Why were we so bad in 1999?

[Roth]

So, I played during this time period and one thing I remember even during luclin was that people almost never chain pulled. It was always camping just a few mobs generally and killing slowly one at a time, medding, and then doing it again. People would pretty much only fight at zone lines and the thought of a corpse run was a dangerous, complicated thing.

When wow released people brought in this eq mentality as well but it slowly got overtaken by speedrunning the instances where it was possible. Now eq in 2019 it's basically the wow mentality(not saying it's bad) - fastest exp/loot per hour, willing to take noticeable risk if you get rewarded for it. What in the early 2000s were we doing that made the game so much harder? Looking for honest thoughts.

[Danth]

Hard to chain pull when there's 70 people in Guk and your entire camp consists of ~6 mobs in maybe two rooms.

[jacob54311]

Hard to chain pull when there's 70 people in Guk and your entire camp consists of ~6 mobs in maybe two rooms.

I started playing during the POP era and seemed like chain pulling was a thing, if my memory serves. As long as the zone wasn't crowded.

[bubur]

me personally? i was like 16. i was stoked to get share wolf form. didnt have any aspiration to raid whatsoever. spent every evening in ec just lookin at stuff. between my eq-wife candidate and my fireworks business, i spent my time camping 1 single spawn every 10 min or so

i remember someone told me what quadding was and i didnt believe him. i guess my insight is now im not a 6th grader and i forgot how to have fun while i grind to 50 asap

once i bound myself on top of the windmills for some reason and clicked on them, that set me back a level or two

[Tilien]

People had less zone knowledge and most people were far more casual. Imagine there are 10,000 eq players back on live what percent were hardcore raiders?

Now imagine p99... What percent are raiders or aspire to be?

[Fammaden]

You were maybe just young and bad OP? People chain pulled in high level groups in late Kunark and Velious. So it only took a year or so and people had shit way more dialed in than in 1999. Sorry if you were still level 36 when Luclin dropped but others were indeed pulling their asses off to go from 51 to 60 and then for AA's/65 all bets were off on chain pulls by raid geared guild groups.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Hard to chain pull when there's 70 people in Guk and your entire camp consists of ~6 mobs in maybe two rooms.

Yea I'm gonna go with this answer. Shit during Kunark I remember there being literally 10+ full groups in The Dreadlands pulling (chain pulling!) to the KC walls cuz EVERYTHING else was completely camped at all times.

[garfo]

Yea I'm gonna go with this answer. Shit during Kunark I remember there being literally 10+ full groups in The Dreadlands pulling (chain pulling!) to the KC walls cuz EVERYTHING else was completely camped at all times.


Yes! I remember the windmill in LOIO was poppin off in the early Kunark days -- there were people doing banking services for a fee, hosting dice casinos, and groups along every wall of the sarnak fort! But now, due to ZEM, I won't be surprised if that zone will be a complete ghost town even when green and teal re-merge.

[Mercius]

live had high population, for example HHK basement which is considered one camp on p99 was considered 4 camps on live

[Morratiz]

I have vivid nostalgic memories of chain pulling in OT wall groups. You pretty much had to otherwise you'd lose all the spawns to the 40 other OT wall groups. Also did the same in DL. (But eq was never that crowded back then according to some...)

[Khikik]

I was so bad at EQ in 1999 that I didn't even play a lizard

[SenoraRaton]

So, I played during this time period and one thing I remember even during luclin was that people almost never chain pulled. It was always camping just a few mobs generally and killing slowly one at a time, medding, and then doing it again. People would pretty much only fight at zone lines and the thought of a corpse run was a dangerous, complicated thing.

When wow released people brought in this eq mentality as well but it slowly got overtaken by speedrunning the instances where it was possible. Now eq in 2019 it's basically the wow mentality(not saying it's bad) - fastest exp/loot per hour, willing to take noticeable risk if you get rewarded for it. What in the early 2000s were we doing that made the game so much harder? Looking for honest thoughts.

Have you played recently? This sounds exactly like my groups. I pull every group I am in no matter the class, because people sit around and wait for full mana to pull....

[Ligma]

People weren't knowledgeable of their own class, and even less knowledge of the classes they grouped with. People didn't know how all game mechanics worked. So for a long time there wasn't a perfect idea of a min/max group because no one knew how to combine every power to form truly effective groups.

