Kommando
08-28-2018, 06:38 AM
I played EQ during classic to velious when they originally came out on the live servers and have had fun on the blue and red emulator servers; albeit not as much fun as when the game was originally released, but still interesting.
A long time ago, in between various iterations of red servers, I recall this dwarf guy released a custom PvP server with the zones and items all changed around (I don't even remember the name of the server). He was mediocre/poor at best at game design and didn't do that great of a job, but still, I think I had more fun playing there than the other emulator servers before it disappeared.
Once people have already beaten all the same content numerous times, I think it kind of warrants a custom server instead of rehashing content from the year 1999 over and over (maybe call it P2018?).
There are several issues with EQ that can be solved with a custom P1999 server (meaning another server in addition to this one) to give the EQ franchise much more longevity and replayability such as:
1) Making it not a huge coordination time sink: People are always jacking off about raids and whatnot, but are 30 vs 1 raids actually more interesting and fun than 6 vs 1 "raids" if the encounters are properly designed? Making all content on a custom server designed for 6 man groups instead of 30 means it can still be fun without having to devote your entire life to the game.
2) Learning from the things DAoC and WoW did right: Structured PvP battlegrounds as the end game. Almost all online games that draw people's attention for any given amount of time have some sort of PvP element like battlegrounds or what have you.
I remember playing a blue EQ server once and being the best guild on the server and I was like, what are we supposed to use this equipment for after we have all the best items in the game? Then I went and played Sullon Zek because I got tired of farming for no reason. Without some sort of battlegrounds or whatever to have something to use the equipment against, there's no point in endlessly farming the best items.
For the server to not die of stagnation, it requires some sort of DAoC or WoW-like battlegrounds as a functional endgame.
3) Add AA's to create more character customization and include new custom AA's - Self explanatory. Also, maybe limit AA choice so if you take one path of AA you cannot take another opposing path. Then you would have defensive warriors, offensive warriors, healing healers, offense orientated healers, etc. Possibly make AA experience only gained through PvP battlegrounds just like DAoC.
4) Custom world map - A zone in that used to lead somewhere else might now lead to unrest and instead of Unrest being a newbie zone, it's now a level 50 zone.
5) Custom loot drops: There's no need to remove or change the low level common items like fine steel long swords, but have all named items have custom stats. I also envision expanding greatly upon the common items in EQ so instead of just going from rusty sword to regular sword to fine steel, adding more tiers where it would go from rusty to copper sword, bronze, iron, fine steel, mithril, etc, and having them all be actually useful in the zones they drop in instead of vendor trash.
Itemization wouldn't be too hard to get off the ground and balance because you could just take fine steel weapons and increase the damage by 20% or whatever to create the next tier up. You know how you get all excited looting a rusty 2h scythe off a level 2 NPC in the starter zone? You could just tier those higher where you loot a mithril 2h scythe in a level 30 zone and it's actually useful off the mob you got it from, albeit more rare than a rusty weapon.
Casters get shafted on itemization for much of EQ, so would need to add lots of dmg focus items, healing focus items, pet focus items, etc, even to lower levels.
6) Out of combat mana and hp regen + bandaging: Possibly alter out of combat mana/hp regen and bandage mechanics to make caster and melee downtime similar. For instance, a rogue might still only be able to kill low blues or something while a caster can take yellows, but the rogue wouldn't have to afk for 1 hour between mobs.
7) Expand upon the crafting system - They added lots of crafting stuff in later expansions so you could just re-integrate a lot of that while downscaling the stats from 5 billion AC to 50 or whatever.
8) The EQ lore element and battlegrounds teams: I've always felt the game was more fun to play when you leave your starting area like Innothule Swamp with a group of other trolls and go harass the other races. My vision of the game would be similar to DAoC or WoW where segregated enemy races exist that you do not group with or see them at all except when you're fighting them in PvP in a battleground or whatever. This would be the basis for the EQ battlegrounds teams.
I would divide the server into a 'good vs evil' setup where each race or diety combination falls into one of those two categories. All evils would start in the same town like Cabilis and all goods in another town like Firiona Vie.
I'm not really sure of the feasibility of creating a structured EQ battleground like DAoC and WoW have, so the other option is of course to connect the two realms by a single zone chokepoint with PvP enabled for that zone. If anyone played an EQ PvP server before, it would be similar to Sullon Zek in it's golden age when you saw 30 halfings fighting against 30 dark elves in east/west commons.
I do like full-PvP servers, but I'd much rather play a 1000 population server with an optional PvP battleground than a 10 man server with full PvP because nobody else will play there.
9) Development time: It wouldn't need to be in development and tested for balance for eternity because you could release it fast using the item tiering method I described based off existing fine steel weapons and such, then slowly add in more powerful items over time in continuous development. Maybe you don't get the full itemization game experience on your first character, but you would on your next alt and it would all be relatively balanced anyway.
If the P1999 people have no interest in creating a custom server, I might try my hand at it and see if I can recruit others to work on it as well. Current P1999 just doesn't have an actual endgame (battlegrounds) like WoW and DAoC have, and playing custom content is more fun than playing the same content over and over.
