The Shards of Dalaya Conspiracy

[Nuk3Afr1ca]

http://forum.shardsofdalaya.com/showpost.php?p=279919&postcount=17

[Cecily]

Yeah, they are nice over there. *shudder*

[radditsu]

that server any good?

[Rhambuk]

that server any good?

If you enjoy boxxing by yourself i guess. Never got past mid level but it was just me soloing with my box char on an empty server. Was a while ago but not my cup o tea

[Gaffin Deeppockets]

It was semi-popular before p99, but it died after the launch here.

[Glitch]

It was kinda fun. They got pretty creative with their coding and encounters, but they took it way too seriously.
Like, you were forced to change your name if you didn't have a roleplaying name (three name vet lolol).

When I played, I just made people mad by getting the main city death penalty healer stuck in a wall every time they reset him.

[Gaffin Deeppockets]

For the old emu players, I think Guildwars was the best server ever, miss it. I had alot of fun pvping on there along with the pve.

[Reiker000]

SoD is the oldest running eqemu server still running. They're still on the GoD (Gates of Discord) client, which was current when they started. This means the client is extremely outdated and clunky, lacks features, etc. But... classic purists might like that.

It's sort of like the game up through PoP but completely customized, even with new lore/storylines/map layout. I say PoP because there is a mass travel system (Mansion of Portals) although it's not nearly as powerful as PoK was. The gear levels are sort of PoP-esque, but like I said the server has been out for almost a decade so the top end raid gear is extremely powerful. This causes a gigantic divide between raiders and casual people. To make it worse, most raids severely limit how many people you can bring to keep them "challenging." So, raid guilds are extremely exclusive and difficult to get into. The fact that the gear raiders have is so much better than "normally obtainable" gear, means there's pretty much no way to make yourself attractive to a raid guild. Your gear will be immediately obsolete in these raids. So, most guilds are just a handful of people and if they need more they just bring in their friends. It's hard to get anywhere as an unknown, new player.

The customization and balancing they've done is super cool. The classes are very balanced. Hybrids can actually block with shields. OP abilities have been removed or tuned down (shaman slow, etc.). Tradeskills are useful, even fishing (you can fish up treasure maps which are kind of like mini raid spawners).

There's too many features to really mention. There are Adept raids that limit what level people can fight them (if the mob is red to you, you cannot attack, heal/buff people with aggro, etc). So, this drives people to get together at levels under max to raid things.

There's a "main quest" that you complete as you progress through the server, and you choose a deity later in the game. There's an alignment system, which is affected by actions you take in certain quests (mostly the main quest). If your character's alignment matches you deity's alignment, you gain bonuses to nearly all of your abilities.

Weather/environment/time of day affects spells, for example undead are stronger and heals are weaker during the night.

There are different types of procs (boots proc on kicks, shoulders on slam, bp when hit, etc.)

And just a ton of cool custom stuff that can't all be listed here.

Despite that, just remember that the mudflation is out of control. The game is well designed up to max level (65), but then it gets a little murky. Most of the content will own you, and even grinding AA slowly will be dangerous. You won't be able to do anything in the vast majority of 65+ zones/dungeons, so gearing is difficult. AA is difficult. Progressing is difficult. There is a lot of excellent content on the server, but it's artificially made difficult to access. I feel this is because raid gear has become so insane, since that's all they've been expanding for years, but the average player isn't going to be seeing this gear.

[radditsu]

SoD is the oldest running eqemu server still running. They're still on the GoD (Gates of Discord) client, which was current when they started. This means the client is extremely outdated and clunky, lacks features, etc. But... classic purists might like that.

It's sort of like the game up through PoP but completely customized, even with new lore/storylines/map layout. I say PoP because there is a mass travel system (Mansion of Portals) although it's not nearly as powerful as PoK was. The gear levels are sort of PoP-esque, but like I said the server has been out for almost a decade so the top end raid gear is extremely powerful. This causes a gigantic divide between raiders and casual people. To make it worse, most raids severely limit how many people you can bring to keep them "challenging." So, raid guilds are extremely exclusive and difficult to get into. The fact that the gear raiders have is so much better than "normally obtainable" gear, means there's pretty much no way to make yourself attractive to a raid guild. Your gear will be immediately obsolete in these raids. So, most guilds are just a handful of people and if they need more they just bring in their friends. It's hard to get anywhere as an unknown, new player.

The customization and balancing they've done is super cool. The classes are very balanced. Hybrids can actually block with shields. OP abilities have been removed or tuned down (shaman slow, etc.). Tradeskills are useful, even fishing (you can fish up treasure maps which are kind of like mini raid spawners).

