cool to do in a game once. The 800'th time you had to take a boat was beyond boring. That's why I like WoW's flight point model. Walking to a new place once is fun, walking there every time gets old fast. While the Ocean of Tears was a pretty cool zone I would have liked boats better in EQ if they'd just skipped it like WoW does.

[Tale]

I would have liked boats better in EQ if they'd just skipped it like WoW does.

Huh? Twice in the last week I've been dumped in the water by a boat ... in WoW.

I get the urge to play it once in a while, but never seem to last more than a month.  /shrug

So the gaping hole in your knowledge is that you've never lasted long enough to experience a raiding game. All you know is sandboxes and levelling curves.

In both EQ and WoW, the driving force is raiding content. Your entire motivation for playing gets changed overnight and it literally becomes like a whole new game (which horrifies many people when they find out how much it changes). You get switched to a path of years, not months, where the gameplay is quite different. Levelling a character in WoW is the equivalent of watching an intro movie. In EQ people used to say raiding was where "the real game starts", but I wouldn't say that because you can follow other paths in the game. But it is where the real understanding of dikus starts, for better or worse.

[Deyth]

Drama, intrigue; Holy shit this is rad!  I am glad F13 is finally getting some notice!

Not really, it just came up in a saved Google search automatically emailed to me, I have no idea what F13 is about and I doubt I'll return once this is done.  I recognized both Haemish and Lum so I replied.  Haemish has been stalking me with this nonsense for years already.  A lot of the Karana inhabitants are simply upset that we took over the spawns and camp areas.