------------------------------
Fraud <Ruin> - Sullon Zek
Hogwild <Afterlife> - DAoC
Makavelli <Rebirth> - random blue server
Wehrmact <Holocaust> - EQ PvP
A long time ago, in between various iterations of red servers, I recall this dwarf guy released a custom PvP server with the zones and items all changed around (I don't even remember the name of the server). He was mediocre/poor at best at game design and didn't do that great of a job, but still, I think I had more fun playing there than the other emulator servers before it disappeared.
Once people have already beaten all the same content numerous times, I think it kind of warrants a custom server instead of rehashing content from the year 1999 over and over (maybe call it P2018?).
There are several issues with EQ that can be solved with a custom P1999 server (meaning another server in addition to this one) to give the EQ franchise much more longevity and replayability such as:
1) Making it not a huge coordination time sink: People are always jacking off about raids and whatnot, but are 30 vs 1 raids actually more interesting and fun than 6 vs 1 "raids" if the encounters are properly designed? Making all content on a custom server designed for 6 man groups instead of 30 means it can still be fun without having to devote your entire life to the game.
2) Learning from the things DAoC and WoW did right: Structured PvP battlegrounds as the end game. Almost all online games that draw people's attention for any given amount of time have some sort of PvP element like battlegrounds or what have you.
I remember playing a blue EQ server once and being the best guild on the server and I was like, what are we supposed to use this equipment for after we have all the best items in the game? Then I went and played Sullon Zek because I got tired of farming for no reason. Without some sort of battlegrounds or whatever to have something to use the equipment against, there's no point in endlessly farming the best items.
For the server to not die of stagnation, it requires some sort of DAoC or WoW-like battlegrounds as a functional endgame.
3) Add AA's to create more character customization and include new custom AA's - Self explanatory. Also, maybe limit AA choice so if you take one path of AA you cannot take another opposing path. Then you would have defensive warriors, offensive warriors, healing healers, offense orientated healers, etc. Possibly make AA experience only gained through PvP battlegrounds just like DAoC.
4) Custom world map - A zone in that used to lead somewhere else might now lead to unrest and instead of Unrest being a newbie zone, it's now a level 50 zone.
5) Custom loot drops: There's no need to remove or change the low level common items like fine steel long swords, but have all named items have custom stats. I also envision expanding greatly upon the common items in EQ so instead of just going from rusty sword to regular sword to fine steel, adding more tiers where it would go from rusty to copper sword, bronze, iron, fine steel, mithril, etc, and having them all be actually useful in the zones they drop in instead of vendor trash.
Itemization wouldn't be too hard to get off the ground and balance because you could just take fine steel weapons and increase the damage by 20% or whatever to create the next tier up. You know how you get all excited looting a rusty 2h scythe off a level 2 NPC in the starter zone? You could just tier those higher where you loot a mithril 2h scythe in a level 30 zone and it's actually useful off the mob you got it from, albeit more rare than a rusty weapon.
Casters get shafted on itemization for much of EQ, so would need to add lots of dmg focus items, healing focus items, pet focus items, etc, even to lower levels.
6) Out of combat mana and hp regen + bandaging: Possibly alter out of combat mana/hp regen and bandage mechanics to make caster and melee downtime similar. For instance, a rogue might still only be able to kill low blues or something while a caster can take yellows, but the rogue wouldn't have to afk for 1 hour between mobs.
7) Expand upon the crafting system - They added lots of crafting stuff in later expansions so you could just re-integrate a lot of that while downscaling the stats from 5 billion AC to 50 or whatever.
8) The EQ lore element and battlegrounds teams: I've always felt the game was more fun to play when you leave your starting area like Innothule Swamp with a group of other trolls and go harass the other races. My vision of the game would be similar to DAoC or WoW where segregated enemy races exist that you do not group with or see them at all except when you're fighting them in PvP in a battleground or whatever. This would be the basis for the EQ battlegrounds teams.
I would divide the server into a 'good vs evil' setup where each race or diety combination falls into one of those two categories. All evils would start in the same town like Cabilis and all goods in another town like Firiona Vie.
I'm not really sure of the feasibility of creating a structured EQ battleground like DAoC and WoW have, so the other option is of course to connect the two realms by a single zone chokepoint with PvP enabled for that zone. If anyone played an EQ PvP server before, it would be similar to Sullon Zek in it's golden age when you saw 30 halfings fighting against 30 dark elves in east/west commons.
I do like full-PvP servers, but I'd much rather play a 1000 population server with an optional PvP battleground than a 10 man server with full PvP because nobody else will play there.
9) Development time: It wouldn't need to be in development and tested for balance for eternity because you could release it fast using the item tiering method I described based off existing fine steel weapons and such, then slowly add in more powerful items over time in continuous development. Maybe you don't get the full itemization game experience on your first character, but you would on your next alt and it would all be relatively balanced anyway.
If the P1999 people have no interest in creating a custom server, I might try my hand at it and see if I can recruit others to work on it as well. Current P1999 just doesn't have an actual endgame (battlegrounds) like WoW and DAoC have, and playing custom content is more fun than playing the same content over and over.
------------------------------
Fraud <Ruin> - Sullon Zek
Hogwild <Afterlife> - DAoC
Makavelli <Rebirth> - random blue server
Wehrmact <Holocaust> - EQ PvP