There's too many features to really mention. There are Adept raids that limit what level people can fight them (if the mob is red to you, you cannot attack, heal/buff people with aggro, etc). So, this drives people to get together at levels under max to raid things.

There's a "main quest" that you complete as you progress through the server, and you choose a deity later in the game. There's an alignment system, which is affected by actions you take in certain quests (mostly the main quest). If your character's alignment matches you deity's alignment, you gain bonuses to nearly all of your abilities.

Weather/environment/time of day affects spells, for example undead are stronger and heals are weaker during the night.

There are different types of procs (boots proc on kicks, shoulders on slam, bp when hit, etc.)

And just a ton of cool custom stuff that can't all be listed here.

Despite that, just remember that the mudflation is out of control. The game is well designed up to max level (65), but then it gets a little murky. Most of the content will own you, and even grinding AA slowly will be dangerous. You won't be able to do anything in the vast majority of 65+ zones/dungeons, so gearing is difficult. AA is difficult. Progressing is difficult. There is a lot of excellent content on the server, but it's artificially made difficult to access. I feel this is because raid gear has become so insane, since that's all they've been expanding for years, but the average player isn't going to be seeing this gear.

So they spent a whole lot of time developing a vast fun world. Then made it so that zero people actually want to play it without investing even more time than the original EQ needed ?

[Breeziyo]

heals are worse at night?

nig how does that even make sense

[radditsu]

Ever play castlevania 2?

Its like that.

[Breeziyo]

yeah i thought of that and immediately said "nah they couldn't actually be that retarded there's gotta be another reason"

healing isn't fuckin solar powered, it's magic you channel through faith and shit or however nerds want to say it.

ur 1+1 = shitlord

SoD brain suks 0/10 would not play

[Breeziyo]

it's a custom ruleset that doesn't make sense and has kindergarden tier trains of logic

SoD suks 0/10 would not play

[Pheer]

it's a custom ruleset that doesn't make sense and has kindergarden tier trains of logic

SoD suks 0/10 would not play

Ya that shit is so illogical everyone knows magic isnt affected by time of day just look at the harry potter books

[Breeziyo]

harry potter uses magic and none of it is based off of worshipping gods or connecting with nature etc in order to heal people

clerics and paladins and shit use magic coupled with their faith and blessings

druids and shamans connect with nature and spirits and shit for their healing powers

why would the sun going down effect any sort of power a druid's connection with nature or a cleric's boon they've gotten from worshipping their god adequately

"sorry i can't make your health regenerate the tree spirits are telling me they are sleepy"

i mean maybe if the spell had a name about the time of day or if it was "holy light of lightness no dark allowed" i could see it but healing spells are usually something like "greater healing" etc and don't even have anything to do with any sort of metaphorical light


picking and choosing which common sense things they want to follow in the eq universe is probably the reason they died after decent servers that didn't have arbitrary rules like that set in place came about

[Pheer]

harry potter uses magic and none of it is based off of worshipping gods or connecting with nature etc in order to heal people

clerics and paladins and shit use magic coupled with their faith and blessings

druids and shamans connect with nature and spirits and shit for their healing powers

why would the sun going down effect any sort of power a druid's connection with nature or a cleric's boon they've gotten from worshipping their god adequately

"sorry i can't make your health regenerate the tree spirits are telling me they are sleepy"

i mean maybe if the spell had a name about the time of day or if it was "holy light of lightness no dark allowed" i could see it but healing spells are usually something like "greater healing" etc and don't even have anything to do with any sort of metaphorical light


picking and choosing which common sense things they want to follow in the eq universe is probably the reason they died after decent servers that didn't have arbitrary rules like that set in place came about

I totally agree friend I believe players got to max level then realized their heal spells were inadequately named and then quit the server in protest

[Breeziyo]

I totally agree friend I believe players got to max level then realized their heal spells were inadequately named and then quit the server in protest

lol did you have to actively try and have that post go way over your head?

