Was level 20 the original planned max level for EQ?

[Dolalin]

I say this because, in the UI, skills turn to 'master' at 100 and you reach this at level 20. There are no further skill levels (i.e., Very Bad, Bad, Average, Good, Very Good, Master).

I've always suspected they envisioned a level 20 cap and changed it to 50 in alpha/beta, but never updated the UI or skills to reflect it.

[Jimjam]

There is a lot more quest content for 1-20.

It's like they either thought those quests would stretch the duration of levelling or they would back patch in extra quest content 20-50 as people progressed through the game... But then they went the expansion route instead.

[Dugface]

It was originally intended that the exp grind in crushbone would take 2000 real life hours and The Emperor was the final game boss.

[fortior]

that's guild wars 1, OP

[Ravager]

Someone should make a max level 20 guild and see how much game content they can beat. Bet it'd be quite fun.

[Dugface]

Good idea. What's the best gear that a bunch of level 20s can get?

If you get to level 21, instant guild removal.

[kaizersoze]

Could 100 level 20s even kill naggy, vox, or phinny?

[Nisrak]

I think the level 20 thing comes from the D&D influence behind EQ. So many of the mechanics are based on D&D concepts/ideas, so the level 20 thing probably also came from that. Then during development they probably realized that they needed more content and extended it to 50.

[Izmael]

If only Green could be a max level 30 server, at least for the first year.

It would put the challenge back into Everquest. Superior Healing chain, anyone?

[Nisrak]

Yeah, max level 30 and make guise drop off frenzy instead.

[Ravager]

Could 100 level 20s even kill naggy, vox, or phinny?
No. They'd die instantly. But that's not where the fun would be had at those levels. Mid level dungeons would be the thing to raid. Such a thing would only be a novelty though and wouldn't hold as a guild. Though it might be cool to organize a level 20 "Pick-Up" raid/dungeon crawl sometime as an event.

[Izmael]

100 level 20 mages could chain pets at Naggy. Naggy can only kill one pet per round meleeing, and a bunch AEing. But with having 100 mages constantly sending pets on him, there should always be enough pets spawning and taunting him.

Maybe he would die eventually, I dunno. I mean, 100 pets is a lot of pets.

[ScottBerta]

I’d be down for a lvl 20 thing but with twinking can make a lvl 20 like a lvl 40. However in my opinion game is most fun around lvl 20-45 or so.

[jolanar]

The game is heavily based off dnd and 20 is sort of the max level in dnd. So it's possible that at some point in development that it was going to be the max, but if so it was something they probably abandoned pretty quick.

[Jauna]

The more likely reason is they ran out of time or rushed it or maybe thought quests for random shit like fishing poles and animal skins were not worth the time.

[Shintuk]

The skills are a way of slowing down fights while everyone is still learning their classes. By 20 you should mostly have the hang of things, at least how the devs originally intended.

[Blitzers]

100 level 20 mages could chain pets at Naggy. Naggy can only kill one pet per round meleeing, and a bunch AEing. But with having 100 mages constantly sending pets on him, there should always be enough pets spawning and taunting him.

Maybe he would die eventually, I dunno. I mean, 100 pets is a lot of pets.

I can’t even imagine the pets being alive long enough to hit naggy. Even if they did he’d probably Regen hps quicker than the dmg received.

[Izmael]

I can’t even imagine the pets being alive long enough to hit naggy. Even if they did he’d probably Regen hps quicker than the dmg received.


Naggy casts AE DD every 12 seconds and AE fear every 36 seconds (according to the wiki spell data anyway).

Should be plenty of windows for pets to hit him. Let's run some basic figures.

According to the wiki, again, the buffiest pet a level 20 mage can cast is Lesser Summoning: Earth, which has 525 HPs, worst case scenario (lowest level pet).

This would mean that all the pets would survive one AE hit and pretty much always die on the next one, making their minimum lifespan 12 seconds and maximum 24 seconds. This makes average life expectancy of a pet 18 seconds give or take.