And people went LD, a lot.

[RealSmug]

Had groups that knew exactly what they were doing in 99, didnt make half the messes I see here in guktop/BB.

[Swish]

I was like 19 and never played an online game like it before. The fact that it took me over an hour to get out of Felwithe as an enchanter probably sums up where I was :D

[Vizax_Xaziv]

I was like 19 and never played an online game like it before. The fact that it took me over an hour to get out of Felwithe as an enchanter probably sums up where I was :D

Haha, same here! Only i was just 12 years old. I distinctly remember making a Gnomish Enchanter and dying to rats outside Ak'anon at LEAST 10 times in a row. That Enchanter would eventually reach level 17 and was given a Flowing Black Robe and a Staff of Writhing (with 9 CHA on it!) by a very kind elf.

I remember people would sit outside Felwithe and auction "language lessons" where you'd group with them and they'd spam the groupchat to train you in foreign tongues.

After finally convincing our parents to buy us the game AND let us use their CC to subscribe, installing the game etc etc, we realized that neither our PCs had a "3d graphics accelerator." We finally brought it to a friend's house who did and installed it there.

And man....this thread is really makin' me wanna play some Kunark!

[Tethler]

I was like 19 and never played an online game like it before. The fact that it took me over an hour to get out of Felwithe as an enchanter probably sums up where I was :D

My first character was a dark elf warrior on live. It took me over an hour too to make it out of neriak. I spent like 20 mins in 3rd gate at that underground dock cause my friend told me boats come to docks. Never found my guild master to turn in my note either.

Lost my corpse somewhere in my late teens and had to punch skeletons to death to regear in cloth and rusty weapons. It was a big change coming from MUDs, haha.

[Tethler]

live had high population, for example HHK basement which is considered one camp on p99 was considered 4 camps on live

Oh god, i remember that. Full group in lookout room camping 3 mobs. Just terrible, lol.

[Bihlbo]

I keep thinking about this. I remember when EQ first came out I was playing on a buddy's computer (mine couldn't run it). I finally got started in earnest 6 months later, then my brother and I played incessantly for a little over two years. Never got to 50.

We spent a lot of time dinking around, enjoying the world. We explored the Qeynos sewers until we mentally mapped the whole thing. We roleplayed a LOT (my brother liked to convert elves to Bertoxxulous). When we were fighting things we were either going for wilderness creatures, loot for tradeskills, money, faction, or just curious fun. We didn't know about zone xp bonuses for a very long time, and thought of the whole game as an adventure that ends when you reach max level. We were trying to get the most content out of every level we could. We made alts just to see what the rest of the world was like or to see what a different class was like, and we played them all to 20-30. Shoot, I played on test server just so I could find out what it was like to share the world with less than 100 people.

It wasn't until I ran into a guy in Stonebrunt Mountains who was playing a twink that rocketed from 1 to 28 in just a couple of days that I encountered a min/maxer. He ticked me off for a long time, it was like he was taking all the fun out of the game by trying to bypass it all for nothing more than bragging rights. Then I got ridiculed for not knowing how to level as fast as he did.

The whole time we played we were going for the goals we had defined for ourselves. That's what kept us coming back to it. No one told us that we were required to raid, that we were n00bs for not having at least two lvl 60s, or gave us an obvious quest track with brightly-colored exclamation points over everyone's heads. We were being creative, building a unique experience in a game world. That was the whole reason to keep playing. When it became obvious that our kind of play wasn't welcome in any guild, and the game was about high-end content alone, we lost a lot of interest.

[Evia]

Haha, same here! Only i was just 12 years old. I distinctly remember making a Gnomish Enchanter and dying to rats outside Ak'anon at LEAST 10 times in a row. That Enchanter would eventually reach level 17 and was given a Flowing Black Robe and a Staff of Writhing (with 9 CHA on it!) by a very kind elf.

I remember people would sit outside Felwithe and auction "language lessons" where you'd group with them and they'd spam the groupchat to train you in foreign tongues.

After finally convincing our parents to buy us the game AND let us use their CC to subscribe, installing the game etc etc, we realized that neither our PCs had a "3d graphics accelerator." We finally brought it to a friend's house who did and installed it there.