[Breeziyo]

or do i have to say that this arbitrary rule could be one of many because you are completely unable to extrapolate anything beyond what you see at face value

[Pheer]

or do i have to say that this arbitrary rule could be one of many because you are completely unable to extrapolate anything beyond what you see at face value

No it makes perfect sense youre right I mean why would something that doesnt really exist not be held to a logical and realistic set of rules

[Breeziyo]

No it makes perfect sense youre right I mean why would something that doesnt really exist not be held to a logical and realistic set of rules

???????

you worded that shit weirdly but i'm p sure you're trying to be sarcastic here so i'll just continue one last time


how does the lack of a sun shining on a particular area of the world make powers that are completely unrelated to the sun being a light source weaker than normal?

why are these two things related?

does that mean if you bring a torch in your offhand at night you get a bonus to your healing?

it's stupid, arbitrary rules like the ones posted here http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=935757&postcount=8 that make it no wonder why it's a 0/10 shit server would not play, especially their "artifical difficulty"

think about it while i get some sleep

cy@ nerd0

[Pheer]

???????

you worded that shit weirdly but i'm p sure you're trying to be sarcastic here so i'll just continue one last time


how does the lack of a sun shining on a particular area of the world make powers that are completely unrelated to the sun being a light source weaker than normal?

why are these two things related?

does that mean if you bring a torch in your offhand at night you get a bonus to your healing?

it's stupid, arbitrary rules like the ones posted here http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=935757&postcount=8 that make it no wonder why it's a 0/10 shit server would not play, especially their "artifical difficulty"

think about it while i get some sleep

cy@ nerd0

No youre right I mean it makes no sense I mean just look at superman he actually gets his powers from the sun but isn't weaker at night so why would everquest magic be weakened by something that doesn't power them, good thing superman isnt on their server or he'd be so underpowered

keep fighting the good fight against illogical fantasy games man im with you on this

[Alawen]

I had completely forgotten how awesome Pheer is at ForumQuest.

[Pico]

breeziyo an excellent poster i would strongly consider readingthis thread again
saving in bookmarks under interesting everquest debate

[radditsu]

http://www.dlnexus.com/weather/moons.aspx

dragonlance does all kinds of power waxing waning with moon shit. why not a fake eq game?

[a_gnoll_pup]

Pheer is obviously an authority on good games, he's pro at gunz.

[Apostle]

why don't you just ask TMO?

[gotrocks]

rofl at breeze going full bore arguing about faith based magic's ruleset in someone elses fictional universe not making sense according to, uh, logic? and then calling everyone a nerd while he dips out.

shits classic dawg.

[Woldaff]

When I play my game, I want the fucking sparkles coming out of my hands to make sense , god damnit.

[Kassel]

???????

you worded that shit weirdly but i'm p sure you're trying to be sarcastic here so i'll just continue one last time


how does the lack of a sun shining on a particular area of the world make powers that are completely unrelated to the sun being a light source weaker than normal?

why are these two things related?

does that mean if you bring a torch in your offhand at night you get a bonus to your healing?

it's stupid, arbitrary rules like the ones posted here http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=935757&postcount=8 that make it no wonder why it's a 0/10 shit server would not play, especially their "artifical difficulty"

think about it while i get some sleep

cy@ nerd0

holy fucking derp.

[Cecily]

Hi Nester. Come back and help fight TMO.

[falkun]

Hi Nester. Come back and help fight TMO.

Does not compute.

[Cecily]

What? I'd like to see him back here.

[Godefroi]

nice new sig cecily, lol.

[cyryllis]

shards of dalaya was absolutely incredible and far more fun than any other eq style emulator...back when it actually had a population. Now its pretty dead with everyone practically required to box an extra char. the content there is above and beyond any custom content I have ever seen, and the devs (at least when I played years ago) really spent a ton of time developing new zones/encounters/ quest lines.

the war events (when people used to do them) were very fun for the early raiding tiered players, and the massive number of encounters present in the game are scaled well throughout the tiers- offering more than just tank and spank general eq encounters. The fact that raid content is limited to 6/12/18/24 man content rather than letting everything be zerged was another huge plus.

However, as someone else pointed out, the game does not really start until 65- and hitting max level is just barely scratching the surface of the grind you need to go through to progress- besides getting 500 or so AA points, you now have hundreds of tomes to grind out (completing each requires anywhere from a very small 10 AA or so exp all the way up to 200ish AA to complete). On top of all of that, the epic length main quest, faction quest, and very slow progression through the raid tiers pretty much guarantees you will be raiding/grinding exp at the very minimum of a year before you even come close to top end content. In fact, most people who play SoD will never see the very top tier events.

If the population was closer to our population here on P99 (not counting boxed chars) I would highly recommend people to try it- but I highly doubt those numbers will ever return.

[Kassel]

Does not compute.

=(

[kotton05]

nice new sig cecily, lol.

Didn't take long, fully converted she just hugs me without words now.

[radditsu]

Didn't take long, fully converted she just hugs me without words now.

:(

[Gaffin Deeppockets]

When I play my game, I want the fucking sparkles coming out of my hands to make sense , god damnit.

Lol'd hard