Naggy will cast AE fear every 36 seconds, which we'll consider will stick on all pets every time for full duration, which is 3 ticks, 18 seconds. This means that half the time, a pet will be feared, and half the time, he will not be (but will have to run back to Naggy from wherever he has pathed to - but running back will take less time than running away because when feared, pets/mobs take weird non-optimal paths).

It's probably a reasonable approximation to say that every 36 seconds, an average pet will be able to melee Naggy for 6 seconds. So about 1/6th of all pets (~14) will be on Naggy at any given time, which should be enough to keep aggro.

A pet will also spend 1/6th of his average life expectancy of 18 seconds meleeing Naggy, which is 3 seconds.

1/6th of 100 pets is roughly 16 pets with an average max hit of 20. If we consider that each pet can sustain about 10 DPS on Naggy (that's a wild guess..), Naggy will be taking about 160 DPS during this fight.

I have no idea if this is enough to beat Naggy's regen and/or deplete his HP's before the mages run out of mana, but it doesn't look too good for the mages.

[Cen]

I never thought about this but given the first two posts I'm actually starting to be convinced that may have been true. Interesting!

[Topgunben]

Someone should make a max level 20 guild and see how much game content they can beat. Bet it'd be quite fun.

Thats a sweet idea. would definitely be willing to delevel my monk for this kind of adventure.

[Atmas]

Could 100 level 20s even kill naggy, vox, or phinny?

Not a chance. 1000 would be not a chance for the dragons.

[indiscriminate_hater]

Lord Shin Ree would be zerged by 130 warmbodies

[7thGate]

There might be specialty strats that could stand a chance at taking down Naggy, it would be fascinating to see if it ever happened. Rangers can outrange dragon fear with a trueshot longbow, and a level 20 ranger can probably pull 5-10 dps against a dragon with a bow. 50 rangers, 50 mages or similar might be able to do something there with very careful positioning. Definitely harder than anything on p99 though, its really tough when you can't get a tank who could last a melee round and the target can AOE your raid to death in two hits. Just getting to Naggy would also be a crazy crawl, fire giants are basically avatar of war for a level 20.

[Yasi]

Should also not forget that level 20 is a key level in many ways:

You get a /surname. It would make sense for level 20 to be max level. You reached the peak, you deserve to be known with a surname now.

INT casters get specialization. You've done it, now it's time to specialize.

If I am not mistaken: If you take all the starting cities and the zones connecting the starting cities, there is not a single zone that would require you to be higher than lvl 20 - except Kithicor at night. And Kithicor has such a big gap in lvl day vs. night, it could have been added on later very well.

[Auvdar]

The original game was planned around lvl 20 in development initially. Once it was realized that much more was needed to make a fleshed out world, (and the concept of EQ was gaining steam with people) it was pushed to 50.

So basically for the OP, kinda. If I remember the devs never thought Everquest was going to be as big as it was when it released. So they started with a small game (lvl 20) to see what would happen, it got a lot of buzz and whatnot, so it was then fleshed out to 50.

[Jimjam]

It does feel like you can stumble into level 20 just following quest lines, exploring and adventuring. To hit 50 in any kind of timely fashion requires an assembly line mentality of mob processing.

Despite their DND / Dev / blow backgrounds the team were too cool and normal and didn't realise the basement dwelling munchkins appetite to consume content as if they were sweatshop labourers. I think these noisy neckbeards are a large part of the reason for the 50 cap.

[Dolalin]

If I am not mistaken: If you take all the starting cities and the zones connecting the starting cities, there is not a single zone that would require you to be higher than lvl 20 - except Kithicor at night. And Kithicor has such a big gap in lvl day vs. night, it could have been added on later very well.

Kithicor only became different at night after the Lanys T'Vyl GM event some months after release.

[Topgunben]

It does feel like you can stumble into level 20 just following quest lines, exploring and adventuring. To hit 50 in any kind of timely fashion requires an assembly line mentality of mob processing.

Despite their DND / Dev / blow backgrounds the team were too cool and normal and didn't realise the basement dwelling munchkins appetite to consume content as if they were sweatshop labourers. I think these noisy neckbeards are a large part of the reason for the 50 cap.

Your whole post had me cracking up