And man....this thread is really makin' me wanna play some Kunark!


Lol that's -9 cha on the Staff ... :)
Atleast you looked cool!

[Ataria]

I played a bard on live, and I remember I never, ever had to pull in groups. Not sure why (p99 bards pull all the time), but I remember I did have to pull CT, every raid. It was my only job, and I remember hating the cleric!! I would beg him please don't let me die this time when I bring in CT! Little did I know he never really had a choice, due to CT's HT. I had no idea! Yet this cleric never said a word. But man, oh how I hated him! lol.

I do not think we were bad. We were so new to this vast game, the dynamics were so different- and now with the explosion of games, the mentality is get max lvl asap, get BIS, instead of exploring, learning along the way through trial and error etc.

[Izmael]

Had groups that knew exactly what they were doing in 99, didnt make half the messes I see here in guktop/BB.

Generally speaking, BB on Green looks incredibly calm and organized compared to live in 2000 when I played there.

It was trains on trains on trains, nameds chain destroying noobs on the top level. There were noob gibs on the walls everywhere.

The commander room was a bloody mess. Noone knew what aggro was. Casters would overnuke and insta get aggro from mobs who killed them in 4-5 rounds.

People had no idea how to CR through the floor either.

Fun times though. It was amazing.

[Phaezed-Reality]

In this humble Erudites opinion, and speaking only from experience i have only been on odus(fantastic people, great place, absolutely fantastic, the palace is great, really really great) and antonica. From my experience most Antonicans still suck. My lord the dungeons .

[fugazi]

I think people weren't all that bad back in ye olde days. You should not forget that EQ punishes death like no other, so the first thing everyone learns is to not die. This pushed a whole lot of people to stick to outdoor zones, where they'd always keep control over the situation, but plenty of people went on to learn the dungeons and mastered them with the available knowledge of the time.

What does surprise me is how bad so many people on P99 are at the game. I happily share knowledge and tips with the people I group with, but dear Prexus, there are plenty of people who are even beyond the Ocean Lord's grasp. I guess P99 has streamlined the 1 to 60 experience to such a degree that gear has become a crutch and the Usual Suspect zones have made game knowledge optional.

[Coridan]

I think on live people were punching above their weight more often. I remember mostly pulling yellows and reds not groups of blues.

[Sagus]

I enjoyed the days everyone was new. I started as a Warrior and remember being told to go pull... I'd either never make it back or return with a glorious train wiping the group. My friend and I had an awesome Monk and Warrior duo... yeah, that was painful duo. We spent more time on corpse runs than anything else I think.

[bum3]

Had groups that knew exactly what they were doing in 99, didnt make half the messes I see here in guktop/BB.

Exactly. People are more ruthless now. With the mentality of, i can just train it if it goes bad. People also now... "i'll train the room to the zone while my group kills the named.. and every poor soul in between can deal with the adds."

[Wwen42]

Being young and dumb mostly.

[Nisrak]

I think having access to wikis is one of the biggest contributors to how people playing P99 differently from original EQ. The first time I started in EQ and finally got my dwarf out of Kaladim, I had no choice but to explore Butcherblock and figure things. Now, even if you aren't an expert of every zone (which most P99 players are), you can instantly pull up a map of the zone with every detail provided. I think a lot of P99 players also spend a fair amount of time outside of game planning what they are going to do to get the best weapon, armor, xp, or at least maximize the result of their in-game time.

EQ used to be more like D&D, now it's more like WoW.

[Sizar]

People would pretty much only fight at zone lines and the thought of a corpse run was a dangerous, complicated thing.


Da fook you talking about? This was so not the case EVER EVER. What kinda care bear server were you playing on

[vossiewulf]

We chain pulled all the time back in the early days. I had a necro, give a necro SOW and as long as there are mobs he can chain pull them until the group begs for downtime. I remember the primary consideration in pull speed was just always healer mana.

[Waldo73]

Felt like people were better players in 99 tbh.

