Regarding the new spell file and such.
 

Well, they painted a pretty broad stroke this time considering every spell caster (and hybrid) on the server probably spent an hour today re-arranging their spell book as well as making and saving spell sets. lol.

I know, it's not as horrid as book-in-the-face medding or anything, but there s a fine line between having fun on a classic server and being those freaks at Denny's at 2 am arguing over irregularities in the content and timeline of the Star Trek Universe.

I know, right clicking to hotswap spells on the go isn't 'classic' per se.. But it's just another time-sinky annoyance in a game that, at it's heart, is supposed to be fun. Not everything that happened post 1999 was Bazaar and Nexus-y. Some of it was simply just UI updates and devs going 'Jeez, this prob doesnt need to be this annoying. It's not like we're Amish here".

Something as simple as soul-binding Plane of Sky keys would shave hours off a raid up there, and it's certainly not like the use of necros and wizards and clerics to make a chain is exactly rocket science or adds anything to the experience beyond a time sink. It's not like it's a matter of talent or skill, just an added sink in the name of "classic-ness".. It's there and i can't think of a real reason beyond sanity (something we all lack, btw heh) that the sky daisy chain is being re-lived 10+ years later, but yet it is!

I know, I know.. go play on EZ or whatever. Anytime someone steps up and says 'hey, does this actualy have to be *this* annoying 10 years later? ppl rage at ya like you're at the park on a sunday jogging and stop to tell one of the guys beating on each other with a nerf sword that his watch is showing, or his kilt is a couple centuries off from the rest of his motif.

We're not bad people (well, outside of RnF), we don't deserved to be punished. We appreciate the insane amount of research and waybacking and coding that go into making this the premire classic spot around. Just please, guys, keep in mind there's a ton of us that *have* been here since the Classic beta and it's the fun factor that keeps us coming back and signing up for more.

I'm not asking anyone to change anything, just to remember it's always been a mix of striving for the classic element with newer UIs in the first place that's kept this place truckin along. I'd be curious to see if everyone got their 'wish' and the only option was 'tinybox in window' 640x480 resolution' and book in face medding that we'd be where we are today. And i get that Rogean and Nil would still be tinkering with this place even if no one came to play at all, but i'm sure there's a certain satisfaction they also get from seeing high peak numbers, legend status, and tallying up all the missed work days, wrecked relationships, and godknowswhatelse their polarizing force has wreaked upon our lives.

Thank you. Keep it Real. But not 'too' Real. :)

I was wondering what happened to the contextual spell menu... i have been trying to fix it without luck.

You can still save spell sets. I'm a cleric so what I've done is made spell sets for whatever situation I may encounter. A spell set for group healing, spell set for raid buffing, spell set for resist buffing, spell set for solo'ing (both undead and live mobs). It's still almost just as easy as it was. No reason to make reasons why it should be like it was when it's not going to change back. Just adapt-and-overcome.

Yeah. I don't like that. It had no real effect on gameplay, but it helped immensely and was just an UI thing. As a laptop player using a touchpad (yeah, say what you want, I do better than average), playing a caster just became nearly impossible. Constantly sifting through 75+ spells is not appealing. Spell sets don't work with the classic UI.

I agree with the sentament. I'm sure everyone has a list of features (or lack-there-of) which annoyed the hell out of them in classic (and probably still do today); these things were put up with because they didn't detract from the game so much to make the experience as a whole unenjoyable.

Thing is, this list will be different for everyone. For some it will be the spell book, for others hybrid penalties, corpse runs or the lack of parity between melee and casters. I'm sure there are even a few out there who think PoK was the best thing to happen to EQ. No one is right or wrong as these issues are a matter of preference. How then does someone running a server like this choose which changes (improvements or otherwise) need to be reverted to keep it feeling classic?

Personally I would like to have seen the dev's take classic and improve on it, but as noted, what consitutes an improvement is subjective. I guess by following history as closely as possible everyone knows what they are in for (for the most part), even if it's not fun for everyone, or even the majority (the majority on one subject will be the minority on another).

Well if the desire to stay classic is strong enough, /rewind and /hidecorpses looted shouldn't function here. Nor should you be able to ajust the gamma so that playing a human without a torch isn't like being a blind person at night.

There are plenty of annoyances EQ got rid of over the years, some that people here would hate to see get fixed. Some that you would Q_Q about leaving (like being able to med sub 35 without being blind).

Idk, things like requiring a Druid to be in a dungeon to cast their port spells in kunark, is a bug that I don't want to see go live but I bet it will because it is "classic".

Yeah i play a necro and a cleric.

The cleric is the easy one to set up, since you're almost always going to have 2-3 heals up, two DAs and a couple slots that are fluid.. Or you're on the raid buff set, or the typical root-n-nuke soloing set. about our only annoyance there is swapping in some stuns, blinds, and dispells based on where we are raiding. Plus we can always hit DA and have 18 seconds to find a root or gate or nuke or whatever in our spell book when we are being beaten on.

A class like shaman, while they'll have to pull their hair out getting their spell book tidy, is going to have a long, long list of buff sets that'll be less-than-joyous to put together.

Like Enchanter, Necros are the jack-of-all-trades class that is most affected by this, as we probably experience far more 'on the fly' spells swaps compared to the more traditional priest and nuker classes. I'm sure everyone that has played EQ has laughed at a necro or enchanter in a bad spot who's had to mem gate on the fly. At least the necro can do it between feigns. :)

You can still make/change/load spell sets. Its just not as easy as it was.

Is there a way to save/load spell sets with a text command? The velious style UI doesn't have the book button.

Classically, there was no book button. So by default, that is how it appears.

However, I believe Savok included the spell bar WITH the spellbook as an optional piece of Velious UI extras. http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...ad.php?t=11949

Hope that helps.