[Seefourdc]

Honestly people have forgotten how secretive eq was and because of that it was a very have, have not game. Lack of any idea about classes outside your own let alone people being terrible at their own class made it hard to find a baseline for anything. I was a well known group maker in kunark in sebilis especially because my groups ran so well. I was one of very few people who was running an open group (non-guildies) on my server doing camps like combined d1-d2 in seb. I remember people constantly telling me “that’s not possible” or suggesting the group wasn’t good enough to do one of the higher level camps but I was in a high end guild and had class knowledge. Things that are fundamental to modern mmo’s were barely things we understood. It also doesn’t help that the game and skill level made things horribly imbalanced. A good rogue was worth some entire groups dps easy depending on skill level or just classes.

[Naxy]

Chain pulling in 1999-2000. Yeah, I would have to lie about my mana to not get pulls that couldn’t be healed through.

We had some good trains to zone in Black Burrow a few weeks ago. A whole evening where we lost more xp than we gained. The brewer kept kicking our butts. Good times.

[Polycaster]

Some of us were pretty good back in 99. Many of you are still pretty bad in 2019. For example, I bet many of you think chain pulling means leaving to pull as soon as all mobs in camp are dead.

[Jimjam]

Some of us were pretty good back in 99. Many of you are still pretty bad in 2019. For example, I bet many of you think chain pulling means leaving to pull as soon as all mobs in camp are dead.

Never let melee turn off their dps. Always have something ready to fight. Once melee start having down time you open up the dangerous situation of wizards becoming a viable group member and no one wants that.

Remember: down time for a melee is prep time for a wizard. Pullers: Don't be a wizard enabler by giving melee downtime.

[Swish]

Now, even if you aren't an expert of every zone (which most P99 players are), you can instantly pull up a map of the zone with every detail provided.

I had a ring binder of maps, and a notepad for important locs of zonelines to aim for when I was seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

I didn't have any ink in my printer at one point so I hand wrote out a combines guide from EQ traders to get my brewing from 1-135ish :D

(no alt-tabbing)

[BlackBellamy]

Da fook you talking about? This was so not the case EVER EVER. What kinda care bear server were you playing on

Right? This was not my experience at all. But then I played on Tallon and having an exp group close to a zoneline was just asking to get ganked in the middle of a pull. The farther and deeper you were the safer it was.

[Kron]

I played at launch and the memories OOooo the memories. I played a solid 2 years with my friend and we never made it higher then 29.

I remember we played druids with my buddy and been terrified of the Kithicor at night because the mobs would wreck us.

We never knew what zone to level in so we just ran in and would start conning things till we found mobs we could kill.

I never went into HK because I saw a Troll guard near the bridge and it spooked me. Also the Karanas was dead to me because walking down that mountain convinced me I could never find my body if I died.

We both thought bind on our druids only worked in cities so we would only bind in FP, Rivervale, Dwarf city, or in Highelf one.

We eventually invited a 3rd buddy in to join us in the game and he quickly out level us who had been playing for a year... We had a talk with him at school how his not playing the game correctly and needs to stop leveling so fast or we can't play with him.

I watched me friend die on his lvl 18 Druid in the river near the Rivervale bank because we didn't know you had to go into 1st person and look up. We died 5 times more times trying to get our gear back and discuss deleting our characters and starting over... A GM had to show up and get out bodies out of the river for us.

Sooo many more funny stories I might have to talk to my buddy and see what else we did.

[mr_jon3s]

Because no one knew. Thats what made the game fun.

[worm4real]

So, I played during this time period and one thing I remember even during luclin was that people almost never chain pulled. It was always camping just a few mobs generally and killing slowly one at a time, medding, and then doing it again. People would pretty much only fight at zone lines and the thought of a corpse run was a dangerous, complicated thing.

When wow released people brought in this eq mentality as well but it slowly got overtaken by speedrunning the instances where it was possible. Now eq in 2019 it's basically the wow mentality(not saying it's bad) - fastest exp/loot per hour, willing to take noticeable risk if you get rewarded for it. What in the early 2000s were we doing that made the game so much harder? Looking for honest thoughts.
You were enjoying yourself in 1999. Even WoW Classic is a shit show of AOE groups and other "efficient strategies" which completely miss the point of wanting to return to these old days.

It's like going back to your favorite playground as a kid and immediately trying to "win" at it. Much harder than being as efficient as possible is stepping back and maybe reclaiming an iota of the fun and mystery you